Category Archives: Food

Should Have Done This Sooner

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I have continued my carbohydrate craze this week and tried something new….pizza dough in my bread machine. And y’all…I should have done this sooner!

My mom got me this great book on bread machine bread. Its really comprehensive and has helped me make really successful bread. But that is all I have ever made.

Jellybean and I needed a project this week so we decided to make homemade pizza. I pulled out the book and used the machine to make one batch of regular crust and on batch of whole wheat crust. It was SOOO EASY. The machine does all the hard work and when it’s done you can cook it right away, store in the fridge for 24 hours or store in the freezer for 3 months.

As a working mom who handles most of the cooking I feel like this has opened up a whole new world for dinner options. My family gets home between 5 and 5:30 and everyone is hungry, especially the kids. I can’t take an hour to cook dinner or there will be meltdowns. It’s just how it is with our littles right now and I know it will change when they get older. But as it stand now, during the week I have to plan meals that can come together quickly.

So holy cow, I can make up dough the night before and put fresh rolls, homemade pizza or whatever else I can think of in the oven for a few minutes when I get home. This has kind of fired up my cooking mojo and maybe I can shake up our recipe rut a little this spring.

What is your favorite (and quick) thing to do with basic dough?

Planning Makes My Brain Happy

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I have my planner and my go to crock pot cookbook….I’m ready to take on this busy week. I am really liking the meal planner insert and I’m using the pages to keep of what I accomplish instead of what I have to get done. It’s been empowering in a time of high stress. I am really enjoying my planner and color coding so far in 2020.

Tonight’s recipe is meatloaf and mashed potatoes magically all cooked in my instant pot and waiting for me when the family gets home tonight. It takes some prep time the night before but really the Instant Pot does all the heavy lifting. And bonus, if I call it “Meatloaf Cake” then my kids gobble it up.

Now I need to plan out the rest of the week! Happy Cooking!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

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Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends. May your pants be stretchy, your wine glass full and your family be well behaved. I’m helping my dad cook this year while my mom chases the tiny humans. I feel like we both scored a win with this deal. No knitting content today as I’m off to start peeling potatoes and mixing up stuffing ingredients.

chicken close up dish food

Photo by Public Domain Pictures on Pexels.com

I’ll see you guys on the flip side tomorrow….probably with actual knitting content. I have some really cool stuff started!!

Let’s Make Pear Jelly

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My neighbor has a pear tree that was LOADED this year. I managed to be the recipient of two grocery sacks of pears this fall. I managed to get the bulk of them ripe at the same time and decided to make pear jelly.

The hubby did his best to keep the tiny humans away from the boiling hot liquids. I managed to get all the pear juice I needed and then sieved the pulp into pear-sauce for the kids.

In the end I got six pints of jelly. It is a very loose set though. I can tip my jars and see the contents move around and I see some juice on top. I need to consult my grandmother, the expert jelly maker, to see if this is a problem or not. I’m pretty sure you can attempt to re-set jelly but I’ll need to use the inter-webs.

But for now I’m feeling proud of this amber colored goodness!

Moms And Martinis

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Everyone needs a tribe (or three). One of the tribes I have really gotten a lot of support and companionship from here lately is a group of moms I have met in and around my community. We are all working moms and try to get together for lunch once a month on a Friday. There are lawyers, bankers, advertising execs, sales managers and accountants so we aren’t always successful but at least two people manage to show up every month.

I decided that wasn’t enough, so quarterly we also meet up at a local restaurant for “Moms and Martinis” after we all put our kids to bed (or leave them with their respective fathers and smile all the way down the driveway).

I pulled out my Cheery Vanilla socks and knit a few rounds as I sipped my beer and the subsequent Lemon Drop Martini. None of the other Moms are especially fibery but they like me and don’t bat an eye at my knitting. I got to laugh, knit and drink with some fantastic ladies. I cannot wait for January to roll around for the next one!!

Do you have a tribe?

Self Care Renewed

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I started the back portion of my Worsted Boxy last night. It was the hubby’s night for bath and bed so I pulled a bottle of one of my favorite local Kansas wine makers and went to town on some flat stockinette.

I haven’t looked yet this morning, but I’m pretty sure I did not suffer wine induced knitting oopsies. It was actually a very much needed calm evening. (And I busted out the crazy yoga pants that drive my husband crazy.) As I’m getting older (read more tired) I find that I’m getting better about self care and taking care of my needs just as much as I take care of others. Some days is a struggle but it’s always worth it.

Happy Knitting!!

This Week’s Meditation

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Today’s meditation is brought to you by blush wine, knitting the hubby does the kids’ bedtime…

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I’m soooo close to separating for sleeves on my Autumn League Pullover, I can literally taste it! The initial neck shaping and raglan increases just whooshed by. But now it seems I knit and knit and knit but every time I measure I haven’t seem to have made any progress. I guess that is where the meditation comes in…

Happy Knitting!

Multitasking Working Mom

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No finished object this Friday. Just a mom battling a cold and trying to feed her family. I’m over germs and I’m ready for spring air and open windows. Today is brought to you by Hamburger helper and knitting while I “cook”. After a full day at work, blowing my nose 1,100 times this was the best I could muster. And Jellybean declared it “THE BEST DINNER EVER” because it takes like macaroni and cheese.

P.S. This is my mini solutions scarf. I’ll try to do a better blog post next week if I can manage. I’m on the fifth color and you guys really need to see this. It’s amazeballs!!

Happy Knitting!!

Holy Carbohydrates Batman

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I’m on a kick of cleaning and using things from my pantry. I have a squirrel like habit to stash food items so that I have a stocked pantry and then constantly buy new items weekly at the store so I “don’t run out”. This kinda means I have a few boxes and cans that languish. Well that is silly! I did some scrounging for dinner the other night and managed to pull a spaghetti dinner out of my pantry without needing groceries.

While I was in there I found a box of hot roll mix. It was on the cusp of expiring and that just can’t happen. So I made a batch of non-uniform but still tasty cinnamon rolls. I got two thumbs up from everyone in the house. But between spaghetti and garlic toast for dinner and cinnamon rolls for dessert….Holy Carbohydrates Batman! I’m gonna need to walk this one off!!

P.S. Cream cheese icing was added after this photo. But they were devoured so quickly that I wasn’t able to snap a new photo!

Happy Baking!!

Tomato Sauce

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When one has access to A) free babysitting and B) large volumes of tomatoes…..you make sauce!!! Here are my happy three pots of sauce bubbling away on the stove.

I only managed to burn myself once, spill a million times and actually finish the day with 20 pints of pure tomato goodness. My house uses this all the time instead of store bought sauce. Note: I don’t season my canned sauce. I prefer a blank canvas to be spiced up later.

How do you like your sauce?