September 15th, 2011

We had a fun night ahead of us, Lauren’s school sponsored a night at Grant’s Farm for all the families.  I wanted to feed the girls before we headed to the event.  Trent was out of town and scheduled to be back later that night, so we decided to eat after we put the girls to bed.  I wanted an easy one pot easy meal.  I went to the pantry to see what pasta I had on hand.

One of my favorites!  I also had some leftover roasted chicken and raw broccoli.

So I boiled the pasta with the broccoli with salted water (I ended up putting the broccoli in the water after 5 minutes of cooking the pasta so it wasn’t too mushy, broccoli should require teeth to eat it). 

For the sauce, I added salt, pepper, and 2 cloves of garlic to a container of ricotta cheese. 

I added a coffee mug full of the pasta water to thin it out.

Stir it up and you’ve got a great sauce that took minutes.

I wilted in about 2 cups of spinach.  Veggies, calcium, protein, and carbs in one dish.  No need for any sort of side dish.

Full bellies ready to feed the bellies of the goats at Grant’s Farm.

September 13th, 2011

I can’t keep it a secret anymore, it’s just too overwhelming.  My husband has a thing for sandwiches.  He can’t help it and it’s been like this since the day I met him.  If he goes out to lunch, 98% of the time he’ll order a sandwich (1% of the time he’ll order a wrap, especially if it’s a buffalo chicken wrap, 1% of the time he’ll order a salad…and 100% of the 1% it’s the Asian chicken salad from St Louis Bread Company).  I pack his lunch most of the time.  I’ll pack soups, pastas….whatever leftovers from dinner the night before.  Whenever we don’t have any leftovers, I’ll pack him a sandwich or wrap of some sort, mostly involving deli turkey, cheese, and mustard.  Those are the days I will get an email around 1 pm that says something like this “wow babe, lunch was great today, thanks!”  I have to admit, it’s pretty cute how excited he gets over sandwiches. 

If I had to rate his favorite sandwiches, it would go something like this:

1. buffalo chicken sandwich

2. Authentic Cajun Shrimp Po’ Boy

3. French dip sandwich with cheese

4. Hamburger (preferably with blue cheese and bacon)

5. Italian Meat Sandwich (preferably hot)

6. Reuben

7. Cuban

8. Pulled Pork

9. Barbecue Grilled Chicken sandwich (with melted cheese)

Lately turkey clubs have been making appearances on his plate, so they’ve got a shot at top ten too.  Also every time the server brings him his sandwich he will look down at it and ask the server to bring him some mustard (except sandwich #1). 

For dinner tonight, we are concentrating on dear #6. 

For my reuben sauce, I don’t use thousand island dressing.  Mostly because I would only use it for reuben sandwiches and I probably only make them a handful of times a year.  Also making it yourself is easy and you get to pick the ratio.  I do equal parts relish, ketchup, and mayo.

Sometimes I’ll buy pastrami or turkey pastrami, but most of the times I just use regular smoked turkey breast from the deli.  I also go crazy with the sauerkraut.  I stuff as much as I can into the sandwich.

Medium high heat on the skillet (or you can use a panini press).

If I had an old school dinner bell outside by my front door, this would be the perfect time to ring it.

September 10th, 2011

When Julie was pregnant with her son, Bryan, she asked me hypothetically if there were any dates that I didn’t want her to give birth.  I told her September 10th, since it was our other nephew’s birthday.  Well like any decent sister she went and did just that.  We have 2 nephews and both of their birthdays fall on the same day.  Bryan is turning 5 and Caleb is turning 7.  Julie and Michelle are very kind each year to schedule the parties on different days so we don’t have to play Sophie’s choice with the birthday parties.  This year Bryan’s party was at a playground/pavilion on Friday night in Clayton and Caleb’s birthday party was Saturday night at a playground/pavilion in North Kansas City.  We officially have themes for the weekend:  nephews, birthdays, family, playgrounds, pavilion dining, cake, and candles.  The other theme was nothing but thunderstorms and rain predicted all day on Friday and Saturday (Sunday, of course, was predicted to be beautiful and sunny).  The rain stopped about 5 minutes before Bryan’s party and about 5 minutes before Caleb’s party and never deterred our plans (but did cause a little stress for Julie and Michelle, and much looking out the window checking the status of rain and cloud patterns). 

Friday night I asked Trent to take pictures of Bryan’s party so I could mingle, hang out with my family, kid watch, help out, etc.  This is the one and only picture he got of the birthday boy:

In Trent’s defense, he did take a couple other pictures.

And there you have it, Bryan’s birthday perfectly captured.  Thankfully I know Ben was out and about taking many pictures, so when Bryan is showing his son what he did on his 5th birthday there will be evidence of a celebration with more than me, Sydney, and Lauren.

Saturday night I took over camera duty for Caleb’s 7th birthday.  No real reason why, just did. ;)

Birthday boy enjoying some swing action.

Sydney decided to make a little pretend money and opened up a food truck.  She quickly had 2 hungry customers eager to purchase pretend food and had tons of pretend money to boot.

Apparently Sydney is quite the comedian in her pretend food truck.  She’s vamping the crowds while preparing her delicious pretend dishes.  You really get your pretend money’s worth here.

Michelle made all kinds of delicious dishes and brought them to the park ready to eat.  The flies were out in masses attacking the food, so we had to keep everything covered.  It must be this time of year because I remember the flies being out of control at Bryan’s birthday last year and we had to put towels over stuff if no one was serving themselves.

Green bean casserole, a Bond family favorite.

Corn soufflé.

Baked beans.

 

Michelle made pulled brisket for sandwiches.  She had a crock pot of pulled brisket that looks like your normal bulled brisket fare.  Then she had a second crock pot and the brisket didn’t shred, so she served it in strips.  It was amazing!  I actually liked this version better because it was like little steaks with a delicious sauce, really tender and tasty. 

Hot dog option for the kids and the young at heart.

Hope all Caleb’s birthday wishes come true!

When we got back from the party, we gave the kids a much needed bath (muddy playground and all), and put them to bed.  Trent and I then hung out with Kirk and Sally for a little bit and decided to watch a movie we brought from Netflix.  While we were watching the movie, we noticed we had a friend free loading on our movie action on the window.

I had no idea frogs had a thing for the Twilight series, she must have a mad crush on Robert Patterson or something.

September 7th, 2010

 

Look out fish at the Botanical Gardens….

Sydney has Goldfish crackers and is perfectly willing to share! 

Hee hee, the fish are eating “goldfish.” 

After we went to the Japanese Gardens to feed the fish goldfish, we went to the Children’s Garden where they have a playground and all kinds of adventures for the little ones.  It was the first time Sydney has been to the Children’s Garden, she was excited.

She was quite pleased with the selection of fun offered.

On the way home we stopped by DiGregorio's Italian Grocery Store to stock up on goodies and treats.

If you were to ask me my favorite type of pasta, hands down it would be Bucatini.  Unfortunately, they don’t sell that shape at any grocery stores in our neighborhood.  So whenever I’m on The Hill, I stock up. 

I love it.  I’ve never made bucatini with my regular meat sauce, so I decided that’s what was going to be for dinner.  Things are about to get insane round these parts!  I didn’t have any ground beef at home, but the nice thing about being at Digregorios is they sell delicious salsiccia.  Which is an italian bratwurst.

Wednesday night’s gravy.

September 5th, 2011

It was Labor Day, my love hate holiday.  I love the holiday because Trent gets off from work.  I hate the holiday because it’s the official last day at the pool for the season.  We are now entering the portion of the calendar where the days will eventually get shorter and colder.  The weather was chilly, in the 70’s (okay, not chilly, but chilly for the pool).  We persevered and went anyway to say our goodbyes, until the girls started shivering and their lips turned a slight hue of blue.

That night we had the family over for a barbecue.  We grilled hamburgers and I made a couple of sides.  I had a ton of veggies on hand and tried to figure out how to incorporate into a side dish.  My mind went straight to pasta salad.

So I diced up some asparagus, zucchini, and cut corn off the cob.  I then added some salt, pepper, granulated garlic, and a bit of olive oil and mixed it all up.  I roasted them in the oven at 375 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.

My favorite packaged low fat ricotta cheese!

Great sauce for pasta, container of ricotta cheese, a coffee mug of hot pasta water (the leftover water you boiled your pasta in), salt, pepper, granulated garlic, and a couple of thyme springs finely diced.  Perfect amount for a pound of whatever pasta looks good to you in that moment.

Add the veggies to the cooked pasta.

Toss all together and you’re done.  Would be a great meal in itself too with a salad.

So I guess my countdown to Memorial Day begins….