Friday Funny

 

Cooking Thursday

 I've got another new crockpot recipe for you that is so easy and quick! We always enjoy meals that are served over rice and this is no exception. The chicken and the sauce are very tasty!

Hawaiian Chicken

2-3 chicken breast, cut into cubes
1 can chunk pineapple, drained
1 green pepper, cut into thin slices
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons corn starch
1/3 cup water
Cooked rice

Stir together the soy sauce and brown sugar in a crock pot, then stir in the cubed chicken and the pineapple.
Cook on low for 4 hours.
Mix together corn starch and water.
Remove most of the sauce from the crock pot, place in pan and bring to boil.  Stir in the corn starch and water mix until sauce thickens, then pour back into meat mix in crock pot.
Stir together and serve over rice.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Lots of ice fishing happening on the bayou of the Grand River near us.

A Day in my Life

Happy February to all of you! Every month I do a post showing what I did on the first day of the month.  So here's how the first day of February went for me.

I start my mornings by going downstairs and walking on the treadmill. I do this Mon-Sat and take Sunday off.

After eating breakfast, I walked out to put some mail in the mailbox.  The sun was shining!  In Michigan, especially on the west side, we get lots of cloudy days in the winter because of having Lake Michigan near us.  It causes a Lake effect situation giving us clouds and snow.  So we love seeing the sun and blue skies when it happens.  It was 25 degrees at this time, much better than the terrible cold we had last week.

Next I spent some time in this book.  It's a read through the Bible in a year book, with notes in each day by John MacArthur.  It was suggested to me by my friend Dianna from Joyful in His Presence, and she is also reading it.  I've really be enjoying it.

Then it was time to get some things done.  My Saturdays are much more relaxed since I retired.  I get most of my housework done throughout the week.  However, I still do food prep on Saturday for Sunday.  Sunday is busy and it's nice to have a meal ready in the crockpot when we get home from church.

First I made this hot chicken spread for buns that we'll have for supper on Sunday.  It's in my mini crock-pot ready to be started in the afternoon.

Then I made Chicken Noodle soup to have when we come home from church.

Have you heard of these noodles?  They are in the freezer section and make your soup so good!  They're thicker, Amish style noodles and are so much better than the dry egg noodles you buy on the shelf.

I also made some corn muffins to eat with the soup, then cleaned the kitchen and ran the dishwasher.

After lunch, Bob and I ran a few errands, including a stop at our church to drop some things off for tomorrow.

Our snowy, messy roads had the car looking bad, so we drove through the car wash.

Here's our neighbors farm on the way home.  We had a few days that the temp went above freezing so some of the snow has melted, but there's still plenty on the ground.

I had some time to relax, look at blogs and do a little reading in the afternoon.

We had garlic bread pizza for supper.  It's a quick and easy way to make pizza; open frozen garlic bread, spread pizza sauce on, then sprinkle mozzarella cheese over and add toppings of your choice.  I had tomatoes and basil.  Bob had pepperoni, bacon and sausage.  It's good!

We love British Detective shows and recently have been watching the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, so in the evening we watched 2 episodes of this show and they were good as usual!

I'm noticing the days getting longer and I'm thankful for that!  I'm also happy we've made it to February.  It was a good day to start the month.

Grand Haven Lighthouse

We live about 20 minutes away from Lake Michigan which is always a favorite stop in the summer. It's also beautiful in the winter and I always try to stop there at least once during the winter season.
I was in Grand Haven and stopped for a short look last week.  It was windy and oh, so cold!  

The beach was experiencing some rare winter sunshine.  You can see the snow fencing they put up and beyond that are the frozen waves.

There were people walking along the beach, their dog was enjoying running up and down the ice.

Further down the beach, you can see the lighthouse.

The Grand Haven Lighthouse, a beautiful sight no matter the weather!

Friday Funny

 

Cooking Thursday

It's Chili Season!  We really like chili and I have several different recipes for it; white chicken chili, beef chili - some that are more difficult and time consuming, some that are easy.  I recently tried a new one that has a few types of beans and is both sweet and spicy. It was quite easy to throw together and will be added to my rotation of chili recipes.

Sweet and Spicy Chili

2 pounds ground beef, cooked and drained
1 small onion, finely diced
1/2 teaspoon dried garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon thyme
4 tablespoons chili powder
dash of red pepper flakes
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 bay leaves
15 ounces beef stock
15 ounce can tomato sauce
14.5 ounce can petite diced tomatoes
15 ounce can great northern beans, drained
2 - 15 ounces cans dark red kidney beans, drained
Stir all ingredients together in large crock pot.  Cook on low for at least 8 hours.  Remove bay leaves and serve.

Wordless Wednesday

 

A night with Cassie

Cassie came to spend the night with us this past weekend.  Connor has been a little scared lately so he didn't come. She was all excited and had her things all packed and ready to go.  She had a little suitcase, a sleeping bag, her pillow and a backpack.  (She's a girl and doesn't pack lightly!) She asked Bob to help her carry things and he took it all but her little backpack.  When he put it in the car, she told him "Grandpa, you are big and strong!"

We were going out for supper and she chose Chik-fil-A.

Here we are in the restaurant.  Can you see that she likes her Grandpa?

Here she's talking his ears off as we walked to the car.

When we got home, we made a squishie, from a kit.

Here it is once it dried and maintained it's shape.

We played dinosaur dominoes

Then we made playdough. We made it pink for Valentines Day.

She's concentrating on stirring.  It took lotion, corn starch and food coloring so it was easy and smelled good!

It was fun to cut out shapes.

Bed time went ok, with lots of requests for snuggles.

She enjoyed waffles the next morning.

Then we headed to her house.  We watched her and Connor while Heather and Andrew went to an appt.

Here's Cassie and Connor at their house.  He was full of smiles.  Such a fun weekend!

Ready for Spring!

Last week's weather was one for the books!  I know some of you in Georgia, Florida and Texas also got snow! Here in Michigan, I'm not a fan of snow and cold but we are pretty used to it.  But last week it was sooo cold, and the snow didn't stop.
Almost all schools in West Michigan were closed Mon-Thursday.  Even the University in our town was closed on Tues and Wednesday.  Our temps got to -5 degrees F and the wind chill was at -25 degrees.
We were getting snow all week, but from Wed to Thurs, we got a foot of snow in one night.  I was very thankful to be retired and not have to worry about driving.  We stayed in all week until Friday.

Here's some pictures I took throughout the week.

Our side yard

Looking into the back yard

My sister had to go in to work, her husband drove her and she took this picture to show me what the roads looked like.

Frost built up on our windows

Here's Bob snowblowing again.  He's clearing the path that goes to his wood shop.

And here's a satellite picture of Michigan that was taken last week.
It makes me cold to look at it!

I'm thankful I have a warm house and that I can stay in it.  And - I'll be so happy to see Spring arrive!

Friday Funny

Cooking Thursday

I've been seeing rave reviews for these cinnamon rolls that are made with heavy cream and decided to try them out. They were easy to make and you wouldn't know they started with refrigerated cinnamon rolls. They were light and fluffy, and full of flavor.

Cinnamon Rolls with Heavy Cream

1 can Grands Cinnamon Rolls
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 tablespoon heavy cream
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease 9x9 pan.
Place cinnamon rolls in pan and pour 1/2 cup heavy cream around them.
Place butter and brown sugar into small saucepan. Melt and bring almost to a boil. Then stir in the vanilla and the 1 1/2 tablespoons heavy cream.
Pour the butter and brown sugar sauce over the cinnamon rolls.
Place in oven and bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown and most of the liquid is absorbed.
Let set for 5 minutes to slightly cool, then frost with the icing that was provided with the rolls.
Serve warm with additional sauce from pan.

Wordless Wednesday

 

Something New!

I'm trying something new.  When I was younger I used to can food.  I grew up with my mom canning all summer long. However, as I got busier with working full time, I quit doing it. It's something I wanted to do a little of since retiring and after hearing from Donna about the canner she uses, I got one about a month ago.  It's an electric pressure canner. Because it's electric you don't have something on your stove for hours.  You do 8 pints or quarts at a time and it walks you through the process.  There are quite a few foods that need the pressure canner to can safely, so this gives me the option to can things like meat.

We have a meat market fairly near us that has good meat from local farmers.  They had a sale on ground beef this month, so I thought this was a good time to try out that canner.

Here it is, sitting on my counter and processing.

Here's one of my jars of ground beef.  I got 22 pints done; each is about 1 pound of meat.  It's nice that it's shelf stable, I don't have to worry about the power going out and losing it.  And, because it's cooked, it'll make it very easy to make a meal with it.

Later this month, they will have chicken on sale, so I'll be canning that too.  It feels good to have this on the shelf, and it was actually kind of fun!

Another overnight stay

 

I have just a few pictures to share with you from last weekend when Alaina and Ruby spent the night.  I didn't take as many as usual.

The weather was awful when we went to pick them up on Friday afternoon, so we just stopped for supper at Culvers (their favorite place) for supper and came back home.

They love to hook up our old Wii and play Mario Cart and race Grandpa.  We did that and then watched an old Muppet movie!

Here's how it looked the next morning.  At least it quit snowing for a while.

The girls are always wondering what kind of craft we are doing. They were thinking about holidays coming up and thought maybe it was something about Valentines day, then maybe Martin Luther King day.  When I said not those things, they said it was too early for Easter.   I asked them what had been going on lately and they said "fires". I don't know what craft we would do about fires though!  I reminded them that in our area it's been snowing non-stop!  So, we made snowmen...

The snowmen were made out of clothespins.  Here's Ruby painting her clothespins white.

And here's Alaina working on hers.

We used toothpicks dipped in black paint to make eyes and mouth, then brushed on just a little pink for the cheeks.  More black dots were added for buttons, and we painted the ended of toothpicks orange, cut them off and glued them to make noses.
Acorn caps made cute little caps, and strips of ribbon were tied on to make scarfs.  

Here they are with their cute little snowmen.

We each made three of them.

Here's mine, tucked into a display on my table.

After lunch, we played a game of Wahoo. Did any of you play that when you were young?  This board was Bob's family board.  They loved it and said they want to play it again next time they come.
We sure have fun with them!