A blogging slump and a yummy salad.

I've been missing all of you out in bloggy land.  But every time I sit down to blog, it seems I have nothing to say.  Ever hit a blogging slump?  I haven't even had my camera out in probably a couple of weeks, can you believe it?  I did pull it out on Friday night to record the yumminess that is couscous-turkey salad - a recipe I tried from my new Good Housekeeping Light & Healthy Cookbook.  I have to confess, as I was making the salad I was thinking it would be mediocre at best.  But y'all.  This was DELICIOUS.  To keep things in perspective, Kloe wants to have it every day, and Jacob wants to never have it again. So somewhere in the middle is probably the actuality of its yumminess.  :)

I wanted to share the recipe and a beautiful, magazine-worthy picture with you, but alas, due to a half-baked photography class I took that made me (mistakenly) think I know how to use the manual controls on my camera, these are the numerous, decidedly un-magazine-worthy pics I ended up with:

So, yeah, I obviously need another photography class.

The salad, however - although really more of a summer salad - was the bomb.  And for me that's saying a lot, because I don't do fruit with my meat.  Canadian bacon and pineapple?  No.  Mango salsa on fish?  Just not natural.  But hey, give me some dried cherries with some turkey and couscous and you've got a winner!

So, if you're tired of all your same-o recipes and looking for something new and fun, give this one a try.

Couscous and Smoked Turkey Salad
1 tsp ground cumin *
1 10oz package plain or original flavor couscous
1/3 cup dried tart cherries
3 tbsp fresh lemon juice *
2 tbsp olive oil *
1 tbsp dijon mustard *
3/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
3 ripe nectarines, finely chopped (may substitute plums, peaches, or apricots)
4 oz smoked turkey breast, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
Boston lettuce leaves

1. In a 3-quart saucepan, heat cumin over medium-high heat until fragrant, about 1-3 minutes.  In saucepan with cumin, prepare couscous as label directs, omitting salt and butter.

2. Meanwhile, prepare dressing.  In a large bowl, whisk together lemon juice, oil, mustard, salt and pepper until well blended.

3.  Add warm couscous, nectarines, and turkey to dressing in bowl.  Mix well.  Spoon salad onto large platter lined with Boston lettuce leaves.  Makes about 7 1/2 cups, or 6 main-dish servings.

Valerie's variations:
1. Increased all the ingredients marked with a * by 50%.
2. Didn't have enough lemon juice, so substituted a half-tablespoon of lime juice.
3. Used peaches instead of nectarines.
4. I have no idea what Boston lettuce is.  I used romaine, and instead of serving the salad on top of lettuce leaves, I tore the lettuce and mixed it with the couscous (not pictured).  Kloe says it yucky without the lettuce. :)

Hope you enjoy!  Let me know if you try it - or if you have any ideas to drag me out of this blogging slump!

Our Thanksgiving in Pictures



It's done!

 


Fallin' off the bone good!  (not sure why this picture came out all skinny-wonky)

 



My very first turkey!  It turned out great!  Tender, moist, delicious.  :)



Can you believe I cooked all that by myself? :) 
(With a little help from Kloe.)



Instead of regular pie, we had individual, mini
pumpkin cream pies.  Mmmmm!



A little after-dinner entertainment.  :)

Me and my mama. :)

The carnage. :)

We had a small Thanksgiving, with just the four of us and my mom.  Quiet.  Slow.  Peaceful.  I cooked my very first turkey ever, and it was delicious!  (Reynolds Oven Bags are the bomb!)  We watched the parade, Charlie Brown, and a little football.  The boys shot slingshots, and Kloe won the wish-bone pull.  All in all a wonderful day!

'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving....

I didn't make it too far on my photojournal of thankfulness. Only nine days of pictures, but definitely a whole month full of being thankful.

So, so thankful for my family.
Thankful for my beautiful children and wonderful husband.
Thankful for our home, warm beds, warm clothes, warm showers.
Thankful for plentiful food and clean water.
Thankful for our jobs, and that we've not had to go without during these hard economic times that have affected so many.

So very thankful. For so much.

In that spirit of thankfulness, our family participated this year in a tradition we learned from our friends the Mosses.....we had a Thankful Dinner. Jen calls it a Starvation Dinner, but I wasn't that brave. :)

We had black beans and rice for dinner, and nothing else. As soon as I said, "And just water to drink," Jacob suddenly started asking for all kinds of other things to drink. "Can I have milk? Juice? Can I put flavoring (i.e. propel powder) in my water?" What's so funny is that we drink water with dinner every night - but suddenly when it was part of the Thankful Dinner, Jacob couldn't stand it. :)

After dinner we watched Kit Kittredge - lighthearted entertainment, but also with a strong message about being thankful - and then a couple of YouTube videos to help us remember that we have SO MUCH to be thankful for. And....SO MUCH responsibility to help others.

We watched this video that I saw on Jen's blog....




And then this video that I saw on someone else's blog a few months ago....




Man.

At the end of the videos I asked the kids, "What do you think about that?"

Kloe's response: "I want to adopt. A lot." I don't know if that means she very much wants to adopt, or she wants to adopt a lot of kids. :)

Jacob's response: "I'm hungry. Will you get me something to eat?"

sigh.

I have to remind myself it's the Holy Spirit's job, not mine, to create compassion in him. My job is just to educate, and train, and remind.....and pray.

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In other news, early this morning -- or at least I thought it was early until I actually got up and saw what time it was :) -- I was awakened by the sound of incessant hammering.  When I couldn't take it any more, I got out of bed and stumbled into the living room where Kloe was watching cartoons.  I asked her, "Where's Jacob?"

"Outside."

Great.  Yep.  That was him making all that ruckus.  Hammering rocks in his size 5 overalls. :D  (Ok, can I just pause right here and ask why Blogger doesn't have emoticons that you can insert into your posts???)

Later I found him hammering nails into the fence, looking a little like Pa Ingalls in the same overalls.  (Why do we still have them, you ask?  Dress up, my friends, is a very important part of our lives around here.  He dressed up as no less than 4 different people today.)

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While Pa Jacob mended the fence, Kloe and I started on lunch for tomorrow. This guy went for a long swim in my sink for the biggest part of the day.

Kloe helped make the green bean casserole and mashed potatoes. She said, "It's like cooking school! Oh, I love Thanksgiving cooking school!" :)  Haha - she might not be so excited if she knew her teacher was the cooking school dropout!

Tomorrow morning we'll finish up the candied sweet potatoes (ONLY because my mom's coming over!), pumpkin pie, dump cake (mmmmm - love), stuffing, and of course the bird. It's my first time making the whole shebang myself (can you believe it? at 40?)....and you know cooking isn't exactly my forte, so wish me luck!

Just like today - what with the crack of dawn rock busting going on - I'm sure I'll be needing a bunch of this to get me through the morning.

Happy Thanksgiving all my bloggy friends - I hope you have a wonderful, blessed, THANKFUL day!

Of friends and cake.

Sunday afternoon we received a last-minute invitation to have dinner at a friend's house. I love that! Last minute invitations are the best - truly. Something about it just speaks of true friendship to me. Sort of like my friend who says she feels loved when people just drop by unannounced. Now....if you're my true friend, please don't do that, but do invite me to dinner at the last minute. :)

The only problem with inviting me at the last minute is...um...well...what will I bring? I tend to live life more like Old Mother Hubbard (whose cupboard was bare) than a Boy Scout (who's always prepared), mostly just because I try to avoid going to the grocery store as long as humanly possible, until we have nothing left in the house to eat other than saltines and ketchup. And we all know I'm not gonna breeze into the kitchen and whip up something wonderful from scratch. Oh, how I was hoping for the salad assignment!

Fortunately for me the invitation was to "bring whatever you want", and I just happened to have the ingredients for the cake I had meant to take to Friday's PTA party, but hadn't had time to make. Unfortunately for me, I was making the cake from memory (note to self: what were you thinking? you know better than to try try to cook without a recipe.) and didn't even think about the part of the instructions that say to "cool completely" before applying the whipped topping.

Unfortunately for me, when we removed the cover from the cake the cool whip and the heath bar bits had completely melted, and looked like a big nasty mess. Fortunately for me, melted, gooey, nasty-looking chocolate heath cake still tastes delicious!

And so, in the spirit of Christmas, I would love to share - from memory - my gooey, chocolate, heath bar, cooling-optional cake recipe with you.



1 boxed chocolate cake mix
1 regular size can sweetened condensed milk (Not evaporated milk. That distinction is probably easy for you, but I always have to stop and think twice about it.)
1 - 8 oz tub Cool Whip
1 bag Heath bar bits or almond toffee bits

Bake cake according to package directions. While it's still warm, poke it full of holes using the handle of a wooden spoon. Lots and lots and LOTS of holes. Fill the holes with sweetened condensed milk. You should have as much milk as possible in the holes, and little left to pour on top. Then let the cake COOL COMPLETELY (or not) before covering with Cool Whip. {There is a version of this recipe that adds a layer of chocolate syrup on top of the condensed milk. I've never tried that, and really can't imagine adding it. This cake is reeallly sweet as it is.} Sprinkle the top with heath bar or toffee bits. Yum.

Family Night - Rainbows

In light of the torrential downpours we endured enjoyed for four straight days over the 4th of July weekend, and in honor of the sun finally coming out on Monday, we had Rainbow Family Night on Tuesday night. I'm telling you, you really can make a family night theme out of anything.

I found lots of fun rainbow ideas at Kaboose Crafts and BirthdayPartyIdeas.com (I use them for a lot of family night ideas).

We started by making a slightly less-cute version of this rainbow cake, that I actually first heard about on my friend Jenni's blog. We used a regular white (oops, I think I may have used yellow, but it worked) cake mix, divided it into six equal parts, and added gel food coloring (liquid won't work) to make the colors of the rainbow.



We each layered the batter colors in our own little glass baking dish.





Umm, oops....a bit too much batter I guess. We had rainbow volcanoes.



And I forgot that the original cake was actually baked in layers, with frosting in between. Oops. It did look way prettier than ours. But look! Didn't these turn out cool? I think it was more fun to see the different patterns in each one.



While the cakes were baking, we made this rainbow ice cream by alternating layers of softened vanilla ice cream with various flavors of jell0 powder.



Kinda blurry, but it came out really pretty! And fun, but oh. so. sweet.



While the ice cream was re-freezing, we attempted to paint rainbow quesadillas with the leftover food coloring gel. It actually worked pretty well, but for some reason Kloe and Jacob wanted to paint bullseyes on theirs (???) instead of rainbows.



And this odd picture is lemonade with blue ice cubes. It turned green as the ice cubes melted. :)



After dinner we made what were supposed to be rainbow hats, but we didn't put enough streamers on them so they actually looked more like thinning clown hair.



Wanna guess how we ended the night? Go ahead, I bet you can guess! I was looking back through our old Family Night posts and had to laugh at how many times we've done scavenger hunts. I guess it's my stand-by when I can't come up with any other activities. So this time we went searching for the rainbow! We colored strips of paper to make two rainbows, then each of the kids had their own clues to find all the pieces of their rainbow.







Once they had each found all their pieces, they had to put them together in the right order, then use the numbers written on the back of the pieces to decipher the code to open the lock on....



The Pot of Gold, of course!



FUN family night....even with exploding volcano cakes, too-sweet ice cream, bullseye quesadillas, clown-hair hats, and a red, polka-dotted pot of gold! So thankful family nights don't have to be perfect!

Five for Friday

1. I woke up at 7:40 this morning....and the rest of my family was still asleep. I immediately had visions of Home Alone with the mom and dad sitting straight up in bed yelling, "WE SLEPT IN!!" We flew around the house trying to get everyone ready for school on time. Kloe did great and was ready (WITH her bed made and breakfast eaten) in 15 minutes. She has no more excuses for dragging around the house taking an hour to get ready in the mornings. Jacob....well, I had to dress him while he slept standing up....and brush his teeth in the same manner....but he made it. Thankfully, Dad took them to school. I usually help in Jacob's classroom on Friday mornings, but today I am staying at home in these....
   
   Yes, they have holes in both toes, but they are comfy and warm and cozy and that's a post for another day. Anyway, this will give me a chance to catch up on my homework before Bible study at 1:00.


2. I made chicken fried rice for dinner last night. Yummy, gourmet :), made-from-scratch fried rice. Y'all. I fried bacon then removed it to a paper towel to drain. I sauteed (sauteed, y'all!) cubed chicken with diced onions and celery, and then removed it from the skillet and kept it warm. I scrambled some eggs, then added all the ingredients back to the pan and mixed well with some yummy teriyaki sauce (I like it better than soy sauce). And Jacob took one bite and asked, "Can I have ketchup?" Y'ALL! (For those of you who aren't from Texas, "y'all" is a multi-functional Texan word that, in this case, is a substitute for "People!" Sometimes being from Texas comes in really handy when you are shocked and at a loss for words.) Seriously. Ketchup? On my gourmet fried rice? Come on. We all know I'm not a great cook, but really?


3. Loved this scene that I found in Kloe's bedroom the other day. She has said for a long time that she wants to be a teacher when she grows up (among 7 other things). Looks like she's off to a good start teaching her Webkinz about the joys of obedience.
   
   




4. Also love this....



Both of my kids love to read and are very good readers, and I am so glad.

And this....one day I walked into my bedroom and found Jacob reading the Bible, with two other versions spread out in front of him. Yes, he really was looking up the same verse in different versions. :)



5. Two things I thought were really interesting and wanted to share with you from the Philip Yancey book I'm reading.
   
   1) Writing about when Moses came down from the mountain after speaking with God and receiving the Ten Commandments...."After that, the holiest moment in Moses' life, he descended from the cloud to find a scene that made him retch. He had been meeting with God on the sacred mountian, getting the stone tablets inscribed by God's own hand. When he came down, his face shining like a lantern, he found them cavorting around a golden calf, an Egyptian idol." I didn't know that, did you? I didn't know that the calf was an Egyptian idol. That's why they were saying, "This is your god, who brought you out of Egypt." Not only were they worshipping an idol, they were worshipping an idol of the very land of bondage that God had just delivered them from! Oh, Jesus, how I pray that I would have open eyes and the wisdom to stay away from the things You have freed me from! It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Gal. 5:1
   
   2) And I loved this...."The scene of Jesus' transfigutaion contains a fact often overlooked by Christians, but poignant for any Jew. At that moment of tender mercy, Moses finally realized his life dream. He stood on a mountaintop smack in the middle of the Promised Land. Indeed, God remembers the dusty ones, the meekest and the greatest."

Happy Friday, y'all!