What to Eat Wednesday- Breakfast in Bed

I took the kids to the library Monday after school. I had a few things that I wanted to check on myself so while the kids were browsing I took my own sweet time. I asked about some lunch idea books. As I searched for the titles I wanted I happened on some other gems. About Breakfast.

There was no time until the next day to sit down with my heap of books. I opened the most delicious looking one first.
The most-delicious-one in my stack was titled:

"Breakfast in Bed
more than 150 recipes for delicious morning meals."

It hooked me with the first quote, and then captured me with the introduction.

I was instantly in love. With a cookbook. About breakfast.
All the recipes originate from bed-and-breakfasts. I kept gasping and reading them out loud. "Oh! Listen to this" and "Doesn't this sound like the best breakfast ever?" or variations of those phrases were heard over and over. I grabbed the closest bookmarks I could find, a few stray Skip-Bo cards, to mark the recipes I wanted to try. Soon I ran out of cards. I was too lazy to get up, so I reached for the next closest thing, Finding Nemo Crush's Crazy 8's. The book was soon filled with new ideas for breakfast.

I took the book with me to the store to double check a few ingredients off my grocery list. I was standing in line and another mom that I know came up behind me. She had a chuckle over my "placeholders."

This book just seems too good not to share. I think I might have to buy my own copy. (or keep this one and get a new one for the library-seeing as how I already have spilled orange zest all over its beautiful pages!)

So as I make my way through recipe-after-recipe that I have marked, I will highlight them here. A little Julie/Julia Project like, without the swearing and probably a little less entertaining writing.

Today's breakfast was not picked because it looked like it would be a favorite, (although it was one of the first ones I marked) but because I happened to have all the ingredients. Well, almost all of them.



2 cups cottage cheese
3 eggs
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon grated orange zest
1/4 teaspoon orange extract
9-inch deep-dish pie shell, thawed if frozen

(I did not have any orange extract, and I subbed a little orange juice concentrate for the tablespoon of orange juice)

Pre-heat oven to 350. In a large bowl, beat cottage cheese with an electric mixer on high speed for 1 minute. Add eggs, sugar, flour, orange zest, orange juice and orange extract; blend well. Pour mixture into pie shell and bake for 50 minutes, or until a knife inserted comes out clean. Refrigerate overnight; serve chilled the next morning.
(The Blair House Bed & Breakfast Inn Friday Harbor, Washington)


An interesting thing about cooking blindly from a cook book is that you have no idea what the recipe is really supposed to taste like in the end. And since there were so few photos in the book I really did not know what it was supposed to look like either. It took much longer to cook than 50 minutes, and I found myself impatient- hoping that it would be worth it to stay up so we could eat the pie for breakfast.


I have never had flan. I am wondering if that is what this is like. It was sweet (surprise to anyone?) and I kind of wondered about the choice of feeding it to my kids for breakfast on a school morning. It seems like more of a dessert, or something that you would serve with breakfast. Not as breakfast.


The whole family loved it, no tears from a single person. In fact I was the one who liked it the least! I will make it again, but this recipe would take a back seat to some of our other favorites.
I wonder from a nutrition standpoint how this would rank? What if I made this as a dessert- would it be better nutritionally than some other sweet thing?

Playlist of my life

I am listening to: Natalie Merchant- Tigerlily
and it reminds me of:

1995- 1st semester with Jay at BYU- remembering how much I disliked living in UT at first- but loved being married to Jay- Being so close to the mountains, experiencing fall in Utah and how early it snowed. Our 1st apartment off of 900 East just south of Center. (the old old building with the fiery furnace, large store front style windows and see through bathroom window, and mushrooms growing out of the carpet)

please hold

A telemarketer just called. He was conducting research in the area, blah, blah, blah.
Feeling friendly, I was answering his questions. I had two kids that needed my attention immediately, so I asked Mr. Telemarketer to hold. When I got back on the phone he had hung up.
I was almost offended, and had to laugh.
I inconvenienced the man.
Isn't that odd that I could inconvenience a telemarketer? The man whose job is inconveniencing others?
It made me think of the Seinfeld moment when he asks the telemarketer for their number so he can call them back.

1st day of school

What I learned on the first day of school:

One child wants to be a marine photographer-

One child wants to do something awesome-

One child wants to graduate from college-

AND

One child has extreme jealous tendencies after having a day of Mom all to themselves.

Family Night - 8-17-09

Family Night- a time set aside

Song: Dad- I am a Child of God

Prayer: Mom

Family Business: Dad gave a father's blessings to everyone for back to school.

Scripture: Tucker
&
Lesson: Luke -combined together with help from Dad reading the The Family: A Proclamation to the World and talking about the importance of our Family! It takes work to be a family. We need to spend time together to build love.

Activity: Jack- Monopoly Jr. (sidenote from mom- if playing a board game with these kids doesn't give us practice on working together and trying to be nice to one another then I don't know what does!)

Treat: Savanna- mini sundaes with crumbled cookies and sprinkles

I'm happy now!

Ok, pitty party is over. I attended it alone-(apparently from the comments, I am alone in my feelings.)

This boy-

He has the cutest saying after he has been sad. He wipes his eyes and as he drys them he exclaims "I'm happy now!" Light just shines from his eyes, and you can't help but catch his happiness. It's contagious.


Well that is what I am thinking about now. When I tuck Tucker (isn't that funny?) into bed each night, we talk about what we can do together after school starts. I tell him "after we take the kids to school we can ..." We have chatted away about going to the zoo, the play place at the mall, pottery barn story time, library story time and playtimes, playgroup, parks, our list just keeps going. Places and things that I have not wanted to do with all 4 kids. Places that I could not go to because of pre-k and K pick ups and speech therapy the last 4 years.

There was a time in my life before school started for any of my kids. The only agenda was, "so what do you want to do today?" I get to return to that time for the next two years with this boy. The boy that I want to just eat up. The boy who will walk into the room and caution "don't eat me mom."

blue

I don't like this time of year. It is a toss up of which is worse: back to school time or midwinter.
At least right now I have sunshine.
We got the schedule for one, and found out the teachers of the others. There is always that catch in my throat looking at the list. Hoping that the kids will like their teacher. That their teacher likes them! Do they have any friends in their class? Will their teacher have time to see who my child really is?
It makes it so real. School starts next week. Blah.

What to Eat Wednesday- Canning Beans

During my trip to Texas, one of my hopes was to can beans with my friend Donna. She has told me over and over again how easy it is to do. But I really wanted to see it done before I jumped in and did it myself. Well we got to do it, and it really is so easy. Much easier than I thought it would be. So here we go.

Canning black beans (or any dry beans)

Beans are exceptionally easy. Normally with canning you have so many pots on the stove, but not with beans.

Wash jars.

Heat a large pot of water to a boil and a small pan of water just to warm.

Sort and pick through beans- discard any bad or broken ones.
(or most of them anyway)


Then rinse them off. (if you want, I didn't)

Put 2/3 cup dry beans to each pint jar. (you could do bigger jars but this is about the size that most recipes call for- doing it this way you don't have any jars sitting open in your fridge-less waste)

Add heaping 1/2 teaspoon salt. You have to add the salt. That is what preserves it.

(add any other seasoning at this point- I was just doing black beans so I did not add anything else. But if you were doing pinto beans, you could add pinto bean seasoning.)

In the small pan of water heat lids, but do not boil.

It gets really steamy in the kitchen!

Pour boiling water into each jar of beans leaving 1 inch head space from the top.


It goes without saying, but I will say it- THE JARS ARE HOT!

Wipe rims of jars. The top and sides. Be sure the rim is very clean and dry, then add the lid (from the pan of hot water) and then screw on the band. Don't screw the band on too tight.

Fill the pressure canner with a little warm water. Add jars into the canner on top of rack.


Fill with more warm water about 1/4-1/3 the way up the jar. Then follow your canners directions on how to close your canner.

Cook for 60 minutes 8# of pressure.

After they are finished, pull the VERY HOT JARS out of your canner. Set them on the counter and wait for that oh-so-thrilling-pop. Resist the urge to push on them yourself to see if they sealed. Just wait. After everything is cooled off-then you can check. Any jars that did not seal can be put in the fridge and eaten soon. * thanks April for helping me see my mistake!

And that is it! You have cooked and canned beans. I am down to four jars. I am going to have to do some canning again soon! I just have to find a pressure canner. During the days canning, we tested out my 2 canners and found out that they were not closing properly. I will have to take them to the county extension after school starts to have them re-tested and find out if they can big fixed.

Guest Blogger today

Leigh Anne from Home Based Mom asked me to guest post about beach week. Here is the post I wrote. It was fun/funny writing for someone else's blog. Thanks Leigh Anne for the invite!

Annual Beach Week

"Its that time of year- its Beach Week!
We have a fun week planned including Jay having some time off of work to do things with us.
We are relaxing and we are having fun, and most importantly we are spending time together."


I wrote this last week. I started a post and then I got sidetracked. I could either be on the computer or with the family. So I made the choice to step away from the keyboard a bit. We have beach week every summer, but this year I found I had to kind of disconnect with the outside world in order to fully enjoy the week! I missed blogging. I missed twitter. But I would have missed my family more.



We read a book aloud. This has been something I have wanted to do for so long! We read to the littles out loud all the time, but never a book for the whole family. We finally did it and have loved it. (one more chapter to go!)


We played card games together. Game after game. I usually have such a hard time playing card games with the age range- cards are flying everywhere, 1 child is frustrated because they can't hold all their cards, another is frustrated because they don't understand the rules. But not with this game! Savanna and I learned a new game from our friends- 7-11 played with skip-bo cards. So fun for all of us.

We stayed up way too late watching movies-we watched every version of Witch Mountain. We laughed at how funny the kids were in the original version but of all 3 movies that one is our favorite.


Although our intent of our families beach week wasn't to pack it all in, we sure did this time!
Jay took off a few days and we included part of our "staycation" into the beach week. We had so many coupons and prizes from the kids summer reading program that we jokingly said,
"beach week sponsored by the public library!"
We used the coupons to go to a baseball game, and to the water park, and out to eat.

We also went to the lake for a day, we went swimming at the pool. We went to the lego store. We went to the Aquarium. We drank sodas at Pops.


I am always so glad that we take the time to have Beach Week- every year it goes a little different. Its worth every bit of work ahead of time to clear our schedules and get things done that need to be tended to. Now our schedule is filled with back to school things- and last-time-of-summer outings. So-so thankful we had last week to be together and slow down for us.

Family night - 8-09-09

Back to blogging!




Family Night- a time set aside

Song: Mom- I will follow God's plan for me


Prayer: Tucker (no surprise that Tucker chose himself for the opening and the closing!)


Scripture: Luke Jesus Walks on Water (Matthew 14)


Lesson: Jack- relating to yesterdays events at church, Jack discussed our ward getting a new Bishop and how it will be different. And how we will miss our former Bishop. He talked about how we can show our support to the new Bishop and how we can sustain him even if we wish it were someone else. (pretty big discussion for a 9 year old!) He talked about how a new Bishop is called- The Stake Presidency prays for inspiration.


Activity: Savanna- We played a new game that we learned from our mom/daughter weekend. 7-11, its played with Skip-bo cards.



Treat: Dad

Sunday Thoughts- a change & rare event edition

Today I witnessed a rare event. I guess I should say a few rare events.
Rare event #1: Our entire family sat together for church. (Wonder why we don't sit together for church? See here and be sure to read the comments.)

Rare event #2: No child had to be taken out, nobody argued, or screamed or needed parental attention during. (I won't speak about the ride to church) Because we had a Stake Conference (this meeting is held twice a year) the meeting was 2 straight hours. While normally we attend for 3 hours, those hours are broken into segments. So for our family to make it 2 straight hours seemed like a miracle!

Rare event #3: Our family witnessed the change in our Stake Leadership. This part was rare because it happens about every 10 years or so. For as long as our family has lived here in Oklahoma there has been the same Stake Presidency. I believe that they were men who have sacrificed much. In our church there is no paid ministry. It is all volunteer. In a way. Not in the way of volunteering yourself or asking to have a position. We are extended callings. Our family has prayed for the leaders of our Stake and their families. We realize and appreciate their time, and their sacrifice.

Today our Bishop was called into the reorganized Stake Presidency. We pray for he and his wife as they experience this time of change. I was surprised at how emotional I was about the change.
With our Bishop being called into the Stake, our Ward (congregation) will experience a change sometime soon of a new Bishopric. There will be a new Bishop and counselors called to serve our ward sometime in the next few weeks. I will keep our leaders in our prayers as they meet and pray and discuss our ward and its needs.

I have a confession to make. I don't like change. Even when it is good change. I find it hard to adjust. Even when I am all for the changes, I still find it hard to take. But today has been different. There has been a peace and a calmness. I don't feel turned upside down. I count this as a blessing.