The Army Can't Be Beat, Trick or Treat!

We had a very warm 5K yesterday in our costumes.

Tonight it was raining and freezing for trick or treating.

We had lots of fun though!

Smoky Vegetable Soup

Soup Season! I love soups. This one is realllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy yummy.

Smoky Vegetable soup

My mom and I made this and were in absolute heaven over the smells, and then ... we ate it all up. This is really really really really really really really yummy soup!

We served this with my sabotage bread and apple blackberry cobbler for dessert. Yum, yum.

To make this simpler than the william sonoma catalog says, just chop up the veggies, cook in olive oil, add broth, simmer, and blend. Yum!

Ingredients

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large yellow onion, diced

4 red bell peppers and 2 yellow bell peppers, cored, seeded and cut into 1 1/2-by-3/8-inch slices

8 plum tomatoes, quartered

4 zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced 1/4 inch thick on the bias

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 russet potato, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice

3 cups chicken stock

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

1 cup packed fresh basil leaves

(You can also add kielbasa polish sausage... it is really good)

Directions:

In a large Dutch oven over medium heat, warm 2 Tbs. of the olive oil. Add the onion and bell peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, until just tender, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl. In the same pot over medium heat, warm 1 Tbs. of the olive oil. Add the tomatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8 to 10 minutes. Transfer to the bowl with the onion mixture.

In the same pot over medium-high heat, warm the remaining 1 Tbs. olive oil. Add the zucchini and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir the onion mixture into the pot. Transfer 2 cups of the vegetables to a bowl and set aside.

Add the potato and stock to the pot and simmer until the potato is tender, 25 to 30 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add a few drops of liquid smoke in to the soup in the covered pot for 5 minutes.

Working in batches, puree the soup in the blender on high for 20 seconds per batch. Return the soup to the pot and stir in the reserved vegetables. Serves 6 to 8.

(Williams-Sonoma Kitchen)

Happy 4th Evelyn! (Beware, Pink Overload...)

4 years ago...

Really?

Thank goodness for little girls. We love her. We hope we did a great job as her royal subjects, treating her like the little princess that she is.

More Potions

Mamma finds cool experiments!

This is one that involves dry ice, hot water, and laundry detergent. You can carefully hold these ghost-y bubbles. Fun!

Dragon Scale Cookies by Severus Snape

As potions master at our Hogwarts Correspondence School, Snape likes to coerce the children into making their own edible potions. Here was today's recipe:

1 cup bile

1/2 cup crystals

1 cup sand from the Black Lake

2 thestral eggs

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 cup ground tree bark

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

4 cups dragon scales

1 cup dried fruit and nuts (or butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, whatever you fancy)

Preheat oven to 375 F. Blend bile, crystals, and sand. Hold wands around mixing bowl and chant "I love cookies" 3 times. Add the thestral eggs, spider milk, and vanilla. Repeat the cookie chant. Beat well. Repeat the cookie chant. Add the remaining ingredients except for the dragon scales and beat. Beat well and repeat the cookie chant. (Do not fight over next ingredient no matter how cool it is.) Add dragon scales and fruit. Stir well (chant again) and spoon onto cookie sheet. Bake for 13-15 minutes.

PS If you don't have thestral eggs (we ran out) you can substitute applesauce, spider milk, and lemon juice in random quantities and hope that the Half-Blood Prince has mercy on you and allows the concoction to actually work!

YUM!

PPS If you need help figuring out the real ingredients, you can contact me!

Just in time...

for Halloween Micah will have a jack-o-lantern grin!

Apple Breakfast Lasagna

THIS WAS AWESOME!!!

1 cup fat free sour cream

1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar

2 packages frozen french toast (9 oz each) or whatever bread you have on hand

1/2 pound sliced boiled ham (or lunchmeat ham)

2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1 can apple pie filling

1 cup granola cereal with or without raisins

In a small bowl, blend sour cream and brown sugar. Chill.

Place 6 French toast slices in the bottom of a greased 13x9-inch baking pan. Layer 1/2 of the sour cream mixture, ham, 1 1/2 cups cheese and remaining 6 slices of French toast. (I used some leftover mashed potatoes for the 2nd layer of bread, but those non-potato fans would probably like bread instead.)

Spread apple pie filling on top (or applesauce and chunked up apples) and sprinkle with granola.

Bake at 350ºF for 25 minutes. Top with remaining 1/2 cup cheese and bake 5 minutes or until cheese is melted.

Serve with sour cream mixture.

Makes 6 servings.

Initiative *updated*

After working on listening, we will improve our initiative! The kids got really skilled at asking, "Now what can I do?" to prove they could listen. Obviously the next step is to "see a need, fill a need". They will get to erase an ugly mark off my picture with each time they do something without being asked!

All this rewarding means I've neglected some discipline... this week has been groaningly horrible. So, the kids and I had a 2nd family council this week and decided on a naughty jar. If they do something wrong, the "wronged" will randomly choose a consequence out of the jar. You can choose the wrong, but you can't choose your own consequence! We'll see how it goes. Rewarding the good, disciplining the bad. Choices, that is.

An Apple A Day

We had a great listening month, and we celebrated with Apple Day! Bobbing for apples, caramel apples, carving apples for shrunken heads, apple worksheets, apple pancakes, watching "Enchanted", apple breakfast lasagna, and apple ice cream courtesy of Coldstone Creamery.

What a fun day!