chicks and cookies

Dan's mom wanted some more chickens, so we got two chicks that we'll keep at our house until they get a little bigger and then give them to her, this way Jackson can watch and play with them. He is a little timid towards them because they pecked at his finger in the beginning. But the other day he picked one up to put on the scale. They weigh 1 5/8 ounces each. They are growing fast though, they are already getting their feathers.

I made oatmeal raisin cookies the other day. Have I posted I love my Silpat sheet? It's great! Food doesn't stick at all and it's easy to clean. Just hope that later they don't find out it's poisonous or something.

today: lions and writing

A couple days ago I made Jackson bear cutouts of cheese and turkey meat with crackers. I asked him if he wanted bears again and he said "Yes!" and then waited a second and said "lions!" He even went and got the lion cookie cutter for me.

So, I think my son is a genius. Look at him, not even two yet and trying to write his name. ...hehe ... I'm exagerating a little, but I am really just amazed.

apple crisp

Last night Jackson and I made apple crisp.

happy love day

Happy Valentines Day! Jackson woke up to some red balloons, little toy gumball machine, chocolate kisses and some red finger paint to play with (which we did tonight). He popped two balloons this evening by sitting on them, he thought that was pretty funny. We made heart shaped sugar cookies yesterday and had heart shaped pancakes also. Fun stuff.

new toys

We had a great Christmas. Jackson got some fun new toys, including a cute elmo tree ornament.

I've been wanting a pastry blender for awhile now, I just never bought one myself. And I finally got one! I was so excited to use it, I made some pineapple muffins yesterday. These are one of my favorite muffins, I love the crushed pineapple and topping.

yummy

I love these pancakes. They are from the Pioneer Woman Cookbook. The secret ingredient is sour cream. I never would have thought sour cream could make them so good.

Dinners this past week

This week, the Chicken tetrazzini was excellent! I doubled it and froze the other half too. It was a new recipe and also the Chicken pesto pizza was a new recipe too. The pizza was also very good.

I've pretty much already have next week planned and the grocery list made too! My goal is to have the week planned and grocery list made on or by Sunday night. Then to go grocery shopping on Monday morning (or sometime during the day).

Tamale pie, apple crisp & dishes

I made Tamale Pie and Apple Crisp last night for dinner. It looks like it takes me about 24 hours to blog about it too.

My tamale pie did not look like the picture on the box. At all.

The recipe for tamale pie was from the back of the cornmeal box. It was pretty good. I thought it was a little dry, but Dan liked it and said he'd eat it again.

This recipe for apple crisp is from The Joy of Cooking cookbook. It's different than what I'm used to from Betty Crocker's version. The top uses white sugar instead of brown sugar. Still very good. I love apple crisp. It's such an easy desert to make.

This is the part I dislike the most. The dishes after all the cooking is done. And then if I'm not right on top of getting them cleaned, they build up more! Especially since I'm cooking more than I used to. Oh well, after I finish dishes, I always realize that it doesn't take much time to do. Like running, it's starting that is the hard part.

Happy Easter!

I made these tonight for Easter tomorrow. I got the idea/recipe from Kellogg's. They were pretty easy to make. The coconut died green was the easiest, which I expected that to be the hardest. And getting the rice krispies into the muffin pan was the hardest, which I wasn't expecting it to be that hard. But overall they were still pretty easy and quick to make.

We went to an Easter egg hunt today in Powell Butte. Thanks to Amy that told us about it. It was a fun one. Way better than last year's, which was in the middle of a street. Jackson was ready for a nap and it was pretty cold out, so he didn't last too long. He did like finding a couple eggs though.

Belgian waffles, yummy!

I made these this morning. They were excellent!

I used the Belgian waffle recipe from this book, The Joy of Cooking.

I had never looked at this book before. I had seen it at the library before (I've checked out a lot of their cookbooks). I just thought it was like a Betty Crocker or Better Homes & Garden cookbook. It's not. It's much more thorough and even the way you read the recipes is different. It's neat. I like it a lot.

The Belgian waffle recipe is quite complex though compared to a regular pancake/waffle recipe. I didn't read it before I started. I probably should have, but then I probably wouldn't have made them this morning. It involves lots of warm milk at 105 F degrees, egg whites beat to soft tips, disolving yeast, and more. However, it made a great waffle.

Next on my list to make from the cookbook is Shepards Pie.

Pita Pockets

From these,

to here,

to this.

I made tzatziki sauce, tried to make some Mediterranean spiced chicken (wasn't that great) and made some greek pitas. They were so good. Love cucumbers and feta.

The pita pocket recipe is so easy! It's from a bread machine cookbook (sorry don't know which exact one, didn't keep track of the name). But you just put all the ingredients into the bread machine and set to dough. Then an hour and half later it has turned into perfect dough! Pita's are so fun to see them rise up in the oven too.

I watched the movie Julie & Julia the other day (of course from the library.

I really liked it. It was a cute, no terrible events, movie. It's inspired me to cook more. I've been trying anyways just to save money, but I often run out of new ideas. So I just need to go through more cookbooks. Not necesarrily Julia Child's cookbook and I'm not going to do 500 some recipes in one year, but it's inspiring me to do some new recipes (pita pockets aren't new for me though, I made them a little over a year ago).

With Daddy, granola & a 'recycled' soaker and longies

These are a couple pics from the other day.

I made some granola! I've been wanting some for my yogurt and strawberries, but didn't want to buy some because I think it's expensive. So I finally made some and it's really good! So glad I did it, plus it was pretty easy.

Here is what I made from an old wool sweater of mine. This was my first attempt at recycling a sweater and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I can't believe I didn't try it sooner. I also made another pair of longies (pants) and some shorties (shorts) with an old gray sweater too.

bread & outside

I switched and tried the regular white artisan bread recipe and ohhh it is good. It's so good if you like bread at all. I had forgot what it was like and I wanted to compare it with the wheat bread. The wheat is ok, but this is so much better. Maybe I'll do a little less wheat flour next time, but still some to get some of the whole wheat in it. The brown wave in the bread is from the whole wheat dough leftover in the container, a little marbling (couldn't taste it though).

It was pretty nice yesterday, so we hung out a bit after doing chicken chores. Jackson found the vegetable garden and loved playing in the soft dirt. Inside the house he is always trying to play with the dirt in our palm tree, so of course he likes this too.

Love the little hand under the fence.

I played with photoshop some with these pics just for fun.

I made some bread

Here is how the bread turned out. It is pretty good. Definitely has a whole wheat taste to it, so pretty different than the regular white artisan bread from their first book. I do like it though and Jackson had some and seemed to like it too. I'll try some of the other variations next.

bread

I finally got the Healthy Bread in 5 mins book from the library. Started my first batch today. Here is a before:

Here is after a couple hours letting it rise. Then it goes in the fridge and to be used when wanted. I'll probably cook a loaf tonight, hopefully it's good! I love their first book and definitely recommend it. I'm sure this bread will be good too, just with more of a whole wheat taste.

It's hard to go without posting a pic of Jackson. Here he is eating breakfast this morning. And I haven't done any B/W for awhile either.

books I'm reading

I frequent our local library a lot. I rarely actually buy books because our library is so great. They even have new release DVD's that I've been getting lately too... no more paying for watching movies for me! But I just thought I'd share what I'm reading right now (oh and I don't read fiction, so these of course are all non-fiction).

First one is Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. A friend told me about it because they are following it and it sounded neat, so I got it. I've read most of it and I like it a lot. It seems like a great plan. It explains how to pay off debt, build emergency funds, build education and retirement funds and invest money. We have some debt that we haven't been successful at paying off very quickly, so this might help us. This book is also full of inspriational stories to help get you motivated to do it. I'm excited about it.

I haven't gotten too into this book yet. It's a little overwhelming because everything seems so new and different. But I want to read more of it and try to learn some from it.

This one is has diet in the name, but it's not really a "diet" as the regular definition, more of just how to live and eat in a healthy way. I use it as a reminder of how to be healthier.

I'm anxiously waiting for these.

This one is a DVD. Right now I'm number 8 on the hold list... getting closer! I think I started as number 45 or something.

And a book. This one is in transit...meaning on the way to the hold shelf!I really liked their other book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes, so I'm anxious to see what this one is like.

riding his lion

My mom got Jackson this lion for Christmas. He likes playing with it. He pushes it around and sits & bounces on it. He's also wearing a new diaper I made.

And my mom got me a food dehydrator! Here is my first time using it. I dried apples, pears and bananas. They turned out good. It's a nice snack to eat for something new. I'm going to do some frozen (soon to be thawed) mangos next.

I didn't edit these pics at all, I just lowered the quality on my camera and uploaded them straight. Hopefully they don't take too long to view. I found out I could also use photobucket to edit/crop pics too if I need. I couldn't find on photobucket a way to change the dpi to 72 for the pictures though. If you know of a free site that does that, let me know!