Party Time

Last night I submitted my taxes finally! Then woke up to the acceptance email from the IRS, wohoo baby. To celebrate I'm gonna take my heathens and go stand in line at the DMV to get my TEXAS tags. Oh the fun!

So how do you make two kids stand next to you patiently for 25 minutes? Make gumbo from scratch and have them "help" with the roux. They were fascinated with the roux process (mixing flour and oil to get the base for the gumbo) and were convinced that I was burning it, lol. But once we reached that magical color, we added in our veggies, then our liquids, then our seasonings, then we boiled it and served it over hot rice with garlic bread. It was a magical meal. They got the biggest kick out of it! It was even gluten-free.

What's even better than finishing my taxes? Finding my favorite shampoo and conditioner (Redkins) in large containers! I saved so much buying it that way and then putting smaller amounts in the travel containers for easy usage. That was a serious find for me! And wow makes my life look very trival huh?

So still no firm word on where our next assignment is. Frankly don't care. Beaumont is great and we love all that is Texas. The project here is still going so we're hoping to just enjoy our time here.

So off we go...........into the wild blue yonder, at the DMV we go.......

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Bored = Baking

I love to cook, but occassionally I try new recipes........ and while tasty beyond belief, the petit fors turned out butt ugly, but gluten-free! Yeah! With raspberry layers. Oh my baby.

But my real treat, the homemade southern pralines I made........oh just look at the calories.

Except I let them go a little too long, hence burnt first batch...........GAG

But the second batch.......... = perfection....... took a little longer to harden but oh so worth it.

And since I cook when I'm feeling strange (which is alot lately) I'm making dirty rice today. We'll see what else I whip up while I'm in here.....

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Thanksgiving Blessing

I'm so lucky to have good friends. While several people have jumped in to help with Thanksgiving cooking, my bestest friend since birth (hi mom) was with me today to precook and prep most of the food. I have two broilers (1 for turkey and 1 for ham) so my oven is free for whenever the girls show up to help cook (no lifting for me). I'm planning on sitting down alot, energy levels are still low. However, huge note today my blood pressure was actually kinda normal.........yeah! I'm keeping an eye on it for now though.

However, in between naps I did turn out the best new recipe I've had in a long time. The kids slurped it up, I was in shock.....

Slice up two zucchini
Slice up two ripe tomatoes
Slice up a slice of onion, pop layers apart

Layer the veggies, sprinkle top with garlic salt and pepper, then drizzle with olive oil.

Repeat veggies, repeat seasonings.

Sprinkle thyme along the top, sprinkle some mozz cheese and toss in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Yum.........

Sorry no pics, we ate it standing up at the bar.

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Do You Smell Fish?

The Man and I have been on a Gluten Free quest. Recipes, recipes and more recipes......oh my. So far, the girlies haven't noticed at all that there is no gluten in the house......I'm not saying a word. Plus they still get wonder bread and hotdog buns so I honestly can't see them complain.

So Saturday evening, we had planned a special fish dinner. Now, me and fish? We go one way. Southern fried catfish or fried/boiled/scampi shrimp. That is it. The End.

Except, being GF means opening the door to proteins, lean proteins. Open door, enter fish.

I won't lie and say I wasn't scared. Cause I'm picky and it's not fried. But The Man found this recipe and being a spinach lover, he was ready to try it.

Then we got the call that company was coming.....opps, sorry but we're having grilled fish. Their response, no prob, what can we bring? Oh, seems not everyone is as picky about their fish as me. Okay. Freaks.

It started with tilapia fillets (2 freaking lbs of the stuff) and alot of ingredients that I needed to stock my new kitchen with anyway. Balsamic vinegar? Ohhhhhh yeah, who doesn't keep that on hand. So after a quick trip to the store, I was ready.

We followed a recipe we found off of this woman's incredible site. OMG, I wonder if she needs a new best friend.......cause hi, I'm right here? Can I have cooking lessons too?

So off we went......

Okay this looks great.......(enter fake yum here?) But yeah, the grill is great.......so I had hopes. Plus the topping was smelling and looking so great. I was getting a contact high. (****note for my mother: use of wording "contact high" is soley learned from movies.....I have NEVER used drugs of any kind. I'm the good child. And I really want that pie safe. Waiting till you die just won't work for me. Amen)

So that recipe, yeah baby, look at what came off my grill........I'd show you pictures of it on my pretty square plates, but noone would stop eating to let me.

This challenge is getting run. Next up? Roasting asparagus........heaven help me. I hate asparagus but I'm gonna make myself eat it, cause I'm tired of potatoes.

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Starting Over Again.....

Hi I'm Hope4Grace and I'm an addict. I'm addicted to meat, potatoes, anything fried. In fact, my favorite food of all times is fried foods. Yum.....there is just something about fried catfish, or fried chicken or fried mushrooms or fried okra.....omg stop me now.




However, due to some medical problems, I'm having to learn to eat another way. Gluten-free. When my doc told me this, my first response was "fine, I'll just cut out gluten", I didn't stop to ponder why he looked at me with such pity.



Now I know.....gluten-free = no wheat, rye, barley.....................

Farking great! Let me tell you. For the past month, I've been the gauntlet. I've sat at home in front of my open fridge wondering what I could eat that wouldn't make me sick. Ditto on the pantry.

For a solid week I existed only on hashbrowns I made myself and bacon. During that week, I did my homework. Then The Man and I decided the best thing to do was set up the house as mostly GF with exceptions: The Man and kids would keep regular bread for sandwiches and some quick fry foods in the freezer. Everything else, GF. I just heart him to pieces for that, that he is onboard before we even knew what the hell we're dealing with. Plus it helped that I asked him to take the girls and go out to eat someone totally not GF at least twice a month........I'll stay at home and eat a rice cake.



The Man took me to B&N and sat me down in a comfy chair in the cookbook section. Somewhere I never go, cause hello.........slutty, dirty romance novels are on the other side of the store.... But he sat me down and proceeded to bring every Gluten-Free (here on out refered to as GF) book/cookbook he could find. I had quite the stack.



I started with :
and then worked my way through cookbook after cookbook until I found three that I felt I could use. When you take the processed foods out of your diet, your cooking times get a little long. Let me tell you.

So the southern girl who loves her some fried sh*t, is starting over.........literally. I'm learning how to cook all over again. I have a learning curve though, The Man has become as fanatical about as I have. We're the scouting, cooking team.

Yesterday we spent three hours at our local grocery store looking for GF foods. I found some cereal.........thank you Rice CHEX! I heart you alot! I found oatmeal in the tiny teeny GF section (you'd be surprised at how many stores have GF sections, you'd never notice them until you needed them) so tonight I'm making oatmeal cookies. We found chicken broth, some frozen dinners, chips, salsa, non-wheat flour for baking........we literally hit the gold mine. So far, this is the most we've found and we were celebrating in the aisle!

So here is my first real all GF dinner.........

I named them chicken pockets.......so when The Man called on his way home from a class and said, "what's for dinner?" I said.......chicken pockets and he asked if he could stop at McD's....har har.......

So I make a "chicken pocket" bar on my bar at home.......everyone got foil packets and they could fill it up with chicken and veggies, I had stocked up with fresh herbs so I was ready for food that had flavor. Drizzle some olive oil in there and then sit aside.......it was time to light the grill.

Now for me, the grill = The Man's territory so I never bother with it. Except I needed these babies grilled.........so I braved it


First off, what a nasty, unflattering picture of me.......moving on.......Since the backyard is in progress (okay, well it's in the very beginning stage, i.e. planning) we got a little charcoaler since we're waiting to get a natural gas grill once our deck is done. This is a project for another day. Just note that I have NO experience with fire of this nature.

Oh PRETTY! So I got a little flame going. I was so proud of myself.........
Then I had to call The Man cause, um.........do you let it burn with the lid up or lid down? How long? Did I use enough coals? Is it too close to the house? Why does my face feel red? You're how close to the house?

Turns out, he was really close......and he took over.......and in between making fun of my chicken pockets and my grilling experience, managed to get it done.
Now doesn't that look just yummy? Served with a side of corn and a salad.

Welcome to GF cooking people......it's gonna be a bumpy ride.....

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I (heart) the 4th....

I just love the 4th. I love it so much that I'm not gonna gripe cause we're spending it with The Man's coworkers. In fact, I'm turning over a new leaf. I'm branching out, putting myself out there.........I volunteered to do alot of cooking for the shindig.

Here's why:

1. If I look busy, no one will bother to engage me in any conversation other than "Hey, how are you", in which a nod will suffice.

2. If I am truly busy, then I'll look even busier. See #1

3. If I'm cooking, then I know I won't die of food poision. Alot of the wives, they do not do the whole cooking thing well.

4. If I'm cooking, I can pass the children off to their father to "supervise" while he is yucking it up with the boys around the grill.......

5. See #4, if I have break time, I can hide in the pantry with my book and ignore everyone.

I'm going to have a wonderful time tomorrow, really I'm quite excited. Since I tend to be quite OCD, I've planned my menu and made my cooking schedule. Come on over, they are making BBQ and a few sides, while I'm preparing....

Summer Green Beans - roasted in olive oil with peppers, yum.....
Antipasta Salad - oh be still my heart, it looks so hard and so professional and it's just SIMPLE
Stuffed Mushrooms - cause this is my signature dish, and it gets requested, pretty cool
Veggie quesadillas - cause dang, those bad boys are freaking awesome........
Smash cake - half brownie-ish, half cookie-ish, be still my heart.....

So what are you making?

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The Reason I Have Love Handles

One thing I love to do with my girls is bake. I like to think that I'm passing on a love of all things high fat and yummy calories but in reality, I want them to be proficient in the kitchen. My mom taught me the importance of measuring (Southern style people....dash of this, pinch of that, scoop of this, teeny little bit of that...to this day I can't give anyone a recipe for cornbread, I just have to make it), chopping, and preparation techniques~ cooking makes me happy.

Plus it kept The Man and I from starving the first year of our marriage when all we could afford was flour, cornmeal, cream style corn, hamburger meat and baking powder...you have no idea how much I can make with those few items. Lord willing I will never have to prove it to you ever again either~

So I try and squeeze cooking time in wherever I can. Since I work and my photo-elusive-step-dad does alot of the cooking during the week, tonight I threw together a big ole pan of homemade zitti and stashed it in the fridge...this way, The Man can put it in the oven, brown some rolls, butter some beans and toss together a salad and woohoo major yummy meal!

But since today was the girls' first day back to school, it made sense to make some oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies too....scratch the chocolate chip though cause Duchess finally fessed up to eating the ENTIRE 12 oz bag of chips....so I gathered ingredients while Princess read her daily 20 minutes to me. Then we all jumped in.

The lovely thing about oatmeal cookies is that you can add everything (pecans, walnuts, raisens, peanut butter or chocolate) to them or add nothing at all and they still make you want to waller around in the creamy butter mixture that is the dough, or that could just be me.....

However, my usual recipe went awry somewhere, think it was with the pinch of baking powder, guess I pinched too much cause this monster took over the pan. I actually had to cut state boundaries into this thing!

Duchess wasn't complaining though, just really happy with the end results. Although the sour stomach from too many chocoalte chips resulted in very little actual cookie making it into her mouth.

Princess didn't seem to have that same problem. She was putting cookies away faster than I could carve them off the continent they grew into on my baking sheets. Can I mention how much I love baking paper? Hello mess-less cooking!

In the end, this is the beauty that will call to me tonight as I strain myself into crunches and situps to remove evidence of my batter indulgence! Oh and that darn recipe made four sheet fulls, good thing I was smart enough to email The Man pictures of the end results, he'll come home from work and head straight for the bowl! I love him, he saves me from myself!

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Countdown Begins...

The countdown to the 4th of July has begun. I love the 4th! It's not just that I get a paid day off work, although that helps! It's not just because of the idea of freedom for our country! No, it's mainly because I love food.

There are so many ways to cook All-American food that I lose count. But my favorite is the hot dog. I don't want to know what's in it....I just love it.

I'm not a hot dog snob. I don't care if it's beef, chicken or turkey. I don't care if it's Chicago style (yeah baby!), Chilli-ed up, or even plain.

However, the 4th is the time of year to publically declare my love for the SAUCE DOG.

A small diner in my hometown served SAUCE DOGs when I was growing up.

The secret to the bbq-ey tasting sauce was so heavily guarded that the owner supposedly made it at home, brought it in and when that batch was gone, that was it people. I ate there often, smacking my way through sauce dogs left and right. Never thinking that there could be a world without sauce dogs. Until I left home. I even told The Man about them and on the first "Family Visit" trip back home, he got to taste the bliss that was a sauce dog. And didn't even question why I ordered six to go and then put them in my purse.

But after that fateful visit, the diner closed and withit, the recipe for SAUCE DOGs....closed with it. Sniff, sniff, the though makes me tear up still today.

Now, does the memory of the sauce dog taste better than the actual sauce itself? Has the sauce dog become the "one that got away"?

Stay tuned, I think I've found a recipe people and I'm gonna try it out....on the 4th....With my new hotdog grillers*....

*You know I would never buy anything so tasteless, so I'm gonna have my friend purchase them for me. The look upon The Man's face will be compensation enough....

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Blogging Taboo....

I'm gonna break blogger rule number 2. I'm gonna talk about my dinner. Sorry people, but dang, The Man and I had a real date night. We decided to get some grown up food....

Oh man, starting the diet next week! The gym too, and the pool. I love being a grown up.

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Gravy makes everthing better....

What do you need when your pissy, the world hates you and bloating seems inescapable? Gravy.

I came home to beautiful thick gravy, biscuits, deer steaks and mashed potatoes. YUM. My world got a whole lot better. Who needs chocolate when you have gravy. It's a beautiful thing.

Until The Man cleans the kitchen and tosses the whole dish of gravy.

WTF?

It just goes downhill from there.

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Ode to Chicken

I adore this red thing. This weathered trusty friend who makes the chicken that makes me sing. This is a recent addition to my home, it arrived with my mom and the photo hating step-dad. However, the sight of this beauty on my porch, makes me smile. Always.
Because this is the best dang chicken in the world. Smoked for four hours along with foil wrapped potatoes and corn over mesquite wood. OH MY MERCY! I have fond thoughts of this chicken. I actually had a dream about it the other night. Perhaps it's not normal to have dreams of food, but I love food, so I'm comfortable with this. All this wonderfulness was created by the photo-elusive step-dad. Who isn't surely threatening me with a knife because I have once again snuck up with a camera. Please....this is the house of cameras.

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Never Again Mommy, Never Again

Recently my wonderful, photo-elusive step-dad and my mom were home with Duchess. While preparing dinner, he volunteered to allow Duchess to share in the joy that is home cooking. They made biscuits from scratch as well as fried eggplant (did I mention we're country people?).
Here is Duchess carefully coating the eggplant before he fried them. This takes skill people, not to mention she swept up the mess she made on the floor, that takes guts! Cornmeal on a wood floor sucks!

Here she is carefully filling the measuring cup with flour. As the photo-elusive step-dad (hee hee, what he doesn't know what hurt him) is captured by Mimi as he patiently allows Duchess to assist. Also not saying a word when she coated the entire front of him with flour....

The simple joy of the overall experience brought forth conversation all evening:

• Mom, I need my very own cookbook (said while piggy tails were flopping as she bounced in place)
• Daddy, I'm a big girl now and I cook so mommy never has to cook, ever ever again (I am fond of this promise, I have it on video, three times)
• This biscuit is for you daddy, I only dropped it three times

I love that my kids are learning the good tradition value of artery blocking, cholesterol raising deep fried Southern goodness that is cooking from scratch.

Next up: grits and brown eye gravy

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Lickable Rolls

Cinnamon Rolls, People!

We successfully baking FROM SCRATCH in our new house tonight. Thanks Ree. I cut the recipe down to size but dang, we are swimming in homemade cinnamon buns over here people! So in honor of the occassion, I documented the process, for you non-believers who didn't think I could cook....

We successfully butter up big time! Princess wrote her name in butter on the first batch!

The butter smells brought The Man out of hibernation. He even assisted!

And then he took over. He said my rectangular dough wasn't the proper shape. However, we did manage to create "heaven on earth" at my house tonight.

Taking one pan over to the plumbers house in the morning. Betting these babies will get my gas line for my dryer put in asap!

Warning: the mess after this is impressive. Maybe I should just leave it and move again!

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Poor Excuse for A Wife/Mother

Tonight I did something I have never done in ten years of being a wife/mother. I fed my royal house via the frozen dinner section of my local grocery store. Yes, The Man is not happy, although he is full of Hungry Man (he agreed to this scheme to keep the dishes/kitchen clean) and the royal kiddo's? Well let's just say that you seriously need a degree in aeronautical mechanics to heat up a freaking Kid Cruisine.....Remove all food except corn, heat, add mac/cheese back in, heat, add back nuggests, heat while you chisel the ketchup packet. Good night.

I did manage to hit the store one last time for cleaning supplies and the above mentioned yummy food (please note that everyone got to choose their own dinner! I got Smart Ones and mine was freaking awesome!)

However, poor Duchess couldn't hang, she took a snooze in the buggy. I think she gets that "can sleep anywhere thing from The Man".

Princess was sporting her new Christmas duds and I must say that my eight year old is quite the fashionista. I'm impressed. The boots are rocking with the matching belt and vintage Coca Cola shirt. Yep, that's my girl y'all.

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Duchess got a Porn Cake

Happy Birthday sweet girl. My baby, the littlest in my royal court is four. God, I'm old. Anyway, last party of the week done! No sleepover, just a bunch of little girls running around in super cute dress up clothes. Hour and a half tops! She had an awesome time, got some fun gifts and enjoyed herself! That is all that matters.

Oh and The Man called me from Costco prior to the party to inform me that her cake had porn on it. Well see for yourself....but does that princess look big breasted or what? So I'm wondering what in the hell....sure enough. Those are some huge boobs. I'm so jealous.

Anywho, have a large paper to write tonight, I'm actually ahead of my schedule as the rough draft isn't due until tomorrow night. Woohoo! Go me. Making some tea, doing about 20 loads of laundry (haven't washed nothing since Thursday) and getting busy. The Man is awaiting his final contract and we're awaiting the contract on our house. God willing everything will come through this week quickly. Keep praying.

More pics from Duchess' party below.

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She's 8 and I'm Old!

I know that she'll never forget having eight of her very best friends over to celebrate her 8th birthday. Silly me, I figured that only a few would show, no...no not the case. Forgot that it's silly season and that every parent needs evenings without their kids to shop for gifts. Yep, I got all eight.

So they karaoked, sleeping bag races, tasted baby food in a fear factor eating contest, watched three movies, and managed to consume the following:
* 4 lbs of M&M's....I forgot to put the bag up.
* Half of a birthday cake meant to feed 48 people (Costco, it was dirty cheap so why not)
* 3 Super sized bags of chips
* 1 oven sized Costco pepperoni pizza (I got none! Not even a spare crust)
* 12 pack of root beer
* 4 boxes of all fruit juice packs
* 1 gallon super sweet tea (yep, that one was me)

At mid-night, I pulled out the "If you don't sleep I'll call and wake up your mom" routine, so I finally got a little shut eye on the couch, with Duchess all over me. She was a trooper, she partied with them all night long.

Morning brought 3 dozen cinnamon rolls and more juice. I got none of that either. Those still hungry where raiding my fridge. One kid ate left over spagetti, for breakfast....

It was a great party and she got lots of awesome gifts and I am the coolest mom ever. I WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN! Ever......cause they ate all the chocolate and didn't share!

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Most Thankful For:

The things I'm most thankful for:

Duchess telling George (the IKEA Giraffe) what for!

Princess shows off her constant companion, Mr. IDOG

The Man who makes ham that will make you cry.

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