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This is a day late and I apologize.
Chewy Fruit and Oatmeal Bars Makes 2 dozen
Oven 350
3/4 cup of sugar
1/2 sugar
1 8oz container of vanilla or plain yogurt (1 cup)
2 egg whites slightly beated
2 TBSP oil (olive or vegetable)
2 TBSP Milk
2 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cup of flour (or GF flour, rice, potato, etc)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
3 cups oats uncooked
1 cup of dried fruit or raisins (extra yummy if you let them sit in warm water while you are mixing the ingredients)
1. In a large bowl, combine sugars, yogurt, egg whites, oil, milk, and vanilla;
mix well. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Mix well. Stir in oats and fruit.
2. Spread dough on bottom of ungreased 13×9 baking pan.
3. Bake 28-32 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool completely on wire rack. Cut into squares and refridgerate to store.
Note- I use about 1/2 cup of brown sugar and 1/4 cup of sugar and its always been sweet enough.
enjoy!
I had always assumed that here they were talking about carrying babies all day or making/kneading bread… I mean you earn muscles from doing that day after day. I have come to the conclusion that there is another way she does it as well. (she being the perfect Prov. 31 woman we all aspire to be). Anyway, she does this by making rice pudding.
That’s the rice pudding I made last night. A real treat for hubby and a workout for me. Being 100F here in town slaving over a hot stove is a lot of work. But it turned out ok, the verdict was cut the sugar by atleast half. Too sweet. I used this recipe.
After dinner I was able to finish my month late birthday gift for a dear friend in Scotland. I think she’ll like em. They are herb markers. I made three and stiffened em by fabric stiffener. It also worked as glue. They turned out so cute!
Have a wonderful weekend readers. Enjoy starting the week out by worshiping our Lord. 
My infamous friend Cathe made these for me a while back. I finally found my picture today while cleaning out photobucket,
Aren’t they gorgeous!?!?! I can’t use them enough. They are so thick and durable, I think these will last me a lifetime! Thank you Cathe.
You can find more of Cathe’s items here
Today is Morgann’s graduation. I am sure my Mother will blog about it. But it left Friday very busy.
We mostly did a lot of gardening. But I made some fresh tea as well.
I am really looking forward to my tea. It’s bought from -www.bulkherbstore.com and I was so pleased with the excellent service they provided.
In my tea is Red Raspberrt, Alfalfa, Nettle, and Peppermint. And it tastes excellent!
We then did our gardening-
This is a little decor on my part. I L.O.V.E. Pinecones. I think they add the sweetest decor’ to any garden. This is how I spruce up flower beds.
We also planted some herbs, mint (ladies, my solution to get rid of ants. We will see if it work’s or not. )
Here, I put them up by the house. You can see more of my flowerbed decor’. I don’t claim to be an expert. Nor is there a particular style of decorating. I just throw in what I like.
Upclose shot;
There’s that sod again!
This one will go in our house. We are not sure where exactly since our diningroom table already homes 2 plants and the computer desk one. Maybe on top of the bookcase by the open window. Early morning sun, afternoon shade. Perfect!
I also planted one Zucinni Squash plant. The poor lil thing looked so neglected at Walmart when I was purchasing the mint so I decided to find a home for him as well. We love zucinini around here.
He looks more perky today.
This is our summer garden, we think those are cantelope, they are voluntary whatever they are. We’ll love em!
This is what happens when you have to work the soil a lot. I am not sure what number of fixin’ this shovel handle is on but it’s not it’s first.
But our happiest moment of the day was to find lil basil peeking from the ground. They have survived first stage. Shall they continue on to the next round? Doesn’t that just wanna make you smile! Have a wonderful weekend!
God give you a good Sunday worship!
I tried to figure out how we could cut and save on our budget. I didn’t get to do coupon’s this week but there was a lot of good deals at the market for some fresh fruits and veggies. I didn’t buy meat at all this week as we still have some in in the freezer that need to be used up so I can defrost the thing. SO, I am going to suck it up and show my reciept. I am always in agony over showing what we bought and spent because I’d hate to think that I didn’t use good stewardship somewhere but I am not a perfect frugal wife, it’s my learning department so here goes;
Ezekial Bread (GF for David and I) $2.99
4 Dannon natural yogurt, coffee, .70= $2.80 (we split this and mix it with plain yogurt)
2 Mountian high yogurt $4.99
Padrino’s tortilla chips 1.99
SB cereal- Corn checks $2.50
2 Dill Relish $3 (they only come in those teensy bottles that you pay a fortune for. I really should learn how to make my own. Recipe’s anyone? we dislike sweet relish)
2 SB soup veggie *for soupy joes* $1.78 (2 meals for both of us)
Tree top applesauce, natural, $2.49 (no apples on sale for us to make fresh for Emma)
Wolfgang Chicken stock- $2.49
2 Asian Pears $2
Banana’s .79 lb- $2.22
Broccoli $1 lb- $1.54 (4 meals)
Grapefruit- $1
2 Spinach Bunches- $2
White peaches $1lb- $1.20
Total 34.38
Savings $5.49
Now if we saved $5.50 a week that brings us too $286 a year. Saweet! And when you calculate it all it ends up being about $1.64 a meal for each person. AND that is just all the food. Not all of that will be used this week.
I Didn’t need any necessities this week, like toilet paper, cleaners, etc. We are still using a 6 pack of Viva paper towels that we bought last year. We have only used 2 rolls so far. I just finished our toilet cleaner. Mamacita has garlic and some other veggies from her garden for us. (I hope to snag her over next year so she can help and show me what to plant and do). I did put $20 of gas in the car. We are now at a full tank.
$100 of David’s check is going into the mortage payment ($120 a week helps us meet the payment at the end of the month)
Next week I will need more of the cleaners as such so I am keeping an eye out for coupons. Hope to try the Walgreens strategy.
Some of this weeks menu will be
Breakfasts:
Eggs, grits, oats, fuit, etc.
Lunches; always leftovers 
Dinners; Chicken salad, chicken soup, baked chicken, taco’s, taco salad, soupy joes, shephers pie, London Broil in the crocpot, bbq sandwhiches
When you write all that down… It is so satisfactory.
Well, thanks for peeking in!
Just a short post to clear something up. I have NO problem saying Chicken Breasts. In the store when I am asking for some I quite often use that term so the poor butchers know what I am talking about. But I got into the habit when I was quite young and growing up in my parent’s weird house of saying, Chicken chests. My mother said it, “was out of respect for the dead chicken”. But I know she didn’t give a hoot one way or another whether a chicken, a animal, needed any respect at all… especially when you were going to devour it soon later. When I met my husband and he learned our new term he added a more old fashion word, bosom. So now we had Chicken chests and chicken bosoms. If that wasn’t enough for a “respectful” chicken… our british neighbor went into Albertsons asking for some, “Chicken Boobs or whatever those breast’s are called”. Man how I would have loved to have heard that one!
So anyway. Now you know another quirk of our family.
Did I have you laughing?
Happy Tuesday to you. This morning I made some baby food. It was pretty simple and only took maybe 10 minutes at max. I did it between flipping pancakes and Emma gave her taste approval.
I blended 1/4 cup of Strawberry Yogurt and 2 Banana’s up. Easy as pie. I wish I could have done 1/8 cup yogurt and used fresh strawberries but I didn’t have any. That is what I would really recommened. I made about 2 large baby food jars and enough left over for breakfast as well. Mind you, don’t over blend cause it ends up more like a smoothie.
I also made some Gluten Free Pumpkin Pancakes.
Recipe for GF Pancakes
1 cup of boiling water
1/2 cup of cornmeal
Stir constantly;
Add 3/4 cup of milk (we like fresh goats milk )
Stir until smooth.
Stir in;
1/2 cup cooked pumpkin (or blended and cooked butternut squash)
1 TBSP honey or sugar
2 eggs, beaten
1 TBSP oil
mix in:
1 cup of Rice Flour (or whole wheat flour if you are not GF)
2 tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
Stir until ingrediants are combined. Cook.
Voila, a lovely and easy breakfast. I managed to get this on the table by 7am and I was up at 6:15am
Since I am in the sharing mood, My sister Braelyn took some Family photo’s over the weekend. This was a snapshot of one of them. Isn’t she good? 17 yr old girl. Love her too!
Hubby and I have been looking at the idea of doing vegetarian meals. We have NOTHING against meat and rather enjoy it but think that the more “green” approach is something to look into, health wise. It has been a interesting research study. We also have to stay GF. That is more important. So that leaves us with a lot of rice and potatoes. So I have been trying to expan my horizons. I would like to stay away from Soy as well. I have been given some VERY helpful advice and I am looking into a few things. This will not be a overnight decision and application. It may be more 1 day all vegetarian dishes for 1 week. Then moving to 2. Until we reach the point where we know what we need to eat to get the right calories and protien til where we are satisfied. It would be so much easier if we lived where we could have crops all year long. A greenhouse would be lovely but we have no room for one. Such decisions take massive amounts of planning, researching and putting into practice.
For those that read this blog and are vegetarians, any information is useful and appreciated. Thank you.
Now to end the day, Emma is learning about tomatoes;
Watering Can! Yep, that’s right, watering cans now have a new and unique look that makes everyone wanna go out and buy 10. The best news is yet to come, you will receieve free juice in the process (well unprocesses juice of a sort). So go and get your new watering cans at any local grocery store!
Yes, that is my watering bottle for my indoor and sometimes outdoor plants. Since most watering cans that you can buy cost an arm and a leg we improvised and found more than one use for our empty juice bottles. One is actually our out of town water jug as well. Keeps nice and cool if you fill it 1/4 way of water, freeze, then when you leave fill the rest up with water. It usually stays cool our whole trip when we see the chiropracter. That’s about 4 hours! Back to my plants, they enjoy these water bottles cause sometimes they also recieve the leftover drops of juice or even the smell of apple juice on their soil. And my indoor plants look so healthy I’d like to think it was my improved watering can. Amazing what you can find to acomplish on a tight budget.
This is my kitchen window. That is my gift from Mamacita (Mother-in-law). I had two but one I tried transplanting to a bigger pot and it died… outdoors too. Sigh. Such persnickity little plants. This one looks about pooped but it has looked that way for almost a year now. Amazing lil guys. Love my aloe vera. I can forget to water it for 2 weeks and it will still look fresh and green. Well, as fresh as I can make it.
Have a wonderful weekend!
I love Taco Bell’s Mexican pizza. So I thought I would make a GF quick and easy version.
Ingredients;
organic refried beans
salsa
Shredded cheese
Olives
corn tortilla’s
taco’d ground beef
Heat your corn tortilla’s either on the stove top or microwave. Heat up your refried beans and your taco meat.
1 layer, 1 tortilla, refried beans. I used about 2-3 spoon dollups.
2 layer, 1 tortilla, thin layer of refried beans, taco meat, salsa, cheese, olives.
Voila. Add a bit of cilantro (or parsley) for an extra zinger.
Not sure what today is going to be like in the meal planning arena. We did cold cereal (corn checks with toasted oats) for breakfast. We may do chicken salad chip n dip for lunch with veggies.
You make a basic chicken salad, and then use corn chips to eat it with. Nice light lunch.
Chicken salad
1-2 chicken bosoms (breast) cut up
large spoon of mayoniase (We use the soy-free from Trader Joe’s)
dollop of mustard- We will probably use a spicy mustard for this
diced celery stalk
dash of pepper
Dinner will probably be tri tip bbq sandwhiches. What I do is I take the left-over tri tip (usually cooked in the crockpot from Sunday) douse it very well with bbq sauce (hickory smoke of course ) and bake it at about 200 degree’s for 1 1/2 hours in the oven. Slap some mayo on your Ezekial bread and voila. Nice sandwhich. Since we are babysitting tonight this will help cut the time down. And it’s always good to have a fresh salad to go with such a meal.
Ok, since we had eggs again for breakfast (I know a lady that would be very proud of me, so winks to her!) I am going to share another way to make oatmeal. I made this once since knowing I was pregnant.
Oatmeal has a lot of fiber in it so it’s best to balance it out with some carbs and protein, here is a delicious way to make sure you have no oatmeal leftovers!
Servings: 4
Bring two cups of milk to a small boil. This means that you don’t want it boiling but a few bubbles in the pan. Add two eggs and 1/2 cup of oatmeal. Reduce heat to simmer and stir occasionaly.
Serve with a pinch of cinnamon and brown sugar.
For lunch:
Turkey sandwhich on Ezekial bread with cheese and fresh lettuce, apple, raw almonds, boiled egg, and veggies. I will be having turkey sandwhich and the left over clam chowder (small bowl).
Dinner:
Cooked chicken, Rice, cooked veggies
How to cook your chicken. I prefer chicken bosoms (breasts as they are more commonly known). So I use this marinade. The lemond juice gives it a more tender taste. It’s best to let the chicken sit atleast 3 hours before cooking. Cook at oven temp. 350 for 45 minutes - 1 hour
Marinade for Chicken
1 or 2 garlic cloves, crushes
1/2 tsp. Curry powder or 1 tsp. crushed cuminseeds
1/2 tsp. dried terragon or basil
1 tsp. Salt
1 TBSP. Salad oil/dressing
3 TBSP of lemon or lime juice
dash or two of pepper.
Another way to use the leftovers for this is to mash the chicken in the rice. It sounds horrible but it really gives the rice a good flavor and a different approach to chicken.
It’s been a hectic day and since it’s nearly bedtime I will only breifly enter what we had today for our meals.
Breakfast: Eggs, toast, and cereal (yes again. How boring we are. )
Lunch: Leftover Chili, Apple, Raw Almonds, Veggies, and boiled Egg
Dinner: Chicken Soup, Salad
I made the chicken soup by putting the following ingredients in a crock pot for 2 hours on high and 1 1/2 hours on low.
6 Chicken thighs
3 carrots
3 potato’s
2 stalks of celery with leaves (flavor)
4 cups of CHicken stalk + 2 cups of water (LOVE broth!)
2 bay leaves
2 TBSP Dried Parsely
2 tsp. Salt
1/8 tsp. Pepper
3/4 cup of cooked rice (we used Jasmine Basmati Brown Rice)
Additional herbs maybe used such as;
1/2 tsp. Thyme
1 TBSP Basil
1/2 tsp. Oregano
I love using the additional herbs cause I just love herbs but I find that my husband perfer’s the soup without. Just a side tidbit there.
When someone says, “Gluten Free”, intsantly people think, “Oh! No wheat.” I wish it was as simple as that!
If you are looking to become Gluten Free, you probably have already looked at the ingredients on food products in the store. If you were like me, you jaw dropped at the fact that your once full shopping cart only has a few GF items. For the most part, everything we eat has wheat in it. For those of you just curious about GF or perusing my blog, I challenge you to go and look into your cupboards and take percentage of how many things include wheat.
Being GF was not just about cutting out wheat for us. I have to cut out any bean flour cause it just don’t agree with either my husband or myself. Trader Joes sells a rice bread that takes a bit of getting use to but once I am pregnant, the xyantham gum is just too heavy for my body. I get easily constipated, more tired, and just in general avoid it. Unlike my husband, I can eat wheat. But once I had our first daughter I realized that I would have to entirely cut it out while I was breast-feeding her.
I have not done the extensive research most people have on the cause of being so allergic to wheat. I got married and had to throw away most of what I had learned about cooking. I could not be the story-book housewife that I had always dreamed could be. There was no fresh pies to be made. I could not have a batch of cookies on the weekends for him to enjoy. All of what I knew how to make like, Chicken pot pie, spaghetti, beef stroganoff, Wild rice soup, or any kind of casserole made with noodles, bread, etc. It was very discouraging (even though I had been preparing myself for months beforehand on making dinners for him… but I had never even made a breakfast! No waffles, no pancakes, no french toast, no toast! No bagels with cream cheese, no breakfast biscuts with gravy. See what I mean? It’s hard!
But, although something may be hard, it doesn’t necessarily mean its impossible! More and more products are being made to help the GF and desperate housewives. I intend to this week show our menu and give you some idea on what can be done to create a lovely, simple menu for gluten free users.
Since I posted this on Tuesday I will tell you what we had yesterday;
breakfast: Organic, toasted oats and corn flakes, banana
Lunch: Hubby took to work, tri-tip sandwhich on Ezekial Bread, corn tortilla, raw almonds, boiled egg, apple and some cheese
Dinner: Salad, fresh lettuce from the garden, Clam Chowder made by Big Bear Creek. Entirely Gluten Free.
Today;
Breakfast: Eggs, toast (Ezekial bread again) with homemade Apple butter, yogurt with toasted oats
Lunch: Left over Subway sandwhich (yes wheat. He will regret it later on. But, oh, he was wanted wheat so bad.) , Apple, boiled egg, cheese, carrot, broccoli, cauliflower veggie bag, and raw almonds.
Dinner: I plan on making chili. We use organic beans which seem to agree with us better, 1lb of ground beef, 1 can of mexican diced tomatoes, 1 taco seasoning package, 1 can of corn
Stay tuned!
Because of my hubby’s sensitivity to wheat we usually have bread on a rare treat. Easter was one of those times. So I made him the GF Banana bread. I followed a traditional bread recipe but substituded the flour for “Montina Rice Flour”. Turned out pretty good if I do say so. Care for a slice? I used the King Arthur Baking Book recipe.
It really is palatable.
Second batch. A sense of acomplishment is filling my being. David is happy.
Oh and this is on my needles. It’s a beginner’s sweater. All it is is knitted rectangles, then you sew em all together. I can do that!
So, I was determind to someday make the best fudge available. I love fudge but I dislike so many. I prefer chocolate as any well worthy (ahem) woman should. But I dislike the powder sugar taste. BLLLEEEECH! So, in trying to come up with a coffee shop fudge without coffee I ended up with this.
Coffee Shop Fudge- a many time requested recipe still in the making; Copyrighted by Challice Neipp. Free distributions of such recipe allowed. Sale rights need to email me.
8oz Cream Cheese, softened
2 TBSP butter softened
2 Cups milk chocolate chips, melted
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 TBSP Dannon All Natural yogurt
1 tsp cinnamon.
nuts optional.
Butter 9″ square baking pan. Melt chocolate chips. See *.
Beat cream cheese, butter, melted chips, and vanilla until smooth.
At low speed, beat in yogurt, cinnamon and nuts (if your nuts and think it needs them).
Press evenly in the bottom of prepared pan. Cover and chill atleast 2 hours, preferbly over night. Cut as desired.
*Perhaps you are like us in the fact that you do not own a microwave. How acient! Heat your oven or woodstove til the temperate is about 250-300 and slowly melt the chips in a oven safe bowl. It takes about 15 minutes but its oh so much better than the microwave! Just think, you can go beyond the normal soccer brownie mom! Or, basic mom!
Please note; this fudge will be more chewy/soft than your average fudge because of the yogurt. You can subsitute yogurt for just basic fresh brewed coffee. Enjoy!
I threw this together as kind of spur of the moment. It actually turned out very good.
Ingredients needed:
1 recipe for beef fajita’s
Corn tortilla’s
Sour Cream
Rice
Cilantro
Lettuce
Cheese
I added the rice to the beef fajita’s, Put a spoonful on the corn tortilla, Put down some lettuce, a bit of sour cream, some shredded chedder cheese and topped it off with some fresh cut cilantro. I am not as good as pioneer woman when it comes to cooking but my hubbyman did enjoy this (amazing!) and so did the boy we babysit. Tonight thouh, we will be enjoying Pioneer Woman’s Marbolo Man Sandwhiches!
This is a Christmas gift for my Brother and Sister in law and their family. The two smaller loaves are for Christmas gifts for friends.
Pomegrante Jam Recipe with pictures.
1. Peel as many pomegrante’s and you think it will take to make 5 cups of juice. This is long and tedious work. It is ok to peel some, refridgerate the seeds, peel some more, refridgerate, etc. This is what I had to do since I have Emma.
2. Once you have your seeds all ready, you juice em. The juice should sit out atleast 24 hours for the foam to rise. Scoop it out with a spoon and then we are ready for the next step.
3. Now, Emma was fussy at this point so I have no more pictures but here is what you do. In a sauce pan put the juice and heat it a wee bit, add the pectin, stir til boiling. Add 3 cups of sugar and bring it back to a boil and stir for 1 minute.
Remove from heat. Pour into sterilized and ready to go jars. Set to seal (about 24 hours). Can take up to two weeks for setting.
Enjoy!
