A whole bunch of cooking

Last weekend I had a big cooking day. I love to cook and bake, but I usually don't have time. So it's usually quick stuff, freezer meals, and crockpot cooking. Lately, I've been so tired after work I haven't even really had time to get a meal in the crockpot to cook the next day. So I spent all of last Saturday cooking, baking, and prepping food for the coming week/month. I was worried that there just wasn't enough stuff around for Justen to eat, since he can't just grab whatever. I started out the day by making him a GF cinnamon pull apart. It was a little dry but I learned my lesson, just because the recipe says you can use an angel food cake pan doesn't mean you should. All the yummy goey goodness leaked out the bottom, but it was still good. And the left overs were dry enough we cut it into slices and made Justen cinnamon french toast. Then, I made everything from gluten free granola bars (they are awesome) to a bunch of bread that we cut in thirds and freeze. I made a triple batch of GF chocolate chip cookies to freeze. Justen loves being able to bake a tray whenever he feels like cookies, and I love not having to make dough all the time. And double bonus, they are amazing frozen. I even took the heels of the old bread and crumbled up to make gluten free bread crumbs. I never throw old gluten free bread out, I always dry it, put it through the food processor and then freeze the crumbs. I suppose I could buy them, but $8 for a box of bread crumbs seems pretty ridiculous. I also tried something new! I got the idea online and hunted down a bunch of recipes that sounded tasty. Crockpot freezer meals! Who would have thought. Now I don't even have to have the energy at night. Some nights I get home and even the effort it takes to thaw and heat a freezer meal feels like to much, so these are perfect. I can just grab one out, microwave for a few min, to thaw enough to get out of the bag, and in the pot it goes. Five min. of effort before work and we have dinner that night. The other great thing is that it is so much faster than regular freezer meals where things have to be pre-cooked. I was able to make 10 meals in 2 hours plus a half hour for clean up. That's not bad at all! 8 went in the freezer, one got cooked for dinner, and one got put in the fridge for dinner the next day. So this round I made, Honey Rosemary Chicken, Orange Chicken, Beef Stew, Cilantro Lime Chicken w/corn and black beans. The fresh meals we ate were the Cilantro lime chicken and Beef stew, and they were both great! I also discovered my new favorite thing. I usually try not to use to terribly many disposable products but this one is so AWESOME that I'm making an exception, Crockpot liners! Sure they've existed for years but I just discovered them. I LOVE them. So here's a few pics from my major cooking weekend:

And just for fun, I thought I'd include a picture of how I organize all my freezer meals. This is my small upright freezer in the house. The top three shelves, with the exception of a little meat on the very top, are freezer meals. I do have another large upright and a chest freezer in the garage where we put our meat, you know half a beef, a lamb or two, and I usually buy 20-40 lbs of chicken at a time. So all of that, plus our big storage of fruits, vegi's, and jam is actually out there. This freezer just houses stuff we may need to grab on a daily basis (and all my freezer meals) and then gets restocked from the outside freezers as needed.

A Long Overdue Summer Update

It occurred to me yesterday that I never updated with pictures of some of our summer adventures. I can't find the cd I burned of my other pics, but here's a few that I have handy. We took a trip up to Oregon and had a great time at the coast and the zoo.

And I don't seem to have taken any pictures of our camping trip at Stone Reservoir, but I did get a shot of everyone all buckled up and ready to go.

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween! Garrison was a mountain man; John C. Fremont to be specific! He went trick or treating at school with the daycare and was even interviewed for PackTV. Unfortunately, my class was being unruly at the moment and I was busy containing them and missed my own son on the announcements. Then we came home and I made GF pumpkin donuts, and got dinner in a pumpkin and rice pudding put in the oven. While they baked we went to a trunk or treat at the Church for trick or treating. No one in our neighborhood goes door to door, the houses are just to far apart. Garrison was so excited to meet up with his best little pal that lives next door. They had a ball! Running from car to car, holding hands, giggling and telling secrets. It will be a sad day for him if she ever moves, they spend their whole summer together as buds and have really been missing each other since school started. We then came home and enjoyed our dinner (in a pumpkin of course) and our donuts. It was a really fun day!

My little mountain man, John C. Fremont with his tabby "Mountain Lion" cat. He's quite convinced that Mountain Men used Mountain Lions as pets.

Pumpkin Donuts

The other day I made Justen a gluten free cinnamon pull apart. He loved it, and pointed out that he hadn't had any kind of a sweet breakfast pastry in over a year. I didn't realize I had quit baking these, mainly to help me not eat them so I could loose weight. Well, I decided right then and there that he NEEDED a donut. He hasn't had one of those in a long while, and he used to live on Krispy Kremes. So I found a recipe and set to work. They were FABULOUS! I can't stop eating them, they are as good as any donut I've ever had. For those who aren't gluten free, here is the original recipe: http://kirbiecravings.com/2012/10/pumpkin-doughnuts-2.html

I bought this pan off Amazon, and since it was such a success I just ordered another because the biggest problem was baking it six donuts at a time.

Also, my flour blends come from Bette Hagman, you can also find them in the Life Tastes good again book and on their blog. I used the featherlight and GF mix in combination to get the right texture. And here is my adjusted GF recipe:

GF Pumpkin Donuts

1/2 cup vegetable oil
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 cups pumpkin purée (canned pumpkin)
1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice (I used a combo of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves)
1 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 Cup GF Flour mix
3/4 cup Featherlight Flour mix
1/2 t. xzantham gum

Cinnamon Sugar mixture
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

Directions:


1. Preheat oven to 350F. Grease donut pans.
2. In a large bowl, beat everything together except flour until smooth. Add in flour and stir until just smooth.
3. Pour donut batter into molds about 3/4 filled. Bake 15-18 for regular donuts (9-10 minutes for mini ones) until toothpick inserted comes out clean. Let donuts cool before coating with cinnamon sugar mixture.
4. Pour 3/4 cup sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon into large sandwich bag and mix together until thoroughly mixed. Put donuts in and zip closed and roll donut around until covered in cinnamon sugar. Remove donut. Repeat with remaining donuts.

Pics to come, they turned out awesome! And this morning we warmed them up in the microwave for 15 seconds and they tasted fresh baked.

Picture Time!

Was backing up my camera disk so I thought I'd share a few pictures.
Here are some pictures of Easter:





And our afternoon hunt with the cousins:


Garrison loves to do things for us, like comb Daddy's hair.




It's sure a good thing Tia is as patient of a dog as they come. It makes me so sad to think how old she's getting because Doberman's don't typically live more than 10 years and she's getting close. I don't know if I'll ever find another kid dog like her. But I remind myself that the Doberman my parents had when I was a kid was every bit as patient (or at least so goes the story of Roger and the rock). So lets just hope she doesn't go anywhere. Because despite the, KID THIS IS MY CRATE, look on her face, she tolerates everything this little monkey does with grace.




Then of course there's just Garrison being Garrison. And yes, he's had a thing for shoes for a long time.











And I realized that I have never remembered to post the pictures of Garrison's new bed. He got it for his birthday (I think if I remember right). Justen had it custom made by some friends, and yes, they both love it. Justen is currently trying to get me to agree to have a queen size one made for our room. In case you're wondering the answer is NO! But I love it in Garrison's room, and they even stained it to match his dresser and desk. I can't argue with Justen when he tells me he has awesome friends and that between them they can build about anything.



Close ups of the laser engraving on the head board and foot board.





That's all for now!

Some recovered Photos

Last year we went on a big cross country trip to see my Oma and Justen's sister Tanya and her family. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line something happened to my camera card and we couldn't get any of the pictures. We even took the card to Inkleys and they told us there was nothing retrievable on the disk. Many tears were shed....So out of desperation yesterday I went to the photography teacher at my school. With about an hour of work she was able to retrieve about 90% of the pictures. Unfortunately the one's she couldn't get were the ones with my Oma and Opa. The pics with their dogs came out fine. One picture of Garrison in Virginia came out fine. All of the family pictures, the pictures of us at James town, the pictures of Garrison and Jonah at the beach, all corrupt. So I'm going to beg my computer tech for help this summer and see if he's able to do any more. I can only hope there is still a way to save a few of those pictures.

The only non corrupt picture from James Town

This is what all of the corrupt pictures look like. We can see what they are in the thumb nails so we know what they are, but when we try to print or look at them bigger they are corrupt. So if anyone out there knows how to fix this please let me know. The first one if the picture of myself, Garrison, Oma and Opa. But you can't even tell because all we can see is the ceiling.

This is the best of the pictures from James Town

*Another Update: I don't know why I didn't think of this. Leave it to a four year old to be the thinker of the family. Garrison was truly bummed out because he had no pictures of he and Jonah at the beach. I told him sorry but they got messed up, well, he says, Aunt Tanya had her camera too and she takes more pictures than you Mommy, why don't we just ask her for some. DUH! Why didn't I think of that. So he called his Aunt Tanya and pictures are on their way. Thanks so much Tanya! And yes, I'm glad we found them but heck, even my four year old knows all the aunts take more pictures than Mommy, sad but true. Sadly, it still doesn't solve the problem of pictures of my Oma and Opa.

If only I ever remembered a camera!

It's pretty well known that I never remember to bring a camera. But lucky for me other folks do, and they are sometimes kind enough to share pictures with me. I'm also very lucky in that Garrison has always been able to be in daycare in either the school that Justen or I teach in. It's a nice compromise to have him in the building with me if I can't be home with him. He loves his "teachers" (the high school students who rotate in and out during the day), and of course his full time adult teachers too. They went on a fun field trip to the American West Heritage Center (yes the place I used to work). And one of my students, who happened to be Garrison's partner for the field trip was kind enough to take and share this picture with me. He just loves critters!

And I've been meaning to throw the pictures of our new laying hens up for a while but haven't yet. So here's our two girls. They are Wellsummer crosses and lay yummy brown eggs. We also still have our one duck, who still hates the chickens and they don't go anywhere near eachother. And then for fun this year we hatched some eggs out in the incubator at school and I brough home three chicks from that. But since last year I hatched six ducks and only got one girl, I didn't want to chance it that I had three chicks and they were all boys. So Justen went and bought two more Rohde Island red pullets from IFA to make sure we had new chicks for when our old girls start to "wear out". With any luck we'll have more eggs than we know what to do with next spring instead of still having to supplement with grocery store eggs. So here are the girls, and I need to get pictures of the chicks still. This picture is in their coop but they never go in it anymore. They spend most of their time in the pasture with the sheep now.