Counting Our Blessings - LinkUp!

It was a nice week here this past week. The weather was crazy but that's normal for the end of March and start of April. We went from cold, cold weather to really hot today. You just never know!

37. We celebrated our Easter last Tuesday and it was so nice! I made ham, Potatoes au Gratin from this recipe HERE. Oh, my goodness! They were so good. I have made a lot of the Pioneer Woman's recipes and have never been disappointed. We had fresh Asparagus, too, and it was wonderful. It was so nice to have family time and celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus.

38.  I have been working on eating better and eating more fresh foods that are better for me. I found this recipe and although it doesn't look too good, it is very good! They are called Cucumber Boats and they have spinach, ham, whipped cream cheese, onions, and bell pepper mixed up and then put inside the seeded cucumbers. My family thinks they look disgusting but looks can be deceiving!  They are super yummy!

39.  I have been working on my large cross stitch piece again and here's an update on that. It's really helped moving my stand to the living room as I'm working on it every evening. 

I'm working on the leg and arm, now, and soon the little bear will be done and I can move on to the next area.

40.  I'm doing daily Scripture writing. It's a list you can find HERE. I love sitting down and writing out Scripture. The process of writing it out helps me to really focus on it and focus on what it truly says. Here's the first day in my notebook...

I found these wonderful pens at WalMart called Ink Joy Gel pens. They are a dream to write with! I love the Ink Joy ballpoint pens but these are just exceptional. The gel ink writes really smoothly and no smearing. I do love pens!

Share your post on the link-up below! It's a blessing to have you share your posts here. Thank you!

An InLinkz Link-up

Blessings - Julie

Recipe - Southwest Skillet Chili Mac - Picture Tuturiol

I was checking out Pinterest the other night and saw THIS recipe on there. It looked so good, and I was ready for some comfort food, so decided to give it a try. The fact that I had all the ingredients in the pantry also helped me decide to make it. :)

Here's what you'll need

Heat about 2 tbs of Olive Oil in a cast iron skillet (my ONLY choice for skillets!) While that is heating up, chop your onion.

Once your Olive Oil is hot, add those lovely onions to the skillet and cook until soft. This doesn't take long so watch them!

Once the onions are soft and translusent, add your garlic. The recipe calls for 3 cloves, but I buy my garlic in the jar, ready to go, so I added about 3/4 of a teaspoon to the onions.

Let that cook for a few minutes, just to release the flavor of the garlic into the onions.

Then add your ground beef to the onion and garlic mixture.

Start mixing it around and breaking it up so the ground beef will be in smaller bites or crumbles.

You want to cook the hamburger until it's thoroughly cooked.

Now here's where I realized my skillet was too small for everything I was going to add in, so I got out this baby. This is my huge iron skillet that I use for large batches of sausage gravy and during the holidays.

So I transfered my onion, garlic and ground beef mixture to this puppy and then added my chili powder and mixed that in good.

To this mixture, I added a can of diced tomatoes and a can of tomato paste.

Then I added 1 and 1/2 cup of water. Now I actually added about 1/2 cup of water more later as I felt it needed it.

Then I added 1 and 1/2 cup of elbow macaroni. Here's the one cup - I didn't bother to take a picture of the 1/2 cup. lol

I also added my can of beans at this time. The recipe called for black beans, but I didn't have those so I used a can of chili beans. Here it is all mixed up.

Then you add your corn. The recipe called for canned corn, but I only have frozen veggies so I used frozen corn.

Mix it up and cover it and cook for about 15 minutes or until the pasta is soft, but not too soft!

While this is cooking, shred your cheese. Then when your pasta is done, add half the cheese to the mixture and stir until melted.

Put the other half on the top and then pop under the broiler until the cheese is bubbly and slightly browned.

Get a plate and dish some up and enjoy!

Now, the recipe calls for more spices than I added - Cumin and Cayenne Pepper. I had a bad episode with Cumin once, so I'm always leery of using it, even though I do love it. I definitely think it needed more spices, so I recommend you stick with the recipe and not me. I'm also thinking I would either cut down on the tomato paste or maybe even use ketchup instead. Not sure. I love to tweak recipes until I get them the way I want them. In any case, it was a fun and delicious recipe!

Blessings - Julie

Recipe - Bacon & Egg Casserole

This is one of my absolute favorite recipes for breakfast! My family loves it and it's a great casserole for company. I made it for my sister and brother-in-law when they came to visit and it was a huge hit. My family loved it so much, I made it again the next day so they would have some left-overs to have. It keeps great in the fridge and can be heated up easily in the microwave or even wrapped in foil and heated up in the oven, if you prefer. It's just a yummy casserole!

Bacon and Egg Casserole

First you'll need to gather your ingredients. Spray your 9x11 pan with cooking spray. Be liberal with the spray as you don't want to have your egg casserole sticking to the pan!

Measure 2 cups of plain croutons. Normally, I would just get plain croutons, but hubby went shopping and came home with these whole grain croutons. They were just as good and probably better for us. Pour the two cups into the bottom of the 9x11 pan.

 Next measure 2 cups of the garlic croutons. Again, the recipe calls for garlic and cheese, but this huge bag was a bargain at Costco, so I went with the Garlic croutons.

Pour the garlic croutons in with the plain croutons into the 9x11 pan.

Next, you'll need 1/4 cup of butter.

I put the butter in a coffee cup and melt it in the microwave for 30-45 seconds until melted. Then pour the butter over the croutons in the bottom of the 9x11 pan.

Next, crack 8 eggs into a bowl...

add one tablespoon of mustard....

measure 2 cups of milk and pour into the eggs...

then whisk all this together until well blended.

Measure 2 cups of cheddar cheese and pour over the croutons and butter...

Then pour the egg, milk and mustard mixture over the cheese.

Then crumble 10-12 strips of bacon over the top.

Bake in a 325 degree oven for 45 minutes. I like to check the middle with a table knife to make sure it's well done. If the knife comes out clean, it's done!

Yum! I forgot to take a picture before we cut into it, but this just tells you how totally amazing this casserole is.

When I serve this for company, I also made toast made with my homemade bread and I cut up fruit. When my sister and brother-in-law came, I served cantaloupe and watermelon since it's in season. Any fruit would be great, though. If you try the recipe, let me know how you like it!

You can get the recipe HERE

God bless you - Julie

Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup - Recipe

I have done absolutely nothing today except sleep, rest, and look at blogs online.  I had a really bad night of pain and then when I finally did get to sleep this morning, the TV in the other room woke me up.  After shedding a few "sorry for myself" tears, I finally had my hubby help me to the living room where he set me up with my heating pad, computer, my cross stitch, my nook, my Bible, and my hot tea.  I took a (strong) pain pill and was finally able to sleep for awhile.  I'm feeling a bit better now and am now thinking of crochet and other such pursuits! LOL

Yesterday, I decided to make chicken soup and I thought I would share how I do it for you to enjoy.  The great thing about making my soup is that I can do it in stages so I can sit in my recliner as needed.  I also have a stool in the kitchen where I sit when chopping and other such things.  I love being able to provide my family with a yummy, hot meal and they all enjoyed it. 

The first thing you'll need is 4 chicken breasts.  Mine were frozen and so I just put them right in the pan with water and started cooking them. 

Normally, I would also add 1-2 cups of chicken broth (I use the low-sodium), but I didn't have any yesterday, so just used water.  I filled my big pot up with water up to about 2 inches from the top.  While this cooked, I rested, then I came back and cleaned celery

and then chopped it into small pieces.

Now, we like lots of carrots and I buy the huge bag of baby carrots at Costco so I can add them to our roasts, soups or just munch on them.  I started with this

then chopped them into little bite size pieces like this.

There are approximately 3 cups of carrots there, but you could add more or less depending on your taste.

At this point, the chicken breasts were cooked enough that I could dice them so I pulled them out of the pot and put them on a plate. 

Then I put my diced celery and carrots in the broth that the chicken had been cooking in. 

I then diced my chicken in to large, bite size pieces. 

I then returned my chicken to the pot and got one of these out.

This is a medium/large purple onion.  I go through stages where I really enjoy the purple onions and I'm in that stage right now.  I then peeled the onion and then diced it.  I will show you how I dice my onions the easy way and it allows you to have big or little pieces depending on what you're wanting. 

First cut your onion in half like this

Then take the first half and make cuts down the side.  Here's where you decide how big of pieces you want.  The closer together you make these cuts, the finer the dices.  You don't want to completely cut through the onion to the board but you'll want to almost cut all the way through. 

When you have these cuts into the onion, you'll turn the onion and cut it like this

Again, depending on how close you make these cuts, will determine the size of your diced pieces.  I did both halves of the onion like this.  Now, I wanted rather large pieces for my soup, so when I was done it looked like this.

I then added these to the broth and at this point salted and peppered my broth.  This is to taste, but I probably added 1/4 teasp. of pepper and about 1/2 teasp of salt to this large pot. 

Here's the soup as it's simmering on the stove.  I let it simmer for about 2 hours and then I added 1/4 teasp. of Thyme, 1/4 teasp. of Rosemary, and 1/4 teasp. of Dill. I also added 1/4 cup of Barley, but really, I think it needed 1/2 cup of Barley.   While I let this simmer more, I put on another big pan of water to boil for my noodles.  I cooked my noodles (approximately 2 cups dried noodles), drained them and then added them to the soup. Just a note here to add that as it's simmering you will have to add water as it cooks.  I try to keep the water up to about 1-2 inches below the rim of the pot. When it was all done it looked like this

 
I then served it with my homemade bread (I try to keep some in my freezer) with butter.  It was a hit!

The great thing about this soup is that it's really good for leftovers and also freezes well.  Sometimes, I will serve half the soup and freeze the rest.  To freeze it and not take up a lot of room, I let the soup cool completely then put it in a labeled freezer zip-loc bag.  I usually double the bags just to be sure soup doesn't go all over my freezer.  When I want to use it, I just thaw it in the fridge and then heat through on top of the stove in a pot again. 

I hope you'll try making this some time and enjoy a bowl! 

God bless you - Julie