Cooking, Baking, and Playing

The last few days have been pretty uneventful. Cozy, but not much going on. I don't like to drive on snow and ice, so unless Mike takes us somewhere, I pretty stay at home. Mike worked from home Friday afternoon and all day today. It was nice for him to not have to drive to and from work, but he worked from 8am 'til 7pm tonight, with two hours off for a break. So we didn't see him much! Griffin got to go outside and play with him in the snow today, though, and it was his first time of official "snow play". We went to Target last night and found some mittens for him (and a matching hat that makes me laugh every time I see it... he looks like the court jester). He had boots, but his little tiny fingers get so cold so fast that he couldn't really play until he had his mittens. They had so much fun! My pictures of them playing didn't really turn out that great with the combination of the sun shining off of the snow and the reflective windows (I got a great picture of the camera, though!).

We have only eaten out once this year! I love saying that. But hey, two weeks is a long time for me to not eat out. I did go to Spin Neapolitan Pizza with Bonnie last week (was it last week?). That was SO yummy. She also took me to see Charlotte's Web, and I wasn't ready for how sad it was! It has always been one of my favorite stories, so it was a very special thing to go see it again after so long. It makes me not want to eat pork. I haven't since I saw it, it just hasn't appealed to me. We'll see how long that lasts.

We had these little mini meatloaves tonight. SO good. Here's the recipe. It's from Kraft Food & Family magazine.

Marvelous Mini Meatloaves

1 pound ground beef (or beef substitute)

1 box stuffing mix

1 cup water

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

3/4 cup BBQ sauce

3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Mix first 4 ingredients together, then press mixture evenly into 12 cups in a muffin pan. Make an indentation with a spoon in the center of each meatloaf. Put in a tsp. of BBQ sauce. Bake pan in a 375 degree oven for 35 minutes. Take out pan and put a bit of shredded cheese on each meatloaf. Bake for another 5 minutes or until cheese is melted. Let rest for 10 minutes before serving.

We all loved these! There are also Mediterranean, Mexican and Italian variations to this recipe. Very versatile. The stuffing keeps it moist, too.

I cut out all of the recipes from their magazine and started a new recipe book. To sign up for their free magazines which have tons of awesome recipes, go to www.kraftfoods.com. Their website also has tons of recipes. I want to have all of my recipes in plastic sleeves in a 3-ring binder (thanks for the inspiration, Mama G!) so that I can just pull out however many I need for a week's (or a month's) worth of dinners and put them in order in my binder and write my grocery list from them. Then I won't have to find all of my recipes in various cookbooks. Oh, I almost forgot. I wanted to post this recipe here, because it was truly amazing, and we loved it. I didn't know what to make for dinner a couple of days ago, so I started to cook some chicken, thinking I'd do something Mexican, but it turned into this.

Chicken A La Carody

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (I used frozen, but fresh would work too)

olive oil pan spray (any kind of pan spray should work)

2 tbps olive oil

1 yellow onion

2 cloves garlic

1 tsp salt

2 tsp pepper

2 tbsp jerk or cajun seasoning (optional)

4 tbsp butter or margarine

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 cup milk (more for thinner sauce, less for thicker)

4 tbsp sour cream

white or brown rice, cooked (optional)

Spray a skillet with pan spray. Drizzle olive oil in skillet. Turn heat to medium and place chicken breasts in pan. Chop onion into little pieces (or big if you prefer). Smash garlic cloves under knife; peel. Cut off the hard end of the clove and throw it away. Okay, I didn't know anything about garlic cloves until about a year ago, I always used garlic powder, so I thought I would just describe the whole process. Put the onions and garlic into the pan with the chicken. Sprinkle each chicken breast with salt, pepper and jerk seasoning. Turn over multiple times (I'm quite the "flipper" when I cook.) while chicken cooks so that the seasonings are distributed fairly evenly. Cook chicken in pan until onions are soft and chicken is cooked through. Remove just the chicken from the pan. Add cream of mushroom soup and milk to onions, stirring continuously to get up all the little chicken bits from the bottom of the pan. Put chicken back in pan when sauce is completely heated through and is thickening. Spoon sauce over chicken until it is almost covered. Put one spoonful of sour cream on top of each chicken breast. Turn chicken over so sour cream is on the bottom. Serve over rice, or by itself with veggies.

Hope you like it! Let me know if anyone tries it.

Sammy is fully stocked up on baby food jars. He still doesn't like many of them, but we're getting him used to them slowly but surely. He needs to eat more than just bottles! He loves our food, but he really can't digest so many things that we just need to stick to baby food for now. He'll get used to it soon, I hope. He seems to take it better if it's cold, so we'll just keep doing that for now.

Sory I haven't posted in so long, I'm working on getting organized. It's a slow process, one that might take my whole life to complete! :)