Category: MISC

Slow Cooking Thursday ~ Sweet & Sour Tangy Chicken

  • 4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts

  • 2 cups brown sugar
  • 1 cup white vinegar

  • 1/2 cup 7-up or Squirt

  • 4 tabespoons minced garlic from the jar
  • 4 tablespoons apricot pineapple jam
  • 4 tablespoons soy sauce

  • 2 teaspoon white pepper

Place chicken breasts in bottom of the crock pot. Whisk the remaining ingredients together and pour over chicken. Cook 6-8 hours on low. Thicken juice with a bit of cornstarch if you like. Serve over mashed potatoes or egg noodles.

Slow Cooking Thursday is hosted by Diary of a Stay at Home Mom.

I'm Here for the Party!

The Ultimate Blog Party hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom
The fun starts March 7th (that’s tomorrow)!
Consider yourself invited.
Sorry guys, but this one’s just for us!

There were over 1,000 participating bloggers last year, and this year looks to be even bigger and better. The balloons are blown up, the decorations are hung, my dancing shoes are on, the music is blaring and we’re ready for a P-A-R-T-Y! Come join us.

Food for thought

Expanding your spirit sounds like a deep, heavy, mystical thing to do,
but it’s really not. Put simply, all it means is realizing that “stuff” happens
for a reason — and that reason doesn’t always pertain to you.
~John Paul Jackson

2 1/2 Bean Salad

I love 3 bean salad, but I hate kidney beans. So, I developed this recipe to cater to my own likes. If you like kidney beans, add them back in.
  • 2 cans green beans
  • 1 can wax beans
  • 1-2 oz. jar pimentos
  • 1 cup white vinegar
  • 1 1/4 cups sugar
  • 2 teaspoons salt
Drain beans and pimentos and place into a jar with enough room for the liquid. In a sauce pan dissolve the sugar and salt into the vinegar and bring it to a boil. Let it cool. Pour it over the beans. Marinate at least 24-48 hours for the best flavor.

What a relief Kitchen Update


My new linen closet.
It’s so nice to be able to empty all those plastic totes after all these months.

These all have just the first coat of stain, but oh what a relief.


I’ve been remiss in keeping the updates done on the house. For those of you just tuning in, we were FORCED into this remodel when the previous owner did not include a horrendous case of mold on their disclosure form. It’s taken us 16 months to tear out and put back most of the downstairs bathroom, kitchen, upstairs bathroom and part of our bedroom. We have finally put back the insulation, walls and almost all the cabinets (yep, it was in the cabinets too) in the kitchen. We were able to get the majority of the cabinets from a cabinet guy going out of business and are able to do the remaining one with over the counter cabinets from home depot. The ones from home depot have to be stained, stained again and then sealed, but are great especially compared to the price of ‘designer’ cabinets.

Thursday Thirteen 13 #7 My dog's 13 favorite "TOYS"

1) kitchen hot pad
2) hubby’s eye glass case
3) hubby’s winter glove
4) the cat
5) remote control
6) bath towel
7) couch pillow
Are you starting to notice the trend? None of these are actually dog toys!
8) bathtub drain plug
9) hubby’s clean sock
10) the soccer ball he deflated with first bite
11) any piece of paper laying within his reach
12) his own tail
13) Last but not least, his own KONG ball ~ the only one he can’t destroy!

Menu Plan Monday

  • Monday~Tacos with home made tortillas and re-fried beans
  • Tuesday~Lasagna with Salad and home made balsamic vinaigrette
  • Wednesday~Meatloaf with twice baked potatoes
  • Thursday~Creamy Tomato Soup with baked Parmesan Croutons
  • Friday~Homestyle Macaroni & Cheese with grilled bratwurst
  • Saturday~Spaghetti & Meatballs & Salad
  • Sunday~Hamburgers & Potato Salad

I also do Favorite Ingredient Friday hosted by Overwhelmed with Joy, so this is making a great addition to help keeping me on track and finding so new recipes! And I’m also doing 5 NIGHT DINNER CHALLENGE hosted by Sommer Designs. Doing more than one helps keep me on track, though you’d never know this week!!

Did I mention we're on diets around here? Easy Diet Cake & YummyToo!

We are on a diet around here, but today was hubby’s birthday and he needed a cake so I made this one. It’s one of our favorites.

PINEAPPLE ANGEL FOOD CAKE
1 box Angel Food Cake Mix
1 large can crushed pineapple with juice

Mix them together, pour into a 13×9 baking dish and bake 30 minutes.

Voile’, a light and fruity dessert. If you want to get fancy spoon Comstock cherries over top before serving.

21 day Inspiration challenge

Day 2 – today’s theme revolves around hard work, stick-to-itivness and common sense. I have stories and ideas in my head that need to get out and as I said before I tend to jot them down on the nearest scrap of paper and let them stack up as I deal with the day-to-day dealings of life, but I’m also an organized perfectionist that can’t always create in chaos, at least not for writing. I’m great with chaos if I’m cooking, quilting or scrap booking. It just doesn’t work for journaling and writing, at least not for me.

I started the day by making this mess and then finished it with the hard work of sorting and categorizing old themes, story plots, character descriptions, making new side tabs for the journal that included all of these plus objective trains of thought, thought provoking questions and surveys, processes, fiction, cookbook, recipes, pictures and references. I stuck to it all day and came up with a finished journal that’s ready to be used day in and day out to create that great American novel someday and a super homestyle cook book. As for common sense, I should have used it years ago to sort through this mess. What a welcome relief to have it accomplished to this stage.

I also altered my graphics for my journal pages so they’re permanently the way I want them.

Plateaus and downfalls

I found this theme on Michelle’s blog for her Thursday 13 entry and thought that since I was at a plateau time on my diet, this would be a good place to follow suit and list those treats that tend to be my downfall. Get my fill of them so to speak.

Now this first one isn’t a downfall, but a saving grace. FLAVOR ~ FLAVOR ~FLAVOR is the key to make good for you foods tasty. Lemon Juice has become one of my saving graces for flavor along with white pepper.

Check out this recipe: Brussel sprouts on Botox a year ago

There are a few big ‘Snack Attack’ items on my list:

  • CHEEZ-ITS ~I can overdose on these. Remember the Lays Potato Chip commercial that said you can’t eat just one? Well, it was originally written for these, I’m sure of it. I even have to eat them salt side down on my tongue.
  • HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE & COCA-COLA ~When I was a little girl and came home from school my grandma would sit my uncle and I down at the kitchen table and take Hershey bars from an old Riley’s toffee tin box and a couple of bottles of coke from the refrigerator and place them in front of us so we’d sit still, do our homework and be quiet so she could watch General Hospital and finish her ironing. Now that was a bad habit in and of itself, but I still to this day love to have them together.
  • PIZZA ~I’m such a pizza fan that I’ve only once met a pizza that I didn’t like since we’ve moved to the U.P. Everyone keeps telling me that the pizzas here are long standing traditions and that the locals don’t know any better. They have walls of frozen pizza here and none of them are very good in my opinion. There are times I’d give anything for a Numero Uno Slaughterhouse 5 or a Round Table Ultimate garlic supreme.
  • SOURDOUGH BREAD ~Warm and toasty with fresh melted butter right off the San Francisco pier – need I say more?
  • DONUTS There isn’t a donut variety that isn’t tempting depending on my mood. I love donuts, but didn’t have to have one until there weren’t any to be had. Here in the U.P. they call them Bismarks, there sold in the grocery store since bakeries are far and few between and they just don’t taste the same as a Winchells, Dunkin’ Donuts or even a Krispy Kreme.

I cherish the trips away from here when I can have a great pizza and a good doughnut and oh some really good Tex Mex too.