It is the simple things in life

I can not express how excited I am that my husband found an entire bag of Honey Nut Cheerios in our pantry. I had thought that all of our cereal had been eaten up weeks ago and I have been lost with out my favorite breakfast. Eggs and oatmeal are ok, but I love the simplicity of pouring a bowl of cereal.

Another amazing and simple thing that has brought me joy are these. You have to make them, they are amazing!

Mmmm... Mac-n-cheese

I have to share this recipe with you. It is for the most amazing macaroni and cheese ever. Evan frequently asks to have it and when we do he always eats a lot of it. I add hot dogs to it, but you have to use really good hot dogs or the flavor of the recipe is ruined. I prefer the kosher hot dogs that you can get at Costco, they are to die for. We also use regular mustard instead of the Dijon. Harry does not like mustard very much and the Dijon was just too much for him. The milder yellow mustard adds the nice flavor, but is not so strong.

I made some last night for dinner and was going to take pictures, but it did not last long enough.

Best meal ever

I think I have cooked my best meal ever. It was so good that my husband, the condiment king, did not add any thing to it. We had grilled rosemary lamb chops (it was my husband's first time eating lamb so he was a bit hesitant and took a bit of convincing), rosemary carrots and roasted garlic mashed potatoes. Everything turned out perfectly. The meat was nice and rare. The carrots were crisp with out being crunchy and the mashed potatoes were not lumpy thanks to my recent purchase of a ricer. I think we will be eating more lamb from now on.

I also want to give a big thanks to Anne/kq for introducing me to the recipe website that I used to find these recipes. I have found so many amazing recipes there since she told me about it. I hardly even pick up paper cook books any more, instead I print out the recipes we like and put them in a binder so that I have my own custom book.

When bad food happens to good people

Disclaimer: by reading this disclaimer you absolve Awesome Mom from all responsibility should you choose to actually attempt to feed your family any of the following recipes.

We are going to enter the way back machine. We will go back to a very carefree time when Awesome Mom was a young tyke who was totally innocent about the awfulness heading her way.

One Christmas my very health obsessed grandmother gifted my father with a recipe book called Recipes to Lower Your Fat Thermostat. My father was a tad pudgy and heading towards high blood pressure according to my grandmother, so in an attempt to head off this descent into bad health she gave him the book and made him promise to make some recipes from it.

The recipes in the book were low fat, low taste and generally just plain awful. It was pretty clear that the author had not actually taste tested her own recipes or she would not have produced the book in the first place. The only recipe that was any good was a chicken noodle soup that my father dumped salt in.

To illustrate my point about the awfulness I am putting up two of the more memorable recipes. The first is a lovely little concoction called bean loaf. It should never be made with kidney beans as the texture of it will be similar to something you would find in a diaper after a stomach virus had hit your child (that is about as delicately as I can put it). On a good day my sisters and I would call it dog poo. Sadly my parents actually served this to us several times before our whines eventually got it off the menu. The next recipe is called Unusual Oatmeal Soup. It is very aptly named as it has a very unusual appearance, texture and taste. Sadly that really is not a good thing. When this gem was present at the table, even my mother (who tried to present a united food front with my father) refused to eat it. This was never served again but it became a family joke that has lived on through the years.

Bean Loaf

3 C cooked beans
1 chopped onion
1/2 C chopped mushrooms
1/4 C wheat germ
1 C grated carrots
2 egg whites
3 T tomato juice
3 T catsup
To taste seasoning with out salt
1 C Beef bouillon

Use pinto, lima, black, garbanzo or the bean of your choice. Grind or chop the cooked beans. See, it starts off bad texture wise and never recovers

Satue onions and mushrooms until tender. Add to chopped beans.

Combine wheat germ, carrots, egg whites, tomato juice, catsup and seasonings with bean mixture in a large bowl. The mixture should be thick. Pat it into a non-stick loaf pan or mold onto a non-stick baking sheet

Bake at 350 for 45-60 minutes. Pour a little beef bouillon over bean loaf during cooking to keep mixture moist. If you have to do that then maybe you should not be making this at all Serve if you dare.

Unusual Oatmeal Soup

1 C sliced onion
1/2 C sliced mushrooms
2 Cloves of minced garlic
1 C rolled oats
7 C chicken stock
2 1/2 C stewed tomatoes this is where the recipe really looses it for me since I am not a huge fan of stewed tomatoes aka peeled eyeballs
to taste seasoning with out salt
1 C skim milk or chalk water as my husband likes to call it

Saute onions, mushrooms and garlic until tender. They don't say what you should saute it in but you can bet it is not butter.

Stir in oats, stock and tomatoes.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

Season and stir in milk I really don't get why you would stir in the seasonings last since in theory you would want them in there longer so the flavors blend. Serve hot and watch your family disown you.

Meme

The Laundress has tagged me with Ms. Cathy's Christmas meme. Here ya go, more than you ever wanted to know about my Christmas preferences.

1. Hot Chocolate or Egg Nog? Hot Chocolate all the way baby!!! First off it is chocolate, second the taste of egg nog makes me gag. I buy a gallon of egg nog every year for my husband but I never touch the stuff.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? Well Santa has yet to visit us. I am still deciding if I am going to even teach the kiddos about Santa. I think that if I delay long enough the problem will go away.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? Colored on the tree, white on the house.

4. Do you hang mistletoe? I try to but have not found any fresh stuff for this year.

5. When do you put your decorations up? The day after Thanksgiving if we are at home

6. What is your favorite holiday dish? I don't really have one yet.

7. Favorite Holiday memory? I love it any time we can go to Temple Square and see all the holiday lights. picture below

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? I was eight and my father made this big deal about telling me. Quite honestly it was not a huge shock to me. I think that deep inside I already knew.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? Of course! My mother was always too impatient to wait until christmas. She is so impatient that she has already confessed to opening the present I sent her (See, I totally outed you to the whole world Mom! Next year I am sending the presents by overnighting them so you can't open them so soon)

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? My husband and I have all our ornaments from when we were kids and we buy the boys one every year. It is a crazy mish mash but it is fun looking at the ornaments and remembering.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it? Love it but that is because I have never lived all that long in a snowy area. When I lived in Washington I remember praying for the temperatures to drop below freezing so we could get some snow.

12. Can you ice skate? Of course! I am not super good at it but I can go forward in a circle without holding onto the side.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift? My favorite gift was the Pound Puppy that my great grandfather got us when we were little. I still have mine and she slept in my bed until the day I got married.

14. What's the most important thing? Making memories with family and remembering the birth of Christ.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert? French silk pie

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition? The Christmas Eve junk food dinner. This is a tradition that my husband's family does. Once a year they all just pig out on all the stuff you are not supposed to eat. For them it replaced a more traditional Christmas dinner but I insist on something nice and fancy on Christmas day.

17. What tops your tree? an angel

18. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving? Giving! I love watching my family open the presents that I pick out for them. I try very hard to find really good gifts for them.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song? My favorite Christmas hymn is "O, little Town of Bethlehem" When we sing it I get an amazing peaceful feeling.

20. Candy canes, Yuck or Yum? Yum!!! Well yum if they are fresh, yuck if they were the ones my husband saved from last year to decorate the Christmas tree.

I am tagging Vicky, You da mom!, and Gina.

Evilness

I baked an apple pie just now and my husband is whining. Apparently I am a horrible temptress who is aiming to torture him. He has been trying to watch his weight so that he does not get put on the fat boy program and to top that all off tomorrow is fast Sunday (we skip two meals once a month as part of our religious observances). I think the whole ideal that the military would put my rather skinny husband into the fat boy program is silly but the way the program is written he has apparently been on the edge so he had to slim down a bit to make weight.

The pie I made is incredible. I think that if you died it would be served in heaven. It is just sooooooooooo good. Last time I made it I ate most of it. I was nice and let my husband have a few pieces and I even let Harry and Evan split one which they promptly gobbled up. I highly recommend you baking one or two up for the holidays. Your family will love you for it.

P.S. Don't feel too bad about my husband. I mentioned to him that my hand hurt because I had burned it on the oven while baking the pie. He wondered why I would burn myself (like I did on purpose or something) and asked when I had done the burning of said hand. He admitted that he had not hear my swearing when I asked and then told me to put it under water. No kidding, really? I should put my hand under cold water to help with the burn? Who knew? He also apparently, along with not hearing the swearing in the kitchen, he missed me leaving the water running for a really long time.

Mmmmm pie!

Lunch ideas

Here is a tasty recipe for your naughty children.

Dinner

For our new stove celebration dinner I whipped up a favorite of ours 20-Minute Chicken Parmesan. I only use two chicken breasts because we have a small skillet and we like having extra sauce for dipping the wonderful french bread that we get at a local grocery store. Pounding the chicken flat is actually very theraputic. Tonight I imagined that I was pounding my husband flat instead of the chicken (ha ha just kidding............... NOT!). I bought a meat mallet just for this recipe since we have never really felt the need for flat meat before. If hubbie dosen't shape up soon I may think about using it on him.