Yummy Stew

As promised! Here is my first recipe. It's easy, and I'm sure that a lot of you have similar recipes, but it's so good that if even one of you makes this as a new recipe for your family it will be worth it.

My Slow Cooker Stew

Serves 8:

2 lbs stew meat

6 potatoes, roughly diced

1 lb baby carrots or 4-6 large carrots, roughly diced

1 onion sliced thinly (optional to taste)

1 (10 3/4 oz can) Cream of Mushroom soup

2 packages brown gravy mix (dry)

2 packages onion soup mix (dry)

8 cups water

In my nifty slow cooker, I brown my meat in my insert, but since most slow cookers are not stovetop worthy, brown your meat in a pan, then transfer to the cooker (and I do think this makes a difference in your stew). Add potatoes, carrots, and onions on top of meat. mix remaining ingredients together in separate bowl and pour over vegetables and meat. Cook on low for 8-10 hours or high for 4-6. Sometimes I cheat and leave it longer on high. This doesn't hurt the stew, it just makes my meat really really tender, which is never a bad thing in my opinion. This stew makes my entire house smell so good! I love this recipe, especially on a day like today (here in Utah, even though it's warm(ish), it's overcast. Enjoy!

Football Crockpot Series

About three days into football practice, Cord started to get really sad because he was missing out on home-cooked meals. The "sadness" with a little whining got to be a little much for me at the end of week one. To be honest, I welcomed the week of no cooking, although I understood where he was coming from...dinner at 8:30 was crazy and then a party at our house afterwards with the entire neighborhood (although so fun) was getting to be too much for my melancholy husband to take. I decided to take control. I made a compromise that if I would make dinner, we could still have the neighborhood over to make toilet bowl cleaner bombs if he had homemade stew first?!?! He agreed! My sanguine personality was satisfied!

Thus, with a little inspiration from Cindy, a fellow football mom going through the same anguish, I have decided to post some recipes that I love in hopes that you will enjoy these this fall...or any time of year. Some of these recipes will undoubtedly come from crockpot365.blogspot.com as I love Stephanie's innovative ideas...and others will come from my little "Mormon" collection, because I love three-five ingredients dumped. Others still come from trial and error in my own kitchen...so I guess you'll have a variety to choose from, but they will all have been eaten by our family first*.

I hope you enjoy reading and tasting these as much as I enjoy posting these for you!

*My kids are NOT picky eaters so watch out!

Oh what joys we find on Google! (long post)

By raise of hands, who's seen Confessions of a Shopaholic? Well I've been compared to Rebecca Greenwood more than once...by friends and family. I don't take that as a compliment by the way. I am working hard on controlling my spending habits and have done much better in the last couple of years thank you very much!

This morning Cordy and I were up way before the sun and we were lying in bed chatting about canning, school time for the kids, work, and started talking about Linked In. He mentioned that his profile was not showing up even though he had just gone to the trouble of creating it (and it IS trouble for him because he doesn't do social media). I told him I'd check Google and see what came up and so I did. I laughed as his Amazon wish list popped up as did his Facebook profile (which he's never on). Then I saw something I've never seen before (although I've never googled his name); I saw an article in the Des News and I clicked and found something that made both of us giggle and thought I'd share it (mostly for journaling's sake as we use this blog for some of our family memories).

"Magnets, Phones, Pots star at Show"

by Kersten Swinyerd

Janine and Cordale Ottley went to the Deseret News Home Improvement, Remodeling & Decorating Show looking for silver polish. They left with nearly $500 in merchandise — and no silver polish. That $500 represented a little of everything: CD-ROM games for their 3-year-old son, Cayden, a new set of cookware for Janine and a Halloween candle for the whole family. While mom and dad (and grandpa, Doug Hansen, who was visiting from California) browsed through displays on windows, vacuum cleaners, floor tile and pots, Cayden and his 1-year-old sister, Hannah, were occupied by the free candy and food samples from salespeople trying to entice the family to buy, buy, buy.Well, it worked. Janine was taken in by a display of the "Greater Grater," and Cordale muttered good-naturedly that "she'll stop for any kitchen utensil — we don't get out of a home show without at least one kitchen utensil.

They also looked at displays that featured closet organizers, ink-jet cartridges, concrete styling techniques, cellular phones, vinyl fencing, mattresses, food storage, gas fireplaces, magnets, shoe polish and cookbooks. "We have about 30 cookbooks at home," Cordale said. That's probably why a cookbook didn't make it into the back of their stroller.

At the end of their day, they had as many pamphlets and business cards from home-improvement companies as they could ever want — but they also had the ideas they needed to get a start on their house.

Just goes to show, you never know what you'll find out there and what's more, Cord and I have no recollection of her ever following us or writing an article about our shopping habits at the home show. This was a good laugh for both of us.

Caydens Braces

One last hurrah!

It was so fun to enjoy our family time together for a week or so. We slept in, watched movies, swam until our ears were full of water and the kids even taught me how to play marco polo (wink wink), ate way too much great food, and took fabulous pictures. But most of all, we squeezed every moment of sheer joy out of each other and it was a great close to summer.

Fun in the fading days of summer

I have a difficult time believing that summer is coming to a close. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that it was something like 97˚ today...or maybe it's that time has gone too fast, yet again! My babies are growing too quickly and I'm trying to bargain with time, but it seems to speed up every time I turn around.

Cayden is turning 12 in two months or so, Hannah is turning 10 in a little less than that, my Madelyn will be baptized at the end of this year, and Eliza Jane can't stop reminding me that she will be "this many" as she holds up her proud five fingers (in February)..."the seventh"...she even knows the day. But on to less sappy things...sniff sniff.

Eliza and Maddy are so proud of the harvests from the garden- and with good reason: they planted almost everything out there, with some help. Eliza shouted just Saturday from the kitchen door, "Daaaaaaddyyyyy??? Do you have any seeeeeeeeeds for me to plant????" to which Cord replied, "sure, come on out!" and the girls when out with glee and grabbed their shovels to help in the garden like they were going to a party!

We have wild kingdom and Animal Planet at our house...who needs the zoo? We caught some grasshoppers and watched George and Clarence (Cayden's sugar gliders) devour them and rip them to shreds. Now I love most living creatures, but this was fascinating to watch and I love our gliders and knowing that they were getting that much enjoyment (and protein) made it bearable.
The final swimming lessons. We loved swimming at the Stewarts. I loved watching my kids excel at their skills and bonding with their Aunt Missy and friends and they loved having Aunt Missy teach them and playing after with their friends and especially their cousins! Red Cross is for sure the way to go and I'm so proud of them for learning to be such champs in the pool! Eliza is the only one who I would even put a life jacket on in the pool and with that she can (and does) do anything- that's pretty impressive for a four-year-old in my book...and without it she can swim by herself- but after a little while she's tired, so I'd rather she be in her little safe jacket after those few minutes of braving it! Yay kids!
SAY CHEESE!
YES!!!
LOOK MOM, MISSY'S NOT HOLDING ME!

A special Father's Day Weekend

We had a fun weekend with our extended family...there were a lot of them.  over 400 people would have been there had the attendance been at 100% but I was impressed at the 220 plus who were able to make it and braved the rain in the middle of June.  We enjoyed hearing all the wonderful things our ancestors did and I feel blessed to have such wonderful heritage.  I met many wonderful relatives who live right here in Alpine, Draper, Highland, whom I didn't even know I was related to.  It was a true delight. Thank you to the foundation for making the weekend possible!   This is my Father's family  www.jacksonflint.org 

Here is Maddy proudly sporting her Lakers hat that Grandpa Doug brought up for her on the way up to Midway!

Here we are at one of the dinners enjoying our family.  I can't believe we all fit in that room even though it was large!