The Bread That Could Kill You and Other Things...

No one who knows me could ever say that I am a fan of moderation. It's part of my personality to be ALL or nothing. It's just who I am. With that in mind, you may discern the joy I get when I have a good piece of garlic cheese bread. I mean, you start with bread, which I love. Add butter (c'mon, I'm an Easterday... nuff said.) and garlic, which I also love, and then top it off with cheese. In truth, the only thing that could make those things better is bacon. Hmmmm... I may have to make that happen...

Anyway, when I saw the recipe for Pasta alla Marlboro Man on Pioneer Woman's site I thought, "Hmm, that looks good. Wait. What is that next to the bowl? Garlic Cheese Bread? Holy Moly!" Really, that's almost verbatim what I thought. An aside: can a thought be 'verbatim' if it isn't verbalized? Just wondering...

In the past 6 days of NFA I have repeatedly made the exact same mistake at dinner making time. So far, I have failed to read the recipe fully and fully understand the process that will get that dinner made. Case in point: 2 half chicken breasts does not mean 4 whole chicken breasts. On the day that I made this, the whole family was playing outside with a couple of the neighbor families. Let me just take this time to say that I LOVE having my house and I LOVE the neighborhood it's in and I LOVE having neighbors! I'm glad I got that out there.

Well, on said day, I came inside around 5:45 to start dinner. I know, I know, that's a little late to start on dinner, but I thought it was a fast one. I mean, it's pasta with meat sauce. Well, first I had to clean the kitchen. You see, a few days ago, my amazing wonderful talented husband lost a bet to me. So, it's been up to him to do the dishes. So I had to clean the kitchen. I'll leave you to figure out the finer details of that story. Anyway, when I read this recipe, I realized it takes an hour to cook... awesome. But it was a nice day... blah blah blah. The boys were having fun outside, it's ok if they go to bed a little late. We ate at 8:15. Yowza! But this blog isn't sposed to be the wordy, long winded story of my life. Let's get to the food, shall we?

This pasta sauce was mostly meat. I'm serious. It was 2 lbs. of meat and two cans of whole tomatoes. It was good. The picture is a little red... Don't blame me, I don't have Photoshop like all the cool kids.

The bread is really the star of this show... let's have a look.

Again with the direction reading... it said to mince the green onions and I only chopped them so the onion flavor was a little intense. In fact the whole thing was a little intense.

I am not one of those "healthy" people. I promise you. I should have loved this bread. It has all my favorites on it. With one glaring exception. Mayonaise. In all my years, I have never been able to get past the ingredient list of this condiment. Raw egg, oil, and vinegar. GUH- ROHSE! If I don't know that it's in something, I can handle mayo. However, when I saw that this cheese bread had mayo in it, I tried real hard to like it. I determined in my heart to love it as much as my own wonderful cheese bread.

PW is not known for her healthy dishes. I daresay she has a few, but this is not one of them. This bread has a grand total of 3 1/2 cups of cheese, a whole stick of butter and that nefarious 1/2 cup of mayo. Along with 4 cloves of garlic. I can feel my arteries closing just writing about it. I wasn't lying when I said that it was bread that could kill you.

I really was determined to like it, but knowing that there was warm mayonaise in it really just put it over the edge for me. I am honestly sad that I didn't love it. Maybe someday, I'll try it again with no mayo and (if you ever say I said this, I'll deny it and kill you) less butter. I must be getting old...

All in all, the pasta was a winner and the bread was a winner with my family.

Next up, Pampered Chef Cool and Crunchy Chicken Tacos... here's a hint: AWESOME!

NFA: Blackened Chicken

So, Day Two was supposed to be Pasta alla Marlboro Man from Pioneer Woman's website. Somehow, I managed to read my calendar wrong. So, it was Blackened Chicken from Allrecipes. A few things:

1: I ain't buyin' white pepper for five bucks just for this meal... My little family don't do spicy.

2: A half a chicken breast is NOT a whole chicken breast. I know that this should be self evident, but it wasn't at cooking time. Me no follow dyrecshuns so gud. This particular recipe called for 2 chicken breast halves. So, I used 4 whole boobs and only doubled the spice mixture. It worked out though.

3: My kids are AWESOME! (That's a freebie, I'm just throwing it in there!)

Since I have the whitest husband on the planet, I did not double the cayenne pepper like I should have. I didn't want it to be too hot for him and the Manlets. It wasn't.

This chicken was very tasty! Both the boys ate a whole piece of chicken which NEVER happens! I made garlic horseradish parmesan mashed potatoes too. Just writing that sentence makes me happy. I love potatoes! You know who doesn't? Jackson. He likes french fries, but a starch in any other form is unacceptable to him. These potatoes were so good that even Jackson asked for seconds! Score one for Mom!

The only thing I didn't like about this recipe was that no one said how you coat both sides of the chicken with the spice mixture without losing some of it when you flip it over to do the second side. But that's really not that big a deal now is it?

Here's a picture of my actual plate. Notice the bite already cut out of the chicken. Notice that there are no other pictures of this meal because I forgot to take them.

Coming up: Pasta alla Marlboro Man and Bread That Could End Your Life

Keen-whaaaat???

Why, THANK you! It IS a witty title! Quinoa. I felt a little bad starting off New Food April with a vegetarian dish. In this house, we are most certainly carnivores. But it looked so good. "IT" was Black Beans and Quinoa, which is NOT a witty title. But I didn't name this dish. If I had, it would be called something like, "Super Versatile Bowl of Deliciousness", or, "Smoky Happy Time". Upon further consideration, "Black Beans and Quinoa" will do.

I got this recipe from my cousins' blog. You'd like her. She is in fact witty. And also very interesting. I'm not just saying that because I know she's gonna read this. She got it from this website. I only just today went onto the site, past the link to the recipe. I think I will like it. Just sayin'.

Anyway, this dish is UH-MAY-ZING! I loved it! Yes, I am on a bit of a quinoa bender, but it really really is wonderful! All the flavors just made me really happy. (It's 11pm and my descriptive ability is wholly depleted. My apologies.)

As far as the "Who Will Eat This In My House" list goes, here's the tally.

Me: Heck yes I will!

Josh: (and I quote) "I am 100% neutral about this food. I will not ask you to make it again, but if you did, I would eat it." (really, that's exactly what he said. He's so cute!)

Jackson: ate it only after he was bribed with a doughnut. No joke. Side note: he lost the doughnut shortly after finishing his dinner for some infraction. Poor Guy.

Noah: ahhhh, little Mini Me... I love this kid! I understand him in a way that his father never will. It's like seeing what I would have been like if I was a boy... Noah will eat almost anything. It's so cute to hear him say in his little lispy voice, "Mmmm, I yuv keen wah!" Yay Noah!

So there you have it. 3 out of 5 Davises will eat this happily.

Because I love my family, I made this dish with chicken broth instead of vegetable. Actually, I just didn't want to buy veggie broth for only one thing, but love is a much better reason, I think. So, it wasn't vegan. Also, I put cheese and bacon in our salad. And that really was 'cause I love my family.

My next post will be Blackened Chicken. May not be new to you, but it's new to us!

It's April! You Know What That Means!

New Food April. I know, you're really excited. I am too! I'm going to start with a meal I made in March. It's cheating, I know, but I took the pictures and was going to do a preview blog for NFA, but it didn't happen. I blame the baby.

Bacon Cheddar Waffles with Homemade Applesauce

I KNOW right??? I took this recipe from Rachael Ray's magazine. I adapted it a little, but sort of not really. I just made it how I knew my family would eat it. Rachael Ray. I like her. So, this one's super easy. I started with bacon. *pauses for all the cheers* I like bacon. A lot. A whole lot. I think maybe God told the Jews they couldn't have bacon so there would be more for Him. That doesn't sound like Him... Sounds more like me... I digress.

Then I made waffle mix. Then I put cheese in it. I used very snobby imported cheese.

Then I made some applesauce. I used like three, ok it was exactly three, different apples. I don't know why. Really, I don't. I cooked them in some of the bacon grease 'cause that's how I do! Then I used some water 'cause I needed to. I put in some nutmeg and cloves and a little cinnamon. Then some syrup and a little honey. Those apples were delish.

So, I mixed the bacon and cheese into the waffle mix and made waffles. Then we ate them. They were good. I mean GOOD.

They were so good that I made another double batch the very next day for the freezer. Some things to note: The snobby cheese was indistinguishable from regular old Tillamook Cheddar (that I love!). In the new batch, I used bacon grease instead of the oil. That's right. You know I did! So that was that for the NFA preview post. It's a little late, I know. Sorry 'bout it.

A to B... but not in a straight line

Ok people. I'm doing this right now because Wayne was right yesterday at church. (or was it Red? I dunno) Either way, he said something to the effect of: you can be full of faith today at church, but if you're not careful, the enemy will come in on Monday and try and steal it.
It was something like that, but I'm sure more eloquently put. But this probably doesn't make any sense to you, so I'll back up.

I've been thinking for the past few days that I need to get bloggin' again. I was reading a few different ones and they were so great that I was inspired. Kind of. I was inspired in the "thinking about what I'd say while in the shower" way. The thought of actually getting on the computer and collecting my thoughts and taking the time to write them out, when I could still be in the shower was a bit daunting.

But here I am. I am, by Intelligent Design, a very right brained person. That means that if I don't regularly get some of my creativity out, I tend to freak out a little. Or a lot. Ask the Ladies' Group. So here goes, I'll try to regather some of my awesome thoughts from earlier in the week and set them down for you to see.

Two weeks ago, I was in a very different frame of mind than I am today. To put it delicately, I was a freakin' basket case! I was mad at my kids, I was mad at my husband, I was mad at my life. To top it all off, I had no idea why. Ever have those days where you're blubbering like a circus sideshow and you can't control or stem the tide? It was like that.

I know you may think that it's just my emotions gone out of whack, and you may be right... But I think that it was the storm before the calm... It was the spiritual fight I had to have to get my current breakthrough. In the quiet dark one night, Josh said to me, " What's going on with you?" In typical 'me' fashion, I told him I wasn't ready to talk about it. 14 seconds later, I'm sobbing again, saying something like, "I feel TOTALLY out of control! I don't even like being a mom! Why would I do this??? (here's the killer.) I feel like I'm turning into my Moooooooommmmmmmmm!" *continue sobbing...*

You may be thinking to yourself, "Why is it bad to be like Joyce Easterday? I mean, come on! She's awesome!" and that's true. But I wasn't talking about her. I was talking about Sherry, my birth mother. She was a great mom, don't get me wrong. But she was a tired, sick, single great mom, and sometimes, it got to be too much. And I was there to collect the steam that was let off.

As a young adult, I used to always say, "I'll never be like my mom! I'll always be calm and loving and have a very quiet voice that commands respect without being scary." Oh, sure... that was before I had the two BIGGEST personalities in the universe packed into tiny bodies entrusted to my care. ANYway, the point I'm trying to make is not about my failure. My wonderful husband reminded me that I am not my mom and I don't have to be perfect, just willing to let God be who He needs to be in my life. Josh spoke Kindness and Patience over me, and reminded me that part of my destiny is raising these little World Changers. I am singularly equipped to be a mom of boys, because that's who God made me to be. And when I feel like I can't, He can. And He chooses to use me. That's cool.

That's not really the point I wanted to make at top of the page, but that one will have to wait for another day...

Sighs

One thing I am not good at is commitment. Oh, I'm good at the big stuff: I married my wonderful husband for life and nothing will ever change that. I have my boys and I tell them everyday that there's nothing they could ever ever do to make me stop loving them. I'm a CASA and that is at least a two year commitment that I am heartily looking forward to. It's the little things, like, "I'll call you back as soon as I know." or "I'm gonna shine my sink everyday cause FLYLady tells me to." or "I'm gonna make a new recipe EVERY day in April!" These things that sound easy always trip me up.

A few months ago, I would have spiraled into a moody funk that would have lasted for days at the merest hiccup in my plan. I have spent a few too many years setting my bar way too high and then beating myself up for missing the unattainable but lofty mark. I realized that my Dad, (the all powerful, all loving One) doesn't give a hoot for my lofty aspirations. I mean He does, don't get me wrong, but I have a Dad who just wants to be with me and He just loves me. A beautifully organized and well executed meal plan can't make Him love me any more than a messy house and 10 undone (or pre-done as I like to refer to them) loads of laundry could make Him love me less. So I'm not stressing about it.

We've been having new food. Even when I don't tell you about it, we do. Most of the time. So, Monday, we had Joshua and Karen over for dinner with their girls. On a side note, I'd like to think I would know what to do with a girl if I had one, but my interactions with them lead me to believe that that might not be the case.

We had Gnocchi with Sausage and Swiss Chard.

It was a hit. It was a little too spicy for the Tinys and Josh (my husband, not my pastor). I think that gnocchi (what's the plural of that? do you add an 's'? whuteve) are/is a little boring, kinda slimy and not that fun to put in my mouth. It's an opinion, don't hate. But it really was pretty good, it's mostly just a texture thing for me. For dessert, Karen and I made these little kiwi-lime tartlets...Yowza! I could eat those every day and they were SO easy! If you want the recipe, ask Nakita...

Here's those:

AND THEN! A winner! It makes me happy to call it noodles with peas and cheese, cause that rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? But the real name was Ricotta Pasta with Peas and Grape Tomatoes.
Again, it was Rachael Ray. I would say it was very close to 30 min. It was so easy, and good for summer because it was served kind of cool. That was mostly my fault because I was making these:

Garlic Parmesan Crostini! Dude! It's FRIED toast with cheese on it!

I'm not even kidding.

Oooooh! Heaven is a place on earth! It's wherever these little butter drenched babies are!

Don't get me wrong I really like the pasta! Like I said, it's good for spring or summer cause it's cool without being cold, and it was really fresh tasting and light. I almost would think of adding a little mint into it too, cause I'm crazy like that, but the fresh basil was SO nice! It's totally a keeper. Back to the bread. YUMM! YUMM! YUMM.

Yesterday we kind of had pecan crusted chicken tenders with a nice salad with tangy maple barbecue dressing. I shall elaborate. For whatever reason, I was again procrastinating on making dinner. Josh was going to be late home from work and, oddly enough, that always causes me to stall dinner. SO I pull out my chicken and start it to thawing, then I remember why I haven't made this recipe before. NO FOOD PROCESSOR! Duh Carlie! Get it together! Cripes! well what did I do? You ask. I hand chopped a cup of pecans into a fine chop. It took for-freaking-ever. Then I had to bread and fry them... Fine whatever... I made the dressing, which was good, and when I went to get the lettuce, I found that it had been pushed to the back of the fridge. It froze and and my salad loving hopes were shattered like the ice clinging to the soon to be wilty romaine leaves. Well, it was about then that I decided that I wanted to go to Josh's practice, I called up Amy and told her I'd feed her if she came over. She did. It's cause she's cool like that. I promise not to take advantage of her now that she lives so close. Maybe.

Anyway, Josh came screaming through the kitchen looking for food, and left a trail of week old macaroni salad behind him. I ate one piece of the chicken, and then asked Amy to cook the rest and feed the boys so I could go. She did. It's cause she's cool like that. Anyway, they were sufficient. I didn't get pics, because I was in such a hurry and also they weren't too pretty.

Tonight was supposed to be sweet pea soup... But as evidence testifying to the first few paragraphs, it didn't happen. Instead, we ran to, I hate to say it, McDonald's. It's true. Please don't hate me. We were in a hurry. Jackson and I had a great date and Josh and Noah and manly time at home.

It's been a good week.

NFA: It's gonna be a long one.

Well, for whatever reason, the picture of the chicken phyllo bundles would not load to my blog, thus causing me to postpone the blog for DAYS. We have continued to eat, and I have continued to take pictures.

New Food April is beginning to spread like wildfire. My friend Josh Guth told his wife that they need to hvae New Food May. We were having Tagine Style Chicken at the time and she replied, "We're not having this!" But I'll get to the Tagine Chicken later. There was some talk about who I would have play me in the movie... it was Beyonce. But there's lots to catch up on, so I'd best get started.

Let's see... after phylo chicken bundles was Vodka Cream Pasta.

This picture cannot adequately describe how much food there was. Again, you guessed it, Rachael Ray was the conspiritor. I kid you not, on the recipe, it says makes two servings with some left over. Well, being the thinker that I am, I knew that it would be more than that, but Josh and Nakita were coming over. So, I "halved again" the recipe. Five days later, there's still some in my fridge. But you know, it was awesome!

There was salad. There was bread. A good time was had by all.

Following vodka cream pasta was chipotle chicken rolls. They were supposed to be with avacado dipping suace, but it was not until I was cutting into the avacados, that I remembered I don't have a food processer. I was running late, so those avos went right into the guac, which was as usual, devine. We had the chicken rolls (Shhh, I used turkey) on Sunday for Josh's birthday party. Lots of friends came to the Rivas House to hang out and eat TONS of food. We had a great time and my love was blessed. I forgot to take pictures, but that's ok, because, while they tasted good, they were not pretty. I got to use some new ingredients and that was fun. Well, one really. Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. The recipe said one and I didn't really think that'd be enough, but trust me when I say that it was!

Moving on... (I told you it was gonna be a long one!)

Monday was one of my favorites! It might go into the permanent rotation. Wait for it....! German Potato Salad with Keilbasa!

OH

MY

GOSH!

It was so good and easy, that 2 days later I still remember the recipe:

2lbs new red potatos, quartered and boiled until just fork tender

1 med. red onion, quartered and sliced thin

1 cup beef stock

3tbsp red wine vinegar

8 strips bacon cooked and chopped

1 keilbasa cut in half moon slices

1 head kale coarsely chopped

you put the reds on to boil and put the bacon in to oven to cook (at 400) they get done at around the same time. next you take a sautee pan and toss in some EVOO (thanks Rach) and the onions. When they're tender, you toss in the kale until it's wilted just a bit, then add the stock and vinegar and take the pan off the heat. Next you cook the keilbasa in another pan until its crispy on the edges and warm through. Everything's basically done at this time so, drain the reds, chop the bacon,put the reds back in their pan, add the onion stock mixture and the bacon, then fold in the keilbasa. At this point, I added some flat leaf parsley to make it look pretty and thanks to RR's exuberant use of it, I have begun to love the taste... Be careful that you don't start to smash the potatoes, and salt and pepper according to your doctor's reccomended sodium intake levels.

Seriously, to a girl who grew up with a German mama making stuff like this up in her head all the time but not quite turning out every time, this recipe is what a good memory tastes like. It was a winner!

And, last and quite possibly least was last night. Quick Tagine Style chicken with couscous.

If you're like me, you didn't know that Tagine is pronounced: tah hee nee.

That's all I have to say about that.

When I read the recipe, I discerned that it was of Mediterranean origin. I still don't really know where it came from, and that's ok. I went to winco to get the necessaries, and found the prunes white raisins, and couscous in the bulk section. A thing for which I am eternally grateful, because we will most likely never have need for prunes or couscous again. I also spent some dough on some spices I probably won't ever use again, but on the off chance that I, someday, participate in a game where I have to shout out the spices in my cupboard and I win with turmeric and corriander and saffron (one of these I didn't use in this recipe, you have to guess which), I will look back on this day and rejoice!

You know what I don't like? Oatmeal.

You know what else I don't like? Sand.

Couscous is like eating a cross between soggy sand, and dry oatmeal. Why would you do that? If you are reading this and couscous is a staple in your diet, don't be mad at me for deriding your eastern pasta. If you've never tried it and my Adventure is spurring you to embark on your own, I give you this warning: Don't buy couscous!

There, I've done it. I'm caught up. Now I have to go make some tomato basil pasta nests. Honestly, I'm not really feeling it tonight. We've had a lot of Italian food lately and ( I hate to say it) I'm a lottle pastad out. It's not a typo, don't tell me. I mean it and I'm not afraid to say it.

One thing I love about NFA is that it is really making me want to have people over to share it with us. I never used to consider myself a very hospitable person, but now I find myself thinking up ways to get people over and feed them something awesome! I like what I'm seeing take place in my life and I really think it's a God thing.

Coming soon is london broil and burbon pecan smashed sweet potatoes... Uh HUH! Also, I heard a rumor about pineapple rum chicken, but I can neither confirm or deny such a menu item.