This Week's 30 Minute Meals

Busy Week

So here are some recipes I've used for busy weeknight dinners, all made in 30 minutes or less.

CLAM CHOWDER

I know you can open a can, and its not bad, but its not homemade.

1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
2 cups sliced potatoes (my shortcut is to use hash brown already frozen potatoes, then just thrown them in -
   no peeling, dicing makes me happy in a hurry)
2 small cans clams (drain the juice and pour it on top of the vegetables in the pan)
Water (take the pan of veggies and juice and add water until the veggies are all covered)

Heat to a boil, then lower and let it simmer for about 20 minutes or until veggies are soft

While that is simmering, make an easy green salad. (takes about 5 minutes or less)
Then in another pan,
melt 3/4 cup butter.
Sprinkle in 3/4 cup flour
With a wooden spoon, blend well, then add
1 quart half and half (light, full or fat-free, its up to you)
Stir until thickened.

By this point, the veggies should be soft.
Add in the liquid buttery broth.
Stir until all combined.
Add 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 T. red wine vinegar

Mmmmmmmm! And soup is so good on a cold windy day. Not as low calorie as the rest of the week, but still so very good.


LOW FAT STROGANOFF

Brown 1 lb. ground turkey with
1/2 diced onion until onion is tender

Add 1 T. butter
Pour 2 T. flour over the melted butter and meat mixture. Stir well
Add 2 small cans sliced mushrooms, drained
1/2  cup water
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 cup light sour cream
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. pepper

Stir until warm throughout. Add more water or sour cream depending on the amount of liquid you want.
Turn heat to warm and make instant mashed potatoes.
I LOVE the Honest Earth brand. They totally taste like potatoes and are ready to eat in 5 minutes.
Serve with a vegetable (I'll usually microwave a frozen one in a steamer package while the potatoes are cooking)

TACOS

Doesn't everyone make these? This is a fast dinner with helpers.

Tomorrow we're having Orange Chicken, Rice, and Stir-Fried Vegetables. While the rice is cooking for 20 minutes I'll be cooking up some chicken and adding a little orange juice sauce and slicing and adding veggies. This usually takes me a little over 20 minutes and by 30 minutes we can be at the table ready to eat. (I really miss Trader Joe's Orange Chicken already cooked and only 8 minutes to heat up, but this is still doable.)

SPAGHETTI or PASTA with marinara sauce and spinach salad. I often use ground turkey or diced chicken breasts in place of hamburger. Last week I added just a 1/2 cup of low fat ground sausage and it was delicious!

TILAPIA/ SALMON/ ORANGE ROUGHY - I love baking fish. Only 10 minutes per inch of fish. Cover your baking pan with foil for an easy clean-up. Sprinkle the fish with lemon pepper seasoning and slices of fresh lemon. Serve with Sweet Potatoes, a green vegetable, and a little tartar sauce. Yum! LittleBuddy is happiest when I add bread to any meal. I recently found frozen french bread loaves at Coscto, for 10 for $10. Take them out for 15 minutes, then bake them directly on your oven rack for about 10 minutes. Love these too!

5 easy weeknight dinners. Variety, healthy for the most part, and fast.

A Good Week

 Its been more than a week since I posted. Sorry, just going about life doing my thing.

These are the LOVE flowers MyMike gave me for Valentine's. I saw that title "love flowers" on Stacy Julian's facebook page and had to smile. That is exactly what they are. His way of saying I love you without spending a fortune which is good. (I have a number of other things that money is earmarked for.) I made him filet mignon with homemade steak fries, and he loved it. We're not that hard to please.

We went to a "Marriage Myths" workshop on Thursday night which was wonderful. Even though we've been married almost 25 years there are still things we think in our heads sometimes that doesn't create joy in marriage. This reminded us of the realities and the process of progress that marriage really is, and we both enjoyed it immensely. In fact, the room was packed, so I think a lot of people benefited from good, free marriage counseling. MyMike came right home and started helping his son with the dishes that hadn't taken place while we were gone. I love that about him, he works hard and pinches in when he knows other people are at their limits. He and my dad did the dishes on Sunday too when it was my turn and I had made a big mess making our Sunday dinner. And the good news, these flowers are still looking good more than a week later. Love!

 I put away my Cricut and pulled out my sewing machine last week. This is a quilt I started several years ago  and this is the year I'm going to finish it. Its a sampler quilt of 20 blocks. This is block 15, the Bear's Paw. It wasn't that hard. I think I'm less intimidated by the whole quilting process knowing my mom is just down the street, although I did all of this without her. Just the knowing is apparently enough for me.

 This is block 16. In this block I learned how to applique the handle by hand.

 I know its not the perfect curve, but you know, I'm learning. I am actually happy with how the hand appliqueing went. I have no idea if this is how you're supposed to do it, but I read the directions, they weren't a hundred percent clear, so this was my best interpretation.

 On a less pleasant note, since last Friday my sleeping has been miserable. It got so I was dreading just going to bed. So, after three days of that, I took advantage of the President's Day sales to get a new mattress and box springs. It just got delivered today. Its a foam mattress with a gel core which is supposed to be less hot than traditional foam mattresses and yet its still plenty firm. Mattresses have come a long ways since I bought my last one eleven years ago. I was told nowadays even the coil ones are adding foam to them they are just so much better, but this one has no coils, just 11 inches of foam. I am so praying tonight I get a good night's sleep. My sofa won't miss me!

 Since Monday mom and dad have been staying in our guest room while their wood floors are being refinished. So excited to see them all finished tomorrow. Its been fun having every meal with them and just being together most of the time. Here Mygirl takes a break from her homeschooling for a little Rummikub with Grandma.

 I finished the top of the table runner for the quilt guild challenge last week. It was more fun to sew up than I thought. I was thinking at first, I have to sew 18 times 4 plus 12 times 2 little 2 inch squares together? I'm going to be so sick of squares, but as it came together I got more and more excited to see how it was all going to look when it was finished. Mom says that's how you know you've been bit with the quilting bug. Anyhow, it only took me 3 hours and now I've got to start putting the middle and back on it then bind it and quilt it. Maybe I'll start that this afternoon, maybe tomorrow.  None of these projects are urgent but I'm enjoying them nevertheless. Even though these aren't the colors of my house they look surprisingly good with the poppies in my dining room. I might use this for a summer runner for my dining room table or I might donate it for the guild to sell at their fall festival. We'll see how it all turns out. 

One of the best parts of the week has been the email received from my son from his first week out in the field as a real missionary. He had some challenges in the CTM and was reassigned from Belem to Sao Paulo North, (not sure if that's temporary or not) but after hearing about the miraculous and amazing experiences he had there after just five days it would seem that this is exactly where he is supposed to be. I am so grateful he is in the Lord's hands when he is so far from me. However, all the rest of my children have been sick with one thing or another, so there certainly were ups and downs this week. Fortunately they are all recovering now.  Overall its been a good week and after a good night's sleep tomorrow is going to be even better!

A Smattering of Celebrations

The last time I bought a card was probably ten years ago. And, cards are often needed in life, so last week after making Valentine's Cards, I made lots of non-Valentine's cards too. This should cover me for the month. I've given away a few not seen here either. This was what was left yesterday as I pulled out my camera.

Used chalk popping on the butterfly and an embossing plate on the yellow background. Chalk popping is one of my favorite stamping techniques!

Hand cut a little onesie. Kept this one very simple.

Used the Cricut to cut out the heart background shape on the Bamboo colored cardstock, and also to cut out the white heart shape which I later stamped in Tulip for the polka dot heart. I also stamped the musical background onto the Desert Sand cardstock giving it the layering I wanted. . . . for my musical hubby. He liked it!

Our family celebrated Valentines Day last night. We're just having that kind of year where all holidays are approximate, as our schedules are often dictated by someone else and it was lovely even if it was the 13th. I do have little surprises for all their breakfasts and lunches today to stretch out the love for the 14th, its just that we won't all be together until tonight at 8:30 pm so we made do.

Layering using fabric flowers works when you don't have to send the card faraway.

I like to stamp open stamps onto patterned paper. Loved this psychedelic daisy! Fun colors here! I'm sure you've noticed I used the same piece of patterned paper and color scheme on different cards here. I like to challenge myself to create different things with the same products. Keeps it interesting for me - and makes less mess on my desk too ;-) It wouldn't be so funny if my desk weren't such a disaster! That is priority #2 today after homeschooling.

LittleBuddy has lots of thank you notes to write. Simplified it by cutting patterned cardstock for the card bases and the Cricut for the front blue caption. Kept it along our superhero theme.

LittleBuddy's birthday card. The present is pop-dotted and took advantage of comic cardstock I had. He loved it. Happy Valentine's Day, Happy Birthday, Happy Baby Shower, always something to celebrate!

Snow and Ice

The past couple of weeks we've had true winter weather, with sunny blue sky days in between. MyGirl loves this snow in all its forms and is so excited to be out in it, whether its shoveling or playing or just driving by. Here she is with Grandpa's sled walking down the street to take advantage of the school's hill.

I woke up to this one morning on my kitchen sliding glass window. Notice there's hardly any snow on the deck. It somehow all got blown onto the outside screen and stayed there making its own sideways wave. Cool!

This was taken at the tail end of a storm. It was so amazing to me that there were drifts in the backyard, again like a wave, but right next to it you can see the grass is showing through, and our back patio, hardly touched. Weird and amazing to me at the same time.

Another about-to-snow day, and I noticed the birds lining up on the power lines. Whenever nature makes lines or distinct shapes, I'm fascinated. I honestly think that was my favorite part of Finding Nemo, when the school of fish shape change.

This morning, we woke up to this. Everything covered in white. The branches, the trees, the weeds - all iced in white frosting. It's somewhat sunny today so it didn't last, but I'm excited every time nature showcases her peculiar beauties. We've seen this same scene a couple of times lately.

And, a couple of shots of LittleBuddy and his buddies last night at the ice skating rink. They had a lot of fun and he agreed that an ice skating rink is a great place to hang out with your friends. I love it because there is lots of space for the boys to move and use their enormous energy and they can be as silly as they want all while wearing themselves out. His smile makes me smile.

Teenagers

I woke up on Wednesday and just knew it day was going to be a good day. Look at the gorgeous sky I woke up to.

As the moon went behind the mountains and the sun slowly rose I had already had my first deep conversation of the day.

 LittleBuddy has taken to getting himself up around 5 and by a little after six he's getting bored and wants to chat. I don't dare not listen. All teenagers that like to chat with me have my attention. I love teenagers. Yes, they have their moments, but overall they are an intelligent, interesting, often amusing, sometimes angst-filled and sweet group. At least the ones I know. I know there are other kinds, and I still like them. I just don't always understand them.

However, this day's conversations were a little more nostalgic because it was his birthday. He's officially a teenager. Wow! Those thirteen years just flew! While he was away at school and basketball practice, MyGirl and I set everything up for his party when he got home.

I decided to create a birthday banner that we can reuse from now on. I went with a bright color and polka dot theme. MyMike had the good idea to hang it at the top of the blinds in the dining room, perfect since we have birthday dinners at the dining room table. You can see the sun's setting as we are ready to sit down.

Here's a close-up. I laminated it at my mom's. This was made exclusively with the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge and CTMH cardstock. I'm all about using what's on hand this year. Love that scalloped pennant shape! Scallops were created at 8 3/4". The bright colored pennats were 8" and I could get two to a page.

We were blessed that MyMike had jury duty that day so he was home at 2:30 instead of his usual 7-8pm. The Lord blesses us in the little and big ways. Grandparents came over too, and we had his favorite meal of beef stroganoff.

For his birthday cake he wanted a German Chocolate Ice Cream Cake. It held together better than I thought would happen when I first took the round layer cakes out of the pan, but the frosting was too heavy to run down the side, so it was more like a bunch of layers. Still, it tasted delicious and he loved his presents.

The next morning, though, he was up at 5 again, and back on my bed to have our 6 am chat. Our conversations revolve around his life and concerns and commentary. I love this time he's carved out for us, (how his dad sleeps through it I'll never know) but I can see that I'm going to have to start going to bed earlier so I can stay coherent the rest of the day. Life as a mother of a teenager - always in a state of adjustment :-)

Hearts Aplenty

One more week until Valentine's! I've got a few cards made, but not enough. I have a few decorations out too, but just a few. Tomorrow is LittleBuddy's birthday so my time has been spent on getting ready for that even more. Today I make his cake. . . may the 3rd time be the charm. My first two ice cream cakes had serious melting issues :-(  I love Valentine's Day because I love to love my family. Its not a big present day for us but it is a special day still.

I like to play with scraps when I make cards so all of these papers are older. Only the stamp sets are newer. The hearts all came from the ones included with CTMH's Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge. It made it easy to know which size of a background heart to frame it with because the inches are printed right on the stamp set.

A little girlie card then a little more masculine card.

Among the favorite hearts in our house are on the Mary Englebreit quilt my mom made for us. I'm currently keeping it upstairs on my sofa as a throw. The colors and the feel just make me happy!

Another great quilt of my mom's, this time from Moda fabric for a table runner on our dining room table. This is more of a snow themed runner, but the bright reds lend themselves to everything from Christmas to Valentines, in my opinion. I sprinkled heart glass shapes in the centerpiece. Sprinkling a little hearts here and there is my idea of decorating.  Love this time of  year!

Presidential Rally

I went to my first presidential pep rally today. It was about as I expected. We stood (about in the very middle) and waited a half hour before Mitt Romney made his appearance. This was my best photo of the day. That's one of his Secret Service agents next to him. He came down to shake hands with the crowd after speaking to us for a little less than half an hour.

At the beginning we were welcomed by a state Republican leader. Next came John Thune, a State Senator from Nebraska, to introduce him.

Some people carried signs. I carried my camera.

The crowd was a pretty peaceful group. We recognized a few people there from our church. There were a number of military people there also. Colorado Springs is a big military town.

When he finally got started speaking, he sounded natural. I don't listen to the debates and I've only heard him answer questions a couple of times from reporters on TV, but I keep hearing from commentators that he sounds too unnatural and fake. I didn't get that sense at all. He spoke like a man who understands the problems this country is facing and has a plan to get us back to where we need to be. He highlighted what needs to be changed and what his experience brings to the job to bring about those changes. He sounded like a leader and a true patriotic American. In spite of his bank account, he sounded like he cared about the same things I do and seemed to have a realistic feel for what is needed to help our nation prosper.

His slogan is Believe in America. He summed it up saying, we need to change direction and come back to the America that is out of debt, morally responsible and believes in following the Constitution. It was especially gratifying to hear so many fellow Americans who cheered about the same things that are important to me.  As MyMike said, "If he gets elected and can keep the promises he's made we'll be in a good place." Today it was good to be in a place where patriotism was alive and flourishing. It felt good to be involved in the process of an election. Our caucus is Tuesday night. Let us hope for good results.

Some January Highlights

 It was fun to have Cowgirl here last week. We laid low most of the time, but one of our fun days was going to the dollar theater and the Western store right next to it. She found some darling boots on sale that she loved. They really are super cute! She was also the impetus for all of us eating more healthy. We all found cookbooks with light and healthy recipes. Here are two that we tried and highly recommend.

                   Sweet Potato Fries
2 light colored sweet potatoes (not the orange yams)
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp. dried rosemary
salt and pepper to taste
2 tsp. olive oil

Slice the potatoes into thin slices. Put them on a baking pan lined with a Silpat. Pour the olive oil on top. Then sprinkle the remaining ingredients on top. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes, then take them out, turn each slice over and bake for another 15 minutes, or until light brown. Watch out for burning garlic pieces. So Good! We could have kept eating these.

Another really good recipe I found and adapted was:

                     Homemade Buttermilk Dressing
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup light olive oil mayo
1/4 cup light sour cream
2 oz. light cream cheese
1 tsp. onion powder
1 tsp. cider vinegar
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
Whisk all together and enjoy! Only 64 calories in 2 Tb. and delicious!

I have a problem finding salad dressings without soybean oil added, so this is a great find for me!

 Just being together was the best fun. Sunday our bishop talked about the need for parents to be parents and not their children's best friends. They need us to be firm and hold up the standards no matter how popular they are and I agree with that. However, once they leave the home, the relationship changes, and the friendship develops in an adult way. That's the way it is with my mom and me and that's the way it is now with my daughter and me, and I love it. Its exactly what I wanted when she was born, but knew it would take a good twenty years to come. It was worth the wait!

 LittleBuddy has decided to try out for the school basketball team. He's never played on a basketball team before, but his middle school isn't going to cut anyone. They're just going to divide them into a team that travels and represents the school and two other intramural teams so my boy knows he'll get to play, and that's the fun of joining a team anyways. He doesn't expect to play on the school travel team, but hopes at least one or two of his friends will be in intramurals with him. He invited one friend over last week to practice
down the street at the elementary school hoops. I'm glad he's having fun and being active.

He's still working on Scouting and earned more merit badges and his Star at last Tuesday's Court of Honor. I was most happy that he received the music merit badge. Its not been easy to keep him in his music since we moved. I'm still looking for the right teacher and so any excuse I can find to keep him playing is a good thing. We performed a viola/piano duet of Joy To the World for his merit badge counselor and it was one of the highlights this January too!