Preview: Recipes for the week

Here's a quick picture preview for the week:

Get excited people, there are a couple of winner recipes and a dud too. Props to you if you can figure out which is the dud. Hopefully I'll also have pictures of our decorated tree - keep your fingers crossed, weeks like this remind me why December is such a hairy month for people like me - people who insist on doing everything. At least this year I haven't insisted on making all of my Christmas gifts - the first year it was homemade candy cane soap, two years ago it was decorated boxes full of baked goods, last year it was forced paperwhite lilies for everyone. This is the first year I'm not going the extra mile. Everyone on my list is getting giftcards this year. And our Thanksgiving cards have officially become Christmas cards. (Okay stop - word vomit)

Good night folks. Soon I'll even have a post about my adventures in Black Friday shopping and a story about Lance's own adventures. That is of course counting that two of my friends' babies aren't born this week ... because of course that means more food I need to make.

Kreativ Blogger Award

My friend Rose, at A Record of Rose, tagged me for a Kreativ Blogger Award. Rose is a friend of mine and Lance from days of Woodbury County 4-H. She was actually Woodbury County Fair queen the year after I was and was Fair Queen with Lance, who was Woodbury County's first ever Fair King. She lives in the next town over and is a new mom!

Anyway, the point of this award is to post about things you value and things that you do not.

Things I Value

• People who remember that Christmas is about the birth of CHRIST
• Naps :)
• My Kitchen Aid mixer
• My community of friends and support
• Being employed

Things I Do Not Value

• People who are inconsiderate to other people's time
• Christmas presents that aren't thoughtful and are just "stuff"
• People who embody beliefs because that's what's "popular"
• Passive-aggressiveness

And those are few things about me!

New Toy ...

Since Lance killed my laptop this past summer (although if you ask Lance he'll say otherwise - he was using it when it sighed it's last breath), we made the decision to get a replacement once I qualified for 25% reimbursement from work. And as of Nov 18, I had been employed by my new employer for 6 months so off we went to purchase my new baby. And I love my new HP laptop (I know nothing about it ... other than it's fast, black, and pretty. Lance was responsible for the research aspect). I've named her Isabel. We're friends. But if you are taking to Lance it's OUR computer (but really, it's mine).

Homemade Chicken Stock

One time saving method that Lance and I employ is rotisserie chicken. Every couple of weeks or so I'll pick up a $4.99 chicken from Costco. We'll shred the chicken and throw it in the freezer to use in casseroles, chicken salad, soups, etc. I'd been saving all the chicken bones and skin (nasty, I know) to make some homemade chicken broth. Except I really didn't know how to go about the process, so I called by friend Sarah and she directed me to this website.

Basically, making your own chicken stock is really easy. We threw in all the chicken leftovers into the crockpot, added two carrots, some celery, some onion and some garlic, filled the rest of the crockpot up with filtered water and threw in 2 T of apple cider vinegar - let it sit for an hour without turning on the crockpot, and then we turned the crockpot to low and let the whole thing simmer for 22 hours. I don't think there's an exact science to it, but you get this jist.
We ended up with some really quality (at least it looks like quality - see how dark it is?) stock - approximately 7.5 cups, equating to a savings of $2.5. (Gads, Lance just figured that we used about 13 cents worth of electricity - who have I married?!)

I know it's the small things in life. But this stock is going to be better tasting and (hopefully!) better for us too. Now if we could just find room in the freezer ...



I have three more containers of chicken bits, so I foresee a lot more stock making in our future. And my mom has agreed to let me have all of her turkey bones and innards, so we'll have turkey stock soon too! I asked my mom if she had any plans for making turkey stock from her leftover Thanksgiving bird and she laughed at me. Apparently, I am more ambitious that she'll ever be :)

Recipe source: Nourishing Days

Happy Early Thanksgiving everyone! We are off to my parents and Lance's parents for Wednesday and Thursday so there will be no blogging as my parents have dial-up (gasp, the horrors) and Lance's parents have zilch (*falling over dead*) for internet capabilities!

Brussel Sprouts

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know what you are thinking ... brussel sprouts are something that your mom would punish you by making me eat (side note: in my case this is not true. My mom never made brussel sprouts, I asked her about this the other day and she said she's never had them before. So I guess they aren't really a punishment in my opinion). However, I thought my roasted brussel sprouts weren't bad. You need your green vegetable intake! Mr. Lance would disagree, he thought they were weird and said I should have made only a half batch. But for a $1.28 for a container, it's a good source of vitamins. And relatively easy to prepare too.

Turn your oven to 425 degrees
Wash, cut off the stems and remove any funny looking leaves
Place in a casserole dish, throw a little olive oil on them and sprinkle with garlic powder and sea salt.
Put them in the oven, roast for 20 minutes, stir and then pop the dish back into the oven for another 20 minutes.
Voila - you are done! Enjoy your green veggies!

Sickie

I've been plagued by a bad cold this week. So instead of whipping up fab culinary works of art ... I made chicken noodle soup and ate soup leftovers the ENTIRE week. And did the bare minimum. Which means that my house is a natural disaster. For example ... this is the view from my kitchen table. It appears that my husband abandoning clean up mid-cycle.

Let's play a little "I Spy."

• Can you see the bottle of cough medicine that I've taken a teaspoon before I go to bed so I can sleep? (Yes, I realize the shaky morals of taking cough medicine so I can sleep)
• How about the empty glass canning jars? (I must give those back to my MIL)
• The cooling containers of homemade chicken broth? (More on that another day)
• The 30 year old crockpot Lance refuses to give up in order for me to upgrade to something a little less ... harvest gold.
• Water glasses that somehow never seem to find their way into the dishwasher
• Or can you see that my husband has a very bad habit of leaving absolutely EVERY kitchen cabinet open after he gets something out?

Good golly Miss Molly, I must leave my post here to clean up the mess I call my home!

Bread!

Lance is upstairs making bread while I am "writing" my paper for my servant leadership class. Granted it's bread machine bread, but how many husbands out there would really make bread of any sort? He's such a good hubbie.

Wrong? Maybe a little ...

Ya know how you can wrack up all sorts of freebies on your birthday? Free desserts, free coffee, free food, the works. Well, I think it's impossible to enjoy all of this in 24 hours and me, being me, hate to pass up something free. So I spread my birthday date to all of these different places throughout the year. For example, I just got my free Starbucks coffee coupon in the mail last week. Yes, my birthday is in March. Is this wrong ... perhaps a little. But it's not like I'm signing up with multiple birthdays, I just happen to enjoy spreading them out a little! Do you do this?

Kitty Visitors

Lance and I have discovered that there are approximately four cats eating out of the catfood bag in the garage: Fire, an orange and white kitty, a grey and black tiger kitty, and a ginormous black kitty. Apparently our garage is now a buffet for the neighborhood cats! Fire likes to sit at the window in the basement and meow at them when they eat at our buffet - in this picture he's worn out from visiting with all of his friends. Lance is putting the kibosh on the food frenzy - the food bag has been secured and there are no openings. Fie Fie is sad.

Favorite Thing: Greyness

These are my newest loves: my grey boots from Kohls and my grey OPI "You Don't Know Jacques!" fingernail polish. I love grey clothing and accessories. It's all very fall and winter appropriate. In fact I think grey is my latest obsession.

I'd also like to own these boots and these ones. Not in the budget.