Spoiled

I am spoiled. I am sitting in front of a roaring fire, blazing in our living room fireplace, as my sweet husband is working on the lights for our Christmas tree….you know, you plug them in and there are always those that refuse to light up and just when you are ready to throw them in the garbage can, voile’ they decide to mysteriously work…it is a conspiracy I tell you! Back on track….
I think about the fact that I can sit on my toasty warm living room floor as one of our dogs is on the hearth stealing the heat from me and type on my laptop to put this out there on the internet and realize that I live a very spoiled life. Is our home brand new? No. do we have all the newest tv’s, computers, cars, appliances, etc. no. Do I even have all that I want? No. but I have all and more than I need. I am spoiled. I am loved. I am blessed.
I am not a whiner for the most part. I am trying to practice being content in all things. I am wishing that I would see my family again before the year 2011 ends, but I know that they are happy, serving the Lord and loving their church’s fellowship, growing their family and living the life that the Lord has given them, so I am content.
Is it easier to be content when you know you are truly spoiled…sure. Is every area of my life silver lined? No. Do I struggle with things? Yes. Do I ever worry about money being there for bills, etc. Yes.
But contentment and joy are a choice. A day by day, sometimes minute by minute, choice. One that I am quite sure, if more people would make this choice, the world (even my little world) would be a much better place for everyone.
In the words of a song: “have what you want, but want what you have” are words well sung.
I am spoiled….I am content. The first is not my choice, the second is.

Soup Anyone??

Successful Improv

I decided to use up some of our leftover turkey by making a “white chili”. Of course, in looking up a few recipes I soon realized that I did not have all of the things that they asked for.
Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo….to my own devices I was left.
This is what I came up with, and it was dubbed a complete victory by my husband and put into my repertoire of recipes to be made again.

This is not a large batch, good for 2 people or 4 if served along with an entrée (a grilled sandwich would be wonderful)

And please know, that this is not the best picture of the soup...I did not take a picture until after my husband had put the leftovers into a plastic container for his lunch.

Here is the recipe:
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup chopped onion (how fine, your choice)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp white pepper
Largish pinch cayenne

¼ cup roasted bell peppers (green or yellow - mine were home canned from my garden)
2 tablespoons green Tabasco

2 C chicken stock - homemade is best (mine was)
½ water

1 clove garlic

¾ cup chopped, cooked chicken or turkey

1 can drained and rinsed canellini beans

¼ cup heavy cream

Cook onion in oil till soft. Add in dried spices and cook for another minute.
Add in roasted peppers (chopped) and Tabasco, cook for a moment till heated thru.
Pour in chicken stock and water then grate the fresh garlic into mixture.
Add in remaining ingredients and bring to boil, turn down immediately and simmer for 10 minutes.

Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with crushed tortilla chips rather than crackers.
Although I did not have these things on hand, I think my husband would have loved a dollop of sour cream on top, and possibly some fresh chopped jalapeño pepper to garnish with.

All of my spices are organic, as was the turkey and peppers. I buy organic canned beans also.
This was not a complicated recipe to make, nor did it take any time at all.
The remaining turkey in our fridge is divided up into ¾ cup servings and frozen for 3 more batches of my new recipe: Paula’s White Chili

And This Is What Our Thanksgiving Looked Like!

This is the appetizer table....info on the chalk board of all the goodies.

Dessert Bar! Lots of sweets, sugar-free sweets also of course, to choose from!My Sweet Mommy Checking Out The Desserts.

The Table....very special to me because.....The Table Cloth was bought by OUR son and daughter in law in Mexico. And in their absence, the cloth caused us all to think of them and feel the love of family all around!

Hope that you had an amazing Thanksgiving with your families...and now....ON TO CHRISTMAS!

Just A Few Thoughts.....

Just a few thoughts…..

I am a bit under the weather, a big ole’ cold, and I am a bit behind on what I need to accomplish for the big turkey day dinner….but not to far behind, so all is well.

Our son-in-law, Ben, had a birthday the other day, we stopped by his parents house on Sunday to say happy birthday and gave him a gift and some tiramisu, which I made for him, as his Mother says that I make it better than she does, even tho it is very low in sugar (and alcohol free).

We have a different camera in the house and I decided to play with a couple of settings, it will take a long while before I am proficient with it. And I am appalled at the dog hair on this blanket!! Wow! Customarily, the few nights before Thanksgiving I am so busy with this and that, that I feed my sweet husband dinner from town, which is completely out of the ordinary for us. I received as a gift today a gift certificate for a local deli, and used it to get my sweetie a huge sandwich…what a blessing beyond words, as this yucky cold has got me beaten down and not as energetic as I usually am leading up to the big day.

Why is it that I LOVE the cooking and baking I do in the days leading up to family dinners and HATE the floor cleaning so much?????????????? Silly question!
I plan on taking lots and lots of pics of all that I do for Thanksgiving….a separate dessert table with a delightful display of goodies….a separate appetizer buffet with a bit of an “Italian” flare….and a buffet of food to tantalize any palette! Oh, and then there will be the table….in my head it is a thing of beauty….hoping in reality to have the same outcome!

Thankful, Grateful, Full Of Gratitude

Thankful
The dictionary defines it as “gratitude, grateful, full of gratefulness”.
We will celebrate Thanksgiving next week, with many of our family members and friends, cooking, eating, laughing, talking, watching football, feeling full, eating more, feeling even more full, well, you get the picture.
But I want to take a moment today to tell everyone how grateful I am for the life I live.
How thankful I am to serve a risen Savior, to KNOW where my eternity will be spent, to live in a country that at this time, I am free to worship my Lord freely and have peace.
I am thankful for a wonderful husband who loves me even with all my flaws, a great and long marriage and the fun that we have together.
I am thankful and grateful for the jobs that my husband and I have, for the provision that God has given our family.
I am thankful and grateful for the children that the Lord has entrusted us with, we are so blessed. We have amazing in-law children and grandchildren who even though are separated from us by hours upon hours of travel, they light us up just by seeing their smiles in pictures.
I am thankful for our parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. We have an abundance of family and are better for it.
I am thankful for friends. I love to laugh with my girlfriends, spending time with our church friends, and the friendship that I genuinely have with my husband.
I find it hard to believe that a person in this United States could not be thankful, we are a blessed nation, and have so much more than other nations. We do not know poverty in the way others know poverty. We do not see war as other countries do (although I am sorrowfully aware of the losses our service men and women suffer in those other countries and again, I am grateful to all those who selflessly protect us in the military).
So, as I have shared with you, just some of the areas in which I am thankful, I want to challenge you to go into this coming week with a grateful heart, thankful for all that you have, and to carry that thankfulness beyond that one day of “thanksgiving”, and allow it to be an everyday attitude of gratitude.

Wall Color Anyone???

Remember this wall? I affectionately call it my “wall of fame”!
Well, it has changed a bit.
Here is the story…. our youngest, a beautiful daughter, decided that she was going to paint her sun room (beautiful, natural woodwork, tons of windows, you get the picture) and she asked me to go with to pick a color [she picked a lovely honey gold that made the hardwood floors pop!]. Well, as I had a conversation the evening before said shopping trip, with my husband, he told me that he has never liked the color of our living room since we painted it this past spring. Nuff said! I picked a color, got the paint mixed and I was off!
My husband spent the day Saturday working with a friend, so the day was mine to get things done. And I did! I moved all the furniture out, cleaned the walls off, cut in, painted, second coat, moved the furniture back in, hung all the pictures back up and had things completed by 3:30pm! I will not talk about the fact that my legs only hurt when I sit, stand, bend, squat or walk, but other than that, they are just fine!
Now to put things into perspective a bit, my living room is 25 feet by 14 feet. A fireplace to trim around, a set of French doors to trim around and a double window to trim around, not to mention the ceiling is vaulted, 10 ½ feet is the height. Now you know why my legs hurt! But only when I use them.
Was it worth all the time, pain and effort? Well, let me just say, the first words our of my husband’s mouth when he came home that afternoon…. “I REALLY like the color!” yep, worth it!!
Well, here is the new wall color, I took the picture at night, and so it may not be the best of times to see the color.
Tomorrow, I will be showing you the finished pumpkins for our thanksgiving table; they are drying as I type!

Pretty, Pretty Pumpkins

Pumpkins, take 2!!
Since I decided to shades of white as my table centerpiece for thanksgiving this year, I thought it would be fun to do it with what I have here at my home, and not buying anything new, or at least as little as possible. Sooooooooooooo, the first of my re-do’s are my small pumpkins.
Let me say, that my wonderful son and daughter in law took a cruise in Sept. and I went to New Orleans to stay with the 3 munchkins…while they were docked in Mexico, my son (Evan) picked out a tablecloth for me and that is the jumping off point for my layers of white & off white for my table.
Ok, back to the pumpkins, 3 wait, no, 4 simple things and this is how it goes…..
Paper mache’ pumpkin, satin finish spray paint, CLEAR glitter, as fine as you can get, stain, a dark shade is best.
Paint the entire pumpkin, stem and all. Let it dry completely.

Second coat of paint…and sprinkle with the glitter but keep the stem clear of the glitter.
Very lightly paint the stem with the stain, layering until you get the darkness you desire, which is a personal choice. I have silk fall leaves, so I am anticipating that they will look wonderful with a coat of paint, some stain painted veining and possibly a bit of glitter! Shall we try?? OK! Well, I believe with a few, ok, maybe ALOT more tea light candles, my table should be stunning for our Thanksgivng feast!!!

And you know, I will take pictures of our set table in all it's glory...oh, and I am planning an all out dessert bar.....as creative as can be...can't wait to see how that turns out!!! Have a superb Wednesday!!!

Blessing Bowl Full Of Peppers!!

The last of the garden blessings came in on Monday afternoon. I walked out to peek, and found 8 green peppers, still firm and growing. They were not as big as those that I picked during the peak season, but a huge and unexpected blessing for sure!!
My husband asked me to make stuffed peppers with them, so I gladly jumped into the process.
Now, that may not look the same as at your home. Since my husband has type 2 diabetes, I need to keep the carbs as low as possible. That means NO rice, low amounts of bread crumbs and a large meat to pepper ratio. So, I try to add as much flavor as possible, and that starts with roasting the peppers over flame, steaming them and scraping the char off. Not a hard process, but a bit more time consuming than using a raw pepper.
I make sure to mix all the wet ingredients into the bowl before mixing the ground beef in, to prevent the meat from getting tough.
My wet ingredients are: ½ grated raw onion, 2 cloves grated fresh raw garlic, 1 whole egg, 2 tbl. Milk, ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese and my herbs….which are usually fresh from my plants. Mix in the 1 pound ground beef and ¼ cup homemade bread crumbs just till combined.
Place some yummy canned or homemade marinara sauce in the bottom of your baking dish, fill the peppers to overflowing (the beef mixture will shrink, so you do really need to overfill) pour more sauce over top the peppers and bake, lightly covered for 40-50 minutes.
When you take them out of the oven, sprinkle as generously as you like with a bit of extra freshly grated parmYour family will love these, I promise….and it is even better when the peppers are an unexpected blessing from the garden!!

Breakfast Fo Dinner

Breakfast for dinner….yes? no? Do you have this at your house? We do on a very limited basis, as my husband has really never been a fan of it….until Monday night! I made pancakes with a mixture of whole wheat flour and coconut flour, a little stevia, vanilla, cinnamon and the usual wet ingredients….they were a big hit, and my sweet husband has decided that he likes breakfast for dinner…at least a few more times a year!
Here is my recipe which I concocted Monday Night:
½ cup whole wheat flour
½ cup coconut flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp cinnamon
½ tsp pure stevia (natural sweetener)
small pinch of salt (sea salt is best)
1 egg well beaten
¾ cup skim milk
1 tsp vanilla (only real vanilla will do)
1/8 cup canola oil
Mix wet ingredients together, add into sifted dry ingredients.
If the mixture seems to thick (and that is entirely possible) add in more milk, ¼ cup at a time.
Butter the griddle (only real butter for us) and fry by ¼ cup full amounts….these are dense and require a bit lower temp and longer fry time, but believe us, they are worth it!
I personally chop some raw pecans, placing them on my pancake, and if I really want to guild the lily, I add a few sugar free chocolate chips before drizzling with a high quality sugar free (all natural if possible, like an agave, or local honey from local beekeepers, fresh from the hive) syrup, or better yet, REAL maple syrup, as that is an all natural sweetener.

I have not had sugar in 6 years. I do eat natural sugars like fruit and things of that nature. For sweetening and baking, I use as pure and natural as possible, like a stevia or another bark sweetener.
My husband is type 2 diabetic, so non-processed foods are the better choice for him, that is why I use whole wheat flour and organic coconut flours.
And honestly, it is better for anyone to eat foods in it’s most natural state, the less processed, the better. That does not mean, however, that it is low calorie, so restraint is still necessary, as much not fun as that is sometimes.

p.s. I can only find coconut flour in our small town at our heath food store, but if you are in a large town that has a whole foods or even a large grocery well stocked grocery store, you may find it a bit more easily…but it can be gotten on line from several companies, like Bob’s Red Mill (organic) which is what I use.

Feelings, & Plans...

Feeling as if I really need to get my Christmas shopping done as soon as I can…not sure why I feel the urgency, as there are so many other things that need to be done much before Christmas, like digging thru all the photo’s taken this past weekend, and getting the discs mailed off, finishing up Thanksgiving shopping, cleaning, deciding what my centerpiece will be for the thanksgiving meal, what dishes should I use….and it goes on and on.
I intend to create a pretty tone on tone centerpiece for our table, and am excited to get started on it…I will make sure to document it in pictures for you and try to get it done as soon as possible, as to not post it too late… to possibly give you an inspiration for your own table! I am thinking levels of white….creamy white, bright white, pale white….lots of candles and sparkle, hoping to make it from all that I have already , and not having to purchase anything (with the exception of unscented tea lights, as I NEVER use scented candles on my table to avoid offending any of my guests).

Remember these.... the pumpkins that I made for our table last year????

Well, they are being re-purposed for this year....stay tuned!!

District Champs!

I may post twice today, maybe.

Just wanted to share the photo taken of our "Player of the Game" #55 (He really was named that this past weekend, just to pad the already numerous honors that he has earned this season) receiving the trophy. Totally Cool! T, we are so proud of you and so happy that we were able to be a part of this amazing day!

Just a Quick Take on Our Weekend

More to come another day, but today, I give you three pictures.

First, my sweet hubby enjoying the view from "The Top Of The World" as the locals in the U.P. call it, and it was quite breathtaking!

2 & 3....I just had to take these pictures. And they are two different pictures, not the same that I turned to b&w. I am, I guess, drawn to the obscure, and I find it to be quite beautiful in it's simplicity. I have to decide if I would like this in color or black and white on my wall, but it will be framed for my eyes to look upon, remembering a precious weekend with family, a special meal with a wonderful young man (who's team took district championship in football in triple overtime....stressful!), I will share a few photo's that I took at my photo shoot with him for his Sr. Pictures another day also, but for today, just this.

Tell me what you think.....color or black & white????

Friday & Lots To Do!

Let's start off with last night (after working and grocery shopping, where I threw away my grocery list ON MY WAY INTO THE GROCERY STORE!)...I accomplished lots! Made a spatchcock oven roasted chicken with roasted potatoes and carrots...yummy! Put 2 future chicken meals in the freezer. Made chicken salad for my mother with the leftover roasted chicken. Put up 22 cups of fresh home made chicken stock. All with 2 four dollar chickens!

Then I cut my daughters hair, she is just so pretty....makes a Mommy proud!

Swept my floors, changed the sheets on our bed and collapsed to watch a bit of tv with said daughter.

Oh, let's not forget the pork loin that I broke down into 16 pork chops to take up north with us for our family up in the UP of MI. We are leaving this afternoon, so that I can do a photo shoot for our Sr. in high school....how did THAT happen?????? A Sr.?????!!!!!!!!!

He is a star football player (which I have mentioned before, but will say it again with pride) and has received multiple honors for his undefeated season this year.

I am putting my foot down and not traveling any more for the year 2011...I have been to New Orleans twice this year, the UP of MI 5 or 6 times this year, Door County WI, other areas of WI many other times and I am looking forward to a two months of being home, filling our home with family and friends and just being with my husband. Doesn't that sound wonderful!

So I shall leave you this weekend with a picture of a wonderful young man, having just defeated their biggest rivalry, loving on two of his young cousins....3 young men I love with all my heart.

I am a blessed, blessed woman!

Are You Ready For Thanksgiving???????????

Well, as I mentioned a few day ago, I have my menu planned for Thanksgiving…and here is how it looks. I put together a book of sorts, (as I have for several years now) with the menu, the dishes that I have asked others to bring (I cook the meat, potatoes and all the desserts) and the recipes that I personally need for my part of the feast. I also send recipes to a couple of my relatives, as they always say…”you just let me know what you want, I am willing to try anything” [I have a fantastic family!] and they get to try something new and fun to bring with.
I find this tool to be one of great value and there are 3 reasons why.
1) When the menu is set, there is NO last minute panic. I know exactly what is being served and I never worry about not enough or too much food. Welllllllllll, I like a bit too much, as then everyone gets to take a bit home with them, as thanksgiving leftovers are the best!
2) I have all the recipes at my fingertips….I am not searching for anything when the time comes to bake and cook!
3) I can make my grocery list up way in advance, allowing me to keep it with me, and then I can buy a bit each week, and I am not doing a huge grocery run the day before thanksgiving….the more organized I can be ahead of time, it allows a stress free cooking time and I am much more relaxed during the actual meal.
We usually have anywhere from 12 – 25 people at our annual meal and the farther ahead that planning and work can be done, the more fun I can have!
I would encourage you to try making a book of your own….it may just make your holiday a bit more fun!!!