Saturday, May 14, 2011

Joyfully at Home: Chapter One


Guest Post
My daughter, Dana, age 11, began reading Joyfully at Home, today and is going to give her thoughts on each chapter as she goes along.  So, here is what she thought about Chapter 1:

This book is encouraging to me. It tells what you need to know to live a life for the Lord and to respect your father and mother. I learned that God made you for a reason and wants you to glorify Him in every way. I also learned that just because I am older now, that does not mean that I should not honor my father and mother. I hope you enjoy that book if you read it.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

My Special Needs Friend: My Crockpot

I have an older version of this crock.  It's the Smartpot but my timer thingee doesn't work anymore.  My lid gave up a long time ago and I ordered a new one.  That one gave up, too.  Now, they don't make the lids anymore and I refuse to buy the same style crockpots in the store that I know that they are not gonna have replacement lids for!!!  So, until I find a big crockpot with a glass lid, I am not buying a new one.   Period.  So, I improvise.  Been doing it this way for a while.....like more than a year.
I love my crock pot.  I really, really love it.  It is faithful.  It no longer has a lid but it never stops cooking.  I even used it to make homemade yogurt in  yesterday...but I will write up a separate post for that, as it wasn't the way crockpot365's blog says to use it.  I sorta did my own thing.

Yes, I said that it doesn't have a lid and I use it almost daily for a variety of things.  I use it for anything I would use an oven for.  Anything....well almost.  I don't bake bread in it, although I know some do.  But I have made desserts, baked potatoes, breakfasts...really almost everything. 

Here's how I used it for my meatballs this past week:
First I made up my meat mixture, with seasonings and whatever you add-I added onions, green peppers, eggs to hold it together, a few bread crumbs and some seasonings.  After I used my mixer to mix it all up, I scooped out meat with my ice cream scoop to form balls and placed them into the bottom of the pot. 

 Then, as you can see below, I layered with aluminum foil and repeated the same thing.





 Here's my crock just cookin' up a storm:


I wrote up one of my meatball recipes here.  But on this day, I was making meatballs in sauce for meatball subs.


A word of warning (or a tip, whichever way you see it)  :  if you cook with foil instead of a lid, it cooks much, much faster than with the lid.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  I only cooked these meatballs 2 hrs and waited to warm them until 2 hrs before I was going to serve them and they were steaming hot when we ate!


Sunday, May 8, 2011

Kids Got My Camera: More Toes

I cannot for the life of me understand why my children love it...but I have yet again found pictures of their toes on my camera when downloading.  Sounds like a rerun, no?