Life and cooking with littles underfoot

Santa Clause is comin' to town!

Imagine if we could bottle up some of that energy and drink it??

CHOOSE TO ENJOY THE MOMENT TODAY!!!

Today we are going to visit grandpa who just came home from the hospital after having surgery. We are bringing him some "frog muffins". We are going to tidy the house and cook dinner. We are going to light the fireplace. It's FREEZING out there!!!

Frog muffins??Eeeeeeeeew!!

We made some muffins this evening. My 3 year old had an interesting view of the whole process!

He's such a great baker! He even pretends to read the recipe quoting "three cups of flour!!"

We made these muffins before...of course they are not called Frog muffins rather lemon poppy seed muffins and in real life they are quite tasty The original recipe is from http://tammysrecipes.com but I changed it a bit to accomodate my dairy allergy:

(Dairy free)Lemon poppy seed muffins

Ingredients:

~2 cups warm water

~1/2 cup oil

~1/2 cup margarine

~4 tbs lemon zest

~1 1/4 cups sugar

~2 eggs

~4 cups flour

~3 tsp baking powder

~1 tsp baking soda

~1/3 cup poppy seeds

Method: Prepare batter as you would any other muffin batter and bake in muffin cup lined muffin tins for about 15 minutes in a 350F oven. Very yummy!!

We also made some more walnut snowballs. The batch made 63 pieces. It was gone in 2 days

My 7 year old helped with those as they were for her activity club's Christmas party.

I wish I could do all the things I'd love to do with my kids...but the greates gift I can give them is to slow down and really listen to what they are trying to tell me. Even if I don't get around to doing all sorts of crafts with them and we don't make it to the park every day......they will still at least know they are loved!! I get so impatient. But that will change!

Banock for breakfast!

Here is a quick and tasty breakfast that all my kids love!! It's a native Indian food and we've totally adopted it:)

Ingredients:

~4 cups flour,

~4 tsp baking powder,

~1 tsp salt,

~water*enough to make a very soft and sticky dough*

Method: mix and drop by a large spoonful into hot oil to fry. Fry both sides until golden in colour. Serve immediately topped with your favorite jam or sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon. We eat it with jam. Tastes great with barley coffee!!
For dropping the dough into the oil it helps to dip your spoon into water first then scoop and drop. That way the dough glides off your spoon easily!

Monster raisin cookies

I made these the other day and they were big and yummy!! Of course I do have a few people in my family who are partial to chocolate chips  so this cookie was not really for them

Ingredients:

~1 cup margarine

~2 cups brown sugar

~3 eggs

~1 1/4 cup peanut butter

~1 tbs vanilla

~5 1/2 cups quick oats

~1 tsp baking soda

~1 tsp baking powder

~1 1/2 cups raisins

Method:

Mix together like any other cookie dough and form into golf ball size balls. Arrange on greased cookie sheet and flatten with fork before baking. Bake at 350F for about 7 minutes. Do not overbake! Enjoy!

A busy season

This is such a busy season. Not only because it's Christmas soon but also because of the intense season of life I am in right now. It's very interesting and I am never bored but get sooooooooo tired and often "sick and tired". However I do not want to dwell on feeling "sick and tired"!!!!! I can waste so much time wishing to make things slow down or different but I just know it isn't going to for a while. About 5 years or so before I can say it's going to be a tad easier. But you know what? Instead of wasting those 5 years or whatever number of years dwelling on how insanely busy life is and stressing out about how complicated it is to run this home I am going to just embrace this time. Let this be my public announcement to that end!! I WILL enjoy my life. I WILL enjoy my children just the way they are and I WILL enjoy my hubby too!! The purpose to my life isn't that I can do everything perfectly. I do not want to beat myself up about not having my life just so.....................

And in the meantime I am simplifying!!!!!!! Christmas is one area that can be totally overwhelming. I am buying the kids one gift each and we picked names so each of them will buy for one person in the family. The older kids use their own money for this and for the younger ones I pay. This way they get 2 nice gifts each from our immediate family. Today I took my 3 and 6 year olds to pick out the gift for their sibling that they are supposed to buy for. Then when we got home I helped them wrap the gifts.  Then they got to find a spot to hide the gift until it's time to put it under the tree. It was such a nice time to just take some time to do that  and not doing it last minute before Christmas! Hubby said I can go shopping tonight without the kids so I'll for sure buy a few presents then as well. I bought some frozen tart shells and will just fill them with something simple. Grandma will bring lots of baking anyways.

I'm just so happy that I can just chill out and give up my expectations on life and just go from there, thankful for the many blessings that are in front of my nose but would otherwise have missed!! Complaining robs you of joy and I've done pleanty of that even if unspoken!!! God has chosen to ENTRUST me with extra busy children. It's not that God has cursed me with BAD children. It's that He has ENTRUSTED me with these children knowing that he will also supply my every need to raise them and point them to Him. So many times I just marvel at how busy they are and wonder why me??? Just the other night it just came to me. I've been ENTRUSTED with a precious treasure. 9x!! How lucky am I??? That kind of thinking sure puts a different spin on things. I will pour myself into blessing these children instead of thinking of myself. There is a crushing in the inner man that takes place. God knew exactly what he was doing for I would otherwise most likely remain the same selfish person I always was !!

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Laundry helper

My adorable laundry helper! She is a CLIMBER!!! Sje wants to do everything mommy does and is into EVERYTHING!!!

Ok I'm off to clean up the dinner things!

Pumpkin muffins!

Here is something REALLY yummy I made the other day. Pumpkin muffins using the pumpkin I put up a while ago. They turned out light and fluffy and oh so yummy.

1 egg

 1/3 c butter or margarine

3/4 c sugar

1 1/2 c cooked mashed pumpkin

1/2 tsp salt (if using unsalted butter or margarine)

1 1/2 c flour

1 tsp baking soda

 1 tsp baking powder

 1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp cinnamon

after you have the dough in the muffin forms mix 1 tsp with 2 tsp sugar and sprinkle on top before baking. Bake at 350 for about 15-20 minutes. It was a big hit at our house!

Mondays inspiration~for me:)

So I will log off and get stuff done!I was at the bread store the other day and almost right beside it is a Christian book store. Some of my kids need bibles for the childrens meetings so I thought I'd stop in and see how much bibles cost. I totally fell in love with the store and when this little green book caught my eye I couldn't resist!! It's a journal with a verse from the bible on the bottom of every second page. I just LOVE it!! It's so relaxing to sit down and jot down my thoughts at the end of a day.

 At the bottom of yesterday's page  was a very inspiring verse:

 "Commit your works to the Lord and your thoughts will be established" Proverbs 16:6

I found it very inspiring especially because my feelings were so not along with me!

When my life seems like nothing but work, I must commit my works to the Lord!! I understand this verse to mean (in this situation) that if I commit my works to God and do my work unto him regardless of what my feelings dictate (being emotional, wanting to just run away:):)~ I will be able to think clearly (not according to what I feel like), I will be able to make decisions and go about my day "established" instead of an emotional mess!! I will be able to catch the suttle little thoughts that would make me unthankful and ruin everything!

This weekend was FAR from glamorous or fun for me  so this verse was quite fitting! Hubby was not home and we were all stuck inside the house due to rain and not having anywhere to go with the workload being tremendous on me! Can I in such a time commit my works to the Lord? Can I go about my day caring for the children and the home with thankfulness instead of grumbling, being upset, crying???

When hubby got home I ended up taking my boys for a haircut. I normally do it myself but this has been a busy month and the boys were looking rather like little hooligans:):) This was my 3 year olds first time at a hair dressers and he was uber exited and so cute sitting on the stool with a big happy smile on his face!!

I also got 2 of the kids their xmas gifts yesterday!!! YAY~ I have officially started getting ready for xmas!!

The chidlren did fairly well this weekend eventhough it was utterly boring:) They did some colouring and reading and chores with fairly good spirits considering!

Of course there was also plenty of mommy controlling everyones computer and playstation time! We watched 2 movies together:)

And now it's Monday and I have 4 loads of laundry waiting to be folded and put away as well as about that much more waiting to be washed!!

Here is to a good Monday!!!!! Have a good day everyone!

Chicken pot pie with cornbread crust

A moist pot pie with a light and fluffy cornbread crust.

Chicken pot pie with cornbread crust

Ingredients:

filling:

~5 chicken breast halves cut into small cubes

~3 carrots diced

~2 cups frozen corn

~1 onion diced

~2 potatoes diced

~1 cup mushrooms (I'd love this but my kids hate it!)

~1/3 cup flour

~1 tsp garlic

~2 tsp steak spice

~1 tsp paprika

~1 tsp salt

~2 1/2 cups milk

 

Crust:

~1 cup flour

~1 cup corn meal

~1 tbs baking powder

~1 tsp salt

~2 tbs sugar

~1 egg

~1 cup milk

~1/4 cup oil

Method:

Filling: Combine all ingredients except for the milk in your crock pot or ovenproof casserole dish and mix well. Add milk and mix again. Cook on low all day or bake in the oven, covered at 375F until chicken and veggies are tender.

Crust: Combine and mic all wet ingredients in a bowl. Mix well and add dry ingredients. Mix again and spread evenly over cooked filling. Bake in 350F oven for 15-20 minutes. If you've used your crock pot, remove the crock pot dish from the base and pop it into the oven as well. (as far as I know crock pot dishes can go in the oven. I know mine can!!)

Enjoy!

Look who can now watch me cook!!!!!!!!!

Why it's my bumbo baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is baby girls early Christmas gift and she loves it!!! Now she too can sit on the counter to watch mommy cook!! Don't worry she's never left unattended!:)
Oh and she can also join us for dinner!! Yay daddy's home!