Circling Through This Life

I don't have any idea how regularly I will do a Menu Monday post but I like the idea of sharing a menu, recipe, or meal idea on a Monday. Today I want to share a lunch idea using up leftovers. Not so much a recipe, but sharing what I did to use up left over broccoli. If you were to ask my family if they like broccoli I am fairly certain they would look at you like you had two heads.  Like broccoli? I don't think so. They might say "well I'll eat it," or they might respond with "I prefer it raw." I've discovered though that Supergirl loves broccoli with cheese. Since I'm trying to get her to eat more veggies and we we are trying to get her to eat more protein we eat broccoli a few times a week.  Steamed.  For Supergirl I might sprinkle some Parmesan or shredded Cheddar on it.  Sometimes I splurge and buy those "microwave-in-a-bag" broccoli with cheese sauce. Don't let them fool you though.  They like broccoli.  They just se...

The weather has turned colder. Fall is here.  That means it’s time to think about soups, stews, and chili! I do love posting recipes and I have maybe close to a zillion, ok not quite, but many, recipes that I’ve collected photos for and started a few blog posts but just haven’t finished up. In the meantime Fall has snuck up on us and Soup Season is here.  I’ve decided to collect some of my soup recipe blog posts and share them here with you! I’m going to do this Random Five Four Style! 1. Tomato Florentine ~  Seriously easy. Very adaptable. Honeybear is not much of a soup eater and this one is broth based so not that filling for a hungry man but perfect for a light supper or for a hungry home schooling mama and students for lunch. 2. Our hands down all around family favorite chicken soup nicknamed Pirate Killing Soup, is our variation of Chloe’s Virus Killing Soup .  This is the *best* Chicken and Vegetable soup you will ever eat!  And we do not only eat ...

Today is Wednesday. Wednesday is not normally a day of bacon eating here but it happens to be a Fast Free Week (specifically Trinity Week, which follows Pentecost) which means we can eat meat and dairy. So of course we had bacon and eggs for breakfast. (Orthodox Christians traditionally fast on Wednesdays and Fridays.) Bacon may be my favorite breakfast meat but I certainly don’t limit myself to eating it only for breakfast.  I don’t dislike sausage or ham.  I’ve even been known to eat the questionable Spam for breakfast. But bacon? Well, bacon is in a category all its own. I can eat bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  All on the same day, too!  But I usually refrain from eating that much bacon in day.  It’s too expensive and I think spreading it out helps me to savor it more. I want to share how we cook bacon here and then share some ideas for using bacon. Once upon a long time ago I would buy the ready cook bacon in the ginormous package from Costco. I...

If you regularly read my blog you may be wondering how someone who doesn’t really like shrimp could have a favorite recipe for shrimp.  I am learning to eat shrimp.  It’s a good source of protein and Lent is the time when Shrimp becomes a vegetable . This recipe isn’t strictly Lenten though if you use butter.  You could try using coconut oil. Depending on which brand you use, the coconut oil may add a coconut flavor to the shrimp.  For some this would be a good thing. I found the idea for this recipe on Facebook.  The ingredients were vague and the directions were almost a by guess and by gosh but the idea actually made shrimp sound good. Butter and garlic can make almost anything edible and some things even better.  So start with butter (about 3 to 4 tablespoons) and garlic.  I used several cloves of fresh garlic peeled and chopped. Melt the butter in the pan.  I let the butter melt while the oven preheats to 350 degrees.  This bit also...

Today, around the world Orthodox Christians, whether they follow the “old” or the “new” calendar, celebrate Cheesefare Sunday.  It is often referred to as “Cheesecake Sunday”.   Today is also known as Forgiveness Sunday. We joke that it is Cheesecake Sunday.  Our first Forgiveness Sunday potluck was nearly all cheesecake! So for cheesecake cheesefare Sunday BooBear did the work and I did the translating but together we took our  favorite super easy 8 Minute Cheesecake Recipe and turned it into a chocolate feast! Also we did not use cool whip.  Instead I taught BooBear how to whip heavy cream using our Bosch mixer and we used real whipped cream. The Super Easy 8 Minute Cheesecake is not a true cheesecake and it is not baked.  It’s one of those no-bake and is very similar to the Jell-O Box No Bake Cheesecake only a million times better!  We hadn’t tried chocolate before though it’s been on our list of “we should try that” for ages.  We u...

I can’t believe January is over!  Hello February.  I know February is only 3 days shorter than January or March but those 3 days make a huge difference.  February is 1/4 of the way gone!  So here’s my 5 Random Thoughts for this week: 1.  Today is actually Saturday, not Friday. I had every intention of finishing this blog and posting it on Friday but I went out to dinner with my family.  We rarely go out and it was a real treat.  (See number 2 below). 2.  I love Arby’s Beef and Cheddars. I know the are not good for me at all. I do only eat half the bun though but I always add extra red ranch. And I don’t like the curly fries. Nope I have to have potato cakes. 3.  I have a husband that cooks. I am blessed. 4.  I posted, I think it was last year, about Shrimp.  I have developed a taste for shrimp.  My favorite is Shrimp Creole.  I also like this Italian Shrimp that is like an appetizer or I’m thinking served with some ang...

These yummy little half potatoes are a cross between twice baked potatoes and traditional potato skins.  They make a great appetizer and awesome served with Buffalo Style Chicken Wings .  I’m not a football fan, but if I were and I was hosting a Super Bowl game watching event I’d be serving some of these Deluxe Potato Skins along with those wings and other finger foods.  This is one of my family’s favorites when we plan a finger food or “junk food” night supper. They’re becoming a tradition with our movie/episode marathon weekends. I liked using smaller potatoes for these since they have a potato filling.  When I make more traditional potato skins that are just topped with cheese, bacon bits, and chives, I like the potatoes to be bigger. First we (yes I had my my girls helping!) scrubbed, pierced and baked the potatoes. I like to make sure that these are very tender.  It’s no fun trying to mash up the filling when it isn’t soft enough.  Let the potatoes...

One our of family holiday traditions is the “Junk Food Feast” which grew out of my childhood.  On New Years Eve we would eat things like veggies and ranch dip and potato chips with French Onion Dip. Maybe mom served a real dinner earlier in the evening but I don’t remember. As we started our own family, Honeybear and I added things and we moved it to Christmas Eve and it was the dinner.  (Now it is served either on New Year’s Eve or anytime after December 25 but before January 6.) Buffalo Style Chicken Wings made their first appearance for Christmas 1995.  We were in Alabama and a fellow military spouse, Sally, taught me how to make them. These are the best Chicken Wings I have ever had.  You can make them as spicy or mild as you like and they still have lots and lots of flavor.   I would not classify this as healthy, and since I only make them once or twice a year I don’t worry about it.  (I would find a way to make these Trim Healthy Mama friendly...

I haven’t done a recipe for a long time.   A few weeks ago, I mentioned on my FB Blog Page that I was making this and I commented that I better post the recipe.  If you are looking for a healthy, “from scratch” recipe, you’ll want to skip this.  If you’re looking for “really easy, very tasty comfort food” then keep reading! I was so diligent to take pictures while putting it together but I completely forgot to take pictures *after* it was done and we gobbled it all up! NO leftovers.  None. Here’s what it looked like assembled but not cooked: This is so super easy to assemble!  You’ll only need 5 ingredients (6 if you want to add optional cheese!): I only included one box of stuffing mix in the photo but I did use two boxes and I only used about 1 cup of soup cream not that whole big container!  The chicken is about 1 1/2 to  2 lbs.  I cut 3 chicken breasts in half (butterfly style) so that I had two thinner but still full sized fillets f...

Here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest we melt when it gets over 80 degrees.  I know we’re pretty wimpy here.  In summer we like to grill or use the crock pot.  Grilling doesn’t heat up the house at all except for maybe the rice cooker.  I like using the crock pot in the summer because it doesn’t heat up the house like the oven does but s ometimes it’s even too hot to use the crock pot!  This week the Schoolhouse Review Crew is blogging recipes with the idea that It’s Too Hot to Cook ! I’m going to link to some different recipe posts I’ve done.  This first one is for my Tuna Macaroni Salad.  Yes you have to cook the pasta but I cook the pasta in the morning because my kitchen is relatively cool in the morning and very hot in the afternoon with the sun coming through the skylight.  Tuna Macaroni Salad I like serving fresh fruit as the side dish for pasta salads.  Two other popular-around-my-house summer salads are my Chicken Bacon Ranch...

This week for Lisa’s Try a New Recipe Tuesday, I’m talking about Making my Favorite Snack: Popcorn. Sometimes I think the main reason I went to the movies when I was younger, was just for the popcorn.  In fact when I worked at the mall, I would sometimes stop at the movie theater just to buy popcorn ! There was something about “Movie Theater Popcorn” that just could not be replicated at home.  And the microwave “movie theater butter” flavor? Um no. It just isn’t. Besides being incredibly bad for your with all those chemicals, it doesn’t taste (to me anyway) anything at all like the movie theater popcorn I ate on so many Friday nights. I rarely go to the movie theater anymore and the last time I ate it, the popcorn just didn’t seem to be as good as I remembered. (Still way better than that nasty microwave stuff that is clearly mislabeled as “movie theater butter”. Popcorn remains one of  my favorite snack foods.  I eat it less often than I use to but I still eat it ...

*Note* I start off with lots of background information but I do share a recipe for “better butter” that is a blend of real butter and a good oil. Scroll down to find the recipe if you want to skip the *why* part. Because of my husband’s cholesterol levels and his newly diagnosed heart disease oh and that pesky heart attack, we’re taking little steps to better health or baby steps to healthier eating. This post gives some background about where we’re starting from. One of things the doctor recommends is a low-fat diet (not a NON-fat diet but a low fat diet). But not all fats are the same and not all fats are bad . Just because it is saturated, doesn’t mean it’s all bad either. Eating a diet where 30-50% of your daily calories come from fat is not necessarily a bad thing, in fact, if it is the right fats with the right ratios, it can be very healthy and beneficial for you. (I urge you to do your own research! Do not take my word for it and go to several different sources. There is l...

I am not a big fan of fish.  Growing up I only liked fish if I had been fishing with my daddy and caught something and my mama cooked it up.  My father loved fish. He preferred fresh water fish like Northern, Pike, or Walleye. Mom always breaded them and pan fried them. I still do not like the smell of fish. If we went to a fish-n-chips shop like Long John Silver’s I would fill up on hush puppies and french fries. Over the last few years (5 maybe?) I’ve been trying to eat more fish and to develop a taste for fish. I’ve discovered that, although I cannot stand canned salmon, I do actually like fresh salmon grilled. I also have discovered that I don’t mind tilapia.  About 3 1/2 years or so ago we had this tilapia at church.  Everyone in my family loved it.  We’ve started calling it Irene’s Fish.  At church it is served this fabulous rice that I call Irene’s Rice. It’s very yummy but I don’t have a picture of it and I haven’t been successful in making it....

I dusted off this old recipe ~ so old that my 3x5 index card is yellowed with age! and made this for our church potluck.  I made enough to take to church and another pan to leave at home for us for tonight. Here’s the original recipe (which I got from my mother-in-law, I think!)ingredients in {} are my additions 16 oz. cooked shell macaroni {I prefer shells because they are pretty but elbows work} 12 oz. sour cream {Do NOT skimp on the sour cream!} 2 lb. hamburger {I used half hamburger, and 1/2 Italian sausage} 1 large onion {I used 1 med}chopped {1 med. green bell pepper, chopped} 32 oz. Spaghetti sauce {home made would be awesome! The recipe said Ragu but I used what was on sale.  Also I used more like 52ish oz.. two of the 24-26oz size cans. We like it “saucier” than the recipe says {1/2- 3/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese} 16 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese 3-4 tsp. oregano {3-4 tsp. basil} Salt and Pepper to taste Mix shells with sour cream and se...