I am Woman, Hear me Roar OR Caution- homemade jam is very very hot!

At this moment I am euphorically riding on a giant wave of satisfaction powered by peach jam. I have never been a jam kind of gal. When asked if I would enjoy jam on my toast I would disdainfully decline. Jam on that peanut butter sandwich? No thank you! But I have just realized I have been woefully misguided for years. Jam is delicious. We have a peach tree in our front yard and I picked all the peaches with the intent of eating them fresh and making pies, cobblers, and cakes but I have been dismally ill the past week and only made one butter peach pound cake. So with a plethora of ripening peaches surrounding me I decided to try jam. To me jam is intimidating. It is my Mount Everest. So my mother in law came over for domestic back up. To my amazement the hardest part was peeling and chopping up twenty five peaches. The peach sugar mixture magically turned into pretty pearly jam at the very touch of my spoon. So now I have seven beautiful half pint jars sitting on my counter cooling. There was a little leftover in the pan and I spread some on a roll and sampled. My eyes about popped out of my head! SCRUMPTIOUS! (if you could not tell already I discovered I really like jam) It would be great heated up and poured lavishly over vanilla ice cream or melted and used as syrup on pancakes. The options are endless. So if you come to my house and see me eating jam straight from the jar do not be surprised. I think I might try making strawberry jam- I have a bunch of unused jars. I also discovered that jam is hot. seriously hot. Wear gloves or use tongs people.
PS That is not a picture of my actual jam- just one I found on google :)

Feed My Belly- Phase One

Ok, I know I have mentioned before that I am working on getting a food storage going in case of natural disaster, economic crisis, alien attack, or I develop that disease where you refuse to leave your house. We have been doing really well with our long term storage- canned wheat, rice, and beans- but not so hot with a three month storage. I buy stuff and use it and then do not replenish it, oppps. So this week I became super motivated and have put a plan in action. Phase one was picking 15 dinners we eat on a regular basis that can be made without fresh ingredients- if necessary. This was a super huge challenge because I LOVE using fresh ingredients and I wanted to make reasonably healthy, tasty, and inexpensive meals. And I really did not want every meal to include cream of chicken soup. So I came up with 15 meals and started making a shopping list for all the things I would need to make each meal 6 times. This started to stress me out, because man that is a LOT a food but I persevered. So now I am going to slowly start buying all the ingredients. I cleaned out the craft room so half of it can be devoted to some shelves. I have come to realize I cannot keep all the food in the pantry because 1. there is not enough space and 2. I will use up all the food without a thought. This way I have to go upstairs, and mark my handy ingredient sheet so I will know what I need to replace. Once I get my dinners all done I am going to move on to breakfast, lunch, sides, and treats :) I will also have to learn how to make homemade flour tortillas but I am feeling up to the challenge and I am going to try my hand at cheese waxing.
Here are the meals I am using.
haystacks
tomato bisque and grilled cheese
spaghetti
turkey chili and corn bread found here http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Simple-Turkey Chili/Detail.aspx, I tweak the recipe a bit
chicken noodle soup from the lion house cookbook
oat wheat pancakes http://neillarsonfamily.blogspot.com/search?q=pancakes
bean burritos http://neillarsonfamily.blogspot.com/2009/07/day-dried-pinto-beans-rocked-my-world.html
stirfry and rice http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Honey-Chicken-Stir-Fry/Detail.aspx
chicken pot pie
waffles
pasta w/ white beans found here http://thisweekfordinner.com/2010/04/27/pasta-with-arugula-and-white-beans/
pizza
sloppy joes
chicken quesdillas
black beans over rice
So on to Phase 2- purchasing food. I am going to focus first on getting the canned goods. If anyone wants to jump on the band wagon I would be happy to email you recipes and a master grocery list :) I promise the food is yummy.

cutie!

Live to Eat

So I am in the midst of a debilitating cooking funk. Usually I love cooking but I have been trying to meal plan and I just keep coming up with spaghetti and meatballs. While that is delicious it is also totally boring. The peaches started falling off our peach tree so I went ahead and picked all the fruit and am trying to rev up my cooking with them. Here is what I've got so far for this week.

Sunday (Father's Day)- chicken fajitas with Mexican rice and refried beans plus raspberry cheese cake for dessert (The cheese cake just finished baking and would have been perfect but I poked it too hard, right in the middle, during the baking process and now there is a little hole from my finger. opppppps)

Monday- leftover Tomato Bisque and homemade Foccacia Bread from here, http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Michaels-Foccacia-Bread/Detail.aspx BUT I leave out all the veggies and onions and just sprinkle it with dried rosemary and some Parmesan cheese. Also I half the recipe because the bread is hugemongo

Tuesday- bbq salmon and rice pilaf with roasted corn

Wednesday- bean and rice burritos with mango salsa

Thursday- ??????????????????

Friday- Byrdhouse Spicy Chicken and Peaches from here (I haven't ever tried this and am leaving out the spicy stuff to make it mild) http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Byrdhouse-Spicy-Chicken-and-Peaches/Detail.aspx?prop31=3

Saturday- ?????????????????

As you can see there are some blanks in my schedule. I have a whole bunch of yellow, red, and orange bell peppers, a pineapple, and a ton of peaches to work with. Any ideas? I'm thinking maybe I will make a veggie chili one day to serve over fry bread with the peppers. And I may try a buttery peach pound cake recipe. I have also been trying to throw in a bunch of vegetarian meals too so let me know if you've got any advice about that. Maybe we will do omelettes one night. OK I am tired. Good night to one and all.

bad news

I am loosing my mind. I just went to sign in to my email account and I blanked on my username. I have had the same user name for years and years and years. Thanks Grace and John- you have finally driven me mad.

In other news Baby Gap was having a crazy cool sale today and I nabbed Grace three dresses, two tops, a swimsuit and two pairs of shoes. John got two tops and a hat. All for seventy bucks! I let Grace pick out all her clothes since she currently refuses to wear anything but "flower dresses". In the store she put a shirt on that she picked out over her clothes and took off her shoes and replaced them with new ones, even though she had to hobble around because the shoes were tied together. That is dedication to your look. Grace has also decided she wants to be a skank. She has some dresses and tops that are suppose to have ruffled t-shirts under them and the obstinate woman will not wear the shirts without an excess of crying. Luckily I am still stronger then her and her modesty is preserved. We have just run into trouble with outfits that require a cardigan because the minute I turn my back she whips her cardi off.

Also, since I have been taking the kids to the pool almost everyday I am turning tanner (for me) despite the use of spf 50 sunscreen. I was secretly liking my darker arms and then I saw a lady at the pool whose entire body looked like an old wrinkled potato-even her back and legs! No thank you- we haven't been back to the pool for two days now. We will go back but I will be even more vigilant in reapplying sunscreen. Everyone have a great Father's Day weekend!

Summer

Have I mentioned I am a widow during the summer? Neil's job gets crazy so the kids and I barely get to see him until the end of September. To counteract the difficulties that arise from this I have been trying to do lots of fun things with the kids. Last Saturday I took the kids to Home Depot. (The first Saturday of every month they have a free kid craft) We, and by "we" I mean me, built little foosh ball tables (no idea how to spell that one and spell check isn't doing me any favors) and walked around checking out all the plants outside. On a day to day basis we go to the pool.... alot. I do have the kids in a really good bedtime routine now. Dinner, bath time, stories and songs and they are down by 7:30 :) Last night I was teaching a makeup and fashion class at a relief society meeting so they got to come along. My sainted friends took John around to the different classes with them and Grace went to the nursery and loved it. Apparently they watched Toy Story and she took turns sitting on the big kid's laps. Then the other kids chased her around the gym to her heart's content. She was in heaven! Grace asked me, after dinner, if we could go to church again tonight. Today we checked out a program at the library about Trains, endangered species, and UFOs. I have no idea how they grouped those things together but Grace was into the music and dancing after a rough start. John, on the other hand, had a freak out over a gorilla puppet and grunting gorilla noises the old lady host was making. I had to take him out and make him a bottle to calm him down. After that we headed to Sams club. I got Grace a GIANT hot dog to eat while we shopped and I turned around and she had discarded the bun and was going to town! She gobbled up the entire thing and then ate the bun for good measure. The kids are both in bed and I think I am going to head over to Amazon to buy some books to fill my lonely nights :)

It is official

the kids are banned from my room and bathroom. I am buying a door knob with a lock on Monday. Grace has an unfortunate unbreakable fascination with makeup and this week I found little bits of black eyeliner ground in all over my bedroom carpet and the living room carpet! baahhhh! I had to clean, reclean and reclean again the spots. Plus cosmetics are pretty expensive, Grace owes me about $100 for her many many shenanigans. And when I got back from Chicago I found bronzer powder rubbed into the grout in the bathroom. It took several doses of bleach to get rid of that one. And I am tired of finding string cheese, crackers, and fruit snacks lovingly tucked into my sheets. So, anyway, I have decided I am going to redecorate my bathroom and try to give it a kid free spa feel. I already carted all the bath toys, boats, bath crayons, sponges, baby wash and baby shampoo upstairs to the kiddos' bathroom. Now I just need some inspiration. All the spa pictures I have found online are all white and I want something with a little more personality. I was thinking of this fabric for curtains and then painting the walls the taupe-y brown highlight color on the branches. Although I keep being drawn to blues but my bedroom has cream walls and the bedspread is red and I want them to go together. I also thought this fabric would be fun in a small dose but it doesn't exactly scream "relax." I have also toyed with chocolate brown because I saw the cutest dark brown bathroom on the Lettered Cottage but the light fixtures in my bathroom are bronze and I would have to be really careful with the shade I chose. If anyone has seen a fabulous bathroom please share the love. Happy Sunday!

News

I just got back from a week in Chicago. An entire week without any babies waking me up in the middle of the night, no diapers to change, and no sticky fingers to clean. But let me tell you I missed my babies. I have a worrying nature because different scenarios kept popping into my head and ruining my mood. Even flying back on the plane I worried about Neil bringing the kids into the airport and one of them getting kidnapped! I did manage to have a great time in Chicago however. Lots of shopping and hanging out with the family. And the best news came today. My dad got his blood tests back and they were cancer free! He still has to go have major chemo on Monday and then have the stem cells put back in but things are looking really good :)I've been singing Praise to the Lord all day while cleaning my house.