Things That Make Me Smile

 

                            Not a great picture but I love driving by this Alpaca Farm in Albers.

This chicken was processed last Friday and eaten last Sunday. You can't get fresher or more delicious than that. 

Sopaipillos

I'm not sure exactly how 'traditional' this recipe is but I can tell you it is delicious, fast and easy.

I don't even remember where I got the recipe from I've had it for so many years. And the bonus is you will have extra chocolate sauce and lasts for 3 days in the fridge and is delicious over ice cream.

Chocolate Sauce:

1/2 Cup Brown Sugar

Pinch of salt

1/2 Cup unsweetened cocoa powder

3 Tbs. unsalted butter

1/2 tsp. vanilla

Sopaipillos:

Oil for frying

Flower tortillas cut in strips or triangles

Powdered sugar for dusting

Bring to a boil 1/4 Cup of water, sugar and salt stirring until the sugar has desolved. Wisk in cocoa until smooth.  Remove from heat and add the butter and vanilla.

Heat oil in a pan until approximately 350 degrees.  In small batches fry the tortillas turning once.

Place tortillas on a paper towel or cooling rack and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Plate and drizzle with chocolate sauce.

Enjoy!

Chapter 53

Today is the beginning of Chapter 53 for me.  With the pandemic still going strong it will just be the big guy and I celebrating at home.

Friday we went to our local meat market and picked up two beautiful large beef bones with meat.  I started the broth yesterday at 2 pm and when I woke up today the kitchen smells amazing.  I love making homemade chicken and beef broth.  There are so many ways to use it. The bone marrow is so good for you.  I use organic/local meat bones because with the broth you really want to make sure it was a good healthy animal.

My maternal grandparents had a farm when I was growing up.  So I grew up eating the meat that they raised.  I can remember my favorite part of a pork chop or chicken bone or steak bone was to suck the flavorful marrow out.  (Some may think that is disgusting, but it is really delicious.)

Bone Broth
2 large carrots
2 medium onions
4 stalks of celery
celery tops
4 thumb size pieces of ginger
5 cloves garlic
Chicken carcass or beef bones
Cover with water

Cook in slow cooker for 24 hours.

I don't add any spices to the bone broth because I use it to make various different dishes.  When I warm the broth for that dish I will add the spices.

This is how the beef bone broth looked when I started it.

A few dinners from this past week.

All beef hotdog, chili, cheese wrapped in an eggroll wrapper.  

Ground beef, pinto beans, Mexican seasonings over rice with a cheese roll up.

An amazing grass fed sirloin.

Saturday night dinner.

A simple but tasty lunch

We don't eat lunch meat very often and we probably only eat ham once or twice a year.  For some reason though I was craving a maple glazed ham, swiss cheese sandwich.

I took beautiful chibatta bread, spread a little mayo and Dijon mustard on it.  Added sliced ham, swiss cheese and red onions.  I toasted them in the oven for about 5 minutes to warm the inside. I ate mine with a side of bread and butter pickles.

Simple but craving fulfilled.

Things That Make Me Smile

I LOVE the colors in our back yard this time of year.

My orchid at work is blooming again!  It is 4 years old.  It bloomed solid for two years.  I repotted it and now it is blooming again.  

Saturday morning pancakes.

Family Favorite Flapjacks

From The Wooden Spoon Bread Book

Sift together and set aside...

1 cup unbleached ap flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

In a large bowl, beat...

2 eggs

Blend into beaten eggs...

2 teaspoons sugar

2 tablespoons oil

1 cup buttermilk

Add dry ingredients to the buttermilk mixture, stirring only until dry ingredients are moist.  Bake on a lightly greased preheated pan/griddle at medium high, turning only once.  Makes approximately 10 4 inch cakes.

Have a wonderful Saturday!!

Random Thoughts and Taco Sauce

 Our state has been basically shut down for almost seven weeks now. I know so many people have been negatively affected by this pandemic.  I am not trying to make light of it but to avoid going crazy I need to look for some of the positive changes this has brought.

1. No visitors, furloughed or work from home employees means prime parking spots are available.  I no  longer have to walk so far to get in to work.

2. 90 percent of the routine meetings have been put on hold.  This saves SO much of my time.

3. I'm now allowed to wear jeans to work.

4.The big guy is at home all day so he has been doing laundry, cleaning up the kitchen, etc.  before I get home from work.

5. With him being home in the evenings we spend more time together and have dinner a little earlier. Which is something we rarely get to do during the work week. From what I've seen on social media, a lot of families are back to doing more activities as a family.

6. Air pollution all across the globe has significantly decreased. Animals are out running around in areas typically full of people.

7. Our eating routines haven't changed much but it is so nice to see so many people cooking from home.

8.  The pace of life has just slowed down and it is a very welcome change.

 Home made taco sauce. This stuff is awesome.  I even had some on my scrambled eggs one morning.

                                                      A gift from one of my Doctors.

Stay safe everyone!                                 

Things That Make Me Smile

I couldn't agree more!

Happy Easter and a dessert recipe

Happy Easter!  I hope everyone is doing OK and is able to spend at least a little bit of today doing something fun and or relaxing.  We are going to have a nice dinner of ham, mac and cheese, asparagus, deviled eggs and black bottom cupcakes.  I made these for the first time probably 13 years ago.  They are easy to make a delicious.  Think of them as a nice chocolate cake with cheese cake in the middle.  Oh yeah!

Black Bottom Cupcakes:

Cream cheese filling:
8 ounces of room temperature cream cheese
1 egg room temperature
1/3 Cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Cream all ingredients together. I use a mixer.

Cupcakes:

1 1/2 Cup Flour
1 Cup Sugar
1/3 Cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 Cup water
1/3 cup oil
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix all dry ingredients.  Mix all wet ingredients.  Combine.
Pour into muffin tin lined with papers.  Spoon 1 heaping tablespoon of cream cheese filling onto the cupcakes.

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.

I have a large stash of cupcake liners.  I thought I would use the bunny ones for today since it is Easter.

Before baking.

Cool and Enjoy!

Update and a new flour

It's been almost a month since I've posted. In 2020 I had full plans on spicing up my blog, posting more regularly and then COVID 19 hit.

Since my last post the big guy has closed his TKD school, temporarily.  Our state is on essential businesses only until April 30th (maybe longer, TBD).  Since he had already planned to move to a new larger building in June we felt it was the right thing to do and hopefully re-open in June instead of paying expenses on a business that is not making any money right now.

We have not been affected by any of the shortages.  Being raised the way I was and having lived in hurricane territory for over 20 years has taught me to be prepared. So we are still eating very well and have plenty of toilet paper.

My position at the hospital has been deemed unable to work from home so I am still going in.  It is a bit unsettling to walk past the quarantine tents into the hospital to have your temperature taken and mini health screening as the beginning of your day. People are stressed, scared and emotions are raw.  It is a bit much some days. There is SO much more I would like to say about all of this but...will  not.

So enough about the pandemic.

A couple of weeks ago I purchased flour online from Janies Mill here in Illinois. https://www.janiesmill.com/  I usually use Bob's Red Mill and will continue to do so for most things but I wanted to try something new.  One of the flours I ordered was their Italian Style.

I used it today for the first time and made a pizza.  It made an amazing dough!  I used the same recipe I always use.

I highly recommend checking out the variety of products on their website and try something new.

Stay safe!

*I have no affiliation with this product or company.

Lock Down

The state of Illinois is on lock down as of 5pm today.  Other than essentials, everything is closing up and everyone is supposed to stay home unless mandatory work, picking up groceries or having health care needs.  I went back and forth to work all week and there was considerably less traffic already so a number of people have begun to stay home.

I was supposed to be able to start working from home Monday but TPTB have yet to get me set up.  Meanwhile positions that have zero contact with the physicians or patients have been home since Wednesday.  I have mixed feelings on it all. I don't want to stay home and be unable to help my doc's during such a difficult time but I'm also afraid of bringing it home to the big guy.  He is very healthy but is older and shouldn't take any chances.  We have a number of suspected cases in our hospital and they will find out today if they are in fact positive. Such a scary time for many.
I believe tomorrow  I'm going to text my leader and tell her that I will be there Monday but would really appreciate being able to work from home ASAP.

We are blessed to be stocked up on all of the necessities to stay home for a few weeks. Life can pretty much go on as normal.  I'm an introvert so I'm fine with staying home as long as possible.  The big guy though is a very social person so I'm not sure how much longer before he gets a little stir crazy.  We do have a large back yard though and the weaher is starting to improve so that will give him somewhere to go besides the house.

Last night I decided to make a little comfort food for dinner.  Beef sausage with peppers and onions, some corn on the cob from last summer that was in the freezer and one of my favorite ways to make potatoes.  You just cube potatoes and boil until they are about 2/3 of the way done.  About 15 minutes.  Drain and spread potatoes out on a cookie sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle on Chicken Salt.  Roast in a 350 degree oven until golden brown and crispy.

Chicken Salt:
1 TBS granulated onion
1 TBS granulated garlic
1 TBS paprica
1 TBS turmeric
1 TSP sea salt
*Store in a glass jar at room temperature

Uncertain Times

All schools in our state are closed until the end of March.  Panic buyers have wiped the town clean of sanitizers, paper products and more. Kroger and Walmart are not open 24 hours a day now so they have time to restock and sanitize the stores. Churches are canceling services.  The big guy owns a Tae Kwon Do school so we are thinking heavily of what we need to do.  The closest confirmed case is two and a half hours away from us.  We don't want to panic and suspend services but we don't want to take any chances either so we have to really think about this over the next day or two. 

I'm a level headed woman that doesn't panic. I'm pretty good at just rolling with it.  Whatever it may be. I've never been one to believe or expect our government to take care of me.  I take full responsibility for myself.  However I can't help but wonder how bad is this really going to get.  Is the media making more out of this or are they suppressing just how bad it truly is? Only time will tell I guess.

Jet has enough cat food and litter to get by for a month.  We have enough sanity items to get through a month.  I'm estimating we have enough food to get through at least a couple of weeks or more.  If we have to stay home for a few weeks there is enough books to read and lists to complete that we would not be bored.

On a positive note...the sun is shining, the forsythia is in full bloom and I am excited about getting outside soon to start my garden. I'm also making hummus today. I hope everyone can find a few positives as we move through these very uncertain times.

Hummus from FEAST by Anissa Helou

1 Cup dried chickpeas, soaked overnight in plenty of water with 1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 Cup tahini

Juice of 1 or 2 lemons

2 garlic cloves ( I use 4 or 5 because I LOVE garlic)

Pinch of sea salt

Combine all ingredients in your food processor and combine until smooth. I have a friend from India who told me to include one ice cube to make it even smoother and it  actually really does.

Garnish with EV olive oil

Serve with veggies, flat bread or pretzel crisps