Worthwhile Challenge 2011 -#3

This week's recipe was one my mother-in-law suggested. It came from a cookbook she picked up in Russell, Kansas, called the Prairiesta Cookbook.

The recipe is Cheesey Baked Chimichangas.

In a large skillet, cook 1.5 lbs ground beef and 1/2 cup chopped onion. Drain. Stir in 1/4 tsp garlic salt, 1/2 tsp seasoning salt, 1 tsp chili powder, and 1 tsp cumin. Also add 1/4 cup salsa and 1/8 cup water.

I added all these things...decided it looked too dry, so I added in more garlic, more chili powder, and about 4 ounces of tomato sauce.

Warm six large flour tortillas in the microwave. Brush one side of each tortilla with canola oil. Spoon 1/4 cup of beef mixture (or a little more) on oiled side of tortilla. Top with shredded cheese (monterey jack or cheddar). Fold sides in and roll up from ends. Place in greased 9x13 pan.

Continue till all your meat mixture is used up, about six chimis.

Brush tops of all of them with oil.

Bake uncoverd at 450 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Sprinkle with extra cheese and bake 2 minutes longer.

Serve topped with sour cream and salsa.

Here's a pic of my chimi with the side salad and chips I had along with it:

Brooke said it was good but I'm not sure she gave it two thumbs up.

Matt said it needed more seasonings, that it was a little bland for his liking.

I thought I'd rather replace the seasonings with a good ol package of taco seasoning and call it good.

Hannah thought it should be spaghetti-o's and meatballs.

I liked how they got crispy, were easy to make, and easy to serve. You could wrap them individually and freeze them to throw in your hubby's lunch quite easily.

I say, give them a try, but doctor them up a little bit more than the recipe says!

Photography assignments

There are not enough hours in the day....

Not enough hours, at least, that are not already spoken for by children, husband, sleep, and meal preparation.

The remaining hours must be split between travel agent work, baker-chic work, cleaning up the house, doing laundry, grocery list making, blogging, facebooking, PTO, emailing, and the daily allotment of DVR'd shows. Because I'll flat out tell you, when the kiddos go to bed, I'm done with "must-dos" for the day. There will be no cleaning the bathroom at 9p.m. for this mother. Nope.

However, not matter how hard I try, I always struggle to get hobbies worked into my day, such as scrapbooking and photography.

I like to take pictures. I like to scrapbook. I'm going on a scrapbook retreat in a few weeks (woohooo!), and I seriously need to get my shit stuff organized.

So I take pics of life going on, but purposeful pictures are few and far between.

I'm trying to keep up with a photography assignment through MCP actions where they give us a topic per week, for all 52 weeks of the year. I missed the first one (around the house) though if i would have submitted, it might have been that hipstamatic picture of Hannah's backpack.

Last week was "a picture to illustrate a song"...so I did this picture and titled it "Angel" by Aerosmith:

This week the assignment is shades of grey, so I worked on a few pictures of Brooke:

And then over on Pioneer Woman, her most recent photo assignment was food. I'm not the most stellar food photographer, but these are the ones I submitted over there.

Orange Leaf, on my iphone!

Not the greatest photograph, but a DAMN AWESOME cake!

I love this picture. Don't you just want to take a bite? It was one of three large goodie trays I did for a local business for their holiday open house:

Little Monsters that I baked the other day with Hannah and her friend Maddi.

I don't expect to ever get selected to make their "favorites" selections, but I do love the challenge of a photography assignment.

Here's hoping we all can squeeze out an extra hour this week to do something we consider an indulgence of our time.

Well that just sucks.

I'm very sad.

I just got a phone call I did not like.

If you remember at the beginning of the year, we had trouble with the new bus driver.

Thankfully, we got last year's bus driver, Greg, back. It was so wonderful to have him back. He's like a part of our family.

I got a call from Greg a few minutes ago. He wanted to tell me that he bid a new route so he could get more hours. And he got it. Which is great for him, because a bigger paycheck is always nice. but it is sad for us...because he won't have our route anymore.

His new route is longer, or something like that. Whoever gets him, I hope you know how lucky you are and are thankful. And you better take good care of the best bus driver ever.

boo. hoo.

Laundry Hostage

I hate doing laundry.

Washing. Drying. Fine. Putting away? Not so fun.

I feel like a hostage to laundry sometimes. Forced to do something against my will. Dreading the moment. Praying for release from the pile. Wishing someone would take it away from me.

Really, not that dramatic. But I don't like it.

But this is what I saw in my dryer today, and after my initial heart attack, I had to laugh.

Maybe I should wash stuffed animals with a magnet in their collar more often. Makes laundry so much more interesting.

Worthwhile Challenge- #2

This morning we woke up to a gorgeous blanket of snow. It was a wonderful day! (Unfortunately, it was not a snow day for Brooke, but Hannah and I had a good day!). The weather put me in the mood for SOUP!

A few years ago, I went on a girls' weekend to Kansas City with two of my best girls, Debbi and Sarah. We had a great time shopping, then got all dolled up for a nice dinner and some fun at the casino. We ate at a yummy restaurant at the Argosy Casino, and I got Kansas City Steak Soup for my starter. I've wanted to try to make it ever since but have never stumbled across a recipe that seemed like it would be close.

Today, I thought I'd try again. I found a base recipe on allrecipes.com (one of my go-to sites) and tweaked it from there. Here's the lo-down on my version of Kansas City Steak Soup:

Many of the ingredients.... though after I took this picture and continued on, I changed a few things...again. lol.

I think you could use many different cuts of beef in this...steak, roast, stew meat...maybe even hamburger. I had a 1-lb. package of kabob meat in the freezer from my local meat market, Satchel Creek Steaks. I decided it would work. I drizzled a few tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet and got it hot, then tossed in the meat and about a 1/2 cup of diced onion. (I used a red onion because that's what I had on hand!).

While the meat was browning away, in a stock pot I melted 1.5 sticks of margarine. Then I whisked in 2/3 cup of flour. Once it's mixed and smooth, let it cook a bit. I learned that at my "Art of Entertaining" class on our last Disney cruise. When making a roux, you have to let the butter/flour mixture cook a bit, don't just dive right into the liquids!


Now it's time to add about 2 cups of water. Whisk till smooth. lumps are not our friend.


Meat check: almost there! I gave this another stir and let it go about 2 more minutes from this point:

Once the roux mixture had thickened up to a good gravy consistency, I added in 2 more cups of water, 6 beef bouillon cubes (I think I would have done maybe 2 more if I had any more!), a can of beef consomme, a can of diced tomatoes, and 1/2 a sack of frozen peas/carrots. I decided (after the ingredient pic was taken) to use those instead of fresh carrots, and it worked out great! You could use any frozen veggie mixture you want, but this is what I had on hand.

Also, dump the contents of the meat skillet right in here too. If it's too greasy, drain most of it off, but what I was using was a pretty lean cut.

Season with salt and pepper, put the lid on...

Turn the pot on low so it can simmer for a few hours, stirring occasionally.

Go outside and play in the snow:

My little pink marshmallow making snow angels, waiting for Brooke and Daddy to get home.

Brooke getting ready to eat some snow. It was not yellow.

After about an hour of playtime, we came back inside to thaw and dry out. The soup was almost ready, but after a taste test I did add about 2 tsp of garlic powder and about 4 dashes of Worshestire sauce.

I popped a can of Grands Biscuits in the oven (I don't think there is much that beats a Grands Biscuit in the biscuit category of life). Checked to see if my variation of Strawberry pretzel salad had set up (it had)... and got it all ready.

Here's our meal!!

The soup was hearty, rich, and fabulous. Brooke gave it two thumbs up, Matt did too but he didn't want a picture. This is definately a keeper, and a good one to take to a friend/neighbor needing a meal. A lot of the stuff is probably in your pantry!

Enjoy!

Thru the new Iphone App...

I got a new app on my iphone. I like love it.

It's called Hipstamatic and it's a photography thing... you take pictures on it like its a vintage camera... and selecting the different types of film gives you different looks, finishes, feels.... it's vintagey. it's funky. it's cool.

Thought I'd give you some peeks at my world, not through the looking glass....but through the Iphone App :)

Hannah's little Minnie backpack can always be found hanging on the closet door back by the garage entrance. Usually it has a change of pants and a pull up in it for Mom's Day Out, but everynow and then you'll find something else has been stuck into it, like... an alarm clock. Or a Barbie boot.

Yes, readers, I am showing you a picture of one of the toilets in my house. But it's what is ON the toilet that you're supposed to see. I recently changed our half bath (which is a neighbor to Hannah's backpack) to a beach theme. We've got a nice caribbean blue-green color in there (with a white wall too), and some fun beachy knicknacks. Including this lovely jar of sand and sea shells.

As a complete side note.... this jar has been around for awhile. Back in college (1997 to be exact) I bought it, and painted my then-boyfriend's (Josh) name on it with the date, in Iowa State colors. Then I filled it with Hershey Kisses. We broke up, it was one of the things i got back for some reason... and so I used nail polish remover to take off the butthead's name and it has served several purposes since then. So far, this one is my favorite.

I have a collection of cool glass bottles in a bunch of colors above my cupboards in my kitchen. I wish I had more (this is just a few of them). They're gorgeous colors and when the rope lighting up there is turned on in the evening, they illuminate quite nicely.

I love this bed. Some nights when we are sooo tired, and there are fresh sheets and we get snuggled into bed, I sigh in contentment and say "I love my bed." I do.

On my dresser sits this beautiful framed picture of Brooke. It was taken at my mom's wedding when Brooke was six months old. She was the flower girl a.k.a. wedding princess. The church was not air conditioned so it was HOT.... so she was sitting there in a diaper, frilly socks, and a headband trying to relax before we had to put on the dress for the ceremony to start. I adore this picture!

Pretty cool app, don't you think? I'm debating taking some pics of some of my pics from our vacation and getting prints like this for some fun pages in the scrapbook.

Family Found

When I posted my year-in-review post on New Year's Eve, I said that we had a family get together with my mom's side of the family in June...but I couldn't find the pictures! I found them, so thought i'd post a few!

My cousin, Danica. She is two years younger than me and we've always been close. We grew up spending a lot of time together, some of my happiest memories are ones spent at their farm. We don't see each other as often as we should now, nor do we talk as much, but we've got one of those relationships where we will always know we'll be a BFF to each other no matter how long it's been. She's the one that came down to go to the New Kids on the Block concert with me in July 2009....and I'll be heading up to go to one with her in July 2011!! :)

Here are Danica and I's children... my two girls, and her daughter Kaisa, and son Thorstan.

Thorstan is just a few months older than Hannah, and Brooke is almost 2 years older than Kaisa.

The other two "Iowa" grandkids (this side of the family has the "floridians" and then the "Iowans" even though we "Iowans" are now in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas). This is my nephew Brayton (in the blue) and Danica's nephew Joshua. (Joshua belongs to my cousin Derek and his wife Kelly). Both of these little guys turned one this past summer.... and Brayton will be a big brother in a few weeks and Joshua will be a big brother in June I think. Since this get together, our family had another new arrival-- Blake... born to my cousin Nick and his wife Katie. We've got babies everywhere! (Except here! lol).

A family get together with these guys is not complete without some games and without breaking out the poker table. Kelly (in red) is always the only girl to jump in on the poker action.

The little girlie cousins... Hannah, Brooke and Kaisa.

Love my family get togethers!