Love Soup and Buttermilk Bread...simple cookin'

So recently we were blessed with one of those meals in a jar...you know what Im talking about...all the pretty layers of dried foods and simple instructions to make a fast and yummy meal. So we made that today for supper. Since my Mom programed me on how to cook I cant leave something the way it came, I have to CHANGE IT. So the kids and I added this and that (Im training them the way my Mom did) and did not cook the noodles that came with it. Simmered it most of the day (which made the house smell amazing btw) and served it up with a little grated Parmesan cheese for supper, everyone dug in and gobbled it down. So Im just going to jot down here what I think came in the jar with my additions, you do as my Mom taught me to do...go ahead and change it if you dont like it or let me know if my amounts are off, again Im guessing here. You could even make it meatless with vegetable broth. 

Oh yeah and to go with it Lily helped me make the best bread I have EVER made in my LIFE (again credit to my Mom, her secret is potato flakes)...they gobbled up an entire loaf in one meal! Sheesh ya didnt like it did you? (Im not so secretly happy they loved it all so much)

Love Soup


1 lb. ground beef
1 medium sweet yellow onion
1 Tbs minced garlic (fresh)
1/2 cup each dried rice, lentils and green split peas

1/4 cup dried quinoa
12 cups beef broth
1 (15 oz I think) jar diced tomatoes - do not drain off liquid
1 cup shredded carrot
1 red bell pepper chopped
3 bay leaves
2 tsp. parsley
fresh ground salt and pepper to taste

Saute beef and onion until cooked. Add garlic and cook for a minute. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil for 5 minutes then turn down to low and simmer for a few hours or until all ingredients are tender. Serve with Parmesan cheese.

Buttermilk Bread

1 c. + 2 Tbs buttermilk
1/4 cup honey
1 egg
4 Tbs butter or coconut oil (melted)
1/2 cup dried potato flakes
1 1/2 tsp. yeast
1 1/2 cups ground kamut, spelt or wheat
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
1 tsp. salt

OK I cheated and used the bread dough cycle on my bread machine and then formed it and put it in a loaf pan and baked it later but since this is a real recipe I will give you the hands on method.

Warm the buttermilk a little (to about 110 F, not to hot or it will kill the yeast) mix in the yeast and butter, stir in the potato flakes and yeast. Allow to stand in a warm place until foamy. Stir in the flours and salt. Dough will be slightly sticky (but not too much). Knead for 5 minutes or until smooth. Cover and allow to rise in a warm place for an hour (mine did not rise to double). Punch down and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Form and place in a greased loaf pan, allow to rise covered for an hour (again my loaf did not get higher than the edge of the pan, but it had risen, the magic happened when it baked). Bake at 350 for 28-30 minutes or until golden and hollow sounding when tapped. allow to cool in pan for a few minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack to cool completely...or cut of a huge slab and eat slathered with butter and honey or homemade jam. 

Let me know what you think if you do give these recipes a try and sorry for the lack of photos...remember my family gobbled it up too fast!

It grows on

14 weeks

A gift

  Happy Valentines Day - this was a awesome gift! 

(I literally took like 20 of the little cheapy tests first before I got a "reliable source" for my husbands sake :)

  Announced our pregnancy on Facebook April Fools Day

 

they are all excited, but I think out of all of our kids Lily shows it most visibly by giving me sweet drawings like this pretty much daily.

This pregnancy has been the most difficult of all of them. Easter weekend I made a trip to the ER, ended up needing fluids for severe dehydration but also had the comfort of seeing our little one on the ultrasound machine. I have to go get fluids twice weekly for a month because I am so sick I can hardly keep any food and liquids down. With the help of fluids and medication I hope that it gets better soon, if not now it will get better in October :) I was put on bed rest for a week, I cannot lift anything heavy (like my 2 year old son who just wants momma to pick him up and hold him) but I can count it all joy that I am blessed to carry this sweet gift. We covet your prayers as we walk through this exciting and very difficult time. My husband and children have been so amazing picking up the pieces that momma has to drop right now. Family and friends have been so helpful with meals and child-care, thank you to all of you! Praise God for life, it is indeed beautiful. 

Foto Friday

 I guess Aurick just wanted to see Nana read...not hear her read!

 Lovin from our sweet Lily

 One of my beautiful sisters

 Getting some serious air on the hill at my Parents house

 Momma and her girl

 Ready to go fly down the hill

Sledding party!

 And yes, Lily does convince her brothers to play princess every now and again

 I think he gets the strange self portraits from me

 All dressed up

Wade and his cousin - went out for a ride along, notice the plastic star Wade is wearing

 Heading home from a trip, I get silly and weird sometimes

This is one of my goals in life :)

Adoption

Adoption, the subject is near and very dear to my heart. I am adopted by my Dad (my birth Father died when I was a wee one) and I have 5 adopted siblings alongside my 3 brothers. 3 sisters from Liberia and a sister and brother from Ukraine.  I have lived and seen first hand the incredible ways in which God pours out His storehouses on those who are called to adopt. I have seen and felt the love of others who are willing to bless with their money, time, prayers and love. Maybe adoption or foster care is not Gods call on your life, but it is the call of many brothers and sisters in the Lord.  These "family members" of ours need our help in whatever way we can offer and is needed. 

Adoption is an expensive process, there is no beating around that bush. It simply is. But what value should we put on life? What price tag is fair? Is not the life of a child priceless?  Please consider prayerfully supporting a family in the process of adopting. Your contribution does not need to be great, every single penny really does count in raising funds to bring children home.

In our home we do these baby bottles to raise money for our local Pregnancy Resource Center. In a short amount of time the little bottle is filled with coins and dollars. It is our little contribution to help save the lives of unborn babies through this wonderful ministry. Recently I put a mason jar next to the baby bottle for adoption funds. It can be something simple as taking $20 out of your monthly grocery fund or giving the whole of your tax refund to to someone on this journey of bringing a child home. 

In the top right corner of my blog there are two links for a family we know who is in this process of adopting from Africa. Also there is a tab for Reeces Rainbow a little further down and a link here for another families adoption fundraiser. A starting point for you maybe?  :)  I am excited to see how the Lord will part the Red Sea and bring these families through to the Promised Land.

Oh what joy it is to my heart to see the fatherless be placed in loving families...how much MORE joy does it bring the Lord? 

 

the video that still makes me cry...the day Dad brought Ethan home 

In sickness and In Health

Us then and now

Saturday, January 22nd 2005, the most special day of my life right next to the day I gave my life and heart to the service of Jesus Christ. It is the day I married the man I had prayed and saved myself for. The day I married my best friend, the man whom I could not wait to grow old with, the man whom I admired just as much as I do my Dad.

Tuesday, January 22nd 2013. I love celebrating the important things in life. Well I just love to celebrate period. And my anniversary is no exception...I had big plans for today, really big special plans, but unlike my wedding day that went off without a single hitch, this is 8 years later...this is 4 children later...and this is me. I made his favorite dessert, French Silk Pie in the morning and after that well the day just took a turn for the worse and I spent half the day crying over things beyond my control, and then the other half before he got home trying to pull it all together. And to make matters worse UPS had lost his gift! It would not ever be showing up and the company I purchased his gift from said a replacement could take up to 15 days!

Puffy eyed and tear stained I decided I needed to get my act together and still do this thing! I managed to have my hair done in one of the styles he loves most, my makeup on and I was wearing something nice (aside from the typical mom garb of black yoga pants/skirt) and the most important part according to him, I had a true genuine smile on, just for him when he walked in the door. He helped me cook supper and we laughed over the memories of our wedding day. We had a lovely little evening with our little ones playing around us. Then they were off to bed.... Our Anniversary celebration ended with a bang. Around 11pm just as we were finishing the final episode of Downton Abbey we heard our 4 year old call out "daddy!" then he threw up all over the place, and it just kept going all night long. We maybe mustered an hour or two of sleep.

I am so blessed by the sacrificial and sweet love of my husband, who uncomplainingly just did all the dirty work...at one point around 2am I was trying to help strip the bedding off to be washed and he gently push my arm away and said "I will take care of that, go lay down with Mack." I have come to the conclusion that one of the best ways of celebrating a special event such as an Anniversary is not in the fancy meal, the sparkling house, the perfect gift or evening but it is in the overflowing heart....at least that is the way I felt standing there around 2am in my baggy jammy pants with my special just for him hair-do all disheveled and wild, with a little boy throwing up in a bowl near my feet and my handsome husband looking down at me with a sweet smile, just pouring his love on to us. I really could not ask for more, it really is still a perfect day because I still have the one whom my heart loves right here by my side. What more can I ask for?

Wink Shapewear Giveaway!

My husband and I have been working on working out more consistently. His goal is to stay fit, mine is to get fit and stay fit. We purchased the fitness series P90X per very high recommendation from my parents, they even gave us the weights we were missing in our set for Christmas to do the workouts. So far we are really enjoying P90X but have found that we cant consistently do it 5 days a week due to other commitments. BUT we are committed to  doing it 3 days a week alongside some form of other "quick" fitness on the other two days of the week.  I am already personally seeing results from P90X and am looking forward to continuing on with the program. It is drop dead hard, but it is an addictive kind of hard.

For some women like me, your body hangs on to certain remembrances of pregnancy, often longer than we want. In my case it is a stomach that in my opinion still looks like it is housing a little one, no matter how many crunches I do! (at one point I was doing 100 crunches daily with not much change) If there were any part of me that I could change magically it would be my tummy. I want it flat again.  So while I squat, crunch, lunge and jump with my husband and Tony Horton (P90X guy) to hopefully get closer to that goal I often rely upon shape-wear to give somewhat of an illusion of a "flatter" midsection. Please dont laugh.

I never ever thought in my life that I would scumbug to wearing this stuff....for my first 3 children I did not feel the need, but something changed after my 4th, and it seemed to get worse after I miscarried a year later right around 11-12 weeks. I put a girdle on of sorts to make me feel a little more dignified at that special supper, a little more put together at church, I do not want to give the illusion that I just had a baby, because well I did not. My "baby" is 2 1/2 now and I should not look like this STILL! But the fact of the matter is 4 children in 5 years means yeah I do look like this still.  Yes, I am committed to fitness and a lifetime of healthy eating but I also cheat every now and again by giving the illusion of hard work.

I have tried several brands of popular shapewear. Most of them have really good qualities but for my shape there seems to be a little bit of "overhang" which completely defeats the illusion of being firmer. Enter Wink.

I was given the opportunity by Wink to review their knee length "Booty Shaper".  This little pair of shorts is wonderful! They give a really nice illusion of being slimmer, frimer and they are comfortable enough to wear all day long (cant say that about the other companies) and the miracle is there is no "overhang"! They are easy to get on (again cant say that about the tug of war I have played with other brands) and they do what they claim. I really like these shorts and I can wear them with any outfit I like, I highly recommend this brand. With that being said you get an opportunity to WIN an Original Bikini from the generous people over at Wink Shapewear. OPEN TO USA RESIDENTS ONLY!

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Wink Shapewear gave me a free garment for review. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook. The opinions and comments are my own.