Bread Bowls and Ogre Stew

As previously mentioned, Jeremy's parents came for a visit. It was lovely to have them here. We got to see them when we went to the baby blessing in Idaho the week before. They got some good time with their grandkids there then came to spend good time with their grandkids here (and their son and daughter-in-law).

One meal we had while they were here was Ogre Stew (you know we love it- most of us) in bread bowls. Yum. 

The recipe for the bread bowls I use is Italian Bread Bowls from Mel's Kitchen Cafe. I wanted to make sure I made enough bread bowls so I doubled the recipe but I neglected to separate it into two different bowls for the first rising time. Ha Ha Ha.

I went about my business with a timer set and when I finally looked over, it was so high then a little bit later it was dripping down the side of the bowl. Ha Ha Ha. Everybody got a kick out of that since everybody was there hanging out on Hanging Out Day, April 19.

The bread bowls turned out and the stew in the bowls was sooooo good, of course. I love the recipes in The Fablehaven Cookbook. 

By the way, April 19 was also Garlic Day and Ogre Stew has garlic powder in it. 

Baking and Cooking

I'm thankful I know how to bake and cook. Sometimes the things I bake and cook are simple, sometimes they're more complex.

I'm also thankful for food bloggers and cookbook creators and for the recipes they produce.

French bread rolls from Mel's Kitchen Cafe are my go to rolls for making sliders.

 

I love A Season of Family Meal Plans (all four volumes) by Jordan Page where I got the recipe for Cheesy Chicken Sliders (in volume 4- Fall).

I'm thankful I've gotten better at learning substitutions in cooking or learning I can just leave things out. Only one pan of the sliders had cheese (based on family preference) and that's okay.

I'm also thankful I don't always have to follow a recipe when throwing dinner together. Spaghetti, garlic bread, and salad is something everybody in my family will eat.

I made sure to use the garlic and onion spaghetti sauce since November 8 was Bram Stoker's Birthday and Cook Something Bold and Pungent Day. It's tradition to cook with garlic that day. 

National Garlic Day 2024

I'm enjoying trying things out in A Season of Family Meal Plans by Jordan Page. There's definitely some shelf cooking going on, too, which is the point. Use what you have. Make substitutions.

Definitely some new flavors, some of them so good. We made red beans and rice and hush puppies for the first time. Yumm. Definitely going to do that meal when it comes around again next year (and I want to make hush puppies again sooner than next year just because they tasted good).

I made Salsa Chicken in the Instant Pot. The other recipe with that meal was Cheesy Southwest Rice. How it turned out was I made tostadas out of corn tortillas in the oven. We had those and the rice and lettuce and the chicken topped with sour cream or whatever. Yumm.

 

Some of the meals were so so. We made Spring Minestrone and Garlic Bread Swirls.

 

Some of the dishes I couldn't stop picking at when they came out the oven. I made American Goulash and Garlic Parmesan Cauliflower and I don't know how much of the cauliflower I ate before it got to the dinner table.

 

Some I didn't get pictures of.

 

Some I don't want to talk about liking or not liking because I want to finish this blog post and go to sleep.

Ham and Cheese Sliders and Classic Cobb Salad.

Caribbean Pork Chops. We had leftover Cheesy Southwest Rice along with pineapple rounds, sliced tomatoes, and bread and butter.

 

And of course we celebrated with some of the meals. For National Garlic Day on April 19, we had Tomato Garlic Pizza. I liked it. I thought it would make a good base for a vegetarian pizza. Add some bell peppers and red onion on there? Mmmm mmm.

Sometimes I still can't believe I was such a picky eater when I was little.

More April Celebrating... With Food

Since we're so busy with school at home right now, most of our celebrating revolves around the menu plan.
April 13 was National Peach Cobbler Day. Oh, yes. Mmmm. It turned out well. And currently I've got peaches in the freezer for two more cobblers. Jr. Jr. turned out to be the biggest fan of this peach cobbler. It made a lot (not everyone in the family is a fan) so there were a lot of leftovers and he was happy to have some whenever he could.

April 14 was National Dolphin Day. We ate tuna loaf. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. We made sure to use dolphin safe tuna. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

Mmm, putting this blog post together, I want tuna loaf again. I should put it on the menu plan.
April 19 was National Garlic Day. I made twisted breadsticks with butter and garlic salt and parmesan cheese on them because I was originally planning on making garlic bread but I didn't have French bread for it (I had made French bread but we were saving it for Monday's dinner) so I used a trick I learned from ourbestbites.com to season them after they come out of the oven and I used some dough we had in the fridge.

April 19 was also National Hanging Out Day. We do a lot of that at home with our family, not with friends right now.
April 20 was National Cheddar Fries Day. I made a simple cheese sauce from The Food Nanny Rescues Dinner and poured it on French fries (not homemade). Jr. used the French bread I made and made apple cinnamon French toast casserole from the book, Budget Bytes. Yumm.

April 21 was Tuna Rights Day. We didn't have tuna loaf. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. We had salmon patties. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.

April 22 was Earth Day. Jr. Jr. drew and colored this fun picture for a school assignment and our family got out for an Earth Day walk together.

We didn't let the kids get out the bike and scooters this time and this was my interpretation of how some of the kids reacted.

April 23 was National Picnic Day. We had picnic food for dinner.

April 24 was National Pigs in a Blanket Day. Nichole had a lot of fun wrapping the bits of hot dog into fun blanket shapes. Creativity strikes again. If you give Nichole a medium...

April 25 was East Meets West Day. We had teriyaki with angel hair pasta (recipe from hillbillyhousewife.com) and watched Big Hero 6 (San Fransokyo?)

April 25 was also National Zucchini Bread Day. My zucchini bread didn't turn out as well as it normally does- the batter anyway. It still tasted good, it was just a weird consistency this time- more like a cookie batter than zucchini bread batter. Oh, well. I've got more zucchini in the freezer waiting to become bread.

I also forgot to take a picture of it before we ate half.
April 26 was National Pretzel Day. Homemade pretzels, yumm.

I took a break in the middle of making pretzels so we could go for a Sunday evening walk as a family. This is another thing we're encouraged to do as a ward. Go out for Sunday afternoon or evening walks, say hi, but don't get too close. It was nice to chat with some people while they sat on their porches or from across the street.

Lots of celebrating with food... and walks. Gotta work off all those food calories, I guess.
P.S. April 27 was National Tell a Story Day. We didn't celebrate with food but one of Nichole's assignments was to read her short story and have it evaluated, which she did on that day.

Garlic Heron

April 19 was Garlic Day.  My parents gave us garlic from their garden and we used some in spaghetti sauce.  Then of course I forgot to take a picture.  Oh, well.

We do have pictures of the new balloon sculpture at Ashton Gardens for the Tulip Festival.  Combining our love of birds with our business, we made a great blue heron standing in water with a group of cattails (or as Jeremy likes to call them KAT-tails since I made those).

Garlic Day 2017

April 19 is Garlic Day.  
Garlic bread?  Spaghetti with "cheese and garlic" spaghetti sauce?  Why not?

Eating with your fingers instead of a fork?  Why not?

Tulip Festival

April 18-May 3 at Thanksgiving Point is their annual Tulip Festival.  We went together as a family today.  Of course we chose to go on opening weekend.  It was packed.  I've never seen so many people at the Gardens.  There's a reason we went today, though.  Yesterday, Jeremy spent the day at Thanksgiving Point building a balloon sculpture for people to see as they headed into the Gardens.

We wanted to go see it in person as a family.  And decided to stay for the tulips.  Tee Hee.

They were gorgeous.  We went to the Gardens a couple weeks ago when the tulips were green and not blooming yet, but it was amazing to see the change with all the colors.  

Gorgeous.  I'm so glad we went.  We've been looking forward to the Tulip Festival for a while.

 "Tiptoe through the tulips."

Anyway, we continued to make a day of it after we left Thanksgiving Point.  We stopped home for a bit to eat and headed out to do some family photos.  Not your typical family photos, though.  Family photos with... balloons.

Jeremy needed some pictures for work so we got to help him out.
On our way home, we stopped at a friend's house and gave their family these balloons.  We thought the kids might have fun acting out some stories with balloons.  These are good friends, our kids visit them sometimes, so when they opened the door our kids immediately ran in and started playing, even though Jeremy had told them repeatedly we were not staying.  Sigh.  Apparently some of our children did not hear Daddy.
After chasing them back to the van, he told them they needed to act like vampires.  They may not go in unless they are invited in.  We thought that was pretty funny since today, April 19, is Garlic Day.  Also goes along with vampires.
When we got home, we had a late dinner (including garlic bread), and everybody was tired.
The End.
P.S.  It was a good family day.

National Garlic Day 2013

Today was a good day.  Some highlights-
Jr. Jr. and I went for a walk around Manila Creek Pond.  We went to see the ducks and we saw ducks, swallows, fish jumping, Canadian geese, a killdeer, deer, a type of hawk, and another bird flying around that we didn't get the best look at.  We also saw some people fishing.  But it was cold so we could only make it once around the pond before we had to get back to the car to warm up and go home.

For dinner we had spaghetti and garlic bread since April 19th is National Garlic Day.  The kids helped make the garlic bread.  Jr. Jr. put the bread on the cookie sheet, Jr. spread the butter, and Nichole sprinkled the garlic salt.

We had Family Home Evening tonight and for the treat and activity, we opened a package of Bubblicious to teach the older kids how to blow bubbles.  It took a while, but by the end both kids were able to sort of blow a few bubbles.  We let them know it will take practice.  We'll get another of those good bubble blowing bubble gums sometime and do it again.  This one was strawberry flavored, but my husband and I both have fond memories of our childhood chewing grape flavored bubble gum.  Unfortunately, I cannot find any anywhere.  I can find strawberry, watermelon, and bubble gum flavors, but not grape.  Ack.  Does anybody know where I can find grape flavored Bubblicous/Bubble Yum/any of those good bubble blowing bubble gums?

Oh well.  It was a good day.

Why Are You Crying?

Jeremy:  Do you want me to run over to the grocery store and get some more french bread?

Kristin:  No.  I can use the picture for a blog post.

November 8th has two holidays to combine.  It is Bram Stoker's birthday and it is Cook Something Bold and Pungent Day.  Like last year, I decided to celebrate by making garlic bread to go with our dinner.

While the garlic bread was in the oven, I decided to drain the spaghetti noodles I'd been cooking.  Unfortunately, I placed my finger in the wrong spot while holding the colander so when I poured the noodles and water in, the hot water went right through the holes onto my finger.  So as I tried to hold the pot and the colander with one hand and run cold water from the sink on the finger of my other hand and call Jeremy in to take the pot and colander, the garlic bread spent too much time in the oven and burned. 
When I opened the oven, smoke was coming out so I tried to call Jeremy to push the mute button on the smoke detector so it wouldn't beep beep beep at us, but I couldn't remember what the smoke detector was called so I burst into tears.
To go along with all of this, I have a cold, and there has been some excitement going on around here with the attention Balloon Bag End has been getting lately.  It's good stress.
So when the kids came in and asked, "Why are you crying?" I explained everything that was going on to them then summarized, "Hormones, pain, illness, and stress.  It can all be categorized into stress."

And guess what.  Nobody complained about the burnt garlic bread.

Garlic Day 2012

For Garlic Day, April 19, we had some friends over for dinner.  We didn't go overboard, but there was garlic in our soup.  Yummm.

Other things we did today:

Jr. reminded me that he has some really good moments.  He volunteered and vacuumed the living room.

Ta-Da.

Let's watch the Muppets in French.  Jr.'s reaction:

Uh.

Mommy, Look.  I'm wearing a mad tutu.

What?

And the cutest thing (I don't have a picture for).  I got Jr. Jr. to say Happy.  Garlic.  Day.  Repeating me, of course.  One word at a time, but he does do it... sometimes.  But if I ask him to say, "Doctor Who?"  No problem.  He does that every time.