Fridge Cleaning Soup

 

I had a bunch of random things in the fridge and decided to use all of them to make a soup.  The result, pretty darn yummy!

You can mix it up depending on what you have in the fridge.  Be adventurous, that's the beauty of fridge cleaning soup.  Keep throwing stuff in until you get a flavor you like.  If you want to make this exact soup, here's what you'll need:

8 C Chicken Broth (or 8 cups water, 8 bouillon cubes)
1 can V8
1 can diced Tomatoes with chili's
1/2 diced Onion
Handful of chopped carrots
2 stalks celery diced
Bring to a boil.  Turn heat down and add:
2 C chopped chicken (leftover crockpot chicken or rotisserie or pan fried or whatever)
1 C cooked Wild Rice
1 C cooked Lentils
1 C Frozen Corn
1 lb Bok Choy washed and chopped
Couple handfuls of Spinach chopped

Let the flavors blend about 10-15 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Serve.  This one would be super easy to make vegetarian.  Just use vegetable broth and leave the chicken out.

Cran Raspberry Coffee Cake

So I had some berries in the freezer that needed to be used because I need the space.  I don't think I have ever made the cranberry and raspberry combination and it was YUMMY!!

Another super easy cake to impress your friends:)

Here's what you'll need:
White Cake Mix
2 Eggs
1 C Sour Cream
1 C Milk ~ I use skim

Mix together with electric mixer.  Add

3/4 C Cranberries and Raspberries
1/2 C White Chocolate Chips

Pour into sprayed bundt pan and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  Invert onto plate after 10 minutes.  Cool and frost with glaze of your choice.  This one was about a third can of cream cheese canned frosting that I heated up in the microwave for 15 seconds to make it easy to drizzle.

Candy Plant

My friend's Dad was turning 80 and I wanted to get him something but seriously, what do you really need at 80?  He's a young at heart, totally hip 80 year-old but still??  I'm 45 and there's not a lot that I want so I thought I'd go with something fun.

 

I know he likes his sweets so I decided to get him some of his favorite candies.  80 pieces of candy to be exact.  I hot glued (just a little dollop will do ya) over half of them to wooden skewers and pushed them into floral foam that I had glued to the bottom of a Terra Cotta pot.  I'm not particularly artistic so I opted for a Happy Birthday spinny ribbon thing to finish it off. 

 

Ash Wednesday

I just got back from Ash Wednesday services at our church.  I use the term "our" loosely because although I became a member so my children could get baptized and confirmed there, I don't feel embraced by the experience.  It's not because our church isn't welcoming, they are.  They are accepting of "my" involvement as limited as it may be.  I just feel like an outsider on nights like tonight because it's not something I can fully accept into my life.  When everyone and I do mean EVERYone goes up for communion and I stay in the pew, I feel a little out of place.

I was raised with a sense of self and a more spiritual attitude.  My Dad believed in the Native ways of spirits guiding you and my Mom believed in the more traditional sense of God and what he represents.  My Dad who didn't make a hard stand on much when it came to our upbringing, took a stand that it would be our choice to pick which route we wanted.  My Dad randomly spoke of different things.  My Mom sang Amazing Grace to all of us and other hymns.  I knew who God was, I just never had any formal teachings.  It wasn't something that bothered me much until 4th grade when one of my friend's moms asked me where I went to church, they were Catholic.  I told her I didn't.  She asked if I was baptized, I told her I wasn't.  That was the last time I was asked to stay at their house.  She told me in school that she wasn't allowed to hang around with me anymore because God wasn't in my life and she really didn't speak to me again.  I couldn't put into words my exact feelings at the time but now I can say it, I was sincerely hurt by the experience.

I attended church fairly regularly with my friend Julie's family through middle school and I can honestly say I took little from the experience other than it was something I did if I wanted to sleep over on Saturday night, I didn't think I was a better person for going and they never judged me, they simply let me tag along and exposed me to something different and I appreciate now because it gave me a positive experience with church.  I remember sitting through brunch after and her Dad asking about how we interrupted the sermon.  I  thought it was kind of silly at the time but now realize he was just helping us figure out what the words really meant in a real life experience and I thank him for that because he made sense of it for me.

But it happened again in high school with my first boyfriend's parents.  Why wasn't I baptized, why didn't I go to church?  That time I was angry that not only myself but my family was being judged.  That we were somehow not good people because we didn't attend church on holidays, what both of those families had in common.  They weren't regular church goers, they were hypocrites is what they were.

So when my children started asking questions about God when they were little and both their Dad and I gave different answers, I decided to bring them somewhere that would give them information and they could decide for themselves and I dropped them off, grabbed a bagel up the street and picked them up 40 minutes later because I still had no interest in organized religion.  But that relationship has been over 11 years now.  I have done some volunteering during those years but my children have attended Sunday school regularly, Claire sang in the choir, took junior high classes, were baptized, had first communion, Max was confirmed and still chooses to attend and Claire is in the final weeks of confirmation.  My children feel a sense of comfort there, I can especially tell with Max and that makes me happy.  Another place, another option that can help them through tough times or simply lighten their load.

But I don't take communion, although I am welcome to.  I don't take it because they put in the work, learned the scriptures and read the bible and are entitled to have that reward so to speak.  I'm not going to be a hypocrite and stand next to them and do it when I haven't invested myself completely like they have.  So instead I sit there and watch them and my feelings of discomfort are erased by a feeling that I gave them a sense of self too and I'm proud of that.  I'm proud of them.

Competition Season

Got off to a great start.  Claire's team placed 1st in Jazz and 2nd in Lyrical and Kick.  It was especially sweet because the "practice" show the weekend before was a little rough.

Started out the day finding her face on the van:)

 Having a blast dancing jazz!

 Lyrical is my favorite

 Kick

 A happy dancer at the end of the day!

Hockey Cupcakes

How can hockey be done?!  I seriously feel a tad cheated this year.  With cold/snow cancellations and it being a high school sanctioned sport, we only had 20 games!!  Twenty, as in TWO ZERO!  Stop the madness, last year we had 51!  I'm one of those weird hockey Mom's who actually like the game and watching the kids play. 

 

So this season left me feeling a little empty even though Max finished as the 3rd leading scorer on the team.  That was a pretty big thing because he is a defensive player. 

 

He played all his shifts as a Varsity player, another big thing because he's only a sophomore. 

 

He broke 3 sticks, big thing for his parents because the cost of those kind of suck:(  The day after he broke the first stick, a friend of his came up and said, "hey, I sat by your Mom last night at the game.  Max wrinkled his face and said, "okkkkk.  "Yeah, I knew it was her because when your stick broke she swore."  Probably not the nicest thing to be known for, but at least I keep it real and I didn't say the naughtiest of words;)

 

But today's post isn't really about hockey.  It's about the cupcakes that were served at one of the team dinners.  I got a little funky with it and colored half the batter green since their colors are green and white.

 

I bought some green melts from Michael's and made hockey sticks on waxed paper.  My little tutorial is found here on how to do that.

 

I piped the number of every player on the cupcakes and stood the sticks up in the middle.  My favorite #3 is Gluten-free so he got special brownies:)

Beef Teriyaki

I make this probably a few times a month.  I buy the meat in bulk, spend a half hour cutting it up and freeze the meat so all I have to do is un-thaw the bag and basically dinner is done in 5 minutes.  I also stopped adding the butter simply because I don't need the extra calories or fat.  This is a re-post so the photos are from when I used butter.

Make a bag of 90 second brown microwave rice and bam, dinner is ON the table.

2 lbs Top Round Steak
Tops of two scallions sliced in thin strips
2 T Butter
1 t Garlic Powder
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/3 bottle Teriyaki Sauce

Cut steak into thin, bite size strips. Throw in a pan with scallions, butter and garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Drain any excess liquid from steak. When steak is cooked to your liking, add Teriyaki sauce, stir around to heat through and serve.

Sometimes I sprinkled meat tenderizer on both sides before cutting. If you use meat tenderizer you will most likely NOT need any salt and it's fine to freeze it still. Cook the same as above and it was melt in your mouth tender.
Basic Top Round steak.
See, just a nice piece of beef.
Cut into bite size pieces across the grain.
This is the tops of the scallions, sliced lengthwise. If you're using the beef from the freezer, add the scallions after you take out of the freezer.  You can skip this step all together if you want.
Mix the scallion tops with the beef.
This is wrapped up and prepped so all I have to do is open it and throw it in the pan with the butter and seasoning when it's time to make dinner.
Throw it in the pan with butter and seasoning. Cook until it's the way you like to eat steak. Drain excess liquid off and add Teriyaki Sauce. Serve.
This is the brand I used. Found it in the grocery aisle with the Asian items.