Firebowl Fun

Tony and I have been wanting to get a firebowl to use at home. We've been watching the prices and looking around. We decided to go ahead and purchase one now for us to enjoy but it will be our Christmas to each other. We got it yesterday and used it last night! What fun! The kids loved it especially since we were roasting marshmallows over it!

Pumpkin Investigation with Eli

I went to Eli's class this week and helped with Pumpkin Investigation day. It was lots of fun! The kids had to estimate the weight of their pumpkin, the circumference and the number of seeds and then measure and count to see how their estimate and the actual compared.... Pretty serious stuff for kindergartners! But they enjoyed it.

Here are some photos:

Zeke the Chef

Zeke has always enjoyed playing with dishes and pretending to cook. So last Christmas he got a play kitchen (from a yardsale) and some dishes and play food. It has been a great toy all year. He also loves to sit on the counter while I cook and does it almost every day!

The past few days he has really been in to cooking and setting up a full feast for "dinner" as he calls it when he cooks. I just couldn't resist posting this pic of him with his feast all ready!

Look out Emeril!

Sneaky Chef

I like to be a sneaky chef sometimes. My family is not very good about eating fruit and veggies like I wish they would be so I sneak things in when I can. This weekend I used a puree that had blueberries and spinach in our hamburgers. When you steam a large bag of baby spinach and then puree it you will only have about 1/2 to 1 cup of puree so all those nutrients in a whole bag of spinach are concentrated. With this I mix pureed blueberries and then freeze in ice cube trays. I use them one or two cubes at time in various recipes. This mixes well in hamburgers and that is what I did. The kids didn't notice and they got a nice source of spinach and blueberries in their hamburgers! How great is that!





Then I've been wanting to try a chocolate chip cookie recipe that had Chick Peas in it. So I made those tonight. They look like regular cookies, though I have to say they were a little cakey. Eli did not like them, but Noah and Zeke ate them up. Tony said he didn't like them but he ate about 4 or 5 of them so I guess he didn't dislike them too much!

Also this weekend, we FINALLY put a hot water heater blanket on our hot water heater. It was $20 and over time we should recoup that. However, it will hopefully reduce the amount of energy used by our hot water heater, which is good for us all!

Frugal and Green Meals

Ok, I have been a pretty frugal person my whole life. I learned it honestly from my parents. However, with the economy like it is and prices on groceries and gas going up it has become even more important me!

This is not something new to me, but I'll share anyway. A few years ago, a gal in my Sunday School class brought me a whole chicken cooked in her oven when Zeke was born. It was great and we really enjoyed it. We ate off of it for dinner and I used the leftovers to make a chicken pot pie and chicken salad later! I was impressed and embarrassed that I had never cooked a whole chicken and didn't even know how! So she gave me her basic instructions. I buy my whole chickens at Sam's b/c they are the cheapest I've found. (Side Note : I don't go to Wal-Mart unless I absolutely can't find something I need anywhere else and their price is probably equally good.) I picked up a pack of 2 whole chickens for less than $7 this week. I put one in the freezer and cooked one tonight.

I choose my seasoning. Some kind of salt works best. You can use plain salt or seasoned salt or a mixture of salt and seasonings that you like. I go ahead and put this into a small dish before I start so I'm ready after the next step. You will probably need about 2 Tbs of your salt/seasoning. You have to separate the skin from the chicken without removing the skin from the chicken. Yes, this is gross... but now I hardly even think about it. Pull the skin up and rub the salt onto the chicken under the skin, covering as much of the chicken as possible. Do this on the top and bottom of your chicken. Then put a little oil over the top and rub more seasoning on. Place in oven to cook. It will take about 2 hours to cook the chicken at 350 degrees.

After it cooks, let it cool for 10 mintues or so and then pull the skin back and start pulling the chicken off the bones. Get as much of the chicken as you can off the bones. This chicken is great for casseroles or any dish with chicken and tastes much better than simply boiling chicken breasts! Plus it's cheaper. We ate the chicken pulled from the bones tonight and tomorrow I'm going to make chicken enchiladas (or a variation of these that I hope my kids will at least try!)

Now, take all the bones and skin and stuff left from your chicken that you are not going to eat and put it in a large pan. Add some carrots, onions, celery, (veggies can be on their last leg, but not rotten!) and seasonings, etc and cover with water. Bring this to a boil and then reduce the heat. Simmer for about two hours. Pour this through a fine mesh strainer, keeping the broth and discard the bones, skin, veggies, etc. Allow the broth to cool for a couple of hours in the fridge or even overnight. The fat will rise to the top and you can skim it off and discard it. You are now left with some wonderful, flavorful chicken broth! Chicken broth which you would have paid good money for in the store! You can use this to make chicken noodle soup with some of your chicken left over or freeze it to use later. I freeze in ice cube trays and then dump the cubes in a freezer bag or container. When a recipe calls for a cup or can of chicken broth, I can count out the right number of cubes that I need. (with my freezer trays, 3 cubes = 1/4 cup).

Here is a pic of my broth simmering tonight:







And here is a picture of the fat at the top of the broth before I skimmed it off:

By making my own broth I saved the energy that would have been used to process and truck the canned broth to the store.

Fall Break

The kids got a one day Fall Break this year, which was yesterday. Tony took off work and we went to the Pumpkin Patch. We had lots of fun and the kids enjoyed it very much!

On our way home, we saw a sign that said Covered Bridge with an arrow... so we turned down the road in search of the covered bridge. We want to teach the kids to enjoy the journey and take risks. They had never seen a covered bridge, so it was really neat.

Thanks Malia, for helping me rotate my pictures!!!!!

Soccer

It's fall soccer season and that keeps us terribly busy! Noah and Eli both play and both love it! Here are a few pictures:

Above is Eli and below is Noah.

Ok, sorry this is sideways, not sure how to change that!

They are cute though, aren't they???

Update on Zeke and his bed: He still gives us a little trouble most night going to sleep, but not too bad. We finally put the mattress back in the bed frame and he sleeps in it now! He does wake up really early (like 4 am) most mornings and we end up giving him a little milk to go back to sleep. This morning he did this and he slept on until about 6:45! Then he was laying in his bed singing to himself LOUDLY. I went up to get him so Eli could sleep in and as I was carrying him out of his room, he was crying, "my bed, my bed, I want my bed!"

He is potty training too! I would be so thrilled to get him out of diapers! He does better sometimes than others and of course, does best when you remind him to go about every hour!

My newest adventure involves my garden. We had quite a successful summer garden this year. Our new strawberry garden yielded several berries and I expect lots more next summer. I just cleaned everything out and planted our fall garden today. Yes, it is late for a lot of the fall plants, but I'm hoping that it will stay warm for the next 2 weeks so the seeds can germinate and get a good start. I planted carrots, onions, lettuce, collards, spinach, and Sugar Snap peas.

It was already getting dark when I took this pic, but here it is...

The plants you see are the lettuce and collards. Everything else was seeds. In that back corner is my compost pile.... I just got my second batch of compost out of it today. I still need to improve my method and I need Tony to use the weedeater around it more to prevent the grass from growing in to the frame.