Pregnancy Cravings

I've had an especially hard time being 7 months along during Christmas. I almost have my decorations cleaned up (it's almost a month later).  I also put on twice as much weight in four weeks as I had between my other Dr visits -- thank you Christmas fudge, candied popcorn, and other delicious sweets.  I've nearly finished purging my house, and my body, from Christmas junk foods. 
Last time I was this far along it was the middle of summer and I could have as many fresh fruits as I wanted.  So, Sunday night I started craving berries.  I made a berry cobbler to fill that craving.  But, on Monday, "BERRIES" my body screamed.  This time I decided to try something healthier -- smoothies.  I didn't find a recipe I liked, so I made up my own:

Berry Banana Smoothies

5 strawberries
3/4 cup mixed berries
3/4 cup milk
1 banana
6 to 8 ice cubes
1 strawberry yogurt
All of my fruits were frozen because it's December, but fresh ones would be better.

Directions:

1. Blend berries and banana with milk until smooth. Add yogurt and blend. Lastly blend in ice and serve.
2. Makes 2 or 3 servings and took about 5 minutes to throw together.

My daughter enjoyed her cup enough to get her first head-freeze. 

What's For Dinner?

When my husband and I first got married I knew how to make 3 or 4 dinners.  Spaghetti, taco salad, breakfast, and stew. The first three seem incredibly easy as I look back, but where did I learn to make stew? I have no idea. But, as daunting as it may seem, it's actually incredibly easy. It has three main ingredients: meat, potatoes, and carrots. Since we've been married for a while my recipe has changed and developed into a delicious recipe and here it is:

Stew

1/2 lb meat (I use turkey or beef to make this stew)

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 white onion, chopped

1/4 cup red cooking wine

4 - 5 medium potatoes

5 whole carrots

canned or frozen corn and green beans

2-3 cups Chicken (for turkey meat) or Beef broth

Directions:

1. Brown meat in the bottom of pot.  Add garlic and onion and saute with meat.  When bottom of pan starts to brown add the cooking wine and reduce by half (boil half of it out, I understand this also removes the alcohol). 
2. Wash and chop the potatoes into 1 inch cubes (sometimes I leave the skin on and sometimes I  remove it, you can do it either way depending on your preference), throw potatoes into pot and add broth until the potatoes are covered (about 2 or 3 cups).  
3. Peel and chop the carrots and add them to the pot.  Bring to boil, then reduce heat to low.  Allow to stew for 1 to 3 hours, you know it's stewed long enough when the potatoes fall apart as you're mixing it and the stew is thick. 
4. About 20 minutes before serving add 1 1/2 cups each of corn and green beans (or one drained can each). Sometimes I add extra seasoning like savory, but that's optional.
5. Makes 4 to 5 servings

Using the wine when browning the meat makes regular stew meat fall apart when you eat it, it's the best change I've made to the recipe. This stew also goes great with a loaf of homemade bread.

Giving Some Joy at Christmas

This year for Christmas Russell and I decided to give some joy to people who might be a little lonely.  That joy took the form of sugar cookies. I love sugar cookies! They are one of my three favorite cookies. Our list had thirty two families on it and that translated into 124ish cookies. It helps that I have the World's Best Sugar Cookie recipe, which makes 80ish cookies with one batch. Here it is:

 World's Best Sugar Cookies

2 c butter or margarine, softened

2c granulated sugar

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon extract

6c flour

1 tsp baking soda

Cream together butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and lemon extract.  Add flour and baking soda.  Mix until all the flour has been mixed into the dough. Refrigerate for 2 or 24 hours. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease cookies sheet.  Roll dough to 1/4 inch thickness and cut out desired shapes.  Bake for 8 to 10 minutes (I baked mine for 12 minutes because my oven runs a little cold) or until edges start to brown.  Freezes well for up to 6 months.

 

Two batches later I had about 180ish cookies.  Then I like to make homemade butter cream frosting - it's also super easy. 

Butter Cream Frosting

4 c powdered sugar

1 cup butter, softened

2 TBS milk

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

Blend with hand mixer on medium speed until well blended. One recipe of this will cover one batch of the cookies.

Then we had three awesome families come over and help decorate cookies, put together plates, and play with Josie's toys.  It was such a great evening.  After we'd decorated them all, we divided the 32 families and everyone went out sharing joy.  This might become a new Christmas tradition, it was that good.

Easy Fish Recipe

As a girl from Washington State, with a father who used to be an avid fisher, I'm practically required to love fish. But in the words of Jim Gaffigin, "I love fish, when it doesn't taste like fish. So, you don't like fish."

Unfortunately, my husband does like fish.  So it's my job to make fish that doesn't taste like fish and this is how.

Ingredients:
-1 fish fillet
-Lemon juice
-Clove Garlic
-Thyme
-Basil
-Olive oil
Drizzle the fillet with lemon juice, mince your garlic and put it on top, sprinkle with thyme and basic, and lastly drizzle with olive oil.  I cover the fish and let it sit in the refrigerator for a couple hours. The secret to this recipe (which took me years to figure out) is to put the ingredients on the fish in the order listed. It looks like this:

I used to wrap it in a foil packet and bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes, but I recently started pan frying it.  I take the fish and cook it on one side on a medium heat.  Then flip it when the thickest part of the fish is halfway done.  I allow it to brown a little.  To make certain it's done you flake it with a fork.  This only takes 15 - 20 minutes, which is so much faster than baking.

For a complete meal I throw some rice into the rice maker and cook up some vegetables. Nice and healthy!

Playdough

My day-care experience with Playdough has always been very messy. But, I have discovered this week that it's not so bad when there's only one kid playing with it. Not only that but Josephine was entertained for hours! That's awesome.

I also gave her four cookie cutters to use, that expended the play.




Recipe
2 cups white flour (I tried wheat and it was super gross)
1 cup salt
1 Tablespoon oil
3/4 cups water (add 4 drops food coloring to water)