Another smoothie...

I used milk as my liquid base for today's smoothie. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but it is delicious! It is much creamier than when I use OJ.

Today's smoothie:

• Milk
• 1 peach
• 1 kiwi
• small handful of frozen strawberries
• 2 packets of Splenda

Mmmm...yummy...

Mmmm...Yummy Smoothies...

The kitchen at my temp position at SC Johnson is a full kitchen. One of the many appliances it has is a blender. I've taken to blending up a yummy smoothie for breakfast each morning.

Today's is particularly hitting the spot.

Ingredients:

• Orange Juice
• 1 Banana
• Frozen mixed berries
• 2 packets of Splenda

Delicious!!

Ymmm...Pie...

The Peña kids spent the night after Selena's birthday.

When AJ woke up, the two of us went out and picked some raspberries and rhubarb. When I asked AJ what he thought we should make with the raspberries we'd picked. Without hesitation, he said, "Pie!" By this time, Selena was awake, and the three of us made one raspberry and one raspberry-rhubarb pie.

The pies were tasty! And it was a lot of fun to spend quality time baking with my niece and nephew. :-)

Here is a pic of the pies we made.

Misc

Yum Yum!!

For Thanksgiving, I made a pumpkin cheesecake. It turned out picture perfect, so I had to post a pic online.

My sister, Treva, is the pie maker in our family, and she makes some delicious pies. I think this past Thanksgiving she brought 6 or 8 pies to Thanksgiving dinner. Unfortunately, I was in MN and was unable to partake. I probably should have tried my hand at making a pie in her honor, but I chose to make a pumpkin cheesecake instead. It certainly was delicious. Maybe next year, I'll make a pie, too. :-)

early Thanksgiving 2006

We celebrated Thanksgiving a little early this year (the Saturday before), because Nathan came for a visit. I made the whole spread--9 lb turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce and applesauce and pumpkin cake for dessert.

It was fun to do, but I was a little pressed for time. Dinner was supposed to start at 5 p.m. (We'd invited the Elders over as well, and they had a baptism at 7 p.m., so timing was essential), but the turkey didn't cook quite as quickly as I'd calculated. We ended up eating around 5:45. :-( Everything tasted good, so I think I'd do it again--without any morning plans. (I'd spent the morning at a PartyLite regional meeting, and hadn't gotten home until 1:45 p.m.)

Here is a pic of our Thanksgiving dinner table. We even used the good dishes.
I would have liked to have gotten a few more pictures from the evening--with the missionaries, Nathan, Jeff and I, but we were too short on time, and I wanted the Elders to be able to eat.
I saved the turkey carcass after dinner to try my hand at making some homemade turkey soup. Here's a pic:
The soup turned out pretty good, but it could have definitely used more salt and more substance. I put in celery, carrots, turkey (of course), potatoes and orzo pasta. Next time, I'll definitely add more of everything and no orzo pasta. I thought that would be good, but it got too mushy and was a weird slimy texture. Next time, I'll think I'll use spirals. With only 3 of us at home, we'll be eating soup for quite awhile! :-)
I also made some baking soda biscuits--from scratch--to accompany the soup. I'd never made them before. They tasted pretty yummy, but they didn't rise all that much. Maybe that's the way they're supposed to be...

Canning Applesauce

The Apples, Apples, and More Apples post didn't give me enough apples to satisfy my apple curiosity.

(I made apple cobbler, German apple pancakes, sliced 3 quarts to freeze, and made one batch (1 qt) of applesauce to freeze.)

So I went and picked up another bagful of apples.

I made an apple crisp.

Today I made and canned 6 pints of applesauce! (I decided to can instead of freeze because our freezer is full!!) It was my first time canning since helping my mom when I was a little girl. I was going to can yesterday, but I didn't have any canning tongs. And it's out of season at Wal-mart for canning supplies.

I called a sister in my ward to see if I could borrow hers. She gave me her canning pot, too. I was very grateful for her helpful advice and for letting me borrow her supplies. Unfortunately, I did not use her pot. It was too big for our stove (in my opinion), and it was too intimidating for me. Everything I'd read said the bottles needed to be submerged with 1 inch of water covering the jars. I didn't see how it was possible to do that with the pot she gave me, so I just used my own deep pot.

I did lots of research on the Internet about canning before starting this venture (that's how I knew about the 1 inch of water cover). I kept looking for advice on how to can without a canning pot (with rack for the jars). I'd read that the jars should not touch the bottom of the pot, so I searched and searched for a way to get around this without purchasing a specific tool. Finally I found something that would help me! They said to put a towel in the bottom of the pot in prevent the jars from touching the bottom and breaking (from the heat?). So...this is what I did today. I also only did two pint jars at a time. It took me 2 1/2 hours to complete the process.

I still have quite a few apples remaining, so I may make more applesauce on Friday. We'll see...

Egg-less pancakes...Oops!

Yesterday morning, I thought it would be nice to make some pancakes for breakfast for our little visitor. Nathan was visiting us for the weekend. Nathan is my stepson; he is 7 years old.

Unfortunately, I kept getting distracted by him and by Jeff that I accidentally forgot to crack those eggs into the batter before having Nathan mix it all together. When I was putting them on the griddle, the batter seemed a little thick. I just added some water to help the consistency.

I didn't really think too much about it until an hour or two later. I don't know why I was thinking about the pancakes again, but I just couldn't visualize cracking the eggs. That's when it occurred to me that I had forgotten them. Oops!!

Turns out...maybe the pancakes didn't really NEED the eggs! They tasted just normal to me. In fact...they were delicious.

Still, next time I'll try to remember to add 'em.