Saturday, November 13, 2010

Do you get the Kraft magazine? It comes out quarterly and usually I look at it and fall in love with all of the recipe ideas, and that's it. Nothing gets baked, stirred or cooked....

But I've fallen into a dinner cooking rut and so this week we've tried 2 so far, and loved both of them! Actually 3 because 1 was a dessert....that was so good.

Tonight we had Slow Cooker Orange Chicken

Toss 8 (boneless skinless) chicken thighs in 3 Tbs of flour in your crock pot

Add 1/3C orange marmalade, 1/3C BBQ sauce, 2 Tbs soy sauce and 1 Tbs fresh grated ginger (the only fiddly part of it)

and you leave it for 3-4 hrs on HIGH, 6-8 hrs on LOW

We had it with stir fried veggies (onion, broccoli, grn pepper & mushrooms) and rice and it was delicious! Now it says it serves 4 but it easily served us 5 (and our kids eat a lot) with leftovers...so I'd say it serves 6.

Thursday we tried the "Creamy beef & noodle bake" from the current issue and it was good too. Again it said it served 4 but obviously these are American portion sizes. We had salad with the dinner and I doubled it because there were 9 of us...and we had 3 servings of leftovers. It was good, but not company-ish enough for me, but it was yummy and creamy. We served the "Chocolate-peppermint stripped delight" for dessert and it was amazing....and yes you should put the extra crushed candy cane pieces on top. We left it out because frankly I forgot...and it could have used the extra mint flavour. You can find these recipes on the Kraft Foods website (google it).

After crushing what was needed in Ziploc bags (and having them brake through and go everywhere....sticky flours are us!) I noticed in a flyer last night that the bulk barn sells CRUSHED candy canes....so this week I am going to buy 3-4 Cups worth and store them in a caning jar for the season. After all I have a bulk barn coupon, so what better use could it be put to!

I see many uses for this new baking staple...think "candy cane hot choco!"

On the house front (yes it is a war zone) the mudroom is clean....and BEHOLD we had a tile flour, I frankly couldn't remember what we put in since it was covered in everything that was dropped there. See it is our main entrance to the house (from the garage), for us anyways, and the coat hooks are in there...and since the shoe bench is in the garage the kids can't reach to hang up their coat....argh. AND it doubles as the laundry room (L-shaped) so I had to organize it, and unpack the 6-7 boxes that we'd stashed in the closet in there during move in. So now we have a system, and I've decided I'm just going to hang up their coats for them.

This weekend was also the great "winter gear" wash and sort time....and surprise surprise Micah's out grown his, why I never thought of this before boggles the mind but I digress. So remember those baskets I got to organize the linen closet for "staging" the last house...they now hold hats (stuffed with a pair of mittens each). 1 for Magoo, 1 for the girls to share, and 1 large one with all the scarves (if I EVER mention knitting more, someone please break my knitting needles!!!!) and hubby's and my stuff.

Other then snow pants (which I cannot find anywhere in his size) Monkey also needed boots...so we sat in the store and tried on boots (our trusty second hand store) for HALF AN HOUR only to come home and discover.....I bought size 7s and we already had that. We needed size 8-9 and they had none so we are keeping the new boats ($5) since they are wider then the ones we had and giving the smaller ones away.

Oh the things we put ourselves through as mothers!

I always get into the organizing mode before winter...do you? Thursday Monkey "helped" me sort all the girls hand me downs and all their toys and we filled 1 bag of garbage and 1 bag to donate....so now we can manage with their broken dresser. 2 girls, 3 full size drawers and 2 mini drawers = must be organized!

Well, I have a Bible school kids program to organize and classes to write so I'd better be off.

God Bless

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