We have been on a Chinese food kick for a few days. After discovering how good PF Chang’s frozen Orange Chicken was, I bought another package of it along with Tai Pei frozen veggie egg rolls! Before adding the Orange Chicken to the skillet, I sautéed Purple onion, zucchini, red and green bell pepper, sliced carrot and mushrooms in a little hot oil until the veggies were almost done then added the frozen Orange chicken (the sauce is included with the chicken) and cooked according to directions on bag! Movie the Boil N Bag of rice, I cooked one bag for us so we could pour the chicken rice mixture over the rice! I wish I had taken a picture of our dinner but it was so good, we gobbled it up quickly ! While the chicken was cooking in the skillet I placed the egg rolls in the oven and baked according to directions. It was the best frozen Chinese dinner we had ever had and the egg rolls were delicious! Was exciting to know that we can have a great homemade easy Chinese meal at home without having to run to Panda Express plus have the veggies we prefer! Wanted to share a very easy Chinese chicken meal with y’all!

Yesterday we were listening to a morning program while we were having a cup of coffee (yes in cool weather sometimes I forgo my Dr Pepper for coffee that has a ton of coffee mate so I don’t actually taste the coffee) that had an author of a children’s book called “Good Morning Sunshine”. For some reason that got me in a sunshiny mood every time I thought of that expression! I thought about it all day and woke up today thinking of how those three words truly changed my attitude! How can three simple words really change my attitude? When I thought about how it made me feel if I woke up everyday and simply said to Randy “Good morning Sunshine”, how might it make him feel as well instead of

“Good morning, are you ready for coffee” or “how did you sleep” or “well, what’s on the calendar for today?”

It is hard to say Good Morning Sunshine without smiling, which, as we age gets harder to do first thing in the morning! We have to get all the stiffness, cricks, and aches out and under control before having breakfast, read our Bibles and dress! But yesterday, I felt the Lord using those 3 words really convicting me, as a Christian, should I not be living each day with that attitude? When days sometimes find us in a valley or circumstances overwhelm me, should I not remember that God has, is and always will be the SONSHINE of my soul! When I’m feeling out of sorts, instead of feeling self pity or discouraged, why don’t I remember how He had always provided and protected me! Before getting out of bed in the mornings, I try to make it a habit of giving my day to the Lord and asking Him to use me according to His will. But then sometimes, by the time I get breakfast made and dressed, something happens and I loose my motivation to live in a way that I had just ask the Lord to help me do! Why is that? It’s because we allow the news on TV or radio to darken our mood, are we hear or read about a loved one getting a bad diagnosis, or sometimes, if I admit it, jealousy creeps from news of a friend getting something we want but can’t have! Daily hurts and disappointments seem to have such an influence over our attitudes if we allow it! But God….He is not only our strength and Savior, but wants to be the SONSHINE of our hearts! So today, if you find yourself walking around with some much needed joy, try saying those three simple words every time you come face to face with someone! It will not only bring a smile to your heart , but you never know what it might bring to others who hear it! Sounds simple, doesn’t it!

Psalm 16:11

You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in Your Presence with eternal pleasures at Your Right Hand.

Since the weather is still running a little cool, potato soup sounded like it would taste good today! I had some hash browns in the freezer that had the bell pepper and onions already included (I think they call that O’Brien potatoes?)

So decided to use them for a quick pot of soup. This is a recipe that I will now keep! It was so quick and easy and cooked in Clementine (the Crockpot) while Randy and I were downstairs for a meeting for about an hour or so!

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon bacon grease

2 cups of cubed hash browns

1 carrot sliced thin

1/2 small onion, chopped

1/2 cup of chopped celery

2 1/2 cups chicken broth

1 package of Pioneer Country gravy added to 1 cup of water

Salt, pepper, garlic powder, 1/2 teas thyme

1 cup of shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

Heat the bacon grease and sauté the onion, celery and potatoes for 3-4 min over medium heat.

Pour chicken broth in crockpot. Place sliced carrot into broth. Add the potatoes/veggie ingredients to the broth. Cook on high for about 2 hrs or until carrot and potatoes are tender!

Mix the gravy mix with 1 cup of room temp water until smooth and pour into crockpot, stirring until well mixed. add the cheese and stir! Place lid back on crockpot and cook for another 20-30 min on low! Ladle soup into bowls and serve with crackers of choice!

About two years ago , I made a rather large investment of $13 and purchased a 1.5 qt crockpot! It is perfect for a single or a couple that don’t want to eat the same food for 3-4 more meals.

This cute little crockpot has been used more than any cooking utensil I have ever owned; well except my mixer that is almost used on a daily basis making dessert, but that is another story. Yesterday I had a chicken breast that I had cooked on Sat hoping to make chicken tacos but we ended up eating out all weekend. Please don’t judge us, we just kept thinking about Menas, Fish Shake and of course one of the best hamburger places, (ok I have to be completely honest here, we had a gift card) Kenny’s Burgers. So since I had this chicken breast already cooked and a cold front was coming at us last night, green chile chicken soup just sounded like a great dinner! It is so easy and the flavor was truly delicious. I used the chicken broth from cooking the chicken and added a regular size can (forgot to look before I threw it away but it is around a 14 ounce can) of chicken broth. Here is rest of ingredients BUT…I put a little different spin on the veggie prep.

1/2 large zucchini , cut small cubes

1/2 small onion, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

1 large celery stick

1/2 green bell pepper

1/2 small can of mild green chiles

Garlic powder

Fresh cilantro

No salt seasoning (picture of this is below!

Sauté the celery, onion and green bell pepper in about 1/2 tablespoon of heated bacon grease about 5 min (this adds a little extra flavor that is so yummy)

Add chopped chicken, onion, celery, pepper and broth to the crockpot! Add the sliced carrots, zucchini, green Chiles and garlic, cilantro and black pepper.

Cook on high for 3-4 hours until vegetables are tender.

I used basmati rice from boil in bag and cooked it for 11 min! When ready to serve, place a spoonful of rice in the bottom of serving bowl and top with a ladle of the chicken soup over the rice! This is a very flavorful soup and we will have enough today for lunch. (The rest of the rice was added to the soup for our lunch today!)

Then our adorable little crockpot is then cleaned and ready for whatever pops in my mind for tomorrow’s lunch or dinner! Since we are going to watch our granddaughter play ball tonight, we will stop on way home for pizza and give Clementine (the crockpot) some rest before plugging her in again tomorrow!

Yesterday Randy and I were going to dinner with some of our kids, so we decided to have a heavier breakfast in which would allow us to skip lunch so we would be really hungry for dinner at one of our favorite places, Dunstons! Finding that my can of biscuits were a can of cinnamon rolls and not biscuits , I found a package of flour tortillas and immediately had a thought! Well, now I realized that I didn’t have any frozen hash browns, so I got a couple of small yellow skinned potatoes and cut them in small cubes and began to fry my own breakfast potatoes! When they were almost done, I sliced a green onion in with them and added a big pat of butter to the skillet with salt and pepper. As the potatoes were frying, I fried bacon and then laid it aside! Time to fry the eggs! Got two eggs out (and of course handled them with care as I wasn’t dressed to go to the bank to get a loan to go buy more) and then fried them in a little of the bacon grease ! I didn’t say this was healthy or low cal, just said it is really delicious.

Now time to put it together….butter a flour (or corn) tortilla and place it on a microwave plate! Put some of the hash browns on the tortilla, then a couple strips of bacon, some of the egg !

Pour a little red (or green) enchilada sauce over the egg/potato/bacon mixture and sprinkle some sharp cheddar cheese over the top! Place in microwave and heat for 30-40 seconds or until cheese is melted!

If you are cooking for more than 2 you can make these in a baking dish and use as much tortillas, eggs, hash browns and bacon as needed for the people you are serving! Then top with the sauce and cheese and bake in preheated 350 oven for about 20 minutes. We had eaten almost all of ours before it dawned on me that I should post the recipe! Was so easy and so good! And the best part was that it didn’t detour our appetite for our usual steak that night !

This is a version of a pasta salad I saw a couple of weeks ago on FB! Today is a dreary rainy day so we needed something that would add a little sunshine! Both Randy and I loved it! The only thing missing was some Italian garlic toasties that we love from Market Street or Eatzis. So we settled for just plain Saltines today! But this pasta salad will be on our lunch tables now quite often. Or the dinner table should we have a heavy lunch when eating out! Used the corkscrew triple colored pasta this time. Loved it!!!

Pasta shape or your choice. Cook until desired doneness!

Drain and rinse. Add a Tablespoon of olive oil and Italian seasoning while pasta is still warm. About 15-30 min before serving add chopped ripe avocado, cherry tomatoes, chopped fresh baby spinach, shredded Parmesan cheese and diced dry Italian salami. Add salt, pepper, Trader Joe’s Aglio olio seasoning to taste, olive oil and because I had the Rosa’s seasoning we bought at Elliotts Hardware. Was shocked at how much food seasoning/barbecue seasoning they sell!! Back to the pasta salad….

Add the above items to the pasta and chill in fridge for 15-30 min before seasoning!

Did not give amounts as the additions need to be according to the amount of pasta you use! But add the items according to the ratio of them to the pasta that you like!

Last week I read about this dip (in Southern Living) that was popular with people who made it when going out in their boats and would just stick it in a container in the ice chest to enjoy while out on the water! Well, I don’t have a boat, but I have lots of containers, so I decided to make it and take it to a New Years game day at a friends house!

All I can say is “wow”. It is absolutely delicious and we almost ate the whole bowl! In fact, I thought I’d just take a bite when I opened it and then quickly got addicted to it, so every time someone walked in the kitchen, we all started to munch away with a chip or carrot stick and boat dip! It was half gone before I yelled “STOP,” I forgot to take a picture of it! So the picture you see is only half of the recipe! AND pretty green onion tops aren’t on it as I forgot to buy them. Thank you Southern Living for sharing this. It will now be on my list of very necessary appetizers or even just a dip to snack on with cut up veggies when we aren’t hungry enough to cook a full dinner!

• 1 (16-oz.) container sour cream (about 2 cups)
• 1 (10-oz.) can fire-roasted diced tomatoes and green chiles (such as Rotel), drained
• 1 (1-oz.) envelope ranch dressing mix
• 1 (1-oz.) envelope 25%-less-sodium taco seasoning mix (such as Old El Paso)
• 1 (8-oz.) pkg. shredded Cheddar-Jack or mild Cheddar cheese (about 2 cups)
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced scallions (about 2 medium) (optional)
• Tortilla chips or potato chips, for servin

And if I ever get a boat, the dip will be the first thing that is carried aboard. Even before a life preserver! Because people started eating it before it was plated pretty with hips around it, the picture won’t win any awards, but the dip will!!!

Many years ago Randy and I decided to find a way to further embarrass our kids and came up with a phone recording (back in the day when we had phone recorders) that went something like this: “Hi you’ve reached Frosty and Noel. We aren’t home right now. Frosty’s at the mall and I’m baking cookies, when he gets home we’ll give you a call.” the kids use to call our house and tell us not to answer the phone so they could show their friends how weird we were! So we have been Frosty and Noel for probably 25 plus years to friends and family. Our Christmas cards were even Signed like that and most of the cards we received were addressed to Frosty & Noel. We have carried a sign from house to house that we had made.

Forward to today and David Jeremiah has been writing devotions for the December weekends that centers on the word NOEL.

His first Dec weekend stated that the N should stand for “giving to the needy” The O stood for opening up your home to others. Todays was the E which stood for evangelize, and that we should take every possible opportunity to share the Good News of Jesus Christ birth and what it meant for us! Can’t wait to read what the L will stand for. It was just this morning that it downed on me that because the Word was such a special word to me that it will be an easy way to remember all year through what I should be doing. Admitting that the N and the O come easy to me (giving and opening my home ) but not so much the E…..why is it that something that means so much to us as Christians; the gift of Jesus and that He has forgiven all our sins when we trust in Him and promised us eternal life, why do we not get excited and burdened to share with others that great gift more than we do? I don’t have a good answer other than maybe we don’t want to make others feel awkward or maybe we feel “oh they won’t listen to what I want to tell them” or maybe we feel inadequate knowing that they might have know us before we accepted Christ and we are afraid they will think “oh I knew them when”! Whatever the reason, may 2025 be the year we quit being afraid to share The Gospel and allow God to use us for the reason he leaves us here! Maybe this year NOEL (Trudy) will remember, not just in December, what her name means, but to use it to share what Christ has done for me and…

Romans 1:15-17 For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

December 1st and “the most wonderful time of the year” is here once again! December came so quickly as it does every year! As we sit at our table every morning looking back and forth between seeing the beautiful blue skies, so many trees that line the street below us and the many Christmas themed decorations that we carry from house to house through the years, we want to hold on to the memories of some of the special pieces that adorn our new place that we so appreciate the Lord giving to us. Some of the pillows that lean on the couch were made by my mom! Some of the Santa’s were special to my dad and for that reason they are now special to me. One of my favorite things is a manger Randys mom passed on to us! It was Randys when he was a young boy and every year when I unwrap the small pieces that are a part of the manger, I can’t help but wonder what Randy was like as a little boy and did he have that mischievous streak then that he has even to this day! If you have read any of the blog stories in Chocolatecastles.com, you know what I’m talking about.

As I have walked past several pieces given to us from dear friends, it is so great to just think of each and the year that we received the gift. So many precious friends who have been so special to both Randy and I. Yes, we have moved A LOT and have had many different houses in many different parts of Dallas, CA and AZ! But the memories and special items we always carry with us has helped us feel at home quickly no matter where we lived. Just like certain taste make us remember certain special events or people, special items can also contribute to times we want to always remember! When I was a young mom and wife, I remember thinking that it would be so great to have money to just go out and buy beautiful Christmas decorations instead of having to use the “old stuff” my mom had passed on to me. Now, I’d give anything to have some of that “old stuff” that was given away to make room for new decorations! Why does it take most of us (I hope I’m not the only one who it took years to appreciate family pieces more than just more Hobby Lobby items added to the collection). Don’t get me wrong. I love HL but I love the old pieces more, the older I get!

Maybe this year as we walk past pieces that may not look like they fit in with the latest trend of decorations, think of the giver when you hold or look at a certain piece! If the giver is still living, offer a prayer for them and ask the Lord to bless them this Christmas season! Drop them a note to express how much they mean to you! Gifts of love and thankfulness to others should be at the top of our Gift giving list! Not only to others but to the Greatest gift giver ever…The Lord God who gave His son for us that we might allow Him to become our Savior.

Not only at Christmas, but all through the year….give thanks with a grateful heart!

They are a prized possession I have so enjoyed every year since then.