Post the One Hundredth! Plus, More Owl Corner and Some Good Cookin'

100!!!

Well, it's taken almost two years and many unposted entries, but I've finally made it to one hundred entries!  Hard to believe.  Also hard to believe is that I'll have been at this for two years on July 25!  Time really passes quickly anymore.  I can't tell you how many times my husband and I have expressed disbelief about being married eight years, or living in Ohio for four years, or this or that--just because it doesn't feel like that long!  Some things change; some things stay the same.  But above it all, it's been a mostly happy journey, and that's what matters.  Thanks for being a reader over the past two years!  I appreciate it! 

This Week's Owl Corner

This week we feature the Barn Owl in our Owl corner.  Aptly named, the Barn Owl is usually found in and around barns, and are a wonderful addition to life on the farm.  Barn Owls are great hunters and excel at keeping the rodent population under control, usually successfully hunting in total darkness.  They are known to hunt small mammals, including mice, voles, and shrews. They are able to sneak up on prey in the dark because their wings make almost no noise while flying, due to unique feathers and larger-than-normal wings in proportion to their body size.  This species of owl is middle-of-the-road in size, measuring between 1'and 1'-6" in height and a wing span of 3'-4" to 4' in length.  It has a distinctive heart-shaped white area on its face, which is found on no other owls.

Information taken from The Cincinnati Zoo website and Owling.com.

Chicken rice casserole with dill French bread

Delicious Casserole

While up in Michigan last week, my mom fixed a delicious casserole of chicken and wild rice.  She found it in a Betty Crocker cookbook, and made some adjustments.  To see the recipe, click this link: Chicken and Wild Rice Casserole.  It's good and extremely hardy--a perfect meal for winter--but also good in the summer too.  I would like to make it again and see how it freezes.

Breadmaking 101

Well, maybe this should be "Breadmaking 100".  I know I'm a bit late to the bread machine craze, but I finally have the bread machine that I've wanted for quite a while.  I have had fun with it the past few days!  I've made yeast doughs by hand before, for pizza crusts and rolls and such, but have never had the time to experiment with bread making, so this is almost as fun for me, and without all of the elbow grease!  I chose a Cuisinart breadmaker, on sale at Elder-Beerman here in the mall, over a month ago.  With everything that has happened over the last month, the machine has been sitting in its box in our living room, sad and unused, until this past Sunday, when I was finally able to pull it out, wash the insides, and experiment!  After a trip to the grocery store to get some fresh yeast and bread flour, I was ready to try out my machine.  My first attempt at bread was a dill French bread loaf.  It turned out good, and so next I tried the plain ol' white bread loaf.  That turned out good too!  So tonight, I decided that because we were having lasagna, I was going to make a recipe for garlic cheese knot dough, to try out the dough-only function.  The function worked great, but took an hour and a half.  The recipe itself was just eh, so when I make them again I'll tweak it a bit.  I baked up half and froze the other half (the recipe makes a dozen).  I also decided that, since the dill French bread was three days old and beginning to go stale, I would make what was left into croutons for hubby's lunch salads.  Here is the simple recipe for the croutons I made:

6 slices of day-old bread, cut into cubes
4 tbsp. butter, melted
Garlic powder, salt, basil, oregano, and Parmesan cheese, to taste (start small and add as needed-I added the flavors, then dipped a piece of bread in the butter to taste it, adjusting as necessary)

Here are the instructions.  Are you ready?  Here we go!

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.  

Cut bread into cubes.  Put the cubed bread into a medium-sized bowl.  

Such cute little cubes!

Mix the butter and seasonings until smooth in a small bowl, then pour into the bowl with bread cubes.  Toss bread cubes and butter mix to coat evenly.

Spread the bread cubes in a single row on a baking sheet lined with parchment.  

Bake at 300 degrees for 30 minutes or so, checking and stirring the bread every 15 minutes, until the bread is crunchy and golden brown.  Yum!

Delicious on salad, but I think I could sit and eat the whole pan by themselves.  You can play around with the ingredients in the butter mix, and you could sub olive oil for the butter, if you wanted.  So easy and tasty!  Makes a great snack, too!

Milestones are great.  They can show an accomplishment, or progress, or an end to a lot of hard work.  I love milestones--they give me something to look forward to and work hard to accomplish.  Milestones are a great time to give God the glory and praise for all He has done, because we accomplish nothing on our own, but only by God's grace.  The Bible is full of Scripture that tell us to rejoice in the Lord (Philippians 4:4-"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!"), so why not give Him praise and glory for all things, big and small?  I will praise the Lord for this milestone, and everything else in my life, both good and bad.  Will you?

I Love Summer!

Hi!  We've been busy here.  I love having warm weather!  It just gives me such an appreciation for the beautiful world around me.  It's so inspiring to see all of the trees with leaves, the bright and cheerful flowers in bloom, the birds sitting on their nests, and the plants sprouting up in the farm fields.  There is nothing like spring and summer in the Midwest region...it still has a feeling of the good ol' days.  It gets hot, but usually it's not unbearable.  Corn, wheat, and soybean fields surround you.  In the middle of the summer, during the hot, muggy days, you can smell a storm coming--a fresh, wet smell that swirls around you and mixes with the smell of the corn fields, and then I long for a covered porch with a swing to sit and watch the storm rage.  I like to let my imagination take me back to days in which I did not live, and imagine what it was like in the summertime long ago.  I like to picture in my mind an old, weathered house with a big front porch, a family sitting around a table at dinnertime eating a delicious dinner cooked on an old wood stove, and maybe a radio broadcasting a baseball game in the background.  The house is surrounded by fields of tall corn, and the stalks rustle in the breeze while the family talks about the day they had.  Wouldn't that be great if we could still have such quaint gatherings?

But I digress, and return to the present time.  As I mentioned, we've been busy here!  Where to begin?  I'll begin last Thursday.  I came home from work and began preparing dinner, and my dear husband came in and told me that he had heard on the radio on the way home that the local Farmer's Market was having its grand opening night that night, and did I want to go?  OF COURSE!  I love going to the Farmer's Market here, but it's actually at a really odd time--Thursday nights from 4:30-6:30.  It's hard for me to remember.  So, we hopped in the car and headed over to the fairgrounds.  There were only a handful of vendors there, since it's a bit early for most produce, but I did leave with some great treasures: a parsley for my patio, a jar of raw honey (which, by the way, is the best honey I've ever tasted!  I had no idea that heating up honey for processing takes so much flavor out.  I'm now hooked!), and handmade soap.  As my interest in organic gardening and homesteading has grown, and I've read more about these things, it's becoming more and more obvious to me that a lot of things that we buy at the store are incredibly bad for us, despite their convenience.  Now, I'm not to the point of swearing off sugar and such, but I'm leaning farther and farther away from purchasing processed items and chemical detergents and hand soaps.  Unfortunately, I have little choice right now, but maybe some day I'll be able to make my own bread doughs and preserve my own garden produce, and eliminate the need for buying these things from the store.  I'd also love to find a local farm that raises and butchers their own meats, and would be willing to pay extra for fresh meat instead of purchasing it from the grocery.  All of these things in time, I suppose.  I still have student loans to pay off before I can consider quitting my day job and devoting my time to pursuing my passions. 

Friday, as I was getting my husband's lunch together for work, I noticed that my African violet had buds on it.  Now, to most people this is not a big deal.  To me, however, it was huuuuge.  You see, I've had this violet for at least 3 years now.  I bought it in the wintertime not long after we moved here, because I wanted a houseplant.  I know, deep reason.  Well, I brought it home, and it bloomed for a little while, then suddenly--no blooms.  Ever.  I replanted it in a bigger pot and set it in the sunniest spot in our house.  Still nothing.  It remained very healthy, with thick, healthy green leaves, and eventually got too big for the pot again.  So, I replanted it yet again, buying some African violet potting soil and feeding it with two different kinds of African violet plant food.  Still nothing.  So, I decided that I at least had a nice-looking houseplant.  So now you can see why I was so extremely excited when I looked at the plant on Friday and saw buds--and not just a few, like you see in the photo.  Three clusters of blooms, hidden in and around the leaves!!  I'll be sure to post pictures once they begin blooming.  For now, here's a picture of some of the buds.

Saturday, I went out to check my garden.  It had been over ten days since I planted the seeds.  Plus, I purchased  a tomato plant and needed to plant him in the bed.  I found to my pleasant surprise that several things had sprung up!  I have two pumpkin sprouts, several bean plants, four ears of corn, and I'm seeing growth on my peppers and cucumbers.  So exciting!  I love watching things grow!

(Hmmm.  Here is where I would normally insert photos of my garden for you to see the progress.  As I tried to upload the pictures, I got an error message saying that I've exceeded my storage limit for photos in my account, and that I'd have to buy storage space.  I'll have to look into this further, but I guess for now, you'll have to use your imagination, since I don't make money from this blog and don't really plan on buying space.)

Sunday, hubby and I started a project here in our front yard.  We took up a patch of grass and are in the process of changing the space into a garden bed.  We've received several plants from others and needed a place to put them, plus we decided to use the grass as sod along the front curb that the city replaced last summer and grass has never grown back.  We'll see how it grows.  I'd love to post pictures here, but...well, see the paragraph above.  We haven't finished yet, but we're close.  I thought I'd finish tonight but I'm so sore from the work yesterday that it hurts to move.  I'm walking around like a 90 year old woman!  Everything aches.  But it should look good when it's done; you'll just have to take my word for it!

Our future flower bed, about 14' x 7'.

Hubby dug this whole patch up--thanks for all of your hard work!

He encountered many roots.

Stage one: complete.  Stage two: after a trip to the store.

Hubby working on transplanting the dug-up grass patches.  We'll see if they take.

Update!  I have found the reason for my picture dilemma.  I'll be working on this over the next few posts, because I guess I have to shrink my photos quite a bit more than I have been.  Oh well, at least it means I don't have to buy storage!

Honey is so sweet.  I've never liked it until I tasted the raw honey that we just bought.  It's no wonder that it's spoken of so highly in the Bible.  So, in honor of honey as they ate it in Biblical times, and our upcoming anniversary, here is a verse from the slightly racy Song of Solomon: “ How beautiful is your love, my sister, my bride!  How much better is your love than wine, and the fragrance of your oils than all kinds of spices! Your lips, my bride, drip honey; honey and milk are under your tongue, and the fragrance of your garments is like the fragrance of Lebanon."  Happy anniversary to my love and my best friend, and may we have many more decades of milk and honey together!

Easter Fun

Not a whole lot going on right now.  I am sick with yet another cold.  Third one since Christmas.  It's getting old.  We had my husband's parents over last weekend for a visit, so I decided to be creative.  We were planning to grill shish kebabs, and I wanted to make some deviled eggs.  I saw this idea originally on Pinterest, so I decided that this would be a great time to make them.

I started out with six eggs.  I bring them to a boil, then cover the pan, turn off the heat, and leave them sit for twelve minutes.  Perfect boiled eggs every time.  (After they are done sitting in the hot water, I take them out and put them in the ice water to stop the cooking process.)  While waiting for the eggs to boil, I gathered my other items: Miracle Whip, McCormick food coloring, paprika, cider vinegar, and a bowl of ice water for the boiled eggs.

After the eggs are done, cut them in half and pop out the yolks.  I didn't match the bowl and the egg yolks.  That was just a neat coincidence.

I filled 12 oz tumblers with about 8 oz of water, added two teaspoons of vinegar to each glass, and dropped in the food coloring.  I think I started with three drops in each glass, then added three more.  I should mention that I don't think I've colored eggs since I was young...I know it's been since before I went to college.  So this was actually a learning experience.  Or, at least, relearning.  On a neat side note, if you put the egg whites in the water while the food coloring is swirled, you will get a sort of tye-dye effect.

So, I started out with the primary colors.  I dropped the eggs in and stirred to mix the water and food coloring.  I let the eggs soak for about five minutes each, then I placed them on a paper towel covering a plate to dry and absorb the extra coloring.

Then, I added food coloring to the existing colors to make secondary colors: orange, green and purple.

I let them sit and dry for another five minutes.  Don't let the different colored eggs touch--they will absorb the colors of the other eggs.

As the eggs dried, they darkened in color.  They continued to get brighter and more vibrant the longer they sat.  While they were drying, I mixed the Miracle Whip in with the egg whites (1/2 cup).  I spooned the mixture evenly into the egg whites, then sprinkled them with paprika.  Then I placed them on the serving plate, and voila!  A fun and tasty treat.  This would be something that you could make with kids--I'm sure they would like it.

On a side note, should you get any food coloring on your countertop like I did, there is a simple way of getting the dye off without permanently staining your surface: sprinkle baking soda over the stain, grab a small brush, wet it down, and start gently rubbing the stained area.  The color will immediately absorb into the baking soda, and come right off of your counter.  Pretty cool!

This weekend is Easter, or in some churches, Resurrection Sunday.  It is, of course, a celebration of Jesus' victory over death and the opportunity for us to be forgiven of our sins forever if we only accept Christ into our hearts and lives.  Once we do that, we are His forever.  As Galatians 2:20 says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."  If you haven't asked Christ into your life, now would be a great time!  You never know when tomorrow won't come.

I love how the jet streams in the pre-dawn sky created a perfect cross above the church.

Deep Dish Pizza Casserole, Chicken and Cheese Casserole, Chicken Piccata

Tuesday-Deep Dish Pizza Casserole (for recipe, click the title)
Tonight we tried the Weight Watchers recipe for Deep Dish Pizza Casserole.  Hubby and I worked together doing the prep work and had all of the ingredients ready for the oven in about 15 minutes.

We did the dishes as the casserole baked and the crust browned, and then added cheese and baked it for 5 more minutes, until the cheese melted.  It smelled so good as we were cleaning up!  The finished product was not disappointing, either.  It's a great food when you are dieting and still craving pizza like a Ninja Turtle.

I only used half of the amount of ground beef, and I bought Meijer brand refrigerated pizza dough and Meijer brand Italian diced tomatoes, but that was all that I changed in the recipe.  Upon first bite, I thought it needed a little extra help from herbs, but the more I ate, the better it tasted, and by the time we were done with our pieces, we decided we needed more!  So far, we have been very pleasantly surprised with the recipes we've tried.  I am more than happy to add this recipe to our rotation now too, and will probably continue to make this long after we part ways with Weight Watchers.  Very tasty, and highly recommended!


Wednesday-Chicken and Cheese Casserole (for recipe, click the title)
This was not as good as we had hoped.  Regardless, we were hungry, so we ate it anyway.  Our biggest complaint was that it was very bland.  It was easy enough to make, though--cook the chicken and macaroni at the same time, then mix all of the ingredients together in the casserole dish and bake for about 45 minutes.

We didn't have any low-fat cheese, so we had to use the regular shredded cheddar that we had in the fridge, which probably affected points a bit, but we hate to let the food we already have go to waste now that we are eating healthier.  I also halved the recipe, since it's just the two of us and used a can of cream of chicken instead of cream of mushroom (the nutritional values on the cream of chicken were slightly better than the mushroom--go figure).  I admit that I forgot to add garlic powder to the chicken, but I doubt that it would have affected the flavor that much.  I might try spices, such as mustard powder (frequently used in homemade mac and cheese recipes), paprika, garlic, and maybe a little seasoning salt.  I will have to play around with it if I make it again.  If you try it and add spices, please let me know what you used!

Thursday-Chicken Piccata (Original Recipe: Pork Piccata)
Nope.  Didn't like it.  So, I'm not going to share the recipe.  Sorry...I'm sure there are good recipes out there in cyberspace.

Thanksgiving!

Hello!  I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.  Ours was filled with family and delicious food.  Our brother-in-law did the turkey honors this year and provided us all with two delicious smoked turkeys, cooked to perfection.  We all thought it was absolutely wonderful.  We also enjoyed homemade rolls, corn casserole,  mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and of course, pumpkin pie.  It was a wonderful dinner.  None of us participated in Black Friday shopping, so we just spent the day doing some relaxing and a little bit of afternoon shopping (it was brief, but fun, and deals were still found).  We ended the day with pizza, and left Saturday around noon.  It was a beautiful day Friday and Saturday, too, with sunshine and temperatures in the mid 60s.  Unusual for this time of year, but quite enjoyable!  After returning home, we did some yard work and I got to do some Christmas decorating--something I've been waiting all year to do!  I didn't get everything done, but I also think I won't put out all of the decorations that I have, too.  So, with the exception of the Christmas tree, I may be very close to being done with decorating.  I'm okay with that.  It's supposed to rain/snow for the next several days, so we'll certainly get the tree up between now and then.  Happy decorating, everyone!

Here are a few photos for your viewing pleasure:

I feel I must explain this first picture.  Every time we go to see my husband's family, we pass this farm just outside of Celina, Ohio.  This sign is actually the name of the farm, and I had to share it with you.  The first time we saw it, we both did double-takes.  And then we laughed hysterically.

 

Decorations for Christmas:

Candlelight: