Gardening

I took pics of some garden prep a while ago, and now we have a bunch of things planted and growing - but here's part of the "before" at our big garden plot: Micah and his dad moving the burn pile out of the way...

...and a "before" picture!

There are now little green things sprouting in our big garden, and we have two plots by the apartment that are now the home to some of the seedlings Micah started indoors.

Psalm 104:14 "You cause the grass to grow for the livestock
and plants for man to cultivate,
that he may bring forth food from the earth."

On the menu...

MON - Broiled Tilapia, Rice, Carrots, J.P.'s Big Daddy Biscuits

TUES - Hunziker Easter Dinner - Light Wheat Rolls

WED - Chicken Parmesan Bundles, Tomato Sauce and Whole Grain Linguine, Corn

THURS - Potato & Pepper Frittata w/ Sausage, Strawberry Muffins

FRI - Four-Cheese Pasta Florentine

Foodie Adventures

One of my sweet neighbor ladies was cleaning out her kitchen, and before she made a goodwill run called me over to see if I needed anything. I got the "now remember we don't need much more stuff" speech from my sweet hubby before departing, and picked out some really pretty bowls and nice kitchen gadgets I've missed since leaving mom's kitchen...that we needed. :-D

One thing that looked like fun was a curly fry maker - my neighbor never tried it, so I decided to give it a whirl:

Here's my colony of happy, skinned potatoes
(they were starting to turn green, otherwise I wouldn't have skinned them):

Place a potato on the spinny-thing:

Smash the white tumbler down on top of it and turn it on:

Watch in amazement as happy, curly potato strings fill the compartment:
Dump potato strings into your choice of coating (I used this one - sorta. I changed a few things.)

Thoroughly coat, then bake:

And eat!
It was a little extra work, but it was fun! :-)

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There was a day last week I wanted to make Micah cinnamon rolls for the morning and to take to the guys at work, but didn't want to be up at 4am to make them...
So I found a couple overnight cinnamon roll recipes, combined a few aspects of each, popped them in the fridge overnight...

..and baked them the next morning! So yummy...there is nothing even remotely healthy about these, so now I'm wondering if it would work just as well with whole wheat flour and honey.

I used the dough recipe from here and the filling and icing recipes from here (I was short on butter for the first recipe's filling, and I LOVE cream cheese icing).

Couponing Trip!

KrogerEither some of the coupons were re-set, or Ronzoni put out more, but I was able to get 4 more coupons per computer using these links at Cindy's blog, Living Rich with Coupons...which equals more free pasta at Kroger through next Wednesday! I paid $6.35 for the picture above, but that's for the pork tenderloin I found on manager's special...I've never made anything with one and thought it would be fun to try. :-)

Wal-Mart

I was able to stock up on Yoplus yogurt for $0.68 each - they were on sale for $1.68 and I was able to print 6 coupons between our two computers (Nicole at Nicole's Nickels has links to the available coupons). Individual yogurts work well for Micah to take in his lunch, so these will be helpful over the next few weeks!
They had some Huggies P&N diapers on clearance, so combined with the incredible $3/1 coupons that have been everywhere recently it was a good deal.
I had a freebie coupon for the little individual cream cheese pack (can't remember if it was from VocalPoint or Pssst), and when my grumpy checkout lady got to that one and had to write down the amount, it almost set her on fire...hehe...sorry lady. She mostly seemed ticked off that I had 6 of the yogurt coupons and said she can only print 2 on her computer because "all those coupons sites are hooked together somehow!" I said something about it depending on their source, but don't really think the poor thing wanted to know...

Blueberry Muffins

I really, really like blueberries...cobbler, bundt cake, coffee cake, muffins...anything!

I wanted to make blueberry muffins the other night since I only had time for some type of quick bread, so I scrounged around for a recipe and ended up with this one...and modified it a bit.
I was out of bananas, so added some canola oil instead to moisten the batter (not sure if that was a good substitute, but it worked I guess!). I used whole wheat and white flours, substituted honey for some of the brown sugar, and had no clue what a "punnet" of blueberries was, so just added them til it looked good. :-) The batter was SO thick that I wondered if they were going to come out like scones...and they kinda did. They were really heavy - but in a good way!

This Week's Eats

MON - Layered Cheesy Salsa Enchiladas, Fresh Fruit

TUES - Mom's Beef Stew, Sweet Cream Cornbread

WED - Three Cheese Baked Ziti (with wholegrain pasta), Asparagus

THURS - Sirloin Steak with Garlic Butter

FRI - Herbed Lemon Chicken, Brown Rice, Broccoli

SAT - Leftovers

SUN Potluck - TBD :-)

Healthy House

When I clean around the house I try to avoid using harmful chemicals, so my 'go-to' cleaner is usually plain old white vinegar. If I want to be vain and get the "clean bathroom smell" (usually because people are coming over), then I'll use some Melaleuca Tub & Tile, which doesn't have too many bad chemicals in it.

The problem I've had recently is the drain issue...our tub and kitchen sink tend to have some draining problems at times. I'll often ignore it until I really need to face the grungies (as in pull whatever soap-slime hairball I can reach out of the tub drain)...but didn't really think about the power of my trusty vinegar and its friend baking soda until I read this blog post on the icky drain issue.

So we'll see if this speeds up some drain action around here...