Feeling grateful

So freezer jam season is starting... Yay! I absolutely LOVE freezer jam! Strawberries have been on sale for a few days now, and I've made no less than 4 batches of jam so far! Yummy yummy yummy. :) Seriously, I can't get enough of the stuff. Freezer jam is one of the simple, every day miracles that we take for granted... can you imagine life back in the dark ages? No lights, no electricity, no PLUMBING, practically no medicine, the plague, and no freezer jam. How blessed are we to live in the days of clean water, penecillin, and freezer jam! And if you think I'm joking, then you don't know me well enough. :) Oooh, and epidurals, don't forget epidurals. I completely believe that whoever invented the epidural should be granted sainthood and guaranteed a seat in heaven. Think of all the pain and suffering that one thing has removed from the world. I know... I was in labor for 28 hours and had to have 2 of them. Best thing in the world, the epidural. :)

So today I'm feeling grateful to live in the age of technology and clean water. I mean, I like making home made bread when I get a wild hair, but growing your own wheat and grinding it by hand, and then baking it every day just to survive? No thank you. I love the super market. I love that I can stop at a fast food chain if I'm just too tired to cook. I love that I can turn up the heater on a cold and dreary day, such as today. I am grateful that women have rights and are treated as equals. That we can vote and that we live in a free country. And where would we be without Spongebob? I mean, come on! The entire society might collapse without that little yellow guy. Although, if I could, I would go back and remove all video games.

Life might be difficult today, but it is so easy compared to what was. Any time I think life is hard, I can almost hear my ancestors mocking me. And don't think that they wouldn't. If they are indeed related to me, then they have quite a proclivity to mock and use sarcasm. I'm spoiled rotten and grateful for it.

Quick and Messy Lasagna with Bechamel Sauce

Wow that's some title! LOL. But I wanted to put it all out there upfront.

 

I love lasagna, I mean who doesn't right? But it takes so much time to make it that I hardly ever do it. But then I saw good ole Rach.el R.ay do this trick and it changed my lasagna eating life. All the yum with half the work.

If you do it quick and dirty, with just browned meat and canned sauce... you could easily pull it all together in about a half hour for a quick weekday dinner. But if you take the time to make a nicer sauce, like mine below, it will take a bit longer and taste a lot better. Still, from start to finish, I had dinner on the table in under an hour.

 

You could use pretty much any recipe for lasagna and then use this method and it would work nicely, but this is my recipe, adapted to this method... and I must say that my own recipe is quite good. :)

 

Basically, you take the lasagna noodles and break them up into pieces before you boil them. I try to break each piece about 4 times. You'll get all different shapes and sizes, and that's great! So you boil them according to the instructions on the package, plus 1 minute. Then drain, and add to your meat sauce.

Then stir to coat them all and get it evenly distributed.

Put half of it in a cake pan (9x13) and then top it with some cottage cheese (or ricotta if you're fancy) and a sprinkle of dry parsley.

Then put the rest of the noodles on top of the cottage cheese.

Top that off with the bechamel sauce (or grated cheese if you prefer), and a sprinkle of grated parmesan, and stick in your oven on 350 for about 25 minutes.

Let it rest for 5 minutes before you serve it.

The only drawback is that I can't get a "clean slice" to make a nice picture. It's "messy" lasagna, remember?

But oh, so yummy!

 

Now if you want my own recipe, which you totally should because it's awesome, here it is.

 

So first, you need to take a red bell pepper and get it roasting in the oven. Put it in a pie tin about 6 inches below the top heating element and set your oven to "high broil." Keep it in there until most of the skin has turned black, about 10-15 minutes.

Cover it with foil, or a bowl of some type to let it steam as it cools. When it's cool enough, remove all the skin, stem, and seeds... throw those away. Finely dice the meat of the pepper and reserve it.

 

Now it's time to make your meat sauce. I believe in using ground sausage instead of ground beef. Trust me, it's so much better.

You brown that up with some finely chopped veggies... I mean finely chopped. You want the taste in your sauce, but you don't want to have visible pieces of veggie.

One onion, one carrot (I grate that), one stalk of celery. Put all of that in with the raw sausage and cook it until the sausage is brown and crumbly.

Add 3 or 4 cloves of minced/pressed fresh garlic. Let that cook for about a minute, then add one 14oz can of beef broth (or chicken broth if you prefer), as well as the reserved diced bell pepper.

 

 Cook it at a boil, stirring often, until pretty much all of the broth disappears, about 10 minutes.

Once the broth has reduced down to nothing, add 48 ounces of canned spaghetti sauce,1 TBS of vinegar, 2 TBS of dried oregano, and some fresh basil. I've stopped using fresh basil during the winter, and I get this stuff instead because it lasts longer in my fridge.

And I add this much...

Then stir and let it simmer while you make the noodles and bechamel.

So break up, boil, and add the noodles how I described above. Then remove the noodle/meat sauce mixture from heat and set it aside while you make the bechamel sauce.

 

First, what's bechamel sauce?

I used to make lasagna and top it with GIANT amounts of shredded cheese. Expensive and yummy. Then I decided to try bechamel sauce. It's a creamy cheesy yummy goodness sauce. I actually like it better than topping it with cheese, plus it's cheaper, more authentic, and is just rich and thick and gooey... mmmmm.

Try it.

 

Melt one stick of butter and then add 1/3 cup of flour. Whisk together to make a roux, let it cook for about a minute, maybe two. Then slowly add 2 cups of whole milk, whisking the whole time. Also add 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp nutmeg. Yes, that's right, I said nutmeg. Trust me, it's good and doesn't end up tasting like nutmeg, it just gives it a background zing.

Keep whisking (or else  you'll get lumps) until it gets nice and thick, like really thick and creamy gravy.

Can you see the "streaks" that the whisk left in it?

Remove from heat and whisk in 3/4 cup of shredded parmesan cheese until it incorporates (melts into) the sauce. It will get nice and cheesy, almost stringy.

That's when you want to pour it over everything, and sprinkle another 3/4 cup grated parmesan on the very top for color and texture... and gluttony.
350 for 25 minutes.

So yummy.

***

1 pound of lasagna noodles (NOT "oven ready" noodles)
24oz of cottage cheese
1-2 TBS dried parsley

1 pound of ground Italian sausage

1 red bell pepper

1 bulb onion (I use white, but whatever)

1 carrot, grated

1 stalk of celery, finely chopped

3-4 cloves of garlic

1 - 14oz can of beef/chicken broth

2 -24 oz cans of spaghetti sauce

1 TBS vinegar

2 TBS dried oregano

1 bunch of fresh basil/basil paste

1 cube of butter, melted

1/3 cup of flour

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese, divided

Rosemary Roasted Root Veggies

I love potatoes. But sometimes, you're just in the mood for something with a bit more variety. Still traditional and filling, but a bit different, and super yummy.

Well, this is it!

I love how everything gets turned jewel bright. Such a beautiful side dish!

You'll get rave reviews with it, even my kids will eat it.

I got the recipe originally from my good friend's BLOG. She's amazing.

This is what you'll need... for a giant batch of it.

Last night I had a big family dinner, 11 adults and 8 kids. I made 2 whole chickens in the crockpot... I had to borrow an extra crockpot, and I made this as a side. It was awesome! But this is a lot! So I'm cutting the recipe down to 1/3 of what I made last night, so that it would be appropriately sized for a normal family dinner.

 

1 red beet, peeled and chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 sweet potato (not yam!!!), peeled and chopped

1 russet potato, washed and chopped

1/3 of a butternut squash, peeled seeded and chopped

1 TBS olive oil

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp salt

 

Toss it to coat, and put in a baking pan. For this amount, probably just a cake pan should do it for yah and you can cover it with tinfoil. But for the full amount you see in the pictures... I used my roasting pan. Ha! I haven't used it in forever, because now I always do my chickens in the crockpot... but it has found a use again!

Cover and cook at 400 degrees for 1 hour. I usually stir it around at 40 minutes, just to make sure it's cooking evenly. And quite often I'll cook it for an extra 20 minutes to get the carrots nice and soft enough for my 1 year old to eat on her own... but I find that makes the rest, especially the squash, be really over cooked. My brilliant fix for that is to put the harder veggies at the bottom and the softer on top. So the beets go on bottom, then carrots, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and squash. (Still stir it around to mix it at 40 minutes.)

Look at how pretty!

 More nutrients, more variety, more taste.

Mmmmm.

The only complaint I ever get is from my husband who misses all the extra butter I put in mashed potatoes. LOL. But he just adds it here and is plenty happy.

Cream of Anything Soup Mix

Yeah, so I'm allergic to a lot of things. A LOT of things. And it pretty much sucks. Do you know how hard it is to make a casserole when you can't have canned soup?

And then I found this recipe.

*Heaven!*

I found it on THIS blog, and I have no idea where it originated.... er... originally.

But it is a life saver for me!

Also I must say, that even without all my food problems, I would still choose this over canned cream soup. First, it's pennies on the dollar compared to the canned stuff. So cheap to make! And it only has a few ingredients, so you know exactly what you're eating... no chemicals and stuff you can't pronounce. But most important to me, is the taste. I mean, being healthy and frugal is great and all, but if it tastes like cardboard then no thanks! But this is so good! Tastes SO MUCH BETTER than the canned soup. For serious.

Try it out.

You won't regret it.

(Also, if you're into emergency preparedness and food storage, this is an AWESOME thing to plan on having. All the ingredients can easily be found in a long term storage package.)

2 cups powdered milk

3/4 cup cornstarch

1/4 cup chicken bouillon granules

2 tsp Italian seasoning

Mix it together and store in a plastic or glass container.

To make it into soup:

1 1/4 cup cold water

1/3 cup of dry mix

Whisk it together over medium-high heat until it thickens. The key is to use cold water, so that the cornstarch will dissolve all the way before you even turn on the stovetop. Then just keep whisking (to keep the other ingredients from falling to the bottom of the pan and burning), just like you're making gravy. You don't want lumps, so whisk away. The longer/hotter you cook it, the thicker it will get.

Substitute that amount of mix for one 10 3/4oz can of condensed soup in recipes. Or you can eat it straight, just how it is. Delicious! Only, don't thicken it so much if you're just eating it. You don't want goo.

So I just use my own Italian seasoning when making this. But you could also buy the little packets. In fact, you don't officially have to add the spice at all, it just makes it better.

But that's the beauty of this recipe. You can make it however you want it.

Want cream of potato soup? Add potatoes and different spices. Want cheese soup? Add some grated cheese (I love sharp cheddar!) while you're whisking away until it incorporates with the soup. Want a sauce for salisbury steak? Use beef bouillon granules instead of chicken, or just add some worcestershire sauce and smoke flavoring.

Try it out, you won't be sorry...

Roasted Red Bell Pepper Soup Recipe

We had a very nice weekend with family in town to visit. I ate myself silly. Mmmmm. And that means that I'll be starting my diet again today tomorrow. First, I *have to* eat all the rest of the junk food that's still here so it won't be around to tempt me on my diet. :)

 I've noticed that A LOT of people are getting sick around here. Including us. My little guy is only just well enough today to return to school again. So I decided that I'd post a recipe of my favorite thing to make during cold and flu season.

Seriously this is the BEST thing in the world when  you're sick. Move over chicken noodle! 

Roasted Red Bell Pepper Soup

*sigh*

6-8 red bell peppers

4 TBS sesame/olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

3 celery stalks, chopped

3 cloves garlic, pressed

2 TBS thyme

2 TBS basil

1/2 tsp cayenne (or to taste, I always use at least twice this much)

2 tsp salt

1 can coconut milk  (NOTE: Must be the kind in a can, not a carton. And don't get the lite/low fat version, it's nasty and this is just freakin coconut milk for heaven's sake.)

OR you can use some heavy cream instead of the coconut milk, about 1 cup to 1 pint of that. Whatever.

2- 32oz cartons of broth (vegetable or chicken)

Cut peppers in half, remove seeds and stem. Score the inside with a fork (helps to cook faster).

Place peppers skin side up.



Broil on high for 10-15 minutes, until most of the outer skin is black.

Remove from oven and allow to cool. (If you cover them while they cool, they sort of steam and the skins are SO much easier to get off!) Remove (and discard) as much skin as you can, but don't be too fussy.

While peppers are broiling, in a large soup pot, heat oil, onion, celery, thyme, basil, and salt. Cook until veggies are tender (10-12 minutes) stirring often. Add the garlic and cayenne for the last couple minutes of that. Then add the broth and allow to simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the roasted/peeled peppers to the soup. Then you can either use an immersion blender to make it all smooth, OR you can do what I do, and just stick it in your upright blender. If you do it in your blender, it will fill it twice, so you'll need an "in between" pan so that unblended soup doesn't meet blended soup... because all of it needs to be nicely pureed.

After all of it is blended, return it to your pot over low to medium heat and stir in the coconut milk (or cream). Simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve.

I make TONS of this in the summer when I have lots of bell peppers growing in my garden, and when the store has halfway decent prices on them. Then I freeze it in pint sized freezer bags. It gets us through cold and flu season every year. Seriously, I can NOT survive a bad cold without this.

Fairy Tales and Special Effects

This month's "assignment" for PAIL is to talk about our plans for the future, and whether or not to continue to try and have more children, and why we choose what we choose, and all that stuff. And honestly, in my mind, thinking about TTC is like watching a My.ster.y Sci.en.ce The.at.ter 3.00.0 episode. 

The whole world of prospective parents is watching this "amazing" film. Fairy tales like being able to time your pregnancy, spacing children, and live happily ever after are flashing on the screen... and surely somewhere, someone is buying the special effects?

But not me. Not IFers.

We sit in the back of the theater making pejorative and sarcastic comments... occassionally throwing popcorn at the screen, and talking about how naive and gullible the rest of the audience is for not seeing through the special effects.... and knowing that for them, it isn't special effects and fairy tales, it's reality.

Laughing at the show, because crying sucks.

So, having said that, what do I think about the movie and how seriously am I taking it?

Well dang. I take it pretty seriously. And despite all my best efforts, I still believe it "could be true." I still want the happily ever after. I still want to think that it could be possible for me to have as many children as I desire. But alas, I've been in the theater too long and my eggs...er, popcorn... has gone stale.

So, my stats.... I have PCOS and repeated miscarriages/high risk pregnancy and Hashimoto's and who knows what else... seriously, they can't decide or figure it out. I am 36, so officially "advanced maternal age" and I have been MIRACULOUSLY blessed with 2 children already. But I hear the clock ticking.

I'm from a family with 6 kids. My mom's family had... crap I can't remember... 11? I think? Maybe 10? I guess I could try to count them, but I'd surely forget one of them anyway, so why bother. And each of her siblings had a billion kids too. So when we had family reunions, we were a crazy spectacle. Think of it... 10ish uncles/aunts with their spouse, and 10-13 kids per family, all of the older ones already married and popping out babies like they were skittles, and even some third generation babies running around. Literally hundreds of cousins. (No, there is NO polygamy. LOL.) I haven't even met all of them, and I'm certainly not close to any of them. My dad's side of the family averages 6 kids per family... which is smaller, but still not a small family.

Growing up, and in early adulthood, I had absolutely NO DOUBT that I would have as many kids as my body was willing to pop out. I was thinking in the area of 8.
Ha!
*throws popcorn at the screen*
And spacing? I figured they'd be about 2 years apart BECAUSE that would give me time to breastfeed all of them for a full year, and then immediately get pregnant again and start over.
Wait! What? My body can't make babies OR breastmilk?
Huh.

So here I am at 36, in my last few years of even being able to pretend that it could still be possible to have more children.... and what do I dream of???
Four kids.
Two more... just two more.
Maybe twins, because then it's only hoping for one more successful pregnancy and that seems more realistic than expecting to survive 2 more rounds of TTC.
And if I somehow got my 2 more kids, what then?... I'd still want more. I'm sure of it. I would continue to try and try until my ovaries dried up and my uterus fell out... just plop, right there on the floor. That would be about the only thing that would stop me from hoping.
But honestly, I think 2 more is all I can even hope for... and even that is really wishing for a lot... but it's still my "goal" or my "vision" or whatever term you want to use.

Because of all my health problems and the extremes I have taken to trying fix them... I won't be doing anymore fertility treatments. My body really does NOT handle those well, and I've spent literally thousands of dollars just trying to get my health back to where it was before starting all of that. And I can't go backward, because I have 2 amazing children who need a healthy mommy to take care of them. So if I'm going to have more children (please please please) it will be up to the old fairy tale of "you can have a baby just by having sex at the right time."
Hahaha.
I know! Can you believe that?

So right now I'm back to charting and temping... not that my chart makes ANY SENSE. Nobody can discern any type of a pattern, and almost daily my charting service changes when it thinks I ovulated. So it's pretty useless. For instance, right now I'm on CD62, and it thinks I'm 10dpo, but the ovulation date will undoubtedly change again tomorrow. BUT it does keep me from spending a gazillion dollars on HPTs. When I get pregnant, my temps normalize. They go up and stay up. So as long as my body is freaking out and weird, and my temps are all over the place... I know I'm not pregnant. I may not know when/if I ovulated, or when/if AFV is coming... but I do know not to POAS. And that saves me a little money and peace of mind.

So, making a long story even longer... Yes I am TTC. Yes, I am charting and temping... and BD often. (Yay! A silver lining!) No, I don't have the luxury of worrying about "spacing" the kids for optimal whatever. No, I don't have the luxury of waiting until I think I'm emotionally ready to face all this again. Truth is, I'm out of time. If it's going to happen at all, it needs to happen soon. And I don't have any time to waste. So I'm going through the motions (hump hump hump. LOL. did I just say that?) but my heart isn't really in it. I am TTC in denial. Meaning, I'm doing everything that I can/should be doing to TTC... but I'm ignoring the fact that I'm doing it. I'm pretending to myself that I'm not really TTC. That way I'm hoping to not go crazy. To not get hurt. So that maybe I'll just wake up one morning, POAS, and have a happy ending... and wonder how I got there.

Popcorn anyone?

The BEST Whole Chicken in a Crockpot... and Broth

Okay seriously, this is FREAKING AMAZING. I usually make whole chickens in the oven, but I saw this recipe HERE and decided to give it a try... SO GLAD I DID!!! So easy and so good!

Of course, I had to change the recipe a little, but nowhere near what I usually do.

 

So here you go:

In a large crockpot:

#1- Roughly chop 1 large white onion and place on the bottom of crockpot.

#2- Take a 3-4 pound whole chicken... remove all the yucky crap from inside (giblets, neck, liver, etc)... rinse it, pat it dry with a paper towel...

#3- Rub the seasoning mix (below) all over it... inside and out, on top of the skin and under the skin.

 

#4- Place chicken on top of the onion.

#5- Cook in slow cooker... 5 hours on high, or 8 hours on low.

#6- Eat.

 

#7- Reserve all bones, skins, etc... leave them in the crockpot until after dinner.

The spice/rub mixture is pretty straight forward... I kind of "heaped" all the measurements cause I like flavor. :)

2 tsp paprika

1 tsp salt

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp thyme

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp majoram

1 tsp rosemary

1/2 tsp sage

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/4 tsp black pepper

The ingredients are pretty flexible... whatever spices you have on hand, or that you know you like. I added a few things that I LOVE with chicken, but that she didn't have listed. But it's a good basic starting point. And SERIOUSLY, you don't need to add any liquid at all. I got nervous about 3 hours in and added some water, and I totally didn't need to!!!

I don't have any pictures of nicely sliced chicken because it can't be sliced. It just falls right off the bone. I do, however, have one picture of the left over chicken in tupperware, which I only barely remembered to take. I was too hungry to remember to take any pretty "on plate" pictures.

If you're looking for a good side dish to go with this dinner. Check out my Rosemary Roasted Root Vegetables. It's my go to... filling and yummy, and just a little different so it doesn't get boring. 

And after you're done eating your fabulous and MOIST chicken dinner... it's SUPER EASY to make THE BEST CHICKEN BROTH you've ever had. Seriously, the chicken was good, but the broth is TO DIE FOR.

So you have all the bones and skin and fat and junk in the crockpot. Now just fill it with water, and leave it cooking on "low" all night.

That's it. You can add a couple carrots or some celery if  you want. And I got too busy the next day and just left it on all day again, until I needed it to make dinner (chicken soup with the extra chicken from the day before).... just strain it through a very fine strainer to get out all the bones and crap.

 But it was AMAZING. It definitely needed some salt, but it was dark and rich and so freaking yummy.

You can't find broth like this in the store. It looks more like beef broth, and it is so amazing!

It made so much broth that I was able to make a GIANT pot of chicken soup (which is already gone, thank you) and still had almost 2 cups of broth left over, which I froze for later use. I usually get about 4 quarts of broth every time I do this, but I think that is just because of the size of my crockpot. I'm sure it varies with the size of your crockpot.

It needs some serious amounts of salt added to it, but you can just do that to taste. 

My whole chicken came in a 2-pack, and I was going to freeze the other bird... and now I can't wait to make it again... so we'll be having this dinner again this week!

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!!! :)