Food Junkie Wednesday ~ Broccoli Cheese soup

Happy Wednesday y'all! As you will hopefully come to learn, I LOVE to cook. However, I do not like cleaning up after my creations are made. So one pot dishes are by far my favorite. I cant believe I am sharing this one as it is a family recipe handed down to me from my grandmother. Its fairly cheap, easy, and a huge hit with my kids. Plus the leftovers are fabulous. I plan on tweaking this in the near future to make it less "processed" but for now I am giving you my current version of the recipe. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
olive oil
1/2 medium onion diced
2-3 large carrots diced
2-3 ribs of celery diced
1 clove garlic finely chopped or grated
1 carton (26oz) Chicken stock (or veg if you want to keep it vegetarian, never tried though!)
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 bag of baby broccoli florets
1 qt milk
2-3 cups of dry mashed potato flakes (do not use "buds", wont work!)
2 cups shredded white cheddar + more for topping if desired
1/2 tsp salt/pepper (or to taste)
optional: 1 cup cooked shredded chicken

 Prep time: 5 min    Cook time: 30 min    Start to table: approx 45 min

 

After dicing veggies, sautee in a couple tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat with a 1/2tsp each of salt and pepper until they begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add garlic during the last minute to prevent from burning.

Add the carton of chicken stock and bring to a low boil. Simmer on low-medium for 10 minutes.

Add frozen broccoli and cream of mushroom soup. Stir to combine. Bring to simmer and cook on low for 5-10 minutes or until broccoli is hot and begins to get tender.

Slowly add in 1 qt of milk (I use 2%). Stir to combine. (Add in shredded chicken here if desired) Continue to cook on low stirring often for 10 minutes until all veggies are tender (not mushy).

Add in shredded cheese and stir until totally incorporated. Add in mashed potato flakes one cup at a time and stir until well combined. I use about 3 1/2 cups total flakes. Make sure to wait a minute between adding each cup in to allow it to thicken up. Much easier to add in more flakes for a thicker texture than to try and thin it out.

Allow to thicken/cool for a couple minutes before serving. Top with more shredded cheese if desired. Serve with warm bread.

So there it is. Hope you enjoy this warm, thick, and creamy soup on a cool fall night soon! If you have any questions please feel free to ask!

Halloween Frame on Kid Craft Tuesday

I love the Halloween craft the kids and I made last year

 

 

My inspiration came from this blog last year:

A Diamond in the Stuff - Googly Eye Halloween Frame

I cant begin to tell you how easy and fun these were. We added something else to ours. Thumbprint spiders! I believe I found the idea for those in a magazine last year though for the life of me I cant find the exact source! (If you know it please tell me so I can update!)

 

Since I used the above link to make mine I wont go into details on how to paint/glue on the eyes. Its pretty easy to follow. The thumbprint spiders were just as easy.

• Cut the cardstock to fit inside frame.
• Have little ones dip their thumb into desired paint color and press onto center of paper.
• Let dry!
• Using a ball point pen (or in our case a Sharpie no-bleed fine tipped pen), draw on the string and all 8 legs. I did the one on my 3yo's but I let my 6yo do his own.
•  Finally glue on the google eyes and let dry. Place in your finished google eye frame and enjoy!

FYI: The spiders in the frame are from this last week. I decided I will let the kids do new ones every year. Last years were just as cute though!

Happy Halloween crafting!

Faith Monday 2

Here goes nothing! Again, my apologies about basically shutting down this blog for the summer. Things here have been CRAZY! So as per my posted schedule, today is all about my faith and what I have learned over the past week. hmmmm. Where to begin?

I learned a lot about my faith in the last few weeks really. God has been challenging our family hardcore. We have been forced to make big decisions in a very short period of time. We have been required to trust how God is working in our lives, even without being able to see where that is leading us. Part of me has wanted to just crawl into bed, not deal with anything, and let my depression cloud get the better of me. The other part is reminded, especially this last 2 weeks, that EVERYTHING happens for a reason. Did I want Jeremy to be injured? Heck no! I wouldn't wish this journey on anyone....wait. maybe I would. This whole terrible, traumatic, painful journey has forced us to take a hard look at what we believe to be true, to trust like never before, and to be blessed with riches far greater than we hoped. So many prayers were answered in this last year for us.

some small, some big, some selfish, some honest, some just because.

We have been so blessed. People are honestly still amazed when I say that. Why? Why cant we take the pain and hurt and turn it into something good that glorifies God? This IS our testimony. This is our chance to show others how much God cares, how He loves, and how we are to love. I admit, I am amazed that we made it to the year mark. It seems like just yesterday that I was walking in his ICU room praying that he would be okay.

I think the fact that this year has gone by so fast is part of the reason I am so scared to move away. I'm worried I will lose sight of the God I have come to know and love so much more deeply when we leave here. His presence is very evident here to me. This is the place where I have developed my strongest relationship with both God and my family. I know in heart though that I have to keep trusting Him. I have to keep trusting that everything we are going through now is part of the same great plan that I trusted him through a year ago. I knew then that God was taking care of us in the midst of the storm. And He still is. He will forever. I just need to continue to seek His face and trust that there is purpose in our lives, and we will be provided for.

Hear my voice when I call Lord;

be merciful to me and answer me.

My heart says of you, "Seek his face!"

Your face Lord, I will seek.

Psalm 27: 7-8 NIV

Did you miss me?

Sorry folks. Summer fun and the stress of the 1-year anniversary of Jeremy's injuries got the better of me. I really really REALLY want to make this blog work. I think it can. I have been blessed to follow some other amazing bloggers and the guilt I have felt over not posting anything has been eating away at me. I am so sorry that I have not been updating it.

This month has been especially hard. Not only did we have some added stress of things going wrong with the property we own in another state (UGH!), both children being in school 5 days a week for the first time, but we also made it to Jeremy's very first "Alive Day"!

WOOHOO!!!

By far its been the biggest hurdle. He is doing AMAZING. The difference a year makes!!! He shocks me on a regular basis with just how much he can do now that he couldn't do even 6 months ago. We are so blessed. The other news that goes along with this is that he finally got his retirement/disability ratings. It means we are leaving.

Soon...

Too soon for me. I love our life here. And I have been praying hard for strength and clarity through it all. The direction God wants us to go in still seems so foggy. I feel like most days I am still stumbling around in the darkness. That darkness is filled with an ever growing to-do list, a house that never seems to stay clean, and all the worry that comes with any Army move times like 1000. The darkness sucks. Not being able to see what the next step is sucks. Thank God I have a strong, amazing, supportive husband who puts up with all my complaining. Thank God I have wonderful, just-as-nutso-as-me friends who remind me that we WILL get everything done. And Thank God I have beautiful children who keep me going everyday.

Which brings me to our adventures today. I had a to-do list that was a mile long this morning. We should have stayed home. I would have ended the day frustrated. There would have been whining, kids fighting, yelling, and feeling guilty cause I hadn't gotten as much done as I liked and yelled too much and didn't pay enough attention to the kids......and on and on and on. It would have been like far too many days lately.

This morning was different. While we were all still in pj's (don't think this was early, it was like 10am!) I made the crazy suggestion that we go to the zoo. No, not the one 10 min from our house that we can walk through in less than 30min, the one that's an hour away that costs us double to go to thanks to gas prices. Thankfully my husband saw that I was serious. See my kids were sad because we couldn't go to the Georgia Aquarium and see the dolphins. This was thanks to the program we saw on tv about how they built it, trained the dolphins, etc. Man do we miss the aquarium something awful!! So the zoo it was instead. Checked the banks account, yep we can go! Checked the fridge, yep we can take a lunch with us! Checked the weather, yep we are outta here! I am so glad we went. The kids had a fabulous time, I go to hold hands with my fella, and I got some super cute shots of some of our favorite friends.

What are you looking at?

My little animals

Siri posing for the camera

Its a rough life just lion around.

As per tradition, we just cant go to Syracuse without headed to the mall. This time we finally got to see the new wing that was added. And the kids rode the Carousel with daddy. Who knew riding around in circles could make them so happy.

After we got home, I realized there were still dishes to do, and laundry to fold, and a child who needed a bath (well they both do but the princess was passed out). While J was in the shower I took a moment to try and catch up on my pinterest page. I came across this blog, Hands-Free Mama. I was in tears.

THAT WAS IT!
We needed today. Was there whining and crying today? Yes. My kids are 6 and 3. Someone is going to cry or whine, that's just a given. Was there grown-up stuff that could have been done today? Of course. I wouldn't trade today for anything though. I got to laugh at my daughter for being fascinated with the "poop beetles" (dung beetles), and watch my son have moments of such maturity that I forgot he is only 6. It was perfect chaos and I loved it. SO much better than a year ago. A year ago I was headed to Germany. A year ago I didn't know if my husband was going to recognise my face when he woke up. This year is different. This year is ours.

My challenge to you is to put down the phone, the remote, the to-do list and just spend a few minutes with your family. Go do something fun. Just because you CAN.

Faith Monday 1

Ok time to try out the new schedule! woohoo!!

im totally trying to wake myself up here can you tell?!

B and I spent the morning at the gym then had a lunch date with a good friend. B of course fell asleep on the way home which made me soooo sleepy too. I ended up spending an hour and a half in bed watching tv while she napped.

(of course now that I am trying to knowck out this post she is waking up!).

Im so glad I got up when I did though. I was able to see one of our neighbors take in a new foster child (at least Im 99% sure thats what was going on). At the time I was working on a devotional made especially for busy moms. I couldnt help but prayer for the girl, this new family, and her own family that she is currently seperated from. I dont know her story and probably never will. Thats ok. But it did get me thinking about just how much I want to someday foster/adpot.

Seeing a very nice family take in a child who needs a home only strengthened my desire to be able to be a part of this world. This world of kids who need to be shown unconditional love, covenant love, Godly love. I am so blessed to have a husband who supports this desire that God wrote on my heart so many years ago. We both know that getting into it is still at least a couple years away if not longer depending on the other things that God lays out for us.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after oprphans and widos in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.   

  James 1:27 (NIV)

It also made me think about WHY we want to get into fostering or adopting (or both). And it has nothing to do with being religious, or looking good to others, or because we have to to be Christians. It has EVERYTHING to do with just being the right thing to do. To care for those around you that need to be cared for. Because no matter what religion you are, that is right. It is 100% what I would want for our own children if something happened to us. For them to be taken in by people who can love them. I am so thankful that God has given me this desire and I cant wait to see how he is going to move and make it happen.

What big challenge/desire has God laid on your heart?

BLOG HOP!

So since I am trying to get more readers, I am inviting yout to join this awesome blog hop today! Check out how many awesome blogs have already linked up! I have already found so many amazing crafty ideas and gotten inspiration for my own blog. YEA! Happy hoppin!

Part 4: our little backyard garden

Our little backyard garden is growing so well! I didn't think it would take off but we have already been able to enjoy some of the lettuce and green beans from it. hopefully my carrots will be done soon so we can enjoy those too. this makes me hopeful that when we move back down to warmer climates I can have a real garden, not just a container one.

So here are some pics from last month:


Right after I got everything transplanted outside and new seeds planted.
Back row is all green beans, middle blue ones are carrots, middle red is lettuce, and front has basil and garlic. and yes that's my giant 7yo chocolate lab Bailey who just had to be in the picture!

first flowers on the beans

and more current ones:

look how much its grown! not a great pic i know and please excuse my very messy porch!!!!

3 types of romaine lettuce. i had my doubts if it was going to transplant well and apparently it just needed to be outside! they are so yummy!!!

these are the carrots i planted outside as seeds. they are as big as my ones that started inside!

can you see all the baby green beans in there too?! the next few warm days should give me enough to use in a meal!

So I don't have any fabulous advice about planting a container garden. Especially because the growing season here is so weird, and because this is the first year I have really been able to grow anything other than pumpkins! I will say that I am glad I did start indoors because its given me some plants that are at various stages of development and so I will have a slightly longer season. The kids have really enjoyed watching them grow. They always let me know when there are beans that are ready to be picked and both kids will eat their salad if I put even just 1 piece of lettuce from the garden in it! Quite honestly the plants just make me happy. I feel accomplished knowing that I can grow food for our family, even if its just this tiny amount for now. Somehow it makes me feel a litle closer to God. Like watching this creation happen before my eyes is one way He is just reminding me thats everything is going to be ok. See how he cares for even the tiny plants?

So what are you growing this year?! Any veggies? Flowers? Tell me! Got any advice to help me make the most of this tiny garden?