A Working Vacation with Jeff

Jeff had to miss quite a bit of the boys 2 week spring break due to the big project at Calabasas. So we decided to take everyone down for a few days to enjoy some sun and change of scenery. The night before we left, I spent the evening in the ER with #3 who broke his arm so you'll see his splint in the pictures. We came from cold yucky weather to nearly 80 degrees so we were loving the shorts time! You can even see some sweat on the kids. :) We ate at Carney's in LA; I think they have two locations and we were at the N. Hollywood one. Awesome hot dogs, per Jeff. I had a yummy wrap thing. I'll have to hunt down the pictures we took at the beach in Malibu.

Chef Tibbers

I had a hankering to make homemade pasta last night; I haven't made it in a LOOOONG time so it was time to dust off the tools. My hubby bought the Kitchenaid Pasta rollers a few years ago for my birthday and they're great. We made some wheat pasta and BO#2 thought it was pretty cool. Homemade noodles are so good!

Some more high chair fun

Here's some fun shots of BO#3 enjoying some crackers...oh how I love that he can feed himself! The boy said sayonara to baby food long ago. His favorites? Mini babybel cheeses, graham crackers, top ramen, grapes, mandarin oranges, peaches and lunchmeat. We figured out long ago that he loves salty/spiced food. I had to put the kabosh on daddy feeding him the top ramen; I think he drank a gallon of juice after the saltiness of that meal! Don't you love the squinty eye look? That was a favorite expression over the last couple of weeks. Too cute!

Happy Floater

This isn't a very good quality picture, but it was too cute with that big grin. We gave him strawberries (the boat creates a nice catch all so they don't fall!) and let him gnaw away. He LOVES strawberries! Jeff has finally gotten him used to the pool on his own. We always had to hold him before. Now he gets to float around and watch all the shenanigans going on around him.

Fresh Crabs!

We enjoyed a GREAT weekend on Camano Island (outside of Seattle) with Jeff's boss/partner's family. What a great place...the boys had a blast...and I got my fill of fresh crab! Click on the link for my web album on the left under My Links for more pictures.

Yum, Yum!

Ian is really enjoying his food! He digs the "garden vegetable" puffs by Gerber!

Bread and More Bread

 
We were having some family over for dinner on Saturday night for a birthday celebration...and in my typical "over doing it" way, I couldn't just make one loaf of bread. Nope. The fear of having it not turn out well forced me into making 2 types. The left two are just a yummy white bread recipe, the far right is a great Farmhouse Pumpernickel. Did you know that cocoa powder is an ingredient in pumpernickel...I learn something new everyday! The little roll was white bread dough given to BO2 to make his own...they always like handling the doughs when I bake. The smaller loaf in the upper right corner is a sourdough loaf I made the day before. I used an "Easy Sourdough Starter" recipe with not the best results. The bread tasted good, but it took a FULL DAY for the bread to rise after shaping! I'm sure I did something wrong! And I know my yeast is good, because the other loaves rose perfectly. Oh well, guess I'll have to try a Not-so-easy starter recipe. Anyone have a good one?

Not at all related to St. Patty's Day

I love my pressure cooker. I think EVERYONE should have one; well not just have one, but use one. I created this recipe by tweaking a couple I found on-line. It's for Mexican Shredded Beef. And not the typical kind. I'd like to think it is a "New Mexico" style shredded beef. It was really good! And, there were lots of leftovers to make additional meals. The first night we had tacos/burritos. (Just depends in how you fold 'em!) Then I made enchiladas for another meal. And I wanted to make a soup with the rest. Just didn't get to it yet. My plan was to make something like Chicken Tortilla soup...but with this shredded beef instead. I'll work on that. If you have any recipe ideas, I'd love to hear them! Here's the recipe I used....

Mexican Shredded Beef

4-5 lbs chuck roast (or any other roast)
2 med onions, chopped
2 4 oz cans chopped green chiles (more or less to your liking)
1/2 cup green taco sauce
1 cup salsa
3 Tbsp hot chili sauce (omit or add more to your liking...my husband likes insanely hot things so I add some for him!)
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp chili powder
1-2 cups water

Brown meat in pressure cooker or stovetop. Meanwhile mix ingredients together. Add meet to cooker, cover with mixture and additional water to cover meet. (Careful not to overfill your cooker!) Cook on high pressure for 50-60 minutes.

I cut the roast in half and did it in 2 batches because my pressure cooker is small (but electric and I love it!) You can do a smaller batch, but I wouldn't decrease the ingredients, probably just the water. Hope you like it!

Shredded Beef Enchiladas

I went VERY easy on this...but you can certainly make your own enchilada sauce.

Tortillas, cheese, meat, olives, canned red enchilada sauce.

I think you know the drill. Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 30-40 minutes. Sorry, I didn't take pictures of this, but they were good!

I served both of these meals with refried beans made from scratch (with the pressure cooker!) I used Miss Vickie's Pressure Cooker Recipes to come up with dried bean cooking times. I printed all the cooking time charts and put them in my recipe binder. It's been very helpful. The pressure cooker is such a great time saver!

Absolutely Evil

 


Thanks to my SIL Bether I have discovered a blog that is funny and evil. The Pioneer Woman has a Pioneer Woman Cooks blog with down home recipes. I saw this one yesterday (I have a lot of dead time while #3 is in his parasitic mode) and decided I had the few minutes it would take to whip it together. I stopped off at the store after picking up #1 from school because I didn't have Granny Smith apples...a little too tart to eat for my taste. And what self-respecting parent has Mt. Dew on hand? Just kidding, hope I didn't offend anyone. But the bi-product of this unlikely ingredient is naughty. Hubby and I only let the kids have one so we could have the rest for ourselves. We had them for dessert, and then dessert to dessert. Do you see the bottom of the pan. They aren't tongue marks, but they could be. That's how good it is. Then we had it for breakfast dessert this morning. Bad. This is what's left of a 9x13. Sad. Not good for the after-baby diet. Neither was the Corned Beef & Cabbage that Jeff wanted for dinner. But all that will have to be another blogpost.

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Fall Treat Recipe

I found this fun treat recipe in the Dr.'s office for these corn pop "rice krispy treat" type things. Of course, I didn't have the recipe at home and I couldn't find it on Family Fun's website, so I decided to wing it. Due to the affects of late pregnancy I forgot the key ingredient of butter before melting the marshmallows...soooo...they didn't taste very good. Maybe it was the corn pops we didn't like. But either way, they were VERY cute to look at. And we might try them again using the correct ingredients and maybe some different cereal. But the boys had fun shaping them and eating the fruit leather "husk". I know I'm admitting to some domestic inadequacies here, but it was a fun idea :)!

Our Little Doggy

This picture was taken at least a month ago; Caleb has had this "doggy" stage and insisted on eating dinner like a dog. So we slapped a placemat on the floor, gave him a bowl of water and let him at it! He thought it was very funny! But, then again, so did we! At least it was stir-fry and he could slurp it up...

Lil Fishermen

Well, I may have a few months of catching up to do, but I'm trying! Here are some great pics of the fish Garrett caught at the river near our house. I think the 16 lb carp would have pulled him into the water if we hadn't been close to help. It took about 15 minutes (with lots of help from Pop-pop) to reel him in. The smaller fish was a great 3.5 lb bass that was quite tasty!