Sisters are forever!

So here goes. Yesterday I realized that it had been almost three months since I wrote in my blog. Three months? Really? I used to post each week, then once a month, then… And it’s not like I took a class all summer. I even procrastinated on my papers for my Maymester class until a couple of weeks ago! But I have thought about updating. I’ve taken pictures for recipes and thought about things my kids did and lots of other things. So here goes. Again, no promises. I just want to try to get back on track.

Laurian, Heidi, Danielle, Me

This weekend we were visited by some of my oldest friends. We were all Sigma Alpha Iota sisters in the mid 90’s at Georgia College (that’s right, we didn’t have the ampersand back then). We were silly girls together back then and we’re still silly now!

Of course now we have kids!

As I watched my child play with the children of some of my oldest friends it just made me smile. Who would have thought all those years ago that we would sit in my living room in Milledgeville and watch our kids rolling around on the floor together! It just filled me with happy.

Y’all come back soon because I can’t bear to not have you in my life again!

Quick and easy asian supper!

So I had fully intended to get this recipe out first thing Monday morning, but, well, I had other stuff going on this weekend so here it is. My easy asian dinner. Seriously, with a little pre-planning this dinner was ready in under thirty minutes. I marinated my steak the night before and the rice could have been cooked the night before or leftover from dinner or, like we did, call Jack on my way home and ask him to heat up some instant rice out of the box. I'm not afraid to admit I use instant rice, I use instant potatoes too. Wanna fight about it?

So, here's my easy asian dinner which turned out so yummy!

First I picked green onions and cilantro out of my own garden!

Sliced and minced and added with the other ingredients to make my marinade.

The recipe called for a flank steak, but I couldn't find one. This is Milledgeville, after all. But the butcher at Kroger talked me into this nice flat iron steak and told me that if I didn't like I' could bring it back and he'd buy it back from me. I'm really glad he did. This was a super tender cut of meat, and even after microwaving it as leftovers it was still tender which was suprprising as well. We will be getting this cut of meat again!

Put some of the marinade in a bag with the steak and let it sit over night. This is also a good time to go ahead and cook your rice as well.

So, to cook this meal, I threw my rice and a small can of peas and carrots into a skillet with some canola oil coating the bottom of the pan (next time I think I'll put the veggies in last as they were a little mushy).

Then throw that steak on the grill (in my case I used a grill pan since it was a little wet outside and I didn't feel like warming up the grill).

See?

I made a little well in the center of my rice and cracked two eggs into there (next time I'll scramble them a little first, but admit it, it looks cooler this way).

Just keep stirring and moving the rice around as the eggs cook.

And the steak continues to cook on the grill pan. Just turn it and baste witht he rest of your marinade.

Take it off of the grill and slice it up! Yum!

Yeah, I know, this isn't the prettiest plate ever, but it will do in a pinch.

But what's that on the rice? Oh yeah, a little "Yum-Yum" sauce. You know, the kind they serve at the Japanese restaurants that you pour over everything...My friends and I have spent much time at a local Japanese restaurant and every time we talk about how we could put this stuff on everything! And how we wish we had a recipe...here it is gals!!

melted butter
mayonnaise
rice wine vinegar
garlic powder
paprika
sugar

That's it. Simple, huh? The recipe I found didn't have any measurements so I just experimented and must say I dind't write down how much of everything I used. Next time maybe... But it was good! Took just a few minutes and I felt like I was at Kuroshima's!

My goal lately has been to fix dinners that use preplanning time to prepare so that when we get home it's super easy to throw it together at the last minute. I love my "Simple & Delicious" magazine that comes every two months. I get it and immediately sit down to read and reread and plan what I'm going to cook out of it! I have a whole stack of them the I flip through and find good recipes and lately I've started copying the recipes and putting them in a book so that i don't have to search for what issue that special recipe came out of! I recommend this magazine to all my friends and you can check out the link I provided and get your own subscription!






Here's the steak recipe...
1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
1/4 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup plum sauce
2 tbsp minced cilantro
3 garlic cloves minced
1 tbsp minced fresh gingerroot
1 beef flank steak/flat iron steak

In a small bowl combine the first eight ingredients. Pour 3/4 cup marinade into a large resealable plastic bag; add steak. Seal bag and turn to coat; refrigerate 4 hours or overnight. Cover and refrigerate remaining marinade.

Drain and discard marinade. Grill steak, covered, over medium heat 6-8 minutes on each side or until meat reaches desired doneness, basting occasionally with remaining marinade. To serve slice thinly against the grains.

Leave of Absence

I’ve been taking a leave of absence from my blog lately. At first I was a little guilty, but then I realized that life was just too busy for me to sit down and blog about it! First it was the end of a semester. I had a huge final and some papers to finish for an incomplete I had taken last year. Then we had Franki’s birthday party

and Mother’s Day!

After that it was getting ready for the Flower and Art Show at work

 

and taking a Maymester class all crammed into three days! At the same time I was working on ideas for an independent study that I’m going to be working on in the Fall.

So life has been extremely busy lately. In the inbetween times we’ve been playing,

laughing,

sunning

and loving life!

So stay tuned, I have a great recipe coming up that’s so simple, but seems like you took a lot of time including a very special recipe…..

What a weekend!

It was quite an exciting weekend here in Milledgeville. We started out the weekend with Jay being sick. Luckily for us he's a tough kid and after a rough night, we had no more reversals and were ready to head full force into the weekend.

We started out with Relay for Life.

Jack and I have both been involved for the past few years with this program. This year I took both kids out with the intention of staying a few hours and heading on home. At 1:00AM we left South Creek with two sleeping kids.

 

Nell couldn't have been a better trooper. She actually knocked out about 10:00 in her pack and play. Jay stopped moving when Field Whipple took the stage and fell asleep in my lap.

 

It's a much different experience than when he was a baby and would fall asleep in my lap, but a sweet moment. Jack's team raised over $3,000 towards the American Cancer Society. This is the torch that the Cook building purchased in honor of one of our nurses.

Saturday started the alumni jazz band extravaganza.

 

I played with the Georgia College and State University concert band back in the day under the direction of Todd Shiver. Over the years we have formed a good friendship. He is leaving Milledgeville for the west coast and a position in Washington state.

It was a bittersweet moment to join my fellow alums on stage to honor him. The alumni all played so well. It was a great show.

Afterward we joined some folks on the town for my first night out downtown in something like four years! Nothing makes you feel older than hanging out with a bunch of college students!

 

Laurian, Danielle and I sat at the bar and pretended we were cool again, let me tell you, it doesn't work. We realized that college bars are for college students and college boys don't seem to shave or know what a comb is these days. At about 1:00AM (notice a pattern here) I left. It was too much with the smoke and all the people and the loudness and...oh yeah, I'm old. I actually took a shower when I got home to wash off the stench of cigarettes and misspent youth.

Sunday morning the kids were up and at 'em early! Too early for this party girl! But we got up and eventually met Laurie and Danielle for breakfast where we discussed the fact that we would have had way more fun the night before had we gone for coffee and dessert rather than hitting the bar scene!

The rest of the day was spent piddling around the house. I really wanted to take Jay to Gray for the Old Clinton war days, but he wouldn't nap and by the time I was ready to go we would have missed the reenactmant so we stayed home. I worked a little in the garden, cleaned out the van...mostly, and just hung out around the house. One of these days, I'm going to have a restful weekend with nothing to do! LOL

The Stomach Bug

It creeps into your house in the middle of the night
Taking precious sleep from parents and babies
It steals away hours of sick time
And any plans you may have for the next twelve to twenty-four hours...at least

It necessitates loads and loads of laundry
An abundance of lysol
Towels and pedialyte
And mother's comfort

It will suck the life out of a rambunctious toddler
And sap the strength of everyone involved
Pale skin and tired eyes are it's hallmark
Trips to obtain pedialyte and crackers are the result

Poor babies
Poor parents
Poor everyone involved
House is in quarantine.....

Pioneer Woman’s Sloppy Joes

Last night Jack and I watched “Julie and Julia.” It was a really good movie and considering I had just finished Julia’s book about living in Paris I really enjoyed it! Jack asked if I had gotten the idea about a blog from the movie. He has no idea the number of food blogs that exist and have nothing to do with Julia Child! So I started thinking about the food blogs that I enjoy. One of my favorites is The Pioneer Woman. She lives on a ranch and blogs about her life. She has some amazing recipes and I love to read them. Lately she posted her recipe for sloppy joes. There has always been something a little subversive to me about sloppy joes. As a child, here was a meal that you were actually allowed to be messy! Now that stuff in a can is pretty good, but I have always thought that it had to be pretty easy to make them myself. So last weekend I found this recipe and lo and behold I had everything I needed already in the kitchen! All except green bell pepper, but I’m not a big fan of those anyways so I just left it out.

I browned the ground beef in my favorite skillet

Added the onions and garlic.

The spices and brown sugar                      

Then added the rest of the ingredients and heated.

Extreme close up!

How’s that for dinner??

Of course my little camera hog had to have his picture taken too! He really loved his sloppy joe!

And then I did this! Pulled out my food mill and ground up some of the mixture

 

So I made this! Sloppy joe baby food! Nell loved it and ate it well. We are currently eating all kinds of foods so it didn’t seem like a stretch to just share this meal with her too!

  

Here’s the Pioneer Woman’s recipe! I actually cut this recipe in half for our family so do however much you want! We had none left and Jack had two sandwiches!

2 Tablespoons Butter
2-½ pounds Ground Beef
½ whole Large Onion, Diced
1 whole Large Green Bell Pepper, Diced (I left this out)
5 cloves Garlic, Minced (I used three)
1-½ cup Ketchup
1 cup Water
2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
2 teaspoons Chili Powder (Next time I think I’ll use a little less. It had a kick to it!)
1 teaspoon Dry Mustard
½ teaspoons Red Pepper Flakes (more To Taste)
Worcestershire Sauce To Taste
2 Tablespoons Tomato Paste (mine had gone bad so I left it out)
Tabasco Sauce (I left this out too)
Salt To Taste
Freshly Ground Black Pepper, To Taste

Add butter to a large skillet or dutch oven over medium high heat. Add ground beef and cook until brown. Drain. Add onions, green pepper, and garlic. Cook for a few minutes, or until vegetables begin to get soft. Add ketchup, brown sugar, chili pepper, dry mustard, and water. Stir to combine and simmer for 15 minutes, adding salt and pepper to taste. Also add tomato paste, Worcestershire, and Tabasco if desired. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. 

 

Sandy Paws…

We interrupt your regular blog for a special report from St. George Island

This week Jack and I took out first trip without children since Jay was born! We’re so lucky to have parents who were willing to put their lives on hold for a few days and spend time with their grandchildren.We’re also extremely thankful to Kim and Zeb Bost for the use of their house here. We arrived on Wednesday to some windy weather, but by Thursday morning the ocean was smooth and the sun was ou. We had two grea days on the beach, then went to Appalachicola on Saturday. If you’ve never been there, you really should go. Our favorite restaurant is there Boss Oyster’s. We had two and a half dozen oysters between us. Then did a little shopping and I hit my favorite yarn store here for a skein of yarn that I’ll make something for Nell out of. Last time we were here I purchased some yarn that I’m’ making some wrist warmers out of. They’re almost done so it’s time for something new. But that’s all for another post. We’ve read, watched movies (thanks Shana for the first season of True Blood), napped and I knitted. This morning about 6:00 the storm hit and we had rain, thunder, lightening and hail! Then had lunch at another great restaurant here Harry A’s and went for a nice walk in the late afternoon. Other than that, I’ve been working on a Quantitative project, but it’s not so bad when this is the view.

On the way here we found this at one of our favorite stopping places, Stripling’s. It claims to be kosher and safe for vegetarians! It’s really not half bad on a sandwich.

We also climbed the light house!

92 steps, 12 ladder rungs and squeeze yourself through a 2 1/2 foot hole! And there we were…

What a view!

 

 

Tomorrow we leave here and while it’s back to reality, I’m really anxious to hold my babies, although I think they’re really having a better time being spoiled by grandparents! Time for a little retraining!
Tomorrow is my regular Monday posting so check in there for that! I made sloppy joes!!!