Starving artists and turning a closet into a reading nook.

Hellloooo, everybody! The Fresh Pioneer is back and we're going to get crafty today!

 We're all sick here, so mostly we've been sipping hot tea and clear broth. I could take a picture of the tea package and call it a post, right??? I'm sure wishing I had some of Julie's home made chicken stock right about now.
 Anyway, I thought we'd show you an update on our closet-turned-reading nook.
Now, some of these pictures are a little shocking. Just remember that I have six kids.

Fine, that's no excuse. Just remember I'm a pack-rat at heart and I have passed that trait down to all my kids. But we're determined to be more organized and donate what we don't use. Because if we don't love it enough to put it away, then someone else needs it more!

When everything is out of the closet, where does it go? And why do we have so many toys? Oh, the questions that will remain unanswered...

Why, why, why??

 So, closet is cleaned out, doors off (they were perpetually broken and you could only squeeze in your upper body to grab a coat or two). The painting begins!

 The work crew.

 He can look cute and paint at the SAME TIME.

 The closet was a 'home made' project from the previous owner (who also built the house, sometime in 1930 or so). I like his shelves, so I'm keeping them.

 Drying. Watch carefully... something may change... any moment now...

 Shelves painted, dried, and replaced.

 I bought a drill at Home Depot and put up some shelves. Not really happy with the quality (of the product, not the work, smarty pants!) but they will do.

 The kids picked out the curtains... Hanging on a tension rod above the frame of the doorway.

 Closed curtains. Cool. Another changing spot. Toddlers may not be running naked quite so often. Unless they just use this space to strip and then return to the world deshabille.

 The kids picked out some wooden trim and painted in the vine scroll pattern. Pretty!

 Ana plans her space. Everyone has made requests for the artwork. She and the others will take turns making it become a reality.

The castle is outlined.

Putting up some of our Fisher Price toys. I want to get rid of an old shelf in the room, so I'm  rearranging.

 LED strip lights were next. I bought a kit at Home Depot. It came with everything I needed, including little sticky pads for the plastic runners. Plugged it in and... pretty!

 I like the soft glow.

 I did manage to install it upside down. Ugh. But, it still works and the kids figured it out really quickly. So, they can adjust the lighting themselves.

 A dragon takes shape.

 I bought a lot of Martha Stewart sparkly craft paint. Grrrrr. It's basically a clear overlay. So we had to go to Walmart and buy standard craft paint. Lesson learned.

 More dragon.

 The door is painted, Rapunzel in the left tower. A poor prisoner to the right.

Now he was somewhere to stand.

 More soft storage boxes arrive from Amazon. They were $5 (not the dragon, but he was too cute to resist) and an excellent deal. You never know what the quality will be like, but they aren't tissue paper thin, but actually woven fabric.

 Some paper origami dragons that we found in a book. Easy and fun!

 Another origami dragon.

 Ana giving me her "je suis une artiste" look.

 Not sure what these characters are. A mouse and someone flying a bat?

 So, now the shelves are little more tidy. I still need to sort out books. So. Many. Books.

All in all, this has been a really fun project so far and it's definitely been worth the struggle of sorting and scrubbing and painting. After the bean bag arrives, we should be putting on the finishing touches and letting the littlies settle in. I've heard talk of camping out in there, but we'll see how that goes. All those dragons and the shadows might be too scary!

Until next time (when I promise to have an actual recipe)!

Christmas Toys and Treats

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Are y'all shivering in your boots? As I type this post, my office is a balmy 52 degrees. Our downstairs heater has been out since early Sunday morning. Right about the same time out latest Arctic blast rolled in. Lord willing, our repairman will be by later today. In the meantime, thank goodness for space heaters.

 

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. We sure did, winding it down with a week at the ranch. I must have wound down just a little too much, though, since I came home with a cold. You know what that means... Time for some homemade chicken soup, heavy on the garlic and red pepper flakes. (You can find that recipe here.)

 

Guess what Santa, aka my husband, brought me for Christmas?

Don't you love the red?

My 20 year old classic white KitchenAid mixer has shown signs of wearing out these past few years. Her gears were grinding, she'd groan and I always feared she'd give out completely right in the middle of a recipe.

 

So this lively addition to my kitchen is very much appreciated. Makes me want to bake some bread (recipe here) or anything else that needs to be mixed. Not to mention uses the nice, hot oven.

By the way, my old mixer still has a little life in her, so she will be providing our oldest daughter and her family with some much-needed assistance in the kitchen.

 

The other gifts the cook in me appreciated were these babies.

 

A shiny new Cutco chef's knife. I LOVE Cutco knives. Excellent quality and they're guaranteed forever. Seriously, forever. You send 'em back and they sharpen them. If something is broken or the company doesn't like the way it looks, they send you new one. How cool is that?

 

 And you've heard Julie and I touting Penzey's spices. So I was really excited when my SIL gave me a bag of their hot cocoa mix. Oh. My. Stars. You'll want to hide this from the kids. Best hot cocoa I've ever had. Rich cocoa flavor with just a hint of cinnamon. Makes drinking cocoa a real treat.

 

This week, I'm hoping to settle back into a somewhat normal routine. I still need to take down Christmas decorations. Of course, I have revisions due by the 20th, so Christmas stuff might have to wait. At least the kids will be heading back to school. With any luck, I'll even be able to hear myself think again.

 

What are you doing this first full week of 2014?



Muffin in a Mug! My journey to becoming a Trim Healthy Mama

Confession time. I hate diets. Every diet I've tried has failed, mostly because I don't want to just lose weight - I want to be healthy.

And it seems that every diet I've seen requires you to either restrict calories to an insanely low level so you're hungry all the time, or it requires you to avoid one or more of the basic food groups. And there's this nagging voice inside me that says both of those approaches are nuts. There isn't any reason why a normally healthy person should have to do either one!

It seems I haven't been the only one thinking that. There's a new book out (okay, it's been out for more than a year, but I don't jump on bandwagons quickly) called Trim Healthy Mama.

This is my copy with Post-It tabs I've added. I have to be able to
find my favorite recipes quickly!

Written by two sisters, the whole approach to this eating plan is to help your body use the fuels you give it in healthy way.

What I love is that no food groups are eliminated (some foods are eliminated - like sugar, white flour, white potatoes - but not the food groups), and that there is no calorie counting. Read that again: no calorie counting.

The only rule - and this is the main point - is to not have large amounts of carbs and fats in the same meal, and always center each meal or snack around a protein.

But it's important to have both carbs and healthy fats in your diet (our two main fuel sources), so you switch it up. I usually have a higher fat breakfast (a S-atisfying meal to fill me up), and then a higher carb lunch (an E-nergizing meal to keep me going), and a snack that could be either one (I often have a chocolate milk shake for snack - how is that for "diet food"?). And supper is a healthy meal with my family.

Between October 1st and December 20th, I lost 15 pounds eating this way. (We won't talk about Christmas and cookies!)

Even though some of the recipes in the book call for special foods, I've found that I can eat well with very few ingredients that I didn't have in my pantry before. And many of my favorite recipes fit well in this eating plan - like Ruthy's favorite salad (recipe here) or my Salmon with Garlicky Spinach (recipe here). You just need to remember the rule: don't have large amounts of carbs and fats in the same meal.

Easy peasy!

But now, the part you've been waiting for! My favorite breakfast!

This is called Muffin in a Mug, and if you're keeping track, it's an S meal (S for satisfying). It's from the Trim Healthy Mama book, page 256, but like most recipes I use, I've adapted it. I added a bit of salt to this one, and a Tablespoon of almond milk to add moisture - necessary for high altitude cooking. You'll have to experiment to see if you need it where you live.

Ingredients:

1 egg

1 1/2 Tablespoons Golden Flax meal

1 1/2 Tablespoons almond meal

1 1/2 Tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

2-4 teaspoons Truvia, depending on how sweet you like your muffin (I use two)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

one pinch salt

1 Tablespoon coconut oil (doesn't have to be liquid)

1 Tablespoon unsweetened vanilla almond milk

Beat the egg with a fork in a large coffee mug (12 ounce works best). Add the other ingredients and stir well. 

Microwave for one minute. The top of the muffin should look dry and the edges starting to pull away from the sides of your mug.

Turn the muffin out onto a plate, split in half, spread each half with butter, and enjoy!

Okay - let's look at some of the ingredients.

Here's the golden flax meal I use. I found it at Sam's Club, but I'm sure you can find it at Walmart.

Almond meal - I bought a pound of Bob's Red Mill Flour almond meal in October, and I keep most of it in the freezer. It was expensive, but has lasted a long time. I recently bought some raw almonds, and will make my own almond meal when I need more.

Truvia is a great natural, non-sugar sweetener made from stevia. Why use things like aspartame when this is available?

Coconut oil. This bad boy is a victim of the war on saturated fats, but you can read about all its benefits by searching online. Coconut oil is full of medium-chain fatty acids - so good for you. Some people even claim it helps with weight loss, but not if you eat too much of it :)


You can explore the Trim Healthy Mama life further by going to their website (www.trimhealthymama.com), and if you're interested in pursuing this plan, be sure to read the book. It goes into the science behind this way of eating, explains the plan, and is chock-full of recipes.

Meanwhile, I think I'm going to have a Thin Mint Milkshake for snack today....

Waist not, want not for 2014.

As I type this, the wind is blowing, the temp is dropping and we aren't promised a lick of snow. The downside of being this far south. Power outages are imminent so I got up early to make sure I got my coffee fix and put my chicken carcass on to make broth. Coffee first helped me stand the sight. Not very pretty. But it is the beginning of soup and soup season.

I keep my chicken bones in the freezer until I am ready to make more broth. Somehow makes the process feel easier.

January's definitely the month of soup. Between needing to drop those holiday pounds, save some money, and battle the weather forecast, soup is the ticket.ManO and I are starting a new budget and insurance plan. I'm launching an etsy vintage shop in the coming months. And we are planning a trip to Ireland in the fall.  Hopefully my waist will be whittled along with my expenses.

So I'm headed to fridge instead of the grocery store. No way am I going outside, except to put the broth on the screened porch to cool down. Flash freeze if you will! So I looked in my fridge to see what I had for soup besides the broth. Fresh black peas with bits of ham, turnip greens, carrots, and celery. Sounds like the makings of soup to me.

I always have this fear that my Depression era grandparents would be appalled by the amount of wilted produce I throw away. I'm resolved to throw veggies in freezer bags for future meals rather than let them die from refrigerator dehydration.

I think my mother and my MIL would also like it if I whittle my waist down. They may not look it in these pictures but both these women had waists measuring in the lower 20 inches! Both got married in cold weather too. My granddaddy had to wrap my mother in a sheet to carry her in her velvet wedding dress through the ice and mud to the car and then the church.

Anyway, back to the soup! I just threw everything in the pot and cooked it for thirty minutes since everything had been precooked. Added a bit of hot sauce and voila! "Good luck" New Year' sides turn into a good-for-me meal.

 

I had enough to freeze for future winter lunches! Yay! 

What leftovers do YOU throw in the soup pot? Are you starting the new year with the resolve to lose wait or gain savings? 

Janet Dean's Breakfast Casserole

Missy, here. Before Christmas, fellow Seeker blogger Janet Dean was talking about making her breakfast casserole every year for her family. Since I knew I was going to be having a houseful for breakfast Christmas morning, I decided to ask her for the recipe. Janet generously shared!

6 eggs, beaten

3 cups milk—whatever kind you use

1 tsp salt

1 tsp dry mustard

6 slices bread, cubed. Thin sliced sandwich bread takes 8 slices

1 ½ cups grated cheddar

1 lb deli ham, chopped

1 can mushrooms, drained and chopped

Beat eggs with whisk.

Add milk, salt and dry mustard. Mix, then add cubed bread, ham, cheese and mushrooms.

Pour into 9 x13 pan. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Bake at 350 degrees uncovered for 55 minutes. Let set before cutting into squares.

Missy again…

My sister won't eat beef or pork, so I made this with sweet turkey sausage.

I used 8 slices of regular sandwich bread and didn't even bother cutting off the crusts. I also left out the mushrooms since my kids would have refused to eat it. :)

And would you believe I forgot to take a finished photo?? Well, yes, you probably would believe it with the chaos of Christmas.

It turned out amazing! Along with the cinnamon rolls we had (thank you Kelly West for the yummy homemade gift!), it was plenty to serve 10 of us. We loved it. Thanks, Janet, for sharing!

Enjoy!

Thumbprint Cookies and Other Oddities of Life!

Thumbprint cookies have been around as long as I can remember, and that's a pretty long stretch of time!!!!

(note to self, buy more anti-wrinkle cream!!!!!)

Mostly, I'm not a fan. I see them as 'ho-hum' cookies.....

Never jumped on the bandwagon of thumbprint cookie aficionados, until..... oh, until!!!!!

My favorite airbake baking pan disappeared.

Yes, that is the start to this story, and this gives you reason to MOCK ME because it is probably in this house somewhere.... sigh.... but I can't find it.

Enter Beth, stage right.... she gets me a new pan while doing some Christmas shopping and presents it to me and it has a thumbprint cookie recipe on the wrapper from the Food Network....

Now, I don't watch cooking shows, I'd rather write books and mess around with little kids, and make a ginormous mess of my kitchen but this recipe tweaked me....

It's all about ratio in recipes. I look at a recipe and wonder if the ratio is my-kind-of-balance, and this one was.... almost.

But I saw these cookies dipped in almonds and filled with McCutcheon's raspberry jam (because Ruthy didn't make her own jam this summer, MY BAD!!!!)

I was enlightened. It was an epiphany kind of moment, because what if... oh what if????  Wait. I dare not say it. Let's play with pictures and see if my idea works!!!!!

Butter and Jam Thumbprint (Food Network  recipe)

1 3/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 large egg
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

(for dipping:)
1 beaten egg white
1 tablespoon water
Whisk these together in small bowl

1 cup crushed almonds
1/4 cup sugar
Mix almonds and sugar in bowl



(Their original recipe called for unsalted butter and less vanilla. I like this version better) 

Mix flour, baking powder and salt in bowl. In mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar together until fluffy... length of time depends on your mixer.

Beat in egg and vanilla until just combined... add in flour mixture by adding half at a time, and just mixing it in... then second half and mix until just blended. This is what gives these butter cookies a melt-in-your-mouth texture to die for!

Form cookie dough into balls about an inch or inch-and-a-half across. Roll cookie balls into egg white, then almonds.

Place on ungreased cookie sheet about 2 inches apart. Make a small "pond" in the cookie with your thumb.... this will level some during baking, so I re-do it once they're out of the oven. Umm, it's a good idea to wait a minute before re-doing the holes because bandaged thumbs are not in style!!!!  :)

Bake in 350 degree oven until just "golding" around the edges, about 10-12 minutes. Cookies will still be light but firming. They'll finish firming during the cooling process.

Some of these are filled with raspberry jam (but sour cherry jam works well, too!)

These two little rascals are filled with raspberry jam and piped chocolate frosting...

And these guys are filled with Hershey's Perfect Chocolate Frosting, one of our favorite family recipes:

This new/old recipe is now a staple in our cookbook of life!

Happy New Year!!!! (Easy enchilada soup and the UGLY TRUTH)

Hellooooo, everybody!! Happy, happy New Year!! I loved 2013 (like really, really loved it) but I am even more excited by 2014! It's time for planning ahead, dreaming big dreams and making all those awesome resolutions. 

(First of all, I promise not to use so many exclamation points. Unless I'm really, really excited. *ahem*)

Let's get to today's recipe and then I'll drop the ugly truth on you. 

What's that, you say? You're not aware of the ugly truth??

Well, it's all around us, including in this recipe (and I don't mean the chicken, Kav!) and sometimes we have to smudge a few of those sharp lines to make the world a bit happier. Are you with me? No? Well, let me start and maybe you'll catch up on the way.

Behold. Shiny enameled stock pot. The cast iron stock pot left a HUGE rust ring on my lovely, vintage sink so it went to a good friend. (Something about leaving the bottom a bit wet and setting it on the white enamel. Whatever it was, it kills me that this sink has lasted a long, long time and I was the one to mark it up. UGH. Ugly truth, right there.)

 Apparently, enameled pots will NOT harm the pretty vintage sink. 

Unless I drop it. 

Which I won't.

 So, ingredients needed: one big bag of chicken breasts (fresh or frozen, but since this is a quick meal, the bag came out of the freezer). Corn tortillas. Cheddar cheese. Enchilada sauce.
You can make this with red sauce but I've never really liked red enchiladas.

Fill your stock pot half full of water. Add the sauce. Add the chicken. Turn it on high. (Sorry these pictures are so dark. It's winter. I need a sun lamp for my food pics.)

 Boil the chicken.

 Add ten to 12 corn tortillas. Let them boil with the chicken and stir a bit so they're in fairly large pieces. Ovoid over-stirring. That would make enchilada mush, which is still tasty but rather icky looking.

 Add about five or six thick slices of cheddar cheese and let that melt into the soup. This gives it a really nice, creamy flavor.

 Remove the chicken and chop into small pieces. Now is a good time to taste for salt, pepper, etc. I usually add a bit of salt and some cumin powder. MMMMMMM.....

 Turn the oven on broil. Cover the top of the soup with thick slices of cheddar cheese. I saw this recipe with Pepper Jack cheese and it looked GORGEOUS. But I don't like Pepper Jack. Put the stock pot in the oven (make sure it's oven safe, of course).

 After 3 minutes or so on broil, pull the pot from the oven. The cheese should be melted very nicely over the top and a bit crunchy. Think onion soup. Think lasagna. Think enchiladas...

Now, here's where the ugly truth comes in. I could just pop this on the table and everyone could  serve themselves, but you know I'm a FOOL for ramekins. I love how they provide a bit of portion control (all that late night writing and eating and writing and eating has not been kind to my rear end). 

But the recipe I saw had the ramekins put in the oven on broil, so they cooked separately.

 Two problems with that:
One- I don't want to clean off the baked-on cheese from a bunch of tiny ramekins. Nobody got time for that.
Two- the ramekins would be incredibly hot. I have toddlers (okay, and older kids who grab their food without thinking) so I avoid handing out 300F serving dishes.
 Here we'll blur those rough edges of truth and make a little happy in our world. Nothing dishonest, just... easier.
Dip the soup from under the layer of cheese and add a bit to every dish. Then, using a knife, cut a bit of the cheddar and lay it on top. Ta-DAH! Baked enchilada soup and nobody is going to the ER. It's still plenty hot, but not enough to hurt you.

 I added a bit of green onion to mine. A friend put corn in hers. The flavor is really amazing and if I had time, I think I might want to experiment. But as it is, I'm sticking with what I know...

 Now, the only ugly truth (cleaning up) involved here will be with this baby. And since I've made this dish three times now in this enameled pot, I'm confident in saying I won't be scrubbing for hours. Not even ten minutes. One dish dinner! Great for a crowd and it keeps well in the fridge. Leftovers!

And now, time for some more of the UGLY TRUTH. This is one of our closets, disemboweled. The innards of the little boys' closet was so tangled and so jumbled that nobody even knew what was in there. Sometime in May, my husband "sorted" part of the laundry room and "stored" things in this closet.
Yeah... Scare quotes and all.
Disaster.
 (And yes, I realize it's January, but what can I say? I've been too busy to deal with the closet problem. Until now.. Now is the time of reckoning...)

 One day, I'd had enough! (Specifically, Sunday evening.) We took everything from the closet and sorted it out. Bicycle helmets stayed, but girl backpacks from ten years ago? Out. Booster seat from 7 years ago? Out. Hallowe'en costumes for little girls when I've had only boys for the last ten years? Out.
You get the idea.

 Also, this ancient old house had 'do it yourself' closets made by the previous owner/builder. Note the awesome paneling. This was all over the house when we bought it 12 years ago. I think this is the last remnant. The closet doors never worked right. EVER.
(P.S. Like my home made light switch covers? One Lego magazine, one layer of mod podge. La voila! Lego light switch cover that made little boys squee with happiness.)

So, everything out. (Sorry, this pic is pre-clean up. Before we swept and scrubbed. Gross, eh?) In preparation for the new carpet in this room, I've got a new plan for this closet. No more ugly truth behind closet doors. No more heaven-knows-what in this space.

Ready??

Here's the plan:

A reading nook!!

You can find a hundred ideas like it on Pinterest here. Go check it out and see what I mean. And next week I will update on our progress! The little people are VERY excited to have their own reading space. We have bookshelves in every room, and they have two in their room, but THIS will be fun. I'm letting the kids decide among themselves what sort of design it will be. So far, I'm hearing a lot of dragons and castles and Legos. We shall see!

 Have a wonderful start to your NEW YEAR!!! I've partied hardy over on Seekerville last night for their New Year's Eve party so I'm going to need a nap.

But first, we're going to open our 'Good Things Jar', which we've been filling of all the wonderful things that have happened this year. We started January 1st 2013, and we'll open it today! We'll read each slip and applaud every small success, rejoice over every blessing, and reminisce over every good memory. 

From my family to yours, may this year bring peace and joy! Happy New Year!