Month: November 2015

Uncategorized

Coming Home To Christmas

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After 20 days we arrived home late last night. We had been driving from Phoenix for the last 2 days. Frosty has been sick with a horrible cough which sounds like he smokes a carton a day. So driving and listening to him make noises which I have never heard before had me repeating at least once every 30 minutes, “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health” all the while having to dodge the filled kleenix which were laying around the floorboard of our car, in the ash tray and side pockets of the car door. Isn’t marriage grand? It’s times like this when it is so hard to remember the marriage vows which at the time seemed so easy to repeat. Of course, I will love this man forever all dressed up in his gorgeous wedding suit all the while gazing down on my size 8 figure. WHERE ARE THOSE DAYS? Ok, Ok, guess I’ve changed a little also, maybe gained a pound or 30! Ain’t love grand!!! Seriously, I wouldn’t change this coughing sickly little hubby of mine for the world. He still looks so great in a suit and the most fun Frosty, helping me decorate and acts crazy like me. It is a marriage made at the North Pole…I mean Heaven!

After 11 hours yesterday in the car and sitting at a dead stop on Interstate 20 while they cleared 4 different pile ups, 4 different times, we were so thankful to the Lord for the safe journey which He granted to us. Dead tired with numb rear ends, we walked into the house and saw little notes all over our house. I immediately began to walk around and pull them off wherever they were stuck and began to read them.

While we were gone these last 20 days we invited 6 ladies to use our house for their annual Dallas Shopping trip. In my quest to inform them where different things were in the house, such as the under the counter lights or extra blankets, I guess I got carried away and began, as a joke, to put stickers on the microwave, the oven, fridge, pantry, etc…you get the idea. So when we walked in last night, to our delight, we found little notes placed in the best places. Still found some this morning. When I opened the cabinet this morning to get a coffee mug, there was a note attached to a coffee cup which read, “lots of hot drinks were drank from these coffee mugs,” Another note was attached to my Christmas blankets which read, “sure enjoyed snuggling up after shopping in these blankets”. Notes were on the fireplace, the bowl of candy, the beds and pillows. What fun to read all the little thoughts. Thank you Cindy, Cathy, Deanne, Donna, Susan and Carrie, you brought a lot of joy and Christmas cheer to us by your thoughtfulness and ideas!

Then going upstairs to carry all our bags and clothes, we stumbled into the bathroom to find cute little gel stickers which the girls had put on our shower door. Made my day. It made me think how much more fun was finding all these little notes which brought so many smiles to my heart instead of just the typical thank you note. So next time we are staying with friends or family that is exactly what I’m going to do.

The first thing that I gave thanks for after thanking the Lord for the safe uneventful trip was that I had decorated the house before leaving for California. It was worth listening to people making fun of how early we decorated when we came home last night to a completely decorated house and getting to wake up this morning to Christmas trees and nativity sets already up and allowing me to just enjoy the sights and sounds of Christmas while unpacking and doing laundry.

Tomorrow is December 1st. Joy to the World, the Lord Has Come, Let Earth Receive Her King!! It truly is the most wonderful time of the year. May our lights shine brightly as we are out among friends, family and folks which need to be pointed to the Savior who is the Light of the World!

Meats · Pies · Uncategorized

Italian Pot Pies

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We are leaving tomorrow for Phoenix to spend Thanksgiving with our kids before heading back to Texas. It has been a glorious 2 weeks with friends who have become like family to both Randy and I. Since today is our last day here we decided to go back to 2 of our favorite restaurants before leaving. We went to Saharas for lunch and now tonight will be going to Panda Inn…best Labenese and Chinese food in our opinion.

Since we have been staying at the Smiths home these last 4 nights, I have had a ball going through many of her recipe books and magzines that Dee keeps out on the table. These Italian Pot Pies sounded just like something that would be so easy and quick for a family dinner. Just add a salad and an Italian Creme Cake and you have yourselves a winner.

1 tables olive oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

2 carrolts, finely chopped

coarse salt and ground pepper to taste

1 lb ground beef sirloin

1 teas garlic powder or garlic cloves, minced (if desired, I desired)

2 cups homemade or best-quality store bought tomato sauce

(such  as Prego or Ragu)

1 cup flour, spooned and leveled

34 cup grated Parmesan

1 12 teas baking powder

1/4 teas baking powder

4 tables butter, melted

1/2 cup whole milk

Extra butter to brush on top of biscuits when done.

Preheat oven to 450. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium. Add onion and carrots; season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, 6 to 8 minutes. Add beef and cook, breaking up meat with a wooden spoon until no longer pink. Add tomato sauce, bring to a boil. (I added some garlice cloves, minced to sauce simply because I love garlic).

Reduce to a simmer and cook, stirring every once in a while until meat mixture has thickened, 8 to 10 minutes. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk flour, parmesan, baking powder, rosemary and 1/2 teas salt. Make a well in center and add butter and milk. Stir just until dough comes together.

Spoon meat mixture into 4 8 oz ramekins; divide biscuit dough between the ramekins placing dough on top of meat mixture.

Place ramekins on a large rimmed baking sheet; bake until toppiing is golden brown and is done. About 10 to 12 minutes. Brush butter on top of biscuits as soon as they come out of oven.

 

Cakes · Fruit · Holiday Fare · Uncategorized

Cranberry Apple Cake

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Last evening we were invited to some friends for dinner. These sweet people reached out to us when we moved to California back in 2010 to invite us for Thanksgiving so we didnt spend the holiday alone. They have become like family to us. When we were through with dinner Louise and I went over and sat down to look through some recipes that she had been collecting. This cake sounded so great that she gave me a copy of it. Can`t wait until I get back to my kithen to make this.

12 oz fresh cranberries, rinsed and picked over for stems

1 granny smith apple, peeled, cored and diced

1/2 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed

1 tables grated orange zest (2 oranges)

1/4 cup orange juice

1 1/8th teas cinnamon, divided

2 extra large eggs at room temp

1 cup plus 1 tables sugar

1/4 lb (1 stick) butter, melted and slightly cooled

1 teas vanilla

1/4 cup sour cream

1 cup flour

1/4 teas salt

Preheat oven to 325. Combine cranberries, apple, brown sugar, orange zest, orange juice and 1 teas of the cinnamon in a medium bowl. Set aside.

In another bowl, beat the eggs on medium high speed for 2 minutes with electric mixer. With the mixer on medium, add 1 cup of the sugar, the butter, vanilla and sour cream and beat just until combined. On low speed, slowly add flour and salt.

Pour the fruit mixture evenly into a 10 inch glass pie plate. Pour the batter over the fruit, covering it completely. Combine the remaining 1 tables of sugar and 1/8 teas cinnamon and sprinkle it over the batter. Bake for about 55 minutes until cake tests done and fruit is bubbling around the edges. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Taken from Barefoot Contessa.

Daily Thoughts · Uncategorized

A Time of Thankfulness

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Eight days and counting. Counting down to the day when most people across the land will be sitting in a home, surrounded by people they love and some that are a little harder than others to love. Of course none of us reading this are “the hard ones to love”! Right? Or are we? After a dinner conversation last evening with three other couples who we love so dearly, I began to question how easy or hard I am to love.  One of our table-mates began telling us of a family member who had not spoken to anyone in their family in 4 years.  They were preparing to have a early Thanksgiving dinner with Mr Unlovable and the entire family next week.  An event they were not looking forward to. As I sat there and listened and laughed at some of the conversation regarding how that dinner might end, I reflected on some of my past Thanksgivings.  I remember some years feeling angry that the people coming to our house for Thanksgiving weren’t the ones I would have chosen to be with. That let down feeling when I would uncover a casserole and wasn’t up to my standards of what I thought a sweet potato casserole should be. The time one person refused to be in the family photo because they didn’t like to have their picture taken.  Or maybe certain folks didn’t stay as long or too long. Why didn’t some friends make their kids behave around the table?

All these memories began to flood my mind last night. It was then that I remembered how I reacted to what now seeks so petty. I certainly am not proud of some of my reactions and probably made me one of those “hard to love” types!

We are now years down the road and hopefully have matured in that the things that seemed, at the time so important , just doesn’t seem important anymore. What is important to me now is making memories with people, family and friends that make up our world.  We have learned that sometimes the memories that used to cause tension or stress are sometimes the memories that give us laughter down the road.

So bring on the canned green beans, or the burned sweet potato casserole. Stay till midnight…whatever! We are ready and just so grateful to the Lord for His blessings and goodness. That He has blessed us with a family who we truly love and enjoy being with. Friends who fill our lives with so much joy that we are a very blessed people.

Have a very blessed and memorable Thanksgiving…

 

 

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Cooking & Cleaning

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Chocolate Castles

It’s amazing how “company coming to town” will inspire me to clean house. It’s so easy to look past dusty baseboards and dirty windows. We seem to think that eventually it will rain and get the windows either dirtier which makes us think it’s no use wasting our energy, or the rain will kind of clean at least the outside of the window. But, the last couple of days, as I began to look around and try to look at our house through the eyes of company, I began to panic. When was the last time I actually dusted the whole house, not just dusting the table that we would be putting our feet on, alas, not wanting our socks to get dust on them?

Not wanting our friends, who are coming, to think we qualify for the Hoarders Program, we have been busy this week throwing out things that have been…

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Daily Thoughts

Retirement & Insurance

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As the weekend approaches and we are getting excited about going to AZ for Thanksgiving to visit, we have had a “to do” list that we are checking off little by little. One of the items was to get a RX refilled before leaving town, so today we went to pick it up. As I walked up to the pick up window inside the store, the young man ask for id and for insurance. He quickly informed me that if I didn’t have insurance my medication would cost $140.00. And they wonder why we have headaches. Anyway, since I did have insurance the medicine cost $ .39. Yep, that’s right 39 cents. The only catch was that with the insurance card, instead of getting the 50 which the prescription was for, they could only give you 9 pills and you would have to come back every 3 days if you needed more. So let’s see. I can get all 50 of them for $140 now, if I don’t use insurance or get 9 at a time, every 3 days for 39 cents. This just does not make sense to me, but we took my 9 pills and left.

On the way home, I began to tell Frosty that I just couldn’t sleep last night. I was up half the night thinking about my new book that will be coming out soon! . I know it will include different trials that we go through along with great dessert recipes. Well, you know women, that made me think of the season which we went through the year. 2015 and Randys retirement. I had this thought that just won’t leave my mind. Why don’t people start out retiring? Think about this. Remember when you were first married and you couldn’t keep your hands off your new mate? You walked them to the door when they left for work in the mornings, after making anything they wanted for breakfast. During the day, I just couldn’t want until hubby walked in the door at 5, throwing my arms around his neck and smothering him with kisses before leading him to the dining table where his favorite meal would be waiting. I cried when he had to leave town for 2 days. Anything he wanted to watch, of course, I “wanted” to watch. It was important to learn all about the people at the office so I could feel like I was apart of his daily world when he was at work.  If I made his lunch, I put little love notes in the sack. We called back and forth during the day just to say hi and ask what was going on. He would call me on his way home every day and talk to me until the car pulled into the garage.

So my thoughts are this. Why not have retirement at the beginning of marriage when we are so in love we want to be with them 24/7? We wouldn’t mind them standing right in the middle of the kitchen blocking us from opening the dishwasher. We wouldn’t mind them falling asleep in the lazy boy as they are watching the 5th football game of the day. It would just give us more of a chance to wait on those precious young men that we couldn’t wait to attach their last names to our first name.

That way, they would be at home with us when we are needing help raising children. They would be around to take out the dirty diapers, take the kids for a walk so we could take naps, entertain the little darlings outside while we cooked dinner.

After the kids are grown, and we really are empty nesters; THEN send our hubbies to work. Why this might even cut down on office romances. I just bet that those cute little office girls wouldn’t be as quick to grab on to the “oldies with the hair growing out their ears. Their bellies that shakes now like a bowl full of jelly, just isn’t as appealing as the tight chested hunks that they use to be.   Did I mention that we would then have the house to ourselves. That because they worked all day, when they got home, they would be so tired that they wouldn’t even be able to stay awake to watch every football game, so we would still be able to watch  House Hunters or Castle. Am I the only one that this sounds like a great plan?   That instead of having to dodge the yellow tape that divides our house to keep us from killing each other during these “golden years”; I would be thrilled when he drove into the garage, knowing that he might be even to tired to think about wanting dinner and go straight to bed. Not having to share the remote or the recliner again tonight. And that would be true “golden years”.

Desserts · Holiday Fare · Pies

Cranberry Custard Pie *Taken fom Food Newwork Magazine

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This has been such a busy week. Because there have been several days of gloomy rainy weather that makes you want to just bake (right? Doesn’t everyone feel like that? OK, maybe several of you feel like getting a book and just snuggling on the couch and reading, but without a chocolate chip cookie or piece of chocolate cake, what are you going to nibble on while reading?) Which leads me back to baking! Because cranberries just yell Christmas, this pie seemed perfect for decorating the Christmas dessert table, whether for family or company. And because I’m now turning over a new leaf and actually posting recipes that use bought pie crusts (OMGosh, did I really just say that? But reading now that even Paula, yes, even Paula has been spotted to give out recipes using bought pie crusts. All I can say is, “what is the world coming to? Never thought I would see the day. But here it Is folks: *Modified version of recipe found in FNM

FYI I just can’t do it, the bought pie crust, but did use a box of Betty Crocker Pie crusts mix that all you have to do is add water and roll out. (honestly, these are delicious pie crusts, much better and less salt that the refrigerated crusts)

1 (14 oz) box refrigerated pie dough, You will only use 1 of the 2 crusts. Save the 2nd one for another use.

2 tables flour plus more for dusting

2 large eggs

1 (12 oz) bag cranberries, slightly thawed if frozen

1 cup granulated sugar

1/2 teas finely grated lemon zest

2/3 cup heavy cream (no you cannot use Cool Whip, just because I am letting you use bought pie crusts doesn’t mean we are even going to discuss using Cool Whip)

Powdered sugar for dusting

Lay 1 pie crust in the bottom of a 9” pie plate. Preheat oven to 350. Bake the empty pie shell for about 12 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

Roughly chop the cranberries and combine with 3/4 cup granulated sugar and lemon zest in a large bowl. Spread in the cooled crust. Whish the 2 eggs, heavy cream, flour and remaining 1/4 cup granulated sugar in a bowl until smooth and pour over the cranberries.

Bake in the preheated 350 oven until filling is set and slightly puffed. About 45 to 50 minutes. Cover edges of pie crust, with foil, if they begin to brown too much. Transfer pie to a rack and allow to cool completely. Dust with powdered sugar

Daily Thoughts

Behind Prison Walls

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Saturday I had the privilege  of going with a group of women to minister to the Crain Unit, Women’s Prison in Gatesville, TX.

There were about 25 of us and as we arrived, we went through the routine of normal checking in when entering as a visitor going into a prison. Because this was a Federal prison, the rules were a little more strict than when we had gone to a prison in East Texas. As we walked in, looking across the barbed wire topped fence encircling the acres of buildings and land, we saw huge trash collectors being poked with long metal poles to ensure that no inmates were hiding under the trash before taking it outside the walls. We were led by a guard to a building where we entered into the world of cages which were inside the concrete buildings, that would have only 1 door to enter or exit the corridor of the concrete building. Permission had to be granted before the ladies could leave the “cage” even to go to the restroom. We were expecting about 500 inmates to come hear our speakers and Bible teaching, but because 2 of the guards refused to come to our service, many of the inmates which had lined up, waiting outside their cells did not get to come. Our team walked around the chairs and shook hands and thanked the ladies for coming. Some already had tears in their eyes. One young lady was crying as she had just received a letter from her mother-in-law saying that she was working with an attorney to try to not allow the children to have any contact with her,their mom. Her heart was breaking. The conversations that we began to have with these ladies allowed us to see that sometimes, “there but by the grace of God, go I.” Yes bad actions and decisions had been made in their lives, and they were now living with the consequences of those decisions, which is how it should be.  But all of a sudden I began to think about some of my actions, though at this time in my life, have not been any that would land me in jail, but had actually placed me in a prison of my own making. It was such a message to my heart that how many times, had I allowed my circumstances to control my joy or my peace & was actually creating my own “prison wall” around my heart?  Just because I was not surrounded literally by a wall keeping me imprisoned, didn’t mean that I wasn’t living my life as such. But because of God’s grace and mercy, He is able to break any chain,  As the ladies from our team spoke, tears would begin to flow down some of the lady inmates’ cheeks. Some of the inmates would begin to clap and encourage each other. As we lined up to hand out a bit of literature, with the exception of only about 5 of the ladies, all the rest either hugged us, or shook our hands and thanked us over and over, telling us to please come back. Some of them commented saying “I can’t believe ya’ll drove all the way down just to see us.” It meant so much that we had spent a Saturday just to come see them. We saw women there that looked so hopeless and so forlorn, while others had a precious spirit about them. It was such a blessing to see what God had been allowed to do in the hearts of some of the women who had surrendered their hearts to the Lord and was allowing Him to shine His light through them in a very dark place. They truly were being a lighthouse for Him in the place where they were.

It really was a blessing to see so many women, held captive behind the barbed wire fence, the light of God shining through them. They had determined in their hearts that just because they were a prisoner didn’t mean that they had to live their life with no hope or peace.

We all left that afternoon, feeling so blessed that we had watched a group of women that loved the Lord and were determined to shine His light behind even a prison wall. God can and is still in the business of changed lives, if we just allow Him to do so!