more food experiments

dinner the other night was, thankfully, a success. experimenting for dinner, always makes me nervous. messing up dinner is one thing that can and will make me really upset!
the plan had been lasagna. but i hadn't made it to the store that week due to being sick. so, we didn't have any decent lasagna noodles (we had some, but there were so old, that last time i used some of them, the melted in the pot. NOT cool). so, we tried something a little new. i'd made a skillet lasagna once, but, it wasn't as good as i was told. this time, i made it up as i went along.
i always make my own sauce when i'm not strapped for time (one of these days, i'll get around to canning it, then i'll always have it on hand). i started the sauce to simmering, then i cooked the hamburger. when the sauce had simmered for an hour, i put it, the hamburger, and the egg noodles in a pot, and let it all cook together and blend (basically, the noodles were cooked in the sauce. and even though i had to add water to get the noodles all the way cooked, it was still good.) we LOVED it!

the next experiment was homemade corn dogs. however, i didn't put them on sticks. i put them in a mini-muffin tin. i made up a simple corn bread recipe (from the desert cookbook), and sliced the hot dogs into little pieces. i put some mix in the tin, pushed the dogs into the mix, and covered the dogs with more mix (note: a little too much muffin mix, and too little hot dog). i then cooked them according to the directions for the muffins.
they turned out great! at least, the little girls liked them. my older two kids didn't come home for lunch today. guess i should check on them at the neighbors house.
we had some leftover, and i put them in the freezer for another day!

splendid

Elizabeth, age 6, "This is a splendid toy."


 I'm still trying to figure out where she learned that word. Let alone how to use it in context

chocolate

nursing the little man, means that i have a few foods that i need to watch how often i eat them. chocolate is a big one, as is salad. not much i can do about the salad, but i have discovered a chocolate fix that doesn't seem to bother his tummy. cocao. i got some ghirardelli 60% cocao chocolate chips. i can eat them to my hearts content, they don't give him extra gas, and they have less sugar in them, so they don't wreak havoc on my teeth as much!

freezer fun

i am trying something. and i REALLY hope this works out well.

i've started making food that we have previously been purchasing from schwans. don't get me wrong, we LOVE schwans! but, with shannon being on the feingold diet, we are a little more careful with what we feed her.

in the last year, i've started following moneysavingmom . she has a current series called 4 weeks to fill your freezer . now, i'm not following the series to the letter, and i'm not even using half of her recipes. but, i am trying a few things out.
the kids LOVE schwans' ham and cheese pouches. so i'm making my own. i'm using her dough from here, and using some leftover ham i'd diced and frozen. when i cooked them up the other day, many of them "popped," and the cheese melted all over the pans. i think i may have been rolling them out too thin.
somewhere, probably on pinterest, i discovered the idea to make breakfast burritos and freeze them. the first batch i made, had too much hashbrown in them, and not enough egg. i haven't had a chance yet to taste the new batch, but i'm sure they are better than the first.

my next projects for the freezer include pizza pockets, more breakfast burritos with different meats, mini corndogs, donuts, and muffin tin omlets.
it's going to take me a few days to get everything done. and that's if i can manage to keep my nose out of books.:)

crazy!

so, i decided to finally just get a project done. whether i had something else to be doing or not. i was tired of putting things off in order to get other things done.

it was FAR past time to go through clothes and get them put in their totes. ashley still had size 6-9 months clothes in her "dresser." and i had a large box, and a tote both stuffed full of clothes that had been grown out of.

after all the barfing excitement was over this morning, i pulled in all the totes that have the clothes in.
i then started on the tote. just about everything that was in there were the little clothes. from newborn to 24 months. got them all put where they belong.
then i started on the large box that resided in my closet. it held mostly 18 month to 7/8 sizes. got them put in their respective totes as well.
then, i emptied "dressers," and put away the ones that no longer fit. then i went BACK through the totes and pulled out the sizes that my little girls need. i was also able to take a couple pairs of clothes for the older two kids, and put them aside for 96-hour kits.

right now, the next size for michael is drying, the clothes for the little girls are all over my bed waiting to be put away, and i have a few dresses and miscellaneous shirts waiting to be taken to DI.

even though it was a lot of work, and DESPERATELY needed to be done, i still don't feel like i got much done.

but, we should be good with clothes sizes through the summer, except maybe for michael.

note: dressers is in quotations, because we don't have room for dressers, but we have shelves that their clothes sit on. unfortunately, they are precisely spaced to be used as a ladder. which means that hiding things on the upper shelves doesn't work. sigh....

sickos

my two little girls have been sick.

shannon was sick the other night. she woke up in the middle of the night, and then threw up on shauns leg and the floor. we got everything cleaned up, and taken care of. she didn't have another problem that night. however, yesterday, she threw up most of the day. not even water would stay down. i gave her a few crackers, and made her eat them slowly. then i made her wait to see if they would stay down. she ate an entire sleeve of them once things settled down. 

today, ashley has been throwing up. the first time, it was cheese in the bedroom. i cleaned up the chunks, and then pulled out the carpet cleaner. the floor is still drying.
next were the strawberries behind my computer chair, and on the heater vent. cleaned up the floor and had taylor spray off the vent outside.
and then the pedialyte and strawberries in the kitchen. by that time, i was so frustrated and upset with everything going wrong that i slammed my head into the fridge door. all that accomplished was giving me a massive headache.

shannon is now fine, and ashley has managed to keep her crackers and the rest of the pedialyte down. hopefully, no one else gets sick!

no, not ever

shannon, age 3, "You know what this story is about?"
mama, "The fact that you cant sit still?"
shannon, "No! Not ever."

poison control

i woke up this morning, and went to go see what my two little girls had gotten themselves into. i found last nights dinner all over the front room and dining room floors.
i found that they had taken the older kids' new games, and thrown them all over the dining room.

and then i saw the nearly full bottle of kids vitamins, now almost empty. i gathered up was was laid in a row on the couch, and went to call poison control. the bottle holds 120 tablets. we had already used, at most, 20. what i found on the couch was 10.
upon calling poison control, i gave her the information, and waited while she ran her calculations. she came back and told me that this was not a lethal doze (did she have to use THAT word?). she told me to give them both something to eat and drink, and watch them. if they complained about their tummies hurting, it was going to be from the iron. if anything changed, to call her back.
i cleaned up the games, and went to put them away, and discovered a large spread of the vitamins on their bedroom floor. when i got the counted and picked up, there were 65. that means what they may have consumed was half of our original count! i was extremely relieved. my visions of sitting in hospital rooms with my 3 babies alone would NOT be coming to pass, thankfully.
i have no medicine cabinet to lock up and keep them out of. and shannon has discovered how to open the child-proof caps, so any bottles with those on them are no longer safe either.

right now, i'm going to go take a shower, and let it drown out and wash away my tears of fear.

at least we are all going to be ok.