December 12th, 2010

We all woke up, looked out of the windows, and discovered snow.  I am so not even close to being a fan of the stuff.  It was Sunday and we really didn’t have anything planned or a list of errands to do, so I decided to put my nesting/snuggle hat on and make it a fun family at home day (that phrase is normally an oxymoron to me, but today it fit).

  

Lauren and Sydney played in the snow while Trent and I shoveled the driveway, walkway, and sidewalks. 

Post snow eggnog, the girls favorite holiday drink.  And it’s back into PJs for the day!

Afternoon with the craft box.

My ultimate comfort food is risotto, and not just any risotto, my dad’s family recipe for Risotto Milanese.  It sounds very cosmopolitan, but it just means risotto with mushrooms, italian sausage, and chicken. 

This is luganega, which is northern Italy’s version of a jimmy dean.  I roast it in the oven with 2 chicken breasts, let cool, then slice it up.  My sister says after I finish reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, I will not be eating chicken anymore.  Thankfully I haven’t read it yet.  I seem to keep putting it off….

Start with sautéing your veggies in olive oil with a little butter, add the rice and let it get toasted in the pan, deglaze with white wine, then continually add chicken stock in small batches while stirring until rice is done.  Add your meat at the end and finish with parmesan.

Comfort in a bowl.  So good it even made me appreciate snow, that’s huge.

December 11, 2010

Every year I make candied pecans to put out on Christmas morning, to have for any holiday entertaining, put in salads, and give away.  I found a great recipe about 5 or 6 years ago on allrecipes.com.  It’s actually for walnuts, but I use pecans for a reason completely unknown to me.  I don’t know why I use pecans, I like both nuts equally, so I’m not discriminating in the least.

 

Added bonus, they make the house smell like Christmas.  I just have to get them into containers quickly because little hands that live here snatch them up quickly.

Dawn’s Candied Pecans Walnuts, but really pecans.

Ingredients

• 1 pound walnut halves
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Spread nuts in a single layer over a baking sheet. Roast for approximately 8 to 10 minutes, or until the nuts start to turn brown and the smell of roasting nuts fills the kitchen.
2. Stir together sugar, cinnamon, salt, and milk in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat for 8 minutes, or until the mixture reaches the soft ball stage of 236 degrees F (113 degrees C). Remove from heat, and stir in vanilla immediately. .
3. Add walnuts to sugar syrup, and stir to coat well. Spoon nuts onto waxed paper, and immediately separate nuts with a fork. Cool, and store in airtight containers.

December 7th, 2010

We are in the Ozarks, but Trent has to go to court for the morning.  I had a list of things I wanted to get done.  Some laundry, Lauren’s school work, some blogging, and make a gingerbread house with the girls.  I told them if we get everything done and still have time before Trent got back, we would go across the parking lot and they could run all around the tennis courts.  Laundry, check.  School work, check. Gingerbread House,

check.  Update blog, check. 

Running around getting out energy while mom gets all my celebrity gossip on twitter, check.  Fun for all!

December 6th, 2010

So Trent and I reserved the day to take the girls to Miner Mike’s, basically a highly recommended indoor amusement park for kids.  We decided not to go over the weekend because it would be too crowded, but we would be the smart people to go on Monday and have the place to ourselves.  Well we would have literally had the place to ourselves if we broke in, because they were closed during the week off peak season.  Awesome.  So plan b was to go to Evergreens, a home good store that Shannon recommended.  It was like a home goods store on steroids and crack.  After awhile of meandering around I couldn’t find Trent and Sydney, so Lauren and I searched around the store and found them in this BRILLIANT man cave room with a huge TV on espn, frig with soda, magazines, and leather couches for all the men that can’t handle walking around looking and wreathes, knick knacks, and candles.  If doctor’s offices designed their waiting room after this template, men would never complain about their wait time for their appointments.  Trent was in heaven.  Next stop was to take the girls to get their toes painted, something they deem incredibly fancy.  Sydney’s first time to a nail salon, she was exponentially excited. 

It was a success, I have never ever seen the girls sit so still for so long in my entire life.  They were captivated.

Nightly condo fire.

Fruit, tortellini with a meat sauce, and salad for dinner.  My sister once told me that tortellini's were invented by a man who wanted a pasta designed after his girlfriend’s belly button.  I guess he had some extra time on his hands or he just really liked belly buttons.

December 5th, 2010

Sunday at the Ozarks!  Trent took the girls to mass, I worked out at the fitness center, and then we reconvened at the condo. Last year in January I bought these Christmas Cling ons for 90% off at Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  I was going to have the girls put them up in our playroom window, but then thought about seeing it backwards from the outside.  It’s silly, but I knew it would drive me nuts.  BUUUUUUTTT, I had no opinions about it in my vacation mellow mind, so to keep the kids occupied while Trent and I got ready to head out, it was the perfect activity.

Lauren’s list of things we want to do on our trip.  So easy to tackle, so loving that!

For some reason, the girls love scarves and always put them on in stores.

In bed ready to watch new Tinkerbelle movie!

Girls dinner, braised chicken with vegetables, brown rice, and bread.  Everything all separated and not touching each other, Lauren’s preferred plating.

Everything in one bowl, my preferred plating.

Enjoying daddy’s fire and the Ozarks!

December 4th, 2010

We had a fantastic first full day at the Ozarks!  We took the girls to the outlet mall for a day of shopping and then took them to see the movie Tangled in the afternoon.  We stopped at a movie store named Shady’s on the way back and boy did it live up to its name.  It was a combo movie rental store and tanning salon, not sure what tanning and movies have in common?  The movies were all organized in alphabetical order, which was a surprisingly confusing way to pick out a movie.  Blockbuster has it right, movies by categories is much, much better.  But I spotted a whole bunch of Sopranos DVDs and Trent and I decided to get season 4 to watch in the evenings.  After the first night we discovered we are way too spoiled with our dvr and cannot go back to commercial television at real time.  Then we headed back to the condo.  Trent built a fire and I gave the girls a bath and made dinner.  Tonight’s menu was spaghetti and meatballs, salad, and bread.

Full fun day and tired little girl.

The condo kitchen had all kinds of quirks.  The oven and stovetop would overheat and the refrigerator would freeze everything, frozen lettuce is hard to resurrect.  It was like the goldilocks of kitchens, things were always either too hot or too cold.  Oh the crazy adventures of vacations!

Bath art of the night, Lauren’s bath marker version of Rapunzel from Tangled.  We must have tuckered the girls out because once we put them down for the night, they were out.  Now that’s what I’m talking about because Trent and I had 12 hours of gangster whacking to watch.