Homefries, homemade from scratch, and easy!

I never make home fries, but I love them. They are not hard to make!!

Simply wash and chopped your potatoes, boil them in water till almost soft. Leave them a bit firm so they hold up while being stirred. Add your seasonings, some onion if you like, and EAT!!

Start with potatoes. Wash em'

Then chop em' into cubes.


Put em' in water and boil em' till soft. I like to say "em'" today. Sorry.


My favorite oniony thing....Shallots. Chop em'


Saute em'


Drain em'


Dump into a saute pan. Sorry, I meant, dump em'


Eat em'

Enjoy!

I think I'm going to make these more often. The boys couldn't get enough of them!

Enjoy garden tomatoes, ALL winter long...

Canning tomatoes is surprisingly easy and well worth it if you can get fresh, inexpensive tomatoes.


My garden never supplies enough tomatoes for canning but a local Mennonite farm that we get our eggs from sure does. She sells plastic laundry baskets full (I guess they equal about a bushel) for only $3.50!! I bought two and processed about half of them today. The other half need another day or two to ripen and will become a batch of homemade salsa.


I have a large pot of boiling water and drop the tomatoes in for about 60 seconds. Then I plunge (I like that word) them into a ice water bath.


See how the skins are peeling? The skins just rub right off and I cut out the cores.


I clean the jars in the dishwasher and boil the lids in a small pot on the stove for about 10 minutes to sterilize them.


Then I start stuffing the peeled tomatoes into the jars. They supply their own juice. I fill to about 1/2" to the top.


The mess afterwards....


I have to buy a big canner, but a large pot on the stove works fine too!

The jars are lined up waiting to be processed. They need to be in a waterbath for about 45 minutes.


I use the handy jar grabber (hand me down from mom-in-law) to remove the jars and allow them to cool on racks.


It's worth the work and I think I'll have to go and get more tomatoes and can some more!!

News Flash: I can drive again!!!!

Picasso?

Maybe you shouldn't even ask...

Okay, we had the cousins from Philadelphia over. All our other cousins don't come to visit because they are too far away. (North Carolina and Montana)

This time the boys took Lukie and traced his outline. (Missed that pic, sorry)

I have this awesomely huge roll of newspaper print from the Reading Eagle that our former nanny, Lisa, obtained for us. Did I mention it's awesome? Every now and then I pull it out and bring down the container of markers from the school room, and Voila! art is born.

Lance made the face, the rest of the boys took turns on the body. They determined that it wasn't a "he" or a "she"....Hmmmmm....

Logan working his magic.


Lunch!

What? Did you think I wasn't going to sneak food in here somewhere?


Pizza bagels...


Watermelon....


and grapes....


I just love a big table full of boys! 6 boys and two mommies.

Shaped Meat patties, It was Lance's idea....

And what a GREAT idea it was! Sometimes, I like to ask the boys what they feel like having for dinner. I give them the ingredients and they can decide what and how to cook it.

Tonight we had ground turkey. Oh, I have some great recipes for ground turkey, but I didn't feel motivated by any of them.

Lance said..."Why don't we make them into shapes?" My ever creative one.


So, we start with ground turkey. I added some bread crumbs, salt and pepper, minced onion, crushed italian seasoning and paprika, maybe a bit of garlic powder. Can't remember, I always make them a little differently each time. I do not use an egg, I guess you could, but I don't think they will hold their shape as well.



The boys had to help out with this one. I love it when children cook


I shaped the little "person" so they had an idea of what we were aiming for size-wise.


Logan's meat lump ended up as a motorcyle, but it kind of morphed into a gun...


Lance and Logan hard at work.





Itchy nose Lancer?


I just love it when they are creative. Lance ended up with a racecar, complete with windshield!

He took a great sculpture class this past Spring and really had a blast creating sculptures. Needless to say, we have a lot of clay in our house.


The finished shapes. I didn't photograph the baked ones on the cookie sheet because, frankly, it wasn't pretty! And, sorry, but I'm all about pretty food. It has to smell good too, oh, and of course, taste great. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, till browned.


The "gun"


The "guy"


The "racecar" with salad and homemade homefries. YummMMM!

Note to self: Make twice as many! We were fighting over them. I think I only got the football.

Puffed Oven Pancake

This is one of my most favorite recipes ever! I recently made it with sauteed cinnamon apples. This was my first time using fresh peaches.

Oh my goodness! It was excellent!

The wonderful thing is the recipe only requires a few basic ingredients and the oven does the rest.


It's a great dessert or breakfast or Sunday night dinner. We love breakfast for dinner. Today, I made it for breakfast with some scrambled eggs. If I had bacon, I would have served that too. Oh well!

Really though, you can use any fruit, hot or cold. You could use syrup (I don't feel the need), sprinkle it with powdered sugar, or leave it plain. Just be sure you have enough because everyone fights over it.


First we start with a 425 degree oven. Preheat the oven. Put 1-2 Tablespoons butter in the pan and put it in the oven to melt.


Meanwhile, in a bowl, blend 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk, 2-3 beaten eggs, 1 tsp. vanilla, and 2 tsp sugar. (I use agave nectar for all my sweeteners. It has VERY low glycemic index, perfect for Bill's diet).


Pour the mixture into the HOT skillet, use oven mitts!


And watch it grow and bubble, but don't open the oven door too much, it will flop. If you have a light and see-through door it helps. Otherwise just peek!


Bake 15-20 minutes till it looks like this picture, lightly browned.


Take the skillet out of the oven...


And pour on your fruit...


Sift some powdered sugar on it, OOooohh so pretty!


Lukie loves it.


Shovel it in boy!


I made a smaller one for me :)