Food Friday: Potato Wedges with Spicy Chipotle Sauce

With all this warm weather we've been having lately, it's been feeling like a great time to get back outside and fire up the grill (before it gets unbearably hot and all we want to do is sit inside where we have cold air). So last night, we did just that. We opened up the French doors in the kitchen that lead to the porch, turned on some old country music we could dance around to, and while little man laughed at our horrible renditions of some of Alabama’s and King George’s greatest songs, my husband put some chicken on the grill while I put together some potato wedges with this great sauce.

It’s pretty perfect for this time of year because it goes with just about all kinds of grilling foods, but it’s especially great with the taste of Sweet Baby Ray’s barbeque sauce. Though, to be honest, I think everything goes with Sweet Baby Ray’s because it’s delicious.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients:

• 3 medium potatoes
• Season packet for potatoes (you can find this in the produce aisle, but use your own blend of seasonings if you prefer)
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 tablespoon Ranch dressing
• 3 tablespoons sour cream
• 1/4 tablespoon chipotle chili powder
• 1/8 tablespoon cayenne pepper
• 1/8 tablespoon salt
• 1/8 tablespoon garlic power

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. After scrubbing potatoes, slice in half length-wise and then cut into wedges (you should have about 4 or 5 wedges per half).
3. Combine wedges with season packet and oil, and lay on baking sheet.
4. Bake for about 20 mintutes, flip potatoes over, then bake another 20 minutes.
5. While potatoes are baking, combine the remainder of ingredients in a small bowl, and refrigerate until ready to serve.

We ate these with bbq chicken, but as I said before, they really go great with anything grilled. And if you have leftovers that you want to reheat, these are a lot better microwaved than regular french fries are (though I'd still suggesting baking them for a few minutes so they don't get mushy).

This Child Can Face Uncertain Days

Some days, the world feels like it just plain sucks. There are tragedies happening around every corner, and crazy people who would love for the rest of us to live in fear. After the bombing in Boston a couple days ago, yesterday was punctuated with text alerts from my alma mater informing me of multiple fires in campus buildings (the last count I had heard was 9), and today I stumbled across a news report of a doctor on trial for doing horrible things to babies.

It can be a scary world. I have a few friends who are talking about conspiracy theories, and while I don’t agree with their theories, I understand where they’re coming from. It’s so much more comforting to think that terrible things happen because people in positions of power are trying to keep those positions. That idea implies that there is a reason for these tragedies. It’s a lot easier to think about these things, and to live without fear when we believe that there is a reason behind the madness. When we find an alternative to the belief that danger could wait around every turn and we are powerless to prevent it, that’s something we want to hold onto. It’s so much more comforting!

The hard truth though is that there is no good reason that these tragedies are happening, other than the fact that some people are just twisted, sick individuals. Anything could happen to us, at any time. That’s a really scary idea, but especially since I’ve become a parent. The thought that something could happen to my perfect little boy is terrifying. After the shootings at Sandy Hook, of course I imagined my son in that school. I see him in the 8 year old boy whose life was taken in Boston. I see him everywhere, and it’s scary.

After he was first born, I went through a period of time when all I wanted was to take him back into my womb and keep him safe from the world. I don’t want him to see the bad things and people in the world, and possibly be a victim of one of those bad people. But really, if I were to keep him from the world, he’d miss out on seeing all the good things too. A quote from Mr. Rodgers has been going around the internet the past few days, and I think it’s really relevant. He said, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

In the face of tragedy, there are those who rush to help, and there are more of them than there are people committing these senseless acts of violence. Rather than get depressed by the news, find those helpers, or better yet, be a helper yourself. God created this world, He created man, and He called them both good. That leads me to believe that the world and the people in it are inherently good, even when there are those who would do evil and have us believe that there is only evil left. God created this world for us, and He intends to do us good and not harm all the days of our lives.

My faith is in Him, so even when I’m afraid for my son and the things that he’ll have to see and experience, I trust in the Lord’s plan. Have you heard the song Because He Lives? A woman at my church mentioned it to me on Sunday, and it’s been speaking to me all week, and describes what I’m feeling perfectly, so I’ll leave you with the lyrics that have really hit home to me:

How sweet to hold

A newborn baby
And feel the pride
And joy he gives
But greater still
The calm assurance
This child can face
Uncertain days
Because He lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4M-zwE33zHA

 

Food Friday: Beef & Broccoli

I know, I know. It's actually Sunday. But I spent all day on Friday with my husband and then all day yesterday with my cousin and our family at her bridal shower! So, since today is the first day I've really had to sit down at the computer, I guess it's really a food Sunday, but it's a pretty good one!

This is my go-to recipe for when I bring people food, because it's pretty easy, yummy, and it's different from the usual things you get when people bring you food. This past week, I brought it over to my friends who just brought their GORGEOUS new baby girl home from the hospital.

 

Ingredients:

 

• 1 pound boneless beef chuck roast, sliced into thin strips (or ground beef)
• 1 cup beef consumme
• 1/3 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 package broccoli

Directions:

1. Brown meat, drain, and return to pan
2. Mix together beef consumme, soy sauce, brown sugar, sesame oil, garlic, and cornstarch in seperate bowl
3. Pour mixture over beef, mix in broccoli, and let simmer together until broccoli is warm.

 

I usually serve this with rice, and all together, it's one of my favorite dishes! I hope yall enjoy it!

 

 

Snips, snails, and puppy dog tails are cute too!

Didn't I just get done talking about how excited I was for spring? I'm pretty sure that was just within the past month, and already it feels like SUMMER! Is Virginia's weather bi-polar, or what? Today it's supposed to get up into the nineties! 90 degree weather?? Holy tamole! I think I was just complaining last week that it was unseasonably cold for April, and now it's unseasonably hot! I should just stop being surprised by anything the weather does in this state and accept it as just being how Virginia is. If I don't like the weather outside, I'll wait a minute or two. It'll change.

I knew this warm weather was coming though, so while I was out earlier this week, I tried to find some shorts for little man since all he really has are pants. I say tried because shopping for cute clothes for a little boy is next to impossible. It was the same story when I tried to find him an Easter outfit. And before that, a Christmas outfit. There were tables and tables full to bursting with clothes for little girls, and they were all adorable! But when I went hunting for the tables with little boy clothes......it was like searching for Big Foot. I guess manufacturers think that boys don't care about their clothes, so they just don't bother making a whole heck of a lot for them, but my boy is still little, which means I'm the one picking out his clothes. And I LOVE dressing him in cute clothes!

I did eventually find two pairs of little shorts that were halfway decent, but I'm still disappointed in the lack of selection. My little boy is adorable, and I want to be able to dress him in the same way without having to pay a million dollars for custom baby clothes (because it seems silly to me to spend a ton of money on something he'll grow out of in a couple months)!

Is it because little boys are made of snips, snails, and puppy dog tails? Those things aren't as sweet as sugar, spice, and everything nice, so mommies of little boys, like me, are faced with tables and racks full of onesies with crude text about breast-feeding and who even knows what else. Nothing I would put my son in, that is for sure! So, step your game up clothing companies! I'll be here, waiting for something worthy of my son's cuteness for me to buy him.

My favorite outfit for little man- it was a gift from his Granny. (I know the hat doesn't match, but it was sunny outside, and I love him in that hat!)

Iron Sharpens Iron

Happy Monday yall!! Did you have as beautiful a weekend as I did?? The weather was beyond gorgeous yesterday, and we were lucky enough to be able to spend some of it outdoors enjoying it. And after that, we had a couple friends over for dinner, and while the boys grilled outside, we got to leave the doors and windows open to let that beautiful weather in the house!

That time we spent yesterday evening sounds pretty simple right- a cookout with friends? Well, it should have been, but it really got me thinking about some more complicated things. I've been thinking a alot about what my husband and I will want to do when it comes time to send little man to school in a few years. I know it's a couple years away, but I want to start thinking about it now, because there is a lot involved in the decision: to home school, or not to home school?

I've really been leaning towards homeschooling the past several weeks. I keep hearing more things that bother me about school, and even more positive things about homeschooling, and I'd almost made my mind up that I want to homeschool, but last night changed that in a big way.

My husband grew up in the area where we live now, and it's a pretty small town. The people we had over last night were his best friend since childhood, and his girlfriend. I say childhood, but really, I should say babyhood, because they've been friends since they were about two years old. And the fact that they're in their mid-twenties now and still spending time together is awesome. He was there when we all went to prom together in high school, at graduation, at our wedding, and at the hospital when we had our son. And for a million other moments before I met either of them. It's a friendship that has literally lasted a lifetime, and you just don't see that anywhere. But in this area, it's not really uncommon. As much good as homeschooling would do little man, I don't want to deny him the opportunity to have that kind of friendship.

Romans 12:10 "Love one another with brotherly affection."
Proverbs 17:17 "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity."
Proverbs 27:17 "Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another."
Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 "Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up."

And there are more verses like these that talk about the importance of friendship. Obviously, none of this is to say that homeschool kids don't have friends, because I know a lot who do. But the kind of relationship that I've seen over the past nine years between these men, and that was shown to me again last night, is something that I think kids in the school system have a better opportunity to find because they spend more time together and share a lot more of their lives with one another. I want my son to have a friendship like this one, where it's still going strong almost a quarter of a century after it began, and there's no reason to believe that it won't last another couple quarter centuries more.

Food Friday: Chicken Noodle

Did you think last week's honey apple pork loin was easy? Wait until you see this Friday's recipe! We had a friend and her son over for a playdate with little man yesterday evening along with two of my husband's sisters, and then we all had dinner after the babies played for a little bit. Rather than being distracted the whole time they were here with fixing dinner, I figured I'd do another crockpot dinner so I could just put everything together before they got here and then be free to enjoy time with everyone. So I made what is probably the easiest meal in the history of all food: chicken noodle.

I didn't call it chicken noodle soup, because it's not really a soup. It's exactly what it's called. Just chicken and noodles. It's incredibly simple, but it's one of my personal favorites, and not just because it takes about a minute to fix. My husband, little man, and I all really like it (and it seemed like everyone else did last night too)!

Ingredients:

• 3-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 2 cans cream of chicken soup
• 1/2 cup butter (sliced up)
• 42 ounces chicken broth
• 24 ounces egg noodles

Directions:



1. Combine all ingredients except noodles in crockpot. Let cook on low for 8 hours.
2. Shred chicken, add egg noodles, and stir together. Let sit for another hour.

2 steps, basically no work, and at the end of the day, you have a yummy dinner that will satisfy even picky eaters. This makes a pretty good amount too, so you'll have leftovers and be set for lunch the next day. We fed 5 adults and little man, a lot of us had seconds, and I still have some leftover for my lunch today! Yall enjoy!

Couponing for Dummies (and the not-so-dumb!)

I’ve been putting up pictures and deals I’ve gotten couponing, and I’ve started having a lot of people asking me questions about it, so I figured I’d give yall another coupon post!

Before I start giving yall any advice about coupons, let me brag for just a second about the deal I just scored. 120 Yoplait yogurts for a grand total of………………$1.45. AND on top of that, the store gave me a $2 catalina. So, basically, I was paid 55 cents for taking 120 yogurts!! I know what you’re probably thinking: What the heck will she do with 120 yogurts?? They’ll all go bad! But not so! Did you know that you can freeze yogurt?? I just found out recently, so when I found this deal, I stocked up since little man eats yogurt for breakfast every morning. Now I’m set for all his breakfasts for the next 4 months!!

So, now you’re probably wondering how I did it. Well, you’re in luck, because here’s the part where I stop bragging and get down to business. It’s a pretty simple concept though. You’ve seen before where I talked about getting my coupons organized. That part is tedious and takes HOURS, but that’s really just the first step. After that, what you need to do is HOLD YOUR COUPONS. I know -- it’s tempting when you see that you need vegetables for dinner tonight, and you have a $1 off coupon. But just say no!! Don’t use that coupon yet!! Hold onto it until the vegetables you use often go on sale. Then, when the prices are even lower than usual, you can stock up.

That’s the big secret! That’s all there is to it! You just have to decide to change the way you shop. Rather than buying one or two things when they go on sale, or when you have coupons, you wait until you have both, and then you buy a TON and store it. That way, you’re catching the deals, and you’re set until it goes on sale again. I’ll use my yogurt example above because it’s such an awesome one. Here’s how I worked it:

I bought my usual 4 newspapers, clipped my coupons, and filed them away. Among those coupons were coupons for Yoplait yogurt. So I had 4 coupons for 50 cents off 8 yogurts, and 4 coupons for 40 cents off 6 yogurts. Rather than using them right away (which I could have done because I just told you how often we eat yogurt), I held onto them. This past week, Food Lion had The Big Deal, where a lot of different items were on sale. Yoplait yogurt included. Through that sale, if I bought 30 items, I got $15 off my purchase. With yogurt on sale for 60 cents apiece, when I bought 30 of them, it took me from a cost of $18 (before tax) to $3. Then I used my coupons, and that took me down to negative numbers. That means that after tax, my cost was -$0.10. Food Lion’s policy is to not give you any money if your coupons are worth more than the item, but my cashier thought I was awesome and gave me the dime anyway (I knew I shouldn’t get it, so I put it in the donation jar on the counter). On top of that, the coupon machine in the store printed out a $2 catalina, which means I now had an additional $2 to spend at Food Lion on my next purchase. So, I turned around and did the same thing the next day. I printed off all the Yoplait coupons offline I could find, and ended the week having done the deal 4 times. Because I eventually ran out of coupons, I had to pay $1.45 yesterday, but I still got a $2 catalina back, so it’s like I was paid 55 cents for those 120 yogurts!!!

That’s how easy it is! It takes a long time to comb through the circulars every week and even longer to clip and file all those coupons. And then I still have to do the math to figure out which deals and coupons are worth it. I probably spend as much if not more time each week couponing than at my actual job. It’s a lot of work. But it’s not really hard work once you get the hang of it. I’m certainly no math whiz, but I figured it out. If I can do it, you can do it too! And if you need help, as I've mentioned before, The Krazy Coupon Lady is a great resource. Buy the book. It's WELL worth the $20 you'll spend, and when you walk out the grcoery store door with a haul like mine pictured below, you'll feel AWESOME. Happy couponing!

This haul was worth over $200. I only paid $80 of that!! (You can see my first 30 yogurts in there with everything else)

If He brings you to it, He'll bring you through it

Good morning yall!! I’m so sorry there was no post yesterday…ok that’s a total and complete LIE. I’m not sorry even a little bit, because instead of sitting at my computer, I took little man, met up with Cathy and James and their little man, and went outside to enjoy the first really pretty spring day of the year. And when I say pretty, I mean it was a B-E-A-U-T-ful day!!! We took full advantage of it too! It was kind of stinky because my husband was working on the ambulance and couldn’t enjoy it with us, but it was still a good time!

I’m also not sorry because the topic of my post changed dramatically. My intention was to write about Easter Sunday because Easter is really the most significant day of the year. It’s always incredibly emotional – I can’t get through an Easter service (or really even that part of the gospels) without sobbing.

But really, I don’t have anything new or different to say about Easter. It’s powerful, and an incredibly meaningful experience every year, and I feel my relationship with Christ grow every time I think about what He did for me…but I think that’s the same thing any Christian would say. So, rather than talk about that today, I’d like to talk about something that I’ve known for awhile, but really hit home to me yesterday: the importance of the attitude we live by.

A young woman about my age recently found out that she’s having a baby! This isn’t the same woman I was talking about in my recent post, but as you can imagine, I had a similar reaction because, well, I love babies. This young woman isn’t exactly in what you might call an ideal situation, but she’s pretty excited too (again because, well, BABY!!). On top of that, she got some news yesterday that is going to make her situation even more difficult. But let me tell you, I was just blown away by her attitude. It would have been so easy for her to be negative; it’s a lot of hard things happening all at once. But she refuses.

And that’s all there is to it. She chose to be positive, and that changes everything. When you refuse to let negative things bring you down, you are making the choice to refuse to admit defeat. It’s not ignoring that things are going to be hard, but rather embracing the challenge, and rising to meet it. And I firmly believe that’s half the battle won right there. When you make the choice to live with a positive attitude, you’re strengthening yourself and not giving your situation power over you.

I go back to the Bible for everything because that’s where I find truth in how to live, and in this case, I can’t help but think of Job. Everything that could have gone wrong for him did. Nothing could possibly be as bad as the struggles he was faced with. Struggle is too minor a word for what he went through. That poor man went through the wringer, and then some. But his attitude never wavered. He acknowledged that things were hard and he wanted them to be easier, but he maintained his positive attitude. In Job 13:15-16, he says, “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him…Indeed, this will turn out for my deliverance.” And he was absolutely right. He stayed positive, put his trust in the Lord, and he was brought through it. We’re told in Job 42:12 that “The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the former part.”

Things happen for a reason, and that reason is all to His good. And we know it is all to our good too, because the Lord speaks to us in Jeremiah 29:11: “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

So there’s really no reason to be negative. We already know the end of the story! We know that everything works for the good, even if it’s hard to find the good in a hard situation. That’s not to say that we sit back and let God handle everything, because as I’ve mentioned before, the Bible tells us in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, “

The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” We have to do some work, and a lot of the time, it’s going to be hard work. No one ever said that life was easy. But if we put in that hard work, and maintain our positivity, there’s nothing we can’t make it through.

I'm going to end with the lyrics to Chris August's song, "He Said."

So your life feels like it don't make sense 
And you think to yourself, 'I'm a good person' 
So why do these things keep happening? 
Why you gotta deal with them? 

You may be knocked down now 
but don't forget what He said, He said 

(Chorus) I won't give you more, more then you can take 
and I might let you bend, but I won't let you break 
and No-o-o-o-o, I'll never ever let you go-o-o-o-o 
Don't you forget what He said 

Who you are ain't what your going through 
So don't let it get the best of you 
Cause God knows everything you need, 
so you ain't gotta worry 

You may be knocked down now 
but just believe what He said, He said 

(Chorus)

Don't fear when you go through the fire 
Hang on when it's down to the wire 
Stand tall and remember what He said 

I won't give you more, more then you can take 
and I might let you bend, but I won't let you break... 

(Chorus)

 

And now here is my little man looking ADORABLE in his Easter outfit! Do you love it?? I love it!