Wordless Wednesday–SNOW!

Last week, the beach. This week, SNOW! Thank you, Colorado spring, for the beautiful, and freezing, homecoming present.

~S

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Menu Plan Monday–April and May

 

The last three weeks were a bit of a whirlwind. My husband’s grandmother passed away about three weeks ago, so me being me, I planned a two week road trip for my family to go to SoCal and enjoy the sights as well as go to the memorial service. Oh, and I played travel agent for the rest of his family, which include his mom and disabled dad, sister and her hubby, and two more brothers. Yeah. Made my head spin a bit. Then was the actual trip. Really good, but exhausting! Almost two weeks in a hotel room with your three kids isn’t exactly relaxing. In any way. BUT we did go to Disneyland, San Diego Zoo, the beach, and several other places. We had a great time, and are glad to be home. Except for this freak snow storm. I mean, almost a foot of snow in the middle of April?!? Welcome to Colorado spring, I guess.

Anyway…I didn’t exactly get any meal plan done for the month before we left, and then we ate out for two weeks, ugh. Now that we’re home, and it’s already the middle of the month, I decided I would just plan out April and May. So here goes. Six weeks of meals all planned out:

Sun	Mon	Tues	Wed	Thurs	Fri	Sat
14  Meatballs & Ravioli	15 Basic Tacos	16 Chicken Pot Pie Soup	17 Teriyaki Crockpot Chicken	18 Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup	19 You’re On Your Own (YOYO)	20 Hamburger Helper
21 Stuffed Jumbo Shells	22 Orange Chicken Stir-Fry	23 Chili Colorado Burritos	24 Healthy Mama BBQ Chicken	25 Date Night with that man o’ mine	26 YOYO	27 Taco Dump Soup
28 Dinner at my dad’s	29 Creamy Chicken Taquitos	30 Sweet & Sour Citrus Chicken	1 Slow Cooker Pizza	2 Parmesan Ranch Chicken	3 YOYO	4 Light and Crispy Waffles
5 Baked Pasta Casserole	6 Mexican Lasagna	7 Valencian Paella	8 Cilantro Lime Chicken	9 Date Night!	10 YOYO	11 Pizza
12 Guiltless Chicken Alfredo	13 Sweet & Sour Meatballs	14 Scalloped Potatoes & Ham	15 Crockpot Parmesan Chicken	16 Rice-a-Roni with Chicken	17 YOYO	18 Something Grilled – Probably Burgers
19 Noodles Bolognase	20 Southwest Chicken Burritos	21 Orecchiette and Sausage	22 Cheesy Hamburger Soup	23 Basic Casserole	24 YOYO	25 Chicken Lemon Soup with Orzo
26 Dinner at my dad’s	27 Mexican Lasagna	28 Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole	29 Grillin’	30 Green Beans, Potatoes, and Chicken	31 YOYO	1 Meatloaf Muffins

One more thing that I really like about meal planning in advance like this: It gives me the ability to bring people a meal more easily. I can see when I would already be making something that is easy to double, or one that I already usually double (like Stuffed Jumbo Shells), and just plan on sharing that extra meal. I have a friend who has just started chemo for breast cancer, and they don’t have a lot of local friends since they just moved here a year ago. I know which meals I will be bringing them in the next six weeks and I’m less likely to forget (what a horrible friend would I be then!) since it’s already in my family’s plan and not just on a sign-up sheet somewhere. I also have a neighbor who had a baby while we were gone in Cali. I don’t know her that well, but what better way to bless someone than by bringing them a meal?

Okay, enough talking. What are you making this week/month?

~S

Wordless Wednesday–The Beach

So…we are in California on vacation. It was a totally last minute trip; Tim’s Grandma passed away and her memorial service was near L.A. I figured since we were all going out anyway, we should make a vacation out of it. We’re nearing the end, and I am soooo ready to be home. I mean, SoCal is great and all, but living in a hotel room with my three small children is exhausting.

I’ll have a ton more pictures to post, but for now, here are a few from the Silver Strand today.

~S

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Tasty Tuesday–Chocolate Chip Cookies Tutorial (Also includes directions for a “Big Cookie”)

Welcome to Tasty Tuesday here at The Young'ns!
There’s a recipe index under the food tab above if you’re ever looking for a recipe I’ve already blogged.

We all have a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, right?? Well, I’ve had several people tell me that mine are fantastic, and I really have no idea why mine turn out better than some. So, I thought maybe a tutorial would help. My husband’s all-time favorite cookies are chocolate chip. Add kids to that, and I basically *have* to be good at making them! I timed myself once, and I can have a batch of dough ready in less than five minutes. If' I take longer to make the dough than it takes the oven to heat up, I’ve taken too long :-)

Anyway, Chocolate Chip Cookies in pictures:

{Ingredients}

• 1 cup butter (2 sticks), salted. The real deal. No substitutions.
• 3/4 cup light brown sugar
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar (that’s the regular white kind)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla. or so. I actually add a bit more than that,  but that’s a personal preference. Also, you’ll see in the picture that I attempted to make my own vanilla extract. It didn’t work all that well, but that’s a story for another day
• 2 1/4 cup all purpose flour. I usually use Hungarian High Altitude, but I’m currently out, oops.
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 cups Nestle Chocolate Morsels. Do yourself a favor and don’t get the generic ones.

{Tools I Use}

• Stand Mixer. I have a large KitchenAid 6-Quart Stand Mixer that I love, but I bet another one would work just fine too.
• Parchment Paper. You can use a silicone baking sheet too, like a Silpat Non-Stick Baking Mat, but I really just like to use the disposable kind.
• Medium Cookie Scoop. Mine is Pampered Chef, but again, another one would work as well. My smaller one is from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and works fine too.

{Directions}

• Soften butter. I do this by unwrapping it into a bowl and microwaving it for 20 seconds. You can tell it’s done when you can dent the top with your finger, but there’s no melted butter in the bowl.                                      
• Place both sugars and the softened butter in the mixer and turn on low. Mix until creamy, about one minute. It should look something like this when it’s done:
• While that’s going, mix flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl. I usually just give it a bit of a stir with the teaspoon measurer.
• Add both eggs and the vanilla to the mixer bowl.
• Mix until it looks something like this: Beware of overmixing at this stage. You still have to mix in the dry ingredients and you don’t want your cookies to be tough. Just mix until it’s pretty well combined, but you don’t have to kill it!
• Slowly add in the flour, a bit at a time, until all flour is combined. I basically cover the top of the dough with flour, and then let it mix just a bit before adding more. The reason you don’t want to add all of it is so that it doesn’t make a huge pouf of a mess AND so that you don’t overwhelm your mixer. Also, for this step, you’ll want to make sure that it’s really all mixed in! So if you need to stop the mixer and use a spatula to scrape down the bowl a bit, do it! I also find that sometimes the very very bottom middle doesn’t get mixed well, so I usually scrape  that too.Okay, your dough should look like this now.
• Add the chocolate chips and mix just enough to combine. DO NOT OVERMIX!! This is important because you want those chips to stay whole and you really don’t want tough cookies. Really.
• Now is where you’re going to love that cookie scoop and parchment paper. Lay out the parchment paper on two cookie sheets and scoop away! I have played with the configuration of the cookie balls a lot, and here’s what I have found to be the best: 8 cookies staggered like this will leave enough room between them so they don’t get stuck together, but doesn’t waste too much space either.
• Bake for 9-10 minutes. They won’t look done yet. That’s okay, pull them out anyway. They should be just getting brown along the top and edges, but only a tiny bit.These are done!    These are a little bit overdone. See the one in the bottom right? Brown all over. Too done.
• Let cool on a rack until all the way cool. Then you’ll see why you pulled them out “early”. They brown a bit and harden a bit after they’re cool. Whatever you do, DO NOT stack them before they’re all the way cool. You’ll end up with ball-o-cookie (not that I’ve ever done that before, right Mom?)                      Try not to burn yourself as you break one open and enjoy the ooey gooey chocolately goodness

 

Okay, a note about “bar” cookies. There’s a restaurant (or two or three) that have those yummy big cookies a la mode, some of them being better than others. Want to make one at home? It’s way easier than you think! Use a 9” cake pan and this recipe for cookie dough

It takes half of a batch of dough to make a cookie this size, so you can either make two big cookies, or make one big cookie and about 16 regular cookies, your choice.

To bake the big cookie, pat it into the cake pan and bake in a 350 degree oven for 25 or so minutes. You want it to get a bit browner than the cookies so that the middle gets all the way done. I forgot to take a picture right after I pulled it out of the oven, so this looks a bit darker than when I actually pulled it out

Slice it like a pie and eat with a glass of milk or a scoop of vanilla ice cream, delicious!

 

I hope this helps in your chocolate chip cookie endeavors! Let me know how they turn out :-)

~S

Wordless Wednesday–Volcanos

Ah, the magic of baking soda and vinegar…

~S

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Speak Up Saturday–Book Review–A Voice in the Wind by Francine Rivers

I told you to watch for a blast of reviews…

A Voice in the Wind: (Mark of the Lion #1)

From the Publisher:

This classic series has already inspired nearly 2 million readers, but both loyal fans and new readers will want this 20th anniversary edition of a Christian classic, which includes a foreword from the publisher, a letter from and Q & A with Francine Rivers, color map, an illustrated glossary, and discussion questions suitable for personal and group use.

The first book in the bestselling Mark of the Lion series, A Voice in the Wind brings readers back to the first century and introduces them to a character they will never forget—Hadassah. Torn by her love for a handsome aristocrat, this young slave girl clings to her faith in the living God for deliverance from the forces of decadent Rome.

I mentioned in my last review that The O'Malley Series by Dee Henderson was one of my favorite series of books. Well, this book, A Voice in the Wind, is the first book in my favorite of all times series! I can’t believe that it’s been 20 years since she wrote this first one, wow.

I think I first read this book about 10 years ago, and I’ve read it probably five more times since then. I figured I was about up for reading it again, so I was very happy to receive this 20th anniversary edition for my kindle.

What do I love about it? It’s so masterfully written. It’s well researched. It’s about a difficult, yet well documented, time in ancient history. The emotion that it pulls out of you is simply astounding. The characters are so deep, so developed, that it’s so easy to fall into this story. I don’t think my kids like it very much when I read this book because I get drawn so far into the story, I have a hard time paying attention to anything else!

To break it down as the synopsis has done misses so much of the story. It’s set in about 70 ad, just as Jerusalem is being sacked by the Romans. It’s about Roman culture, slavery, love, corruption, but most of all, true and tenacious faith in the one true God.

One warning: this is the FIRST book in a THREE book series. Don’t stop here…keep reading! This one ends with a gut punch, but reading the next one smooths it out. Francine Rivers uses that technique in the Marta's Legacy Series too, which is very effective, got me to read the second one in that series too!

Have I mentioned yet that I love this book?!? Go, get it, read it! If you want to borrow mine, let me know! I now have two different kindle versions plus the paper version, and I am happy about it :-)

~S

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from NetGalley as part of their book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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