Christmas time is here again….

This time of year our kitchens are busy with making the special holiday treats and traditional meals we all love to enjoy.  Well, mine is the same way.  On our list still is- Grama K.’s peanut butter bars, my mother in laws date bars, another round of cake balls and peppermint truffles, and chocolate covered pretzels.  The countdown is on, with only 4 days left (can’t forget since my girls remind me 3 or 4 times each day!).  With the kitchen being so busy with extra treats, I’ve been using my crockpot for dinners.

Tonights meal is from a Kraft food and family mag and is a sweet and sour chicken dish for the  crockpot! yay! It smells pretty good so far! So after feeding the girls breakfast, I prepared dinner!  Now all that is left is the get the rice cooker going while we set the table.  This leaves plenty of free time to cook up some goodies!!!  and well, make a mess in the kitchen!

Hope your kitchen is buzzing with holiday helpers spreading holiday cheer just like mine!

Winter Pot Roast…….

I had the perfect opportunity to start my dinner this morning.  With 2 extra little ones here, I didn’t think I would be able to get the crock pot dinner started.  Well, the older 2 surprised me by playing well together and the little sweetie took at nap at the same time! Shocking! Off to the kitchen I went!

After piling sweet potatoes, carrots, celery and onions in the crock pot, I went to add the beautiful chuck roast all seasoned and nice….but the 3.79 lb thing wouldn’t FIT! ugh.  So I cut off a portion not knowing what the world to do with that ,poured the basil, Worcestershire, bullion water mix over the top and fired up the goodness.

I decided to thumb through a cookbook for ideas for the extra roast piece.  I figured I had a bout a pound left.  I found a nice stove-top recipe for Beef and Noodles that i haven’t done…(my normal one has paprika and dill) It looked good.  I used rice flour instead of wheat flour to coat the meat so that I can have Ashley eat it.  “No Glutens” she says…  and I plan to add GF pasta later.  So one dinner turned into 2! love it… and my house smells divine…. roasting meat reminds me of a warm home full of love and good eats.

Well, there’s the buzzer for the Beef n’ Noodles.  Happy Friday everyone.

My first go….. at this blog thing

so I did it… I decided to start a blog.. my intentions here are to mostly discuss food, cooking, baking and life in my kitchen.  I hope you enjoy!

I am a stay at home mom who discovered I like to cook by accident! When my high school sweetie and I said I do, I expected him to do all the cooking, since my dad handled most of it as I grew up. His mom is also an AMAZING cook so I had a lot to live up to, and didn’t want the challenge then.  Well, after living on cambell’s soup, spaghetti and frozen pizza’s, I cracked open a cookbook I got as a wedding gift.  I thought it was a nice gift, but one that would just be a decoration in the kitchen, not a useful tool.  Boy was I WRONG! I began to figure out that if I could read the recipes, I could do them.  I began experimenting alot and found how I felt at home in the kitchen making a mess and meal!

That first cookbook I received 12yrs ago now, has fell apart. I literary   wore it out.  Thank goodness I was gifted by my sweet daughter, Elizabeth, the same book updated, with the new book smell and creaky unused noise you hear when you open a new book for the first time.   Now, I don’t know how many cookbooks I own but I really enjoy checking them out of the local library first before investing in one!

I hope you enjoy my little tidbits of my cooking!

So last nights dinner has been coined “Burn your tongue good” or Comforting comfort food….  The first one came because I was too impatient to wait for it to cool and burned my own tongue.  The second is self-explanatory since the meal was Chicken Stuffed Bundles from one of Taste of Home cookbooks.  I made this meal for a friend recovering from surgery but also made enough for our dinner too.  It is not one I would do often, mostly because of all the flour flying everywhere to make the bundles! It was absolutely screaming COMFORT FOOD to me as I smelled it cooking and later enjoyed it for dinner.

this concludes my first entry… since it’s dinner time around here…