At Home on a Friday Night

I just washed the floors of my (huge) kitchen on my hands and knees.

I can guarantee that I have never done that before in my entire life. Maybe I could get into this stress relief through cleaning that so many claim.

Why? Maybe by brute strength, sheer will, I could convince someone to come see our house?

Potential selling points to add to the descriptions:
--I use natural cleaners! Well, mostly.
--We have all CFL lightbulbs!
--I'll cook you dinner if you come see it!
--You can keep our Adirondack rocker, our coffee table...and anything else you want

It's extremely disheartening to have had no showings in a whole month. I had such a peace during Mr. V's job-search process. Now that we know where we're going, I want to GO. I don't want to wait on God.

But I don't think I have much of a choice.

I'm trusting, trusting that His plan is the best. Better than anything I could dream up in my mere little head.

In the meanwhile, I'll distract myself by reading His Word ... and cleaning. A lot.

Family Recipe Fridays: D-Hall Feta Pasta

This is stretching it a little as a family recipe. But if I want to keep this carnival going for any length of time, I'm going to have to do that!

Jen taught me how to make this recipe in our dining hall at college my freshman year. It was totally my fallback for when I could not stomach chicken strips or even my special concoction of Kix, peanut butter, and strawberry frozen yogurt.

Then, the summer after freshman year, I taught my mom to make it. She LOVES anything with feta. The rest is history. We just love this stuff, and it's a great lazy dinner that doesn't take much actual cooking.

Feta Pasta

D-Hall version: Scoop some spaghetti noodles into a cereal bowl. Top with feta cheese, bacon bits, and peas from the salad bar. Add one little container of butter, and microwave for a minute or so. Mix well.

For the rest of us:
1 lb. spaghetti noodles, cooked, with a little pasta water reserved
1 package feta, crumbled
1 cup frozen peas
1 lb. bacon, fried crisp and crumbled (I always do mine in the microwave)
1 T. butter

Combine cooked spaghetti, butter, feta, peas, and bacon. Stir together well and let the feta melt a little bit. If it is too dry, stir in a little of the pasta water until desired consistency. If you're real fancy, you could top with some fresh parsley.

Join the carnival! Link up to your specific post (NOT your blog address, the post permalink) about a recipe your family has passed down. If you don't have a blog, you can leave your recipe in the comments section.

[Please pray for my dear friend Carolyn, who has linked every time I've done this carnival. Her father-in-law died of a heart attack yesterday, and I know the family could use your prayers.]

Once-a-Month Cooking Recipes: A Review

Since some people asked when I did it, I decided to do recipe reviews for all of the Once-a-Month-Cooking dishes Meredith and I made in May. While there weren't many recipes that wowed me, I would totally do it again for the ease of being able to pop a dish in the oven. It was a great experience. We did the April Menu from Once a Month Mom.

Egg muffins: YUM! They got very puffy. I warmed mine about 45 seconds wrapped in a napkin to absorb water, as recommended. I think I would like them better with bacon or sausage, but understand the ham was because that's what other recipes called for and made it easy. I love having a hot breakfast I can stick in my bag for work. I did find, however, that as I approached 6 weeks in the freezer, they were inedibly salty. Strange?

Frozen fruit cups: I think I should have gotten the cream cheese mixture a little more smooth--it is rather chunky, but that's my fault. Meredith and I used blackberries instead of blueberries and canned pineapple instead of fresh. The fruit is delicious and I've really enjoyed these. Also great for on-the-go!

Chocolate Chip Cream Cheese Coffee Cake: Absolutely wonderful! I would definitely make this again.

Ham & Potato Pockets: The first time I made these by myself, I made them with dehydrated onion flakes. I think I liked that better than the actual onion. I had a hard time stuffing these all in the crescent dough. And the batch we made during OAMC didn't get done enough, causing them to be doughy when reheated. But when I made them right--the first time--they were great!

Slow Cooker Chicken Barbecue: I didn't really care for the flavor of the BBQ sauce. I've made Mr. V eat it, and he likes it.

Cheddar Butter Burgers: Um, buttery! The first time I made them in a frying pan, so they sat in all the leaked-out butter. Still tasty, just different. Loved the cheese all the way through. A little small for a big bakery bun.

Chicken Pesto Spinach Salad: Pasta salads were not meant to be frozen. This one defrosted OK, but I had to mix in more mayo to make it creamy. The nuts needed to be added after the defrosting, because frozen and defrosted they were soggy. The crunch of the nuts would have been nice.

Hammy Cheese: The flavors were good, but the pasta dried out because there wasn't enough sauce. We added some broccoli and that was a good touch.

Ham and Hashbrown Bake: Fattening, yummy deliciousness.

Pizza-Stuffed Meatloaf: You can see my opinion on it here.

Burritos: Wow, these were absolutely delicious. Meredith and I kinda oops-ed on the recipes and ended up mixing all the sauce and beef mixture together. So we put some inside and some on the top. Still fantastic. Go, Aunt Susan (creator of this recipe)!

No Fuss Chicken Cordon Bleu: The chicken/ham/cheese part was tasty. I thought the sauce got a little runny upon defrosting, but it was still pretty good. I liked the carrots in the sauce as a great vegetable addition. They still had a bite after all the cooking and I loved that!

Maple Honey Mustard Pork Chops: We grilled these and didn't boil down the marinade for the sauce. I didn't taste a lot of the flavors because of this, but they were nice and tender and pleasant.

Beef Fajitas: I really enjoyed this recipes. The marinade gave the beef a good kick! We used canola oil to replace the tequila, and that was fine. We are eating this again tonight, and I'm excited!

Orange-Apricot Pork Chops: Dumped the whole bag of stuff, still frozen, in the crockpot and let it cook on low 10 hours. Really tasty. As Mr. V pointed out, it was using normal ham flavoring (cloves, brown sugar, cinnamon) on pork chops instead. The cloves really made it. Might be better as a winter dish with the spices, but very tasty nevertheless!

Alone in the Kitchen

Curled up on my couch, plate in hand. Vanilla-scented candle lit; the point of early evening where it's not too bright but I do not yet need to turn on a light. Tart apple slices with creamy havarti cheese. Summer sausage. Crisp carrots with a spinach dip. Alone, I listen to love songs from Broadway, snuggle down in my robe and extremely old leopard-print slippers, and dream of words coming together.

I am reading a book that seems so situation-appropriate right now it’s almost funny. I ran across Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant while I was trying to find some books to take on vacation a few weeks ago. I remembered seeing it on Paperbackswap as something I might be interested in a while back, so I grabbed it and packed it in my bag. While I was too busy attending to the baby and playing pool with my sister to read as much as I thought I would, I did get around to starting it a few days ago.

The book is a collection of essays on eating alone. I confess I don't mind eating alone in a restaurant. Cooking alone, however, is a completely different story. I love food; I love to eat; and yet, when I am by myself, I often come home, open the fridge, stare at it, and eat nothing. It’s not worth the trouble.

I am fascinated by the stories in this collection about what people cook for themselves. Saltines with cheese; anything that only uses one pan; soup; often, people cook the same thing over and over again without tiring of it (like asparagus).

I am not home for dinner by myself much, but if I am I pretty much fall back on two options: pierogies cooked with sauerkraut and Polish sausage or a plate of Granny Smith apples, havarti cheese, salami, vegetables, and spinach dip. Both dinners I would never expect Mr. V to eat. Things I like. Simple pleasures.

I’m confronted right now with the possibility of living just with Libbie during the week for months as we wait for our house to sell here in Nashville. Mr. V has to go to Chattanooga in August whether it has sold or not. It’s a frightening conjecture, but one I know many couples have gone through and survived. I may go literally insane trying to be a single, working mother…and I may either lose or gain 40 pounds. Cooking for myself is not my area of expertise. As one of the authors in the book explains, my joy in cooking is serving it to someone. I often tell people my spiritual gift is feeding people.

My relationship with food is so awkward, so strange: I love it, dream about it, fear it, hoard it. Eating alone, unrestricted by the foods my husband doesn't like, makes me bite my nails. It could be a happy place … or my very own seventh circle of hell. No matter how much I wish it were just sustenance to me, it's not. Too many years of battles, too many words read and eating plans attempted.

Dining alone. Oh, my.

What do you eat when you cook for yourself? How do you cook for 1?

Precious Memories

I love this picture.


While it is in no way very attractive of me, or of Libbie really, it's the moment.

It was her first bath at home. She was three days old. She absolutely hated the bath, but afterward I wrapped her up in her little towel, held her to my chest, and smelled her head. For an hour.

I swear that Aveeno stuff has something in it to make it intoxicating.

She still has the same sweet face when she sleeps as she did at three days old. It makes my heart hurt a little every time I go peek at her, asleep in her crib at night.

_____
This post is for the MckLinky Blog Hop, whose theme is "Favorite Picture" this week. Come join in!

Menu Plan Monday

Planning meals for Sundays is a laugh in our household. For one, we almost always eat breakfast at Sunday School and eat out after church service. Then, we are either too stuffed for dinner or we scrounge around for leftovers. So now you know why I am no longer going to plan for Sundays—it just seems silly!

I am trying to empty us out of my May once-a-month-cooking so I can maybe tackle it again (with Megs, if she wants)! I have so enjoyed having these meals to pop in the oven when I get home from work.

We apparently had a weird week, because we didn’t get to many of the meals I planned last week. I ended up making two meals on Wednesday night that we then noshed on the rest of the week (except for my dinner with Megs on Thursday). Saturday night we ended up eating the rest of my Cheddar Butter Burgers with friends to celebrate the 4th. It was great!

Here’s my plan for this coming week.

Monday
Breakfast: oatmeal, peach
Lunch: leftover Mexican Stuffed Shells, raw vegetables, ranch dressing
Dinner: leftover Chicken Cordon Bleu

Tuesday
Breakfast: Eggs with cheese, toast
Lunch: Out with work team
Dinner: Beef Fajitas, Rice

Wednesday
Breakfast: Sweet Potato Hash
Lunch: Sandwich, Peach, Veggies
Dinner: Church (Roasted Chicken)

Thursday
Breakfast: Sweet Potato Hash
Lunch: Frozen Meal (not part of the “whole foods” plan, but it’s in the freezer so I feel obliged), veggies, fruit
Dinner: Ham and Hashbrown Bake, veggie

Friday
Breakfast: Grits with cheese, toast
Lunch: Sandwich, Fruit, Soup from cafeteria
Dinner: Leftover Ham and Hashbrown Bake

Saturday
Breakfast: French Toast or Pancakes, Bacon
Lunch: Leftovers/Sandwiches/Whatever’s in the Fridge
Dinner: Baked Pasta with Meatloaf Mix from OAMC*

For more menu plans, click over to I'm an Organizing Junkie.

* Meredith and I both thought the Pizza-Stuffed Meatloaf was inedible. I think it didn’t lend itself to freezing; also, we used high-fat meat because we were buying in bulk and being frugal, and so the meatloaf was sitting in several inches of fat while it cooked. I couldn’t seem to get mine hot, either.

I love Kate at Cooking During Stolen Moments so I hate to write that! I am sure when she made it fresh it turned out just fine; it was just something about the freezing. Meredith suggested we use the meat mixture for spaghetti, so that’s the basic way I am going—defrosting the meatloaf, browning the whole mix, draining off all the fat, and then mixing it with spaghetti sauce and combining with some whole wheat elbows I have on hand. Then I will sprinkle with more mozzarella and bake.

Oh, Ugh

I have a really lovely menu plan. It's going to go right here in this very post.

Unfortunately, our computer is being extremely temperamental at home. We had no Internet yesterday at all and it was out this morning (it's not the actual Internet, it's the computer refusing to use it. Weird, huh?).

And since our printer is wireless, it wouldn't print the post either.

Hopefully we'll get things running and Mr. V can send me the post I've already written later today.

'Til then, happy Monday.

Why don't you take this time to visit some of my top referring sites and give them some comment love?

Money Saving Mom
I'm an Organizing Junkie
$5 Dinners
Once a Month Mom
The MawMaw
Like Merchant Ships
Balancing Beauty and Bedlam

A Dinner, in Pictures

My sweet friend Megs and I have been trying to get together every couple weeks. We have dinner at my house on a Thursday night, Mr. V's night out with the boys, and get to talk while the baby is asleep.

This Thursday, Megs asked if she could make Crispy Yogurt Chicken from The Pioneer Woman Cooks. Um, YES! And then she suggested we take lots of pictures so we could both blog about it.

I decided to stick mostly with the PW theme and made her Fresh Corn Casserole as a side dish. I also made my mother-in-law's salsa with a kick of fresh parsley that we had from the chicken. It was all delicious!

Here is the corn casserole before it went in the oven. I forgot the butter (PW would never forgive me) but it still turned out awesome. I used peaches-and-cream corn from the Nashville farmer's market that Carolyn picked up for me--YUM!

Libbie wanted to help, but I wasn't so sure about letting her touch raw chicken and sharp knives, so she ate banana instead.

Here's Megs posing with her Parmesan cheese. She added some to the panko for the chicken breading--it was perfect. The chicken was phenomenal!

Beautiful ingredients for the salsa--onions, tomatoes, green pepper, and jalapenos all from the farmer's market.

Finished chicken. We used legs and thighs from Megan's farm share. We kind of forgot to take a picture before we started digging in.

And the corn casserole ... also only remembered once we were serving seconds!

I also made a variation on French Yogurt Cake from Baking: From My Home to Yours, Dorie Greenspan's cookbook, that Chocolatechic shared back in March. She used orange zest, orange marmalade, and chocolate chips--and so did I! It was soooo good. Very moist and perfect and refined. And it would have been pretty if I'd been able to get it out of the loaf pan in its completeness. Oh well. Go look at Chocolatechic's pictures, they're pretty! And pretend mine looked just like it.

It was a wonderful night.

Family Recipe Friday: Layered Salad

Is there one certain recipe that seems to be at every extended family gathering you have?

For me, it's my Grandma R's layered salad.

Grandma and Grandpa R* with Libbie a few days after we came home from the hospital

It is seasonless. The ingredients are nothing terribly out-of-the-ordinary. And it's graced the buffet for every family holiday I can remember.

The crunchy iceberg, the creamy mayonnaise, and the rolly-polly peas meld together for a truly delicious bite. I am honestly not a big mayonnaise fan; I eat pasta and potato salads and the like, but if I have it on a sandwich I just spread the tiniest amount. Thinking of eating straight mayo makes me gag--it is seriously the grossest thing I can think of. But the mayo in this blends with the other ingredients and seasonings and I never think of it as anything but a good dressing for the lettuce.

This salad would be great for any 4th-of-July gatherings you're planning this weekend. My grandma always serves it in a Pyrex 9 by 13 pan.

Grandma's Layered Salad

Break up one large head of lettuce into bite-size pieces. Spread out in a 9x13 dish. Then add the following layers:

1. 4 to 5 stalks of celery, chopped
2. 1 c. frozen peas, uncooked
3. a sprinkling of dehydrated onion flakes
4. 1-2 c. mayonnaise, spread (enough to cover)
5. 1 lb. bacon, fried and crumbled
6. a sprinkle of salad seasoning
7. 1/2 c. or so of Parmesean cheese

Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours before serving.

Do you have a family recipe to share this week? I'm trying out the new MckLinky system for sharing--it seems to be working great for others! I'd love to read your recipes and hear what is on your table each Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Patriot Day. ;) Please link back to Vanderbilt Wife so everyone can find all the links. Feel free to use the FRF graphic by saving it to your own computer and uploading it to your post.



*I always called my grandparents Grandma and Grandpa S (the whole last name) and Grandma and Grandpa R (same). NO ONE in Tennessee calls their grandparents "Grandma and Grandpa." It's Nana, Pawpaw, Mawmaw, Memaw, Nona, Granny... is "Grandma and Grandpa" Northern jargon? (My parents and grandparents are from Ohio.) It just always strikes me as one of those funny things.

Linky Love

1. "Stop, Thief!" from Is There Any Mommy Out There? [I came across this via BlogNosh--a great way to find wonderful posts that may be older.]

2. "The Power of Motherhood" from The Secret Life of Kat

3. "Legalism vs. Authenticity" from Crewsin' Together [aka my friend Scott]

4. "A Twinkling" from Pensieve [another older post she linked to, still beautiful. When ya writing a book, Robin?]

5. "Learning Compassion in the Church of Chick Fil-A" from Playgroups Are No Place for Children

6. "Sacrificing Memories" from The Life, Faith, and Creativity of Jessica Turner

7. "Contentment with Frugality" from A Simple Walk

8. "A Hobby of Mine" from The Pioneer Woman

9. "Top Ten Myths about Mom Bloggers" from Sarah in Real Life

10. "Bacon Always Comes to the Rescue" from BooMama

If you're really desperate to have my recommendations before I do this kind of post, you can always subscribe/friend me on StumbleUpon or see my Google Reader shared items.

I'm going to link this to OhAmanda's Top Ten Tuesday, even though I'm writing it on Thursday. Hope she doesn't mind!