Thursday, February 9, 2012

Random Things We've Been Up To

We'll the kids and I have been hitting the books hard everyday, this is the most stable our life had been in about 4 or 5 years.  Everyone is enjoying seeing their progress day by day and week by week.  It's probably a little hard to appreciate this blessing we are enjoying if your whole life hasn't been picked up and dumped on its side a few times, but rejoice with us anyway.

Samuel's birthday is exactly one week after Haden's.  He's such a good sport about letting us go on and on about how it's almost Haden's birthday for the whole month of January.  Some extra money came in so we were able to do some special things on his birthday and he got a really cool Lego set.  His actual birthday was so packed full that I got the cake baked, but not decorated.  So we celebrated again Friday night when we finally got around to decorating the cake.  It was a little crumbly, so I was sure it was going to be even more a flub than Haden's.  I apologized a few times when I was trying to put it together.  Hubby came in and saved the day somehow and it turned out really nice.  It's held together with a LOT of icing.  Hahaha!






In other news I have tried some new recipes I got off of Pinterest.....my life since I discovered Pinterest.....Facebook who?  LOL!  So I found this recipe for Portabella Pepper Steak from Once Upon a Plate blog.  You can get the recipe by clicking the link.  So I made something a lot like it but my own version.  Portabella mushrooms are actually kinda "meaty" and comparitivly priced to meat and my family loves mushrooms.  So I also read in Clara's Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories and Recipes from the Great Depression that sometimes her mom would use some of the bread dough on "bread making day" to make pizza.  Then Monday as the kids and I were in the middle of our own "bread making day" it all came together.  I had some of the wonderful fresh sautéed tomato sauce from making Huevos Rancheros, I added to that 5 or 6 sun dried tomatoes and one can of stewed tomatoes and it was AMAZING.  I rolled out some of the bread dough, put my AMAZING pizza sauce on it, topped that with the Portabella Pepper Steak and Mexican cheese.  I served it with sautéed collard greens from the garden.  What a gourmet dinner! 











But that wasn't the end of the portabella mushrooms.  I was able to get a huge package for less than $5, so I still had 6 left AND I had some of the Portabella Pepper Steak left AND I still had some of the AMAZING pizza sauce.  I placed the portabella mushrooms in the oven topped with olive oil and salt, while I added another bell pepper and onion to my "pepper steak" mixture along with the mushroom stems and let that sautee.  After about 5 minutes I pulled them out and topped them with the "pepper steak", pizza sauce and mexican cheese.  Then they went back in the oven until then were done.  So delicious.  I served it with Spicy Curried Beans.  





Hope you're having a great week too!  :)


3 comments:

  1. Wow, Carie, you are so creative. I wished I would be more like you. It is always inspiring and fun to read you blog. I miss you.
    Happy Birthday (late but from our hearts) Samuel and Haden.
    Manuela

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh! We miss you guys so much! Happy late birthday to Tommy also from the entire Means Clan. :)

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