Family Alive

A couple weeks ago, I shared my cooking plans.  I wanted to come back and let you know how it all turned out…

• Asian Peanut Butter Pork – I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this!  The onions (which I don’t normally like) were very milk, the peanut butter flavor wasn’t overwhelming, and the lime took the edge off the sweetness. The meat was falling apart when we were ready to eat, and I just shredded it.  Brian didn’t even recognize it was pork tenderloin! I served it with rice noodles, and it was a HUGE hit with Brian.
• Pork Fried Rice Chinese Style – This was ok.  It came together quickly, and I liked it.  But Brian would have prefered another night of the Peanut Butter Pork.
• Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins – These were tasty.  VERY dense.  It felt like I was eating an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie for breakfast… without the guilt 🙂
• Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins – These were ok for me, great for Brian.  Too much banana for my liking, but he loved them.
• Some form of cupcakes, with some special Valentine’s decorating help from Analise for Life Group on Wednesday.
• Spicy Sour Cream Chicken – Probably unnecessary to even rate this, but it was a big hit.  Two bags of chicken tenderloins (doubling the recipe), black beans, and taco toppings was plenty for a dinner of 10.
• Banano con Leche – Everyone loved them, and Brian is now asking me to make them.
• Carmelized Onion and Cheese Quiche – I just finally made this last night.  Wow.  This is a melt-in-your-mouth quiche.  Seriously, seriously good.
• Deep Dish Pizza Crust – I’ve made this twice since I originally posted… once as pizza crust, and tonight as breadsticks to go with spaghetti.  They are a homeade version of the Olive Garden.  Yum.

Happy eating!  Feel free to come back here and post your comments if you try anything!

These have become one of my two signature desserts.  They are amazing. I keep a can of pumpkin and a block of cream cheese on hand at all times, so they can be whipped up when needed.  And they can be lightened up with no compromise to taste!

Pumpkin Bars (courtesy of AllRecipes.com)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

• 4 eggs
• 1 2/3 cups white sugar
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree

Mix together and until light and fluffy. Combine the following ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt

Add to pumpkin mixture.  Pour into ungreased 10×13″ jelly roll pan.  Bake 25-30 minutes.  Cool before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting

• 1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

Cream together the cream cheese and butter. Stir in vanilla. Add confectioners’ sugar a little at a time, beating until mixture is smooth. Spread evenly on top of the cooled bars. Cut into squares.

**Notes: I have used Egg Beaters, applesauce for the oil, and half white whole wheat flour, as well as lowfat cream cheese.  No one knows the difference!  These will never fail to be a hit!

It’s been a sweet day in our house today.  Lots more loving-one-another, and that just warmed this mama’s heart.  We had lots of fun little treats and fun times together.  Let me give you some glimpses of our Valentine’s celebrating…

My sweet Valentine dressed for school

The pink-and-sprinkle-dipped marshmallow lollipops Analise and I made for her class.

Pink-tinted buttermilk chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast this morning. I had strawberries and whipped cream on mine 🙂

Twirly cookies in the making

Our cookies turned out great!

Don't waste good chocolate on a 2 year old boy, even if is only $1 and has a racecar on it.

Dinner this evening

My favorite part of each day... snuggling and books before bed.

Brian was off on a race ride this morning, so the kiddos and I played, watched a movie, got Happy Meals for lunch (because nothing says ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, Mom!’ like not having to cook 🙂 ), made the pretty little playdough cookies, and had a super-short naptime.   Brian came home with the exciting news that he’d won the 3-month winter race-ride series, including a nice jacket, backpack, $50 Tria Market card and $20 Starbucks card.  Sweet!  And then he surprised me by shaving his rough overgrown beard back to a short clean-cut goatee.  He looks so young and handsome!

We watched the Tour of California kick off in Sacramento online this afternoon, had our heart-shaped pizza dinner, and then capped off the relaxing family day with a trip to the ice cream shop.  YUM!  Analise was excited – and tired – for bedtime, because I’d given her a new satiny nightgown and fuzzy warm bathrobe.  I should have gotten a picture of her all decked out for bed tonight!  Oh well… I’m sure she’ll wear them both again tomorrow 🙂

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Hope your day was filled with love from your sweethearts and a sense of the Greatest Love of All.

This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.  –1 John 4:9-12

Of course we’ve been talking about love this week.  Analise has been practicing her bible verse, “We should love one another” in one breath, while snapping at her brother in the next.  Makes me wonder how deep my teaching is going.

But this awesome post reminds me that my siblings are not out of the ordinary.  Other families struggle to love one another.  And the deeper message speaks to my heart… that love doesn’t come naturally to us.  It requires dying to self, and that is a painful business that I wreste with day by day, even moment by moment.    So I’ll keep struggling for myself, hoping that in the death of myself, my children will see and learn of the greatest Love… and hopefully, eventully, graciously, maybe we’ll see more moments of loving each other than loving themselves.  Some day…

Just thought I’d pop in and share what’s going to be cookin’ this week…

• Asian Peanut Butter Pork – from one of my very favorite websites, A Year of Crockpotting.  Brian’s going to LOVE this, as anything Asian with peanuts is his favorite.
• Hopefully, I’ll have leftover pork for Pork Fried Rice Chinese Style (apologies to dear friend, Corrie, who makes lovely fried rice, and I’m sure this isn’t very authentic, but it looks easy!!)
• Some yummy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins, possibly the Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins that I didn’t get to make last week, as I’ve got a pile of bananas browning on my counter.  (I’d prefer the oatmeal, but should probably make the banana.  Last week, I really WANTED the banana chocolate chip, but went with the healthier blueberry banana muffins.  Of course, I’ll probably go with what I *should* make… )
• Some form of cupcakes, with some special Valentine’s decorating help from Analise for Life Group on Wednesday.
• Our friends, the Kawells, are coming for dinner on Thursday… all 8 of them!  We’re celebrating our Nicaragua trip and Abigail’s 17th birthday.  I’m making Spicy Sour Cream Chicken in the crockpot, and we’re having Banano con Leche (banana milk) for dessert.  This dreamy drink, served over ice, is served at a restaurant in Leon, and Abigail and I enjoyed it together on our last day there.
• I’ll possibly make this savory Carmelized Onion and Cheese Quiche for the weekend.  Maybe even 2… one to freeze 🙂
• Lastly, I’m putting homemade pizza on the menu about once every 2 weeks.  I intended to rotate through various crust recipes, but we have settled happily into this delicious Deep Dish Pizza Crust recipe.  I haven’t pinned down my exact sauce recipe, as I toss it together on the stovetop by taste.  But we sure enjoy our homemade pizza, and I enjoy knowing it’s a night I don’t have to think about what to make!

This couldn’t be easier, and this is an amazing tasting pie.  I’ve made it several times, and it’s never failed me!

Nellie & Joe’s Key Lime Pie (from Nellie & Joe’s website)

• 9″ graham cracker pie crust
• 14 oz. can of sweetened condensed milk
• 3 egg yolks (whites not used)
• ½ cup Nellie & Joe’s Key West Lime Juice (the only one I’ve used, and from reviews I’ve read, plain lime juice just will not work)

Combine milk, egg yolks and lime juice. Blend until smooth. Pour filling into pie crust and bake at 350º for 15 minutes. Allow to stand 10 minutes before refrigerating. Just before serving, top with freshly whipped cream, or meringue, and garnish with lime slices.

It’s cold here.   Well, cold in a Southern sense… like 30 degrees.  Brian’s off for a long bike ride this Saturday morning, and I’m in the mood to bake and be crafty.  Sounds like we’ll all benefit from this day!   Here’s some fun links that we might be trying today…

• A Better Banana Muffin – a lighter, healthier banana blueberry muffin that is on the agenda for this morning.  Gotta get rid of the frozen black bananas in my freezer!  If they’re good, I might even make a second batch to freeze for breakfasts.
• Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins – If I decide to balance out the healthy with a little not-so-healthy, these are what I might make as the second batch.
• Oh No!  The Snowman Melted – a fun little melted snowman craft project we might attempt today.
• Playdough Cookies – These would be fun to make in white, red and pink for Valentine’s day.
• A Valentine’s Collage – If I get brave and decide to break out the paints today, this is what we’ll do.
• Valentine’s Candy Pots – If I were really on the ball (which I’m not), these would be fun to make for Analise’s school friends.
• Marshmallow Lollipops – Hm, marshmallows, dipping and sprinkles… my kids favorite things to do!
• I Love You Garland – A fun way to showcase photos of those we love.
• Sugar Shack – Oh my goodness… lots of sugar involved in this one, but man, would this be fun to let the kids build and decorate!
• Valentine Garland – One super easy heart garland, if only I had pink and red pipe cleaners (and why does everyone call them “chenille stems”?  They’ve always been “pipe cleaners” for me!)

Can you tell I’ve created a folder called “TO DO with kids IF BORED”?  I’ll post pictures if we get anything done!

(*I found this in my drafts folder from mid-October… it was funny to read, and I’ll add a little commentary to the end…)

It was a lovely, rainy, cool fall day here.  Though it’s mid-October, our past couple weeks have been HOT, like mid 80’s.  Analise has had “fashion” problems every morning, and I’m not sure how we’re going to make it through the winter.  She doesn’t want to wear anything but dresses.  She had plenty of summer dresses, and most of the twirled.  But I’ve put away most of the summer clothes, because it’s supposed to be fall, along with the fact that she’s had a growth spurt and most of them are too short.  So we quickly wear out our short supply of appropriate warm-weather dresses before they’re clean again, and then we have problems.

She picks out the winter dresses, like corduroy, denim and long sleeves.  And though it’s fine in the coolish-mornings, by the time she goes out to the playground at noon and it’s 85, she’ll be overheated.  When I pick her up at 1:30, she’s always red-faced and sweaty anyway.  Not going to work.  So I point her towards her drawer of skirts and tops, or I pick out a cute shirt and pants.  No way.  She’s been so upset these past few mornings at her lack of options, it’s hard to believe clothing is causing such a fuss.  Ug.  Maybe fall will come soon so she can start wearing the other dresses hanging in her closet.  And maybe I shouldn’t bother getting her anything that ISN’T a dress for the spring and size 5T.  Unless, of course, she determines she doesn’t want to wear dresses any more.  Then we’d be in trouble!

**update from mid-January:  We’re still having the same dilemma.  It’s the dead of winter, which, in Alabama, means it can be in the 20’s in the morning when Analise goes to school and still in the 40-50’s by afternoon.  And they still go outside to play some days.  So we’ve been wearing the same dresses and tights all winter, and they’re wearing thing.  And short.  She’s sprouted a bit in the last couple months so that nearly all her 4T dresses (which is nearly everything!) are too short.  So Brian’s mom scoured the secondhand store clearance racks and found a few dresses to get us through to spring.  But, like I said in October, looks like I should ONLY be buying her dresses, and specifically ones that TWIRL, in 5T when the consignment sales start next month!  The fashion dilemmas of a 4 year-old girl… I can only imagine the issues we’ll have down the road!

So I just read this amazing post by one of my favorite bloggers ever (her personal blog is Rocks in my Dryer).   She just gets it… this joyful, exhausting, overwhelming, huge responsibility of being a Mom.  She gets it, and she knows how to communicate it.

I’m not sure I was fully aware, back then, how incredibly taxing those days were. I operated much of the time in survival mode, buzzing between a pediatrician visit to a botched bedtime to a temper tantrum to an explosive diaper (or three). And I loved it – make no mistake. For all the exhaustion, there were many times that were so precious they did (and still do) take my breath away. But the intensity of the demands had me bouncing back and forth constantly between joy and discouragement, wonder and fear. I remember feeling guilty, sometimes, knowing there would never be a sweeter season in my life, so why was it that I sometimes just wanted everyone to go to sleep already?  (Quoted from Parenting.com)

I read this just this evening, and it moved me to tears.  Seriously… this is where I’m at most days.  And she continues at the end of her post (which you really must read!), to say that after all is said and done we will think, “this is very good”.    And today of all days, I had a glimpse of that.

We were busy all day, out and about doing things, enjoying each other, having fun.  Analise was in rare good form today… very sweet, obedient, not whiney or teary, full of grace… the girl I know she can be.  Josiah was bouncy and playful, sweet and charming.  And I enjoyed my kids today.  It was balm to my sometimes beat-up Mommy ego that is constantly fighting  with tantrums, colds, diapers, cracker crumbs, rundown trains and tears.   I know this calling as a Mom is awesome and holy and full of great rewards (another fantastic post),  but today was a much needed glimpse of those rewards.   And at the end of the day, this post (quoted above) wrapped it up for me.