The Reluctant Mommy Blogger

I present our evening meal.

I was going to make spaghetti pie from the Deceptively Delicious
cookbook, but there was too much spaghetti. I had to turn it into a
spaghetti bake. I used half cup increments of broccoli, pumpkin,
summer squash and kidney bean purees. Also, I like ricotta cheese a
lot better than cottage cheese, so I swapped those in the recipe.We managed to get Trent to eat three bites of the stuff and
surprisingly, Hunter loved it. I was pretty confused by that since the
kid doesn’t usually like pasta, but I’m not questioning it! 

(more…)

I can make cute pancake faces, too! Plus I got pumpkin into the kids.
The restaurant certainly couldn’t manage to do that.

It was so nice last week that the kids had lunch on the deck on Thursday.

This is the dinner that the kids will not be eating tonight. If I’m
lucky, Trent might try it.

Update February 19, 2011: Here is the recipe. It originally calls for turkey thighs, but I had chicken thighs on hand.

3 medium potatoes, cut in chunks

1/2 pound of carrots, peeled and cut in chunks

1 onion cut in chunks (put in 2 onions if you like them, I cut one out since we aren’t big fans in my house)

4 chicken thighs

1 can of tomato soup

1/3 cup of water

1 teaspoon powdered garlic

1 teaspoon Italian seasoning

1 teaspoon of salt

Layer the potatoes first, carrots second, and onions third in your slow cooker. Place chicken thighs on top of this. Combine soup, water, garlic, Italian seasoning and salt in a bowl and then pour over the contents of your slow cooker. Put the cover on and cook on high for six to eight hours, or until a meat thermometer reads 170 degrees Fahrenheit.

This Baked Potato soup was so yummy. The kids wouldn’t try it of
course, but I thought it was delicious. I’ll update later with the
recipe.

Update February 16, 2011:

4 Baked potatoes
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
6 cups of milk
1 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup sliced green onions

Lots of bacon crumbles, about ten pieces cooked crispy and cut up, and cheddar cheese.

Peel the already baked potatoes, if you have some left over. If not, bake the potatoes in a 400 degree oven for an hour. After you have peeled the potatoes cube them and set aside. Cut up the green onions at this point as well and set aside.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and using a whisk to stir it in, add the flour, salt and pepper. Once this is combined well and smooth, slowly start adding the milk while whisking the entire time. Bring this to a boil and cook, while stirring, for two minutes. Remove the soup from the heat and stir in the yogurt with the whisk. Now add the potatoes and green onions.

Serve topped with the bacon and cheddar cheese.

It consists of vodka and blueberries.

> I always make this soup after I have made a whole roast chicken for a dinner and I need something to do with the leftover meat. I’ve gotten pretty darn good at it. This is the perfect chicken soup for Winter time and sniffly colds. This is also perfect for the leftovers of those cooked chickens you get at the grocery store or Boston Market.
>
> 1 Whole Chicken carcass
> 2 Turnips, one big and one small
> 2 Onions, one big and one small
> Carrots
> Celery
> Garlic
> Barley
> Extra Wide Egg Noodles
> Bell’s Poultry Seasoning, to taste
> Sea Salt, to taste
>
> Optional ingredients,
> Parsnips
> Potatoes
> Tomatoes
> Butternut Squash
> Any Veggies, herbs or other grains that you like and think will taste good. I have had good results with all the above listed vegetables. Butternut Squash chunks will give your broth a sweet flavor.
>
> Select a large pot, one that will be big enough to hold the entire chicken carcass. Place the carcass inside and completely cover in water. Add the small turnip and small onion. Do not cut them up, just put them in the pot whole. Place the pot on high heat on the stove top and cover. Once it comes to a boil, reduce the heat to a medium-low setting and let simmer for one and a half to two hours. Once the meat is falling off the bones it is done.
>
> Cut up your veggies any way that suits you, adding as much or as little as you like. I personally like everything cut up into big chunks and cutting the garlic into slivers. I usually cut up all the veggies while the carcass boils for that two hours and set aside until the next step is complete.
>
> Let the pot sit until it is cool enough to handle the contents. Place a very large bowl in your sink and then a large colander into that. The bowl needs to be large enough to hold the contents of the pot. Placing the bowl in your sink prevents a large mess in case you spill. Pour everything from the pot into the colander/bowl. Remove the colander, with all the bones, and pour the liquid back into the pot. Dispose of the onion and turnip. Separate the meat from the bone, disposing of the bones, skin and cartilage, and putting the meat back in the pot. Place the pot back onto the stove top and turn on to high heat. Add your veggies, Bell Seasoning, salt, and barley (about two to three handfuls). Be sure the pot is covered. Once the soup is boiling again, turn it down to a medium-low heat to simmer for about forty-five minutes to an hour, or until the barley is tender. Now add your egg noodles and turn the heat off. The pot will stay hot long enough for the noodles to cook.
>
> Enjoy!

For Christmas Garrick gave me Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of
French Cooking.” One of the first things I looked at in the books was
the chapter on baking bread with one thing in mind: French bread. I
have been making my own version of French Bread for a little while now
and was curious about the correct way to make it. I read through the
twenty page selection dedicated to this one type of bread and was
astounded at the amount of discipline that is required for this French
staple.While I really look forward to one day making some French Bread in the
way listed in my new cook book, for now I will stick to my much
quicker version. Being the busy mother that I am I do not have an
entire day to dedicate to baking a loaf of bread. Plus my bread is so
yummy as is that I always have people asking me how I make. So I will
put my recipe and instructions here to send folks when they ask.
Without further ado, Marla’s version of French Bread.

1 1/4 cups warm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon yeast

Part of the secret of why my recipe is so fast is because I use a bread machine to do most of the work for me. I add all the ingredients in the order I have listed above, as per the machines instructions, and use the dough setting. If you are using a bread machine, add the ingredients according to its instructions. If you are going to make your dough by hand, combine the water, sugar, salt and yeast and let sit for five to ten minutes. Add in the flour and knead this dough for fifteen to twenty minutes. After that, place the dough in a floured bowl, cover with a towel and let rise in a warm spot for about forty five minutes.

Now that your dough has completed it’s first of two rises, place it on a floured surface and roll it out no wider than your widest baking sheet. I like to use a marble rolling pin for this for two reasons. One, the flour tends to stick less to a marble rolling pin. Two, the weight of a marble rolling pin is great for evenly rolling out any dough.

Once your dough is rolled out nice and flat, roll it up jelly roll style. After completing rolling up the dough be sure to pinch the dough closed. Your dough should be long and thin once you have come to this point.

Now that you have completed pinching the dough closed, spray down your baking sheet with a cooking spray (or your choice of greasing technique) and place the unbaked loaf seam side down. Make diagonal slash marks across the top of your loaf with a sharp knife, or a razor if you have one available. Put a cloth over the loaf and let rise for another twenty to thirty minutes.

Remove the cloth and place the baking sheet with the loaf on it into a preheated four hundred degree Fahrenheit oven for twenty minutes. Once the twenty minutes is up, just turn the oven off and let the bread sit there for another five to ten minutes, or until you serve your meal. A nice warm loaf of French bread is so great with dinner.

We almost always have bread left over and have discovered (surprise, surprise) that the next morning it makes for wonderful French toast. I’ll have to post a recipe for that later. You should also note that Trent  is getting exceptionally good at handling a camera, a bunch of the pictures up there were taken by him.

Today we made equality cookies and read “The Story of Martin Luther
King Jr.” by Johnny Ray Moore. While we ate our cookies we talked
about how all the cookies were a different color but they are all the
same. Just like real people. I got the idea from Almost Unschoolers.