recipes & crafts

As I’ve mentioned before I tried Tortilla soup for the first time a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was so good! I was shocked…for some reason I pictured it to be this big chunky vegetable-like soup. Not at all! It had a couple pieces of tomato and some corn and the rest was a tomato-like soup/broth.

I would love to replicate the soup, but there are a gazillion Tortilla soup recipes out there. May as well just start trying them!
I tried this crockpot recipe first…

It had a kick to it. My guess it was a combination of the green chile peppers and cumin. I cheated a bit because as soon as I opened the can of whole tomatoes which I was suppose to just mash and then chop the onion I knew I wouldn’t like it. So I mixed all of the ingredients together except the corn and chicken and put it in the blender. I preferred more of a puree soup then a chunky soup (like I had at the restaurant!) I also left out the black beans because the other dish I was making also called for beans and that is just too many darn beans! I knew the younger kids wouldn’t love it, but Ken and Andrew devoured it. I thought it was just so-so, it was bit to spicy for me. We topped it with Tostitos Dipping Strips and a dollop of sour cream.

The other dish was a quesadilla recipe of beef, flour tortilla shells, corn, tomato sauce, black beans, and cheese. I left out the green chilies because again, I didn’t want them in both. I hoped that the kids would eat at least one of the items. Blake really like this casserole and Andrew ate it after I picked out his black beans. Ugh! Karli and Chase didn’t eat either of these items very well. I sort of knew they wouldn’t.

This is the problem with trying new recipes…the kids are so picky that it is hard to find something that they all will like. I just keep a good stock of fruity oatmeal, yogurt, cereal or PB&J…to give the kids that won’t eat whatever I make. Ironically I noticed that I don’t eat that much of whatever I make. I find by the time the food is done cooking I am sick of looking at it and I’m not hungry. That could be a good thing!

Our Ratings and Links for Recipes:

Crockpot Chicken Tortilla Soup
Our Rating: B-
I would still like to try and find a better tasting Tortilla Soup recipe.

Quesadilla Casserole
Our Rating: D
Just wasn’t that spectacular and the kids didn’t like it…so I won’t make again.

Another yummy dinner! The Tuscan Chicken Milano was so tasty except that I put a wee bit too much salt in it. I have a habit of overdoing it when it calls for “salt and pepper to taste”. Oopsies! It was still really good…it tasted like something I would order at the Olive Garden. The broccoli cheese soup was so easy to make and Chase claimed that it tasted better than McDonald’s Broccoli soup! Nevermind that that McDonalds soup is broccoli cream soup…not cheese, but who cares. I love soup…I could eat it year round no matter how warm outside. For this recipe I had to puree the broccoli in a blender and that made me feel like a real cook. LOL!

Our Ratings & Links for recipes:

Tuscan Chicken Milano
Our Rating: B+
I think next time I would consider adding some vegetables in the mix and definitely more mushrooms.

Broccoli Cheese Soup
Our Rating: C
It was good, but I don’t see me making it again anytime soon. Next time I won’t blend the broccoli quite so much. I like my broccoli a bit more chunky in soups.

One of the recipes that Ken picked out for this week was Baked Penne Pasta Lasagna Style*.

This was really easy to make, very similar to preparing lasagna. I especially liked that the recipe called for ground turkey and fat free ricotta cheese. It was really really yummy and the kids liked it as well. I could taste the turkey, but no one else could tell the difference from using ground beef. Andrew actually helped me put all the ingredients together because he didn’t have baseball practice for once. He has been pretty excited about trying some new foods despite that this recipe called for mushrooms. I’ve been cooking with fresh mushrooms rather than canned and they taste so much better. One error I made was I used the entire box of pasta, which was more than 7oz, so I should have increased my spaghetti sauce as well. It could have used more sauce, but it had just the right amount of cheese and was quite tasty.

BAKED PENNE PASTA LASAGNA

INGREDIENTS
Barilla Plus Penne, 7 oz cooked and drained
Turkey, Ground turkey, 93% lean, 16 oz
Ricotta cheese, fat-free, 8 oz
Mozzarella Cheese, part skim milk, 16 oz
Egg, fresh, 1 large
Basil, 2 tbsp
Spaghetti/Marinara Sauce, 4 cups
Garlic, 3 clove
Salt, 1 tsp
Pepper, black, 1 tsp
Hot pepper flakes 1/2 tsp (I substituted with pepper seasoning)
Mushrooms, sliced 4 oz
Parmesan, grated 4 tbsp

DIRECTIONS
Lightly spray 13 x 9 inch baking dish with cooking spray.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Brown ground turkey and drain.
Add the marinara sauce and hot pepper flakes and 1/2 each of salt & pepper and the sliced mushrooms.
Let sauce come to a simmer and simmer while combining the cheese layer.

In a medium bowl combine ricotta cheese, 1/2 of the mozzarella cheese, and 3 tbsp freshly grated Parmesan cheese,the egg, the fresh garlic chopped , the fresh basil chopped, the 1/2 tsp salt and pepper.
Mix until well combined.

In the prepared baking dish spread 1/3 of the sauce on the bottom of dish, press 1/2 of the pasta on top of the sauce. On top of the pasta spread all of the cheese mixture.
On top of the cheese mixture place 1/3 of the sauce mixture, and then the other 1/2 of the pasta topping with the remaining sauce.
Sprinkle with remaining mozzarella and Parmesan cheese.

Bake uncovered in preheated oven for 35-40 minutes.

Tastes great with Caesar salad and fresh bread!

Our Rating: B
I would make it again and it’s easier to make than messing around with lasagna noodles that never quite fit in the pan right!

Before baking…

*Recipe from SparkRecipes.com

Last night Blake and I started working on his Mini-Society project for Social Studies. I hate this project with a passion. I’ve already had to do it with Andrew twice in the past and it is not fun. They have to make and sell products to other kids in the school to learn about economics. The other classes come visit their “store” and buy their items with fake money. They allow you to make food one day if you would like as long as it is packaged up nicely. Or you can provide a service like painting nails, face painting, hair coloring, etc. Blake thought those things were too girly even though I told him they would be much easier to do. Andrew was the same way though so I shouldn’t be surprised. I joked and told him he could bring in a fine tip marker and give people freckles, LOL. They sell products on 3 different days and each day you have to have at least 20 items to sell.

You can make whatever you want as long as you don’t spend more than $15 on the supplies. We came up with the idea to make sports themed magnets. We bought different colors of foam board and cut out letters to represent the college teams; University of Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Michigan State. Other than the board you only need glue (I bought the foam board glue, not sure if it is actually any different than regular glue), scissors, and magnets for the backs.

I printed letters from the internet and I made templates for each one.

Blake traced the letters on the foam board and cut them out. It was hard to not be picky about his crooked lines. We used two colors for each letter and glued them together. To make the top color we just used the regular size template and cut it down a little smaller. Then we used magnetic tape for the backs. Pretty easy project and they came out nice enough for a 4th grader! He has to have 20 done by this Thursday so we got those done tonight. He doesn’t have to have the rest done until next week so we will probably work on those towards the end of the week. For once we have something done ahead of time instead of waiting until the last minute.

Not sure why, but whenever the kids go back to school I always seem to immerse myself into a dozen things at once. It’s like fall cleaning of my life. You know what though, I am not complaining one bit. I love being busy, as long as some sort of schedule is involved. I like having a plan, even if I don’t necessarily stick to it completely.

I ordered 2 and 1/2 years worth of photos -July 2006 – December 2008. I had to put all of the photos in order because the photo place gives them back out of order. I guess I could have ordered each month separately, but that probably would have ticked off the photo printer person huh?

I then divided all the photos up. The piles consisted of:
-Each of the boys had their own sports memory book
-Each of the kids had their own school scrapbook
-Vacation photos – 1 for Disney from 2007, 1 for Myrtle Beach 2008 – these go into their own photo album
-All other photos go into family photos albums that are organized chronologically of course. Why I am so anal about this, I have no idea. It’s nothing super fancy. I buy random photos albums and shove them in.
As of today all the misc photos are put into their perspective photo albums. The sports and school photos are organized and in appropriate piles waiting for the pages to be designed.

It feel great having this task done. Well not done completely, the boys sports and school scrapbooks are not complete, but the photos are all organized at least.

And because I am a total nerd and convinced someone out there really cares to see what I am doing with my free time when I stay up too late, here are some pics.

The front covers of the Sports Memory Books:
(I have Chase’s book on order and will have to start his next!)

Example of some pages:

Andrew & Blake’s School Scrapbooks, Karli & Chase’s books are on order:

I found these really cool pages for the books where they have a grade on each one. I bought coordinating colors for each page. Luckily when ordering Karli & Chase’s books, I found the papers online so I could order them for their books as well!

Most of the pages look like this…pictures thrown in the sleeve, waiting to be designed:

The bookshelf in the basement is where I store all of my completed photo albums: