Food for Thought Friday

This recipe comes from one of my best friends in Oklahoma. It is one of those feel good meals and perfect one to take to new mother, or other people in your ward that might need a meal brought it. It makes a TON, but we always end up eating all the leftovers. This meal will always remind me of Oklahoma. :) It's definitely a 5 star meal in our house.

Italian Casserole

1 lb. Rigatoni (or pasta of choice, but this is the favorite)
1 TB Oregano (I actually didn't have any when I made it yesterday, or any parsley, so I used about 2 TB of some Italion Seasoning and it still turned out great)
2 TB Olive Oil
28 oz can of chopped tomatoes ( I just used two 14.5 oz cans of diced tomatoes)
1 Medium Yellow onion, chopped (Since I hate buying, chopping real onions, I just used about 1/3 cup of dehydrated onions)
1 cup heavy cream (Again, I was out of this, but I used a food storage recipe for sweetened condensed milk using powdered milk-which I can post if anyone really wants-and it made it a little bit sweeter than normal, but was still delicious, but for your first try I would use the cream)
2 Cloves Garlic (I just used 1/4 tsp of garlic powder...not a huge fan of real garlic)
1 lb. Mozarella Cheese (this is about 4 cups, but just use how much you like)
1 lb. Ground Italian Sausage
1/2 cup Fresh Grated Parmesan
1/2 cup fresh parsley (see note for oregano)


Preheat oven to 350. Cook pasta as directed. Brown sausage, then add onions, olive oil. Saute for ~10 minutes. Drain fat, if you have enough to drain. Add parsley, oregano, & tomatoes. Bring to boil, simmer uncovered for ~15 minutes. Stir in cream & raise heat to boil. Remove immediately from heat, add any salt & pepper if you want. Mix with pasta, place in greased 9X13 pan by putting a layer of pasta, layer of cheese, remaining pasta, then cheese. Bake until cheese is melted ~15-20min

A Little Feverish

This week we have all still be in recovery mode. Whatever bug we caught we all just kept on passing it around. Damon ended up with it on Thursday and had a fever for the next couple days. Finally on Friday night his temperature came down and he's been as happy as ever since. It was a rough couple nights though. Whenever Logan was sick he would sleep even longer through the night, but Damon is my cuddly baby and he just wanted to be held and fed all night long...*sigh* it's a good thing I love him so much.

We did get some fun in this week though. We got to go up and visit Grandma and Grandpa Hadlock and Logan got to play with some of his cousins and he had a blast. He wasn't able get a nap in, so at about 6:30 he finally just crashed and fell asleep while the adults got a chance to just sit and visit for a while, it was really nice.

The weather has been better this past week and we've been able to go outside a little bit, the fresh air helped our cabin fever. Logan LOVES to play outside, but he is also very distracted and runs away a lot to find cars or airplanes, or just to follow any random stranger home :) He definitely keeps me busy when we're outside. It will be nice someday when we can go to the park and he'll be able to play with Damon too and I can spread out a blanket on the grass and just relax...I know, keep dreaming, right? :)

In other news, we've been able to get our house in Oklahoma rented for at least the next 6 months. We're hoping to still sell it though. We'd like to get it sold while the renters are still there, it's a great investment for anyone looking to buy some real estate in OK, wink wink.

So, I just checked the camera for pictures....didn't have any this week, how sad. This week I'll try and do better since we're all feeling a bit better. I guess, until next time...

Food for Thought Friday

So I made another batch of whole wheat tortillas...well technically this was my third time, but I think I've finally got it down now. Now my goal is to try and roll them out in as perfect a circle as possible. The other route is finding a nice circle shaped object big enough to just cut out a circle, only for aesthetic reasons of course if I were giving them to someone else, they still taste delicious no matter their shape and even Logan loves to eat them freshly made.


Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas
5 cups flour ( I use all wheat, but you can mix white/wheat to what you like)
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening or olive oil (I use olive oil)
2 cups boiling water


In large bowl mix flour & salt. Rub in shortening/oil by hand until texture is like oatmeal. Make well in center and pour in boiling water. Mix with a fork until evenly incorporated. Sprinkle with flour and knead until dough doesn't stick to fingers. (Be careful, dough will still be quite warm) Dough should be smooth. Make balls about size of golf balls. Place on tray and cover with a cloth. Let stand for at least an hour or up to eight. Heat griddle or frying pan over high heat. Roll out dough on lightly floured surface to desired thickness. Place on griddle and cook until it bubbles, then flip for about 15 seconds or until done.

Refrigerate or Freeze Tortillas, makes about 18 or so depending on size. We love to use them for burritos, quesadillas, or cinnamon roll-ups (just warm it up--enough to melt butter--and spread a little butter then sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and roll it up like a burrito, perfect little snack or dessert.) I don't think I've bought tortillas from the store since I started making them, they just don't taste as good. :) Good luck!

The Cannery

This week was interesting. I always seemed to be a day off because of the holiday, and Logan got a cold this week and gave it to me and Damon. :( I think we're over the worst of it. I was feeling great yesterday, but today, not so much and Logan has been really fussy, so we stayed home from church to get some rest.

I did get to go to the cannery yesterday, I really love that place. I went with my sister-in-law. We're going to try and make it a monthly thing until we both have our food storage items that we need from there and then just go as needed. It's a nice little break from the kids and the day. We met up in Sandy at Grandma and Grandpa Hadlocks place and the hubbies got to play with kiddos for a while.

We got there a little too early for the shift, so alas we were forced to do a little shopping and grab a Jamba Juice. Then we spent the rest of the day just sort of hanging out and we had Cafe Rio for dinner (and for lunch today :) it was delicious.

And really and truly, that is my week in a nutshell, not a whole lot happens when we get sick, so maybe this next week will be better since the weather is looking up. Oh yeah, we did make it to the little park by our house one day and Logan loves the slides, but he HATES to come home...oiy. Anyway, here are some pictures from the week, I'm still trying to figure out what's wrong with a couple videos.

This was Logan this morning at breakfast. He says "cheese" for the camera now.
Logan's hair has finally grown out a little bit more again and I can sort of spike it. It only lasts a few minutes though. :( I told Morgan that's why we need to have a girl, so I can do her hair and not resort to putting gel and hairspray into my sons' hair. :)
This is Logan's new favorit spot to watch TV.
Damon is getting so big and so cute!
He loves his bouncer now, and I love that he loves it!
I wish I would have taken the camera with my yesterday, cuz let me tell you, me and Sandra looked pretty hot in our hairnets and plastic aprons at the cannery. :) And it would have been fun to post some pictures of the shenanigans that the kids get into when they are together. Logan just loves following Josh around and playing with his cousins. Well, that's about all I have, I think I'm going to go take a nap now.

Food for Thought Friday

I love Fridays! I might have to do more than one recipe this week because we have tried a couple really good ones this week.


Two-Bean Tamale Pie
1/3 cup dried red/green pepper mix
1 can chicken
1/6 cup dried onion
4 oz can diced green chili
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cumin
1-2 TB oil
1 tsp chili powder
2 cans beans (kidney, pinto - and I actually prepared and used dried beans from storage)
1 cup cheese
8 oz can tomato sauce
8.5 oz Cornbread mix
1 cups chicken broth

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and spray/grease 2 qt square baking dish. In a skillet combine, peppers, onion, oil, beans (drained/rinsed), peppers, chili powder, & cumin. Combine broth and tomato sauce and add to the skillet mixture. Heat until almost to a boil. In the meantime, prepare the cornbread mix according to package, then add cheese to cornbread mixture stir until combined. Pour skillet mixture into baking dish and top evenly with the cornbread mixture. Bake uncovered for ~25 minutes. We gave this dish 4 stars and will definitely be adding it to our regular routine, although Morgan likes his cornbread separate. :)

And our snack this week was:

Homemade Granola Bars Sooooo much better than store-bought.
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups oats (yay for food storage)
1/2 cup corn syrup
2 1/2 cups Rice Krispies
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 tsp vanilla
*chocolate chips, other "chips" craisins, raisins, almonds, etc

Bring brown sugar and corn syrup to a boil. Meanwhile, mix oats and rice krispy cereal and line 9X13 pan with wax paper. When mixture boils, turn heat to low and add peanut butter and vanilla, mix until melted and remove from heat. Add cereal and oats until evenly coated. Add in your "extras" and press mixture into pan. Wait 15-20 and cut into bars. I blended up some almonds and made almond/craisin granola bars and Logan loved them and the best part is you can cut them as big or as small as you want.

I Love Vacations

This post is a little late since we just got back from St. George. We went down for the weekend and had a great time, but more about that later, I'll start from the beginning of the week. This week I have started "working out" again, mostly because I agreed to do a 5k in March, but also it's something to get out of the house. I've been doing aerobics in the morning with other moms and the kids just get to run around, it's a nice little break. And last Thursday I played basketball with our ward women's team....wow, I'm not very good at basketball, but I did make 2 shots, and that actually had me feeling pretty good. :) Here's a few pictures from the week before we went to St. George.

There's my happy Damon. He's been getting so much better lately. And he's rolling over now!!! Yeah! I have a video of it, but it's having a hard time loading, so I'll have to figure that out and then you can see it.

Logan loves to play peek-a-boo still, but in more of a hide-and-seek fasion. He loves to stand on the ottoman and look out the window at all the cars and sometimes he gets jumbled in the curtains. :)

On Friday we got ready and packed and headed down to St. George after Morgan got home from work. We thought that since we would be driving at night that Logan would just fall asleep and we could make it there in one shot...oh how wrong we were. He was up talking and singing, and the whining until about 1 hour before we got there. We did have to stop because he was complaining of "poo-poo" and since he's been getting over a diaper rash we decided to stop and of course there was nothing in his diaper, that little stinker, but it did give Morgan a chance to stretch his legs and I fed Damon so that we could for sure make it without stopping since we were only in Beaver.

Both the boys had a blast in St. George playing with Grandma and Grandpa. My parents even babysat all the kids so me, Morgan and my brother and his wife could go out to dinner. We went to Outback and it was delicious. Me and Morgan haven't gone out to eat on our own since before Logan was born....that's almost 2 years. So, it was really nice to enjoy a meal without the kids whining. :)

On Saturday we went over to my brother's house and there is a park nearby and the kids got to play and have a picnic, it was a little chili, but still really fun. Logan loves slides!

My parents have a flight simulator game on the computer that Logan just loves. He sees the computer and just keeps saying, "airplane, airplane" this day he was a little tired since he hadn't taken his nap yet, and my mom was playing with him and the humming of the engine must have put him to sleep. He just fell asleep right there, so I went and put him in bed for the rest of his nap. What a silly boy.
We had a family sunday dinner and we set up a little table for the kids and it totally reminded me of when we would go to my grandparents house when we were little and they would have the "kid" tables for all the grandkids. It was one of the moments when I realized how fast time has flown by and how quickly things can change.
I was actually really surprised at how well Logan stayed in his chair without any sort of restraint. :)
Logan also loves to sit on the couch at Grandma's and look at her window at the cars driving by. We were just getting ready for bathtime. :) We had a really great time down there. I got a chance to organize some recipes and my mom sent me home with some awesome cookbooks and even some food storage. Thanks again mom! And another thing I was looking forward to in St. George was getting my haircut....

I decided it was time to go short again. I love it! Anyway, I better get back to unpacking and doing laundry, both things that will probably take me all day. :) Until next time...

Food for Thought Friday

Yay for beans! So, last night I tried a new bean recipe along with another wheat recipe that has been on the list. I did cheat on the beans though and used canned beans because by the time I had decided on that recipe it was too late to fix up the dry beans. Anyway, here it is. Morgan even gave both recipes 5 stars! and said it was one of his favorite dinners now. :) (That totally made my day by the way)

White Chili Soup (CROCKPOT)

3 cans kidney,pinto, or white beans (I used a can of northern white beans, a can of pinto and a can of black-eyed peas)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
2 cans chicken (or 2 1/2 cups cooked chicken breast chopped up)
2 tsp cumin
1/2 cup dry onions
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup red/green bell peppers (I used dehydrated peppers)
4 cups chicken broth
1 tsp chili powder
*Shredded Cheese & Tortilla Chips*

In crockpot combine all ingredients and stir together (except cheese/chips) Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-5 hours. Great in bread bowls, or with cheese and tortilla chips.

We had them in bread bowls from the following recipe:

Whole Wheat Bread Bowls
**Note: I actually halved the recipe and it still worked great and it made 4 bread bowls
2 (.25 oz) pkg active dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup warm water
2 eggs (I used the food storage egg powder)
1 cup warm milk
2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening ( I actually used olive oil instead and they still turned out great)
6 cups flour (combo wheat/white)...I used about 1 1/2 cups white flour was all and the rest was wheat

In a mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add the milk, shortening, sugar and eggs, salt and 2 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic ~6-8 minutes. Place in greased bowl, turning once. Cover and let rise until doubled, punch down. Divide into 8 pieces, shape into ball. Grease
2 cookie sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal. ( I just sprinkled with a little flour since I don't have any cornmeal on hand yet) Place 4 balls 3 inches apart onto each prepared pan. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from pans to wire racks to cool. Then cut out top and fill with chili, soup, or chowder.

I hope you enjoy! :)

What? The Week is Over?

This past week has gone by way too fast. At this point though, I don't mind if the semester is over pretty quick, and I'm sure Morgan wouldn't mind either, except I think he would like a couple extra hours to study each day. It will be over before we know it though, especially with a little baby that grows so fast that keep us occupied...speaking of which, Damon had his first Dr. appointment here on Monday and this is what we found out:

Height: 26 inches (73%)
Weight: 14.7 lbs (32%)
Head: 41.8 cm (25%)

So all that talk about Damon being soo big was just not very accurate I suppose. He is pretty tall, but he seems like he weighs more, he just feels a little more "solid" than Logan did. And it's probably just a combination of him being a little taller and Logan's old clothes shrinking more and more with each wash, because as far as clothes go, Damon has almost caught up to him. He is wearing all the clothes that Logan wore for his first winter...and Logan was about 8-9 months and Damon is only 4 months. Which is fine with me though, it saved us from having to buy more "seasonally" correct clothes for Damon, like long sleeves, and coats and such. :)

So, I just went back and did a little checkup and Logan was 14.11 lbs and 26 inches at this same age, but he went through quite the growth spurt after that, so now I'm just going to be waiting for Damon to hit that spurt too.

Damon is so close to rolling over right now, he rolls back and forth on both sides and pretty much moves around in a full circle with his head as the pivot point. He's much better at playing with toys and this week I even started putting him in the crib for naps and guess what? no crying, not one peep, so now he takes his naps in there, YAY! I've been keeping him awake more during the day and he's back to sleeping a good 7 hour stretch which is back to "through the night" for us, but for a couple nights he was up every 3-4 hours, but I said no way! It really is amazing what an extra couple hours will do with sleep.

On Wednesday we had the wonderful pleasure of going to the Draper Temple Open House. We weren't able to find babysitters (not that we really looked that hard or even really tried) so we took the kids with us. We got to the chapel to watch a little video and Logan turned into a little monster and really we were about to just go home, but we were already there (and so counting as a temple trip at this point, our goal is 10 times this year) we boarded a bus to shuttle everyone up to the temple and Logan settled right down and then Damon started acting up...oiy.

But, we got to the temple, strapped Damon in the Bjorn and put Logan on Morgan's shoulders. Logan hardly made a peep throughout the whole tour and Damon only started acting up at the very end, so it turned out to be a great experience. The temple was beautiful and we are excited to make one of our temple trips up there and go back after it's been dedicated.

I plugged the camera in to get the pictures off and guess what?.......we didn't take a single picture this whole week. How sad is that? We did have some videos, so I guess I better start working on that, and I'll have to do a video posting when I'm done...so, until next time.

Food for Thought Friday

Banana Bread

So, I've tried lots of different banana breads and recipes lately because for some reason it just seems like we hit the last 3 bananas and decided we don't want to eat them anymore...that and we all prefer them not so ripe...anyway, through all my experimenting nothing comes close to my mom's banana bread recipe, so here it is:

1 1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cup mashed bananas (I usually use about 3 medium bananas)
2 eggs, well beaten (I'm sure you could substitute the powdered eggs here too)
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour (keep it all-purpose white flour..I know, the thought of that just seems weird to me now)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup buttermilk (I think this is the key to the deliciousness, but if you're like me and don't normally have buttermilk on hand, use 1 tsp vinegar in milk and let it sit for a few minutes and that's just as good)
3/4 tsp salt

Cream butter & sugar. Add bananas, eggs, vanilla. Add flour, soda, buttermilk. Alternate between buttermilk and flour mixtures while adding.

Bake at 325 for 1 hour 15 minutes, check after an hour or so.

Makes one large loaf or two smaller loaves. I hope you enjoy!

Time to Privatize

Hey Everyone, well, it's finally time to take our blog private, but don't worry, if you leave your email in the comments I will add you to the list and you can still view the blog, even if it's just occasionally. :) I plan on making the blog private just before Valentine's Day, so you've got two weeks to send your info. :)