Xmas Lights Around AZ

Day after Xmas

The holiday was festive and interesting.. My Canadian neighbors are home in Peoria for the holiday w/ lots of creative decorating and more holiday spirit then my family. It was fun to watch them get ready for the big day.. Light out side and a big huge tree trimmed beautifully..

I have not been in much of a mood to be online as of late this past week DD had her foot surgery and is slowly recovering after her a few days in the hospital...

For the next 30 day I am doing a budget challenge for myself..I will post more about this later....

Holiday Cookies

They always say don't use newspaper well I am going on the big 40 in a few years and my mom still uses newspaper every year to put the cookies on and we are all here to tell the story..

Pets

Who couldn't fall in love with this face????

This puppy is one of my mom's dogs...Lucky....

Fall Pictures

Tree in the back yard of my neighbor yet and get lots of yellow leaves near my shed....for me to clean up every year. Hard to believe I took a picture (not shown here) on Saturday with a few leaves and Today I have a huge amount leaves fall fast....


This is my Pink rose bush that I don't do anything with and it grows just fine every year....

Message From a Friend

This coming week is National Mental Health Care week.
You can do your part by remembering
to contact at least one unstable person to show you care

Well .. .. . my job is done. Your turn! Please send an encouraging message to a disturbed friend….just as I've done. I don't care if you lick windows or take the special bus.... you hang in there sunshine, you're special.. Every sixty seconds you spend angry, upset or mad, is a full minute of happiness you'll never get back. Today's Message of the Day is: Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, and never regret anything that made you smile Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we might as well dance

Menu 4 Dec

Wed 1- Potato Soup
Thu 2-Leftover Soup and crackers
Fri 3- Bought a Rice and Cheese burrito for $4
Sat 4-Leftover from Lunch
Sun 5-Chicken Wraps
Mon 6- Turkey taco's Mexican rice and refried beans
Tue 7- Leftovers
Wed-Homemade Pretzels w/ Cheese and pizza sauce
Thur-Baked Chicken Wraps
Fri-Fix it yourself
Sat-Fix it yourself
Sun-Pieces of Chicken/String Cheese/Chips & Salsa
Mon-Leftovers from Lunch out w/ daughter...
Tue-? forgot
Wed-Dinner out w/ grandparents
Thur-Leftover dinner
Fri- Turkey burgers and chips
Sat-Homemade Chicken Pot Pie from freezer
Sun-
Mon-
Tue-
Wed-
Thu-
Fri-
XMAS-

** Note to self make burritos to freeze this week on my days off cheaper & I have all the ingredients...make stuff for dd surgery as well...

Baked Potato Soup

Over the weekend at work a co-worker brought in a huge pot of Ham & Potato Soup however I was unable to try/have it due to being pork free so of coarse I went in search of a small batch that I could make/try for myself. After reading many I decided this was the one to try...Baked Potato Soup
From as usual my fave go to website All Recipes. After reading most of the ingredient I set about to create a great soup. I wanted to added extra veggie as well (to use up my supply of stuff in freezer/Refrieg) I am not picky about having a soup be all about just potatoes.

1 tbsp of garlic
1 tbsp of Yogurt butter
1 tsp of EVOO
3 tsbp of Flour
1 cup of diced carrots
1 cup of celery
2 potatoes diced
1/2 cup of minced green onions
6-8 stems of Asian Basil
3 cups of Chicken broth
1/2 cup of half & half
Pepper

In a small pot I sauteed the butter/evoo/garlic added basil and greens onions mixed well poured 3 tbsp of flour over mixture and cooked a few mins to that I slowly added the chicken broth and whisked well. Allowed to heat well. then poured that into my new 2 quart mini crock-pot I added the nuked diced up carrots- celery-and the hot mixture allowed this to cook for 1 hour.
At quick tasting it was VERY Bland so off I went to making it taste better
This is what I added to my individual bowl

1 cup of shredded cheese
1 more diced potato
LOTS OF PEPPER
2 tbsp of sour cream
More green onions

Verdict: It was pretty good.. It is something I would make again with the extra items plus more of all of them :O)

New Toy

As you can see it's just a little blender however the reason I purchase this style was for a few reasons which I will list.

1- Price $20.00 over $54.00 for a Magic bullet at Walmart

2- I have a 2 food processors however when trying to mince herbs (the blades are to HIGH) to mince them up this has a smaller/lower blend that I think will be perfect (the blend it just like the type in a coffee grinder which was $12.00 at Walmart and would only be good for chopping herbs since I don't drink or use coffee so that would be a big waste of money)

3- I thought it was cool

4- To mix up dressings

Verdict I used the blender today (Monday) for mincing up Fresco peppers/green onions and red peppers love it...I can already see me using this Blender a lot more the my food processor

Update Home Life Around the Holidays

Most people think I am just a scrooge since I prefer to skip them if I could however that is not the case. Growing up Holidays for me always meant family drama/BAD gifts or people not getting what they wanted ie all around drama.
Growing up every holiday my grandma made Xmas a pain by trying to cause as much DRAMA as possible to even get everyone fighting over stupid things most the time someone would leave due to this.
I am a very giving-helpful person ..However my brother is just the opposite as possible he is the type of person who forget even simple holidays like Mother's day or will go I didn't realize coffee cups were a very bad gift for my parents. Yet he would expect

Homemade Pot Pie

Your all probably asking yourself what the heck to do with all the leftover turkey that someone sent home with you from Thanksgiving dinner.. go searching for a great recipe of course well I found this one at 8 am this morning Turkey Pot Pie

Step 2

Well first remove all the good stuff from the bones and diced it up into small bite size pieces.





This was all dark meat that most people don't prefer/like & they usually toss in the trash but as you know I can't see/afford to waste food I just have to get creative this month my budget is super tight to being off on Turkey day..My mom did dinner at her house this year and I yielded a lot of dark meat to use for this recipe I only needed 1.5 cups however I had 5 cups total so the rest stayed in my gallon Ziploc baggie & go popped into the freezer for me to be able to try this recipe or any other again later next month. ( 3.5 cups of free turkey meat)





Step 3
The recipe calls for 1 small onion minced as usual I don't have an onions except green so I grabbed 5 stalks and quickly diced up w/ my kitchen scissor makes this job really quickly. Don't be afraid to use different types of onions then what a recipe calls for live dangerously and use green instead of white lol or maybe dice up a nice red onion it would give this lots of color.




Step 4

I had to dig in my freeze for my pre-diced stash of celery (2 stalks was what I needed for the recipe) makes meals like this go quicker as well. I see I am getting low on my celery I will purchase 4 bags and diced it all up at once saves time and common sense why dice it 2 -4 time a month if you use celery that much?
I never have regular carrots but I had a bag of what I call munching carrots I need 2 carrots so I just grabbed what looked like enough for yield around 2 and diced away.




Step 5

I washed 3 potatoes and left the skins on and diced up really quickly as well.




Step 6
The recipe called for 2 cups of water and 2 chicken bouillon cubes to yield 2 cups of broth . As usual I don't have them ( they contain a yucky ingredient called MSG I get really bad headaches from this so I skip that when I can) as you can see the label says NO msg :O) So I opened this box and used 2 cups.






Step 7 In a large pan or stew pot melt 2 tbsp of butter I ran out of my dd lactose free butter so I used oil..since the butter is made with evoo so regular canola oil will be fine.




Step 8 In the heated oil drop the carrots/celery/green onions cook until tender then add in the chicken broth and bring to a nice quick simmer.



Step 9
While the carrot mixture is cooking now is the time to add the spices the recipe calls for parsley I have none..& oregano I have none..and salt and pepper Hey I have those... I decided to use garlic powder since dd loves garlic and Italian seasoning since it's close along with salt and fresh ground pepper.



Step 10
DD is lactose intolerant and she can use lactose free milk so that is what I used in the recipe. 1/2 cup of lactose milk in place of regular moo. I poured the milk into a cup to come to room temp.





Step 11
You will need 3 tbsp.of flour I would assume that any type could be used for this step like rice or even whole wheat.



Step 12
I guess I better get the pans ready since I will be making these for me and my dd I decided to use mini loaf pans for a few reasons in place of a circle pie plate.

1 reason takes up less space in the freezer.

Reason 2 dd doesn't like peas and corn and I want to add those to my pie

Reason 3 this allow us to try different extra ingredients to each loaf.



Step 13
Time to drop in the diced potatoes into the boiling chicken broth to cook until tender the smaller you diced (all your food) the quicker it will cook and also you will avoid different sizes being over/under cooked




Step 14 Cook until tender this took about less then 15 mins.




Step 15

In a small sauce pan heat the remaining 2 tbsp of butter ( used oil)




Step 16 When the oil is heat/bubbling add the flour to the pan and stir well to mix up and cook.




Step 17 This is what the flour mixture well look like before you drop in the turkey.







Step 18 Drop in the turkey and coat well.



Step 19 Slowly add the milk and keep mixing well.





Step 20 Drop the turkey mixture pan ingredients into the larger pot of carrot broth mixture and mix uo well.




I like lots of veggies in my food so I pulled from my freezer stash a bag of corn and a bag of peas to add the my pot pie.. DD doesn't like them.



I also wanted to add some shredded cheese to mine as well and since I have NEVER made pie crust I grabbed the leftover pie crust hiding in the lower pull out drawers.



Step 21
I wanted to make these in my toaster oven plus I didn't want to have any tipping/spilling issues so I placed in on a cookie sheet. I then scooped Turkey filling into each then added the extras to the ones that needed them. (remember don't mix them up and forget which is which this happened to me and dd got and upset tummy w/ issues bad mommie!!!)




Step 22 roll out your pie crust dough



Step 22 Wing it and flip your pan over onto the crust and cut around it



See just wing it a lot..



Step 23 THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE PERFECT :o) I RAN OUT OF CRUST AND USE THE SCRAPS TO COVER ONE (TASTED JUST FINE TOO)





Step 24 Make sure you remember to cut slits of you can use a small cookie cutter to cut cute air hole shapes.





Step 25 Bake your pies for 45 in a 350 *F oven until crust is golden allow to cook some before removing. They will freeze/reheat well too :O)

Finished at 11am however I had to stop in between to wash dishes/grandma stopped over to pick up something so was busy for 30 mins and then drove to library and got some DVD's while they cooked :O) Multitasking baby..


Verdict: Picky DD loved them ate 2 however she accidentally got my extra veggie/cheese one and I guess it was so go she didn't notice ( extra veggie yippie) however she got sick but loved the pie so I will make sure to make mine first and put them up :O) I love them as well only change would be to do crust tops & bottoms and add more chicken broth filling was a little dry.