Spicy Chicken Chili

I haven’t made this yet, but KC really liked it from a church dinner, so I asked for the recipe and thought I’d put it here so I won’t lose it when I get ready to try it out. I’ll have to figure out a way to shrink it, or else I’ll have lots to freeze for future meals…lol!

Ingredients:
1 lb pack of Great Northern Beans (dried)
1 lb pack of Red Beans (dried)
1 lb pack of Navy Beans (dried)
8 Chicken Thighs
2 Chicken Breasts
5 medium potatoes
2 large red onions
1/2 package baby carrots (sliced)
4 celery stalks
1 bell pepper
Hot Pepper (optional depending on desired heat)
Hot Sauce (optional depending on desired heat)
6 cloves of garlic
1 Tbsp cumin
1 Tbsp black pepper
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce

Put all beans in crockpot and cook until about 3/4 way done. Season with salt, pepper, & garlic.

Put chicken thighs & breasts in separate pot and season with salt, pepper, cumin, and 3 of the cloves of garlic.

When chicken is done, remove from broth, debone & chunk chicken to add later.

Use 1/2 – 3/4 of broth to cook vegetables.

Take broth and veg mix, add chicken and beans. Mix all together. Add remainder of spices and hot sauce if desired.

Let simmer approximately 1 hour to mix flavors. Add additional broth or bean juice to achieve desired consistency.

Serves 20-25

Monday’s Aren’t For Wimps

I probably need to check my wimp meter because I feel like Monday has kicked my behind this week.  LOL. 

Started with crazy dreams (in the night, yes, because I—contrary to my daughter’s firm convictions—do not get to go back to bed and sleep all day every day while the kids are in school), and they were crazy enough that I don’t care to attempt to remember them.  That’s what I get for having Ultimate Oatmeal Cookie ice cream at the local ice cream shop after church last night.  LOL. 

Then I checked off one of my to-do list items, only to find that doing so added another 5 things to my to-do list.  LOL…I hate it when that happens. 

Haven’t been able to shake my headache all day, then added a bellyache to the list.  And then, afternoon homework…which always wears me out, but there’s not really time for a nap.

BUT….it’s all good. 

On the bright side, I’m officially a student again (except my first classes aren’t until January), my placement scores from a couple years ago are still valid…and my—pathetically wimpy around populated areas that I’m unfamiliar with—own self managed to find my way onto campus, then across campus, and into registration without any panic attacks or cries for mom (lol…okay, I’m exaggerating about my helplessness, but not so much exaggeration about my comfort level because I really do dislike crowds).  Ha…the diapers commercial just popped into my head: “I’m a big kid now.”  Sorry…random is sort of my thing, in case you didn’t know. 

Where was I going again? 

OH yes, that bright side.  Crock-pots…they are very much not from the dark side.  They make Monday’s so much more wonderful.  And also fragrant. It’s hard not to get distracted when smelling barbeque chicken in the crockpot all afternoon. I made—sniff sniff….OHHH…I’m so hungry….oh, uh…what was I saying again??  LOL…Oh yeah, I was saying I made it last week, too, but this week, we’re putting it on buns.  Easy and fast…and fragrant.  Did I mention that my mouth keeps watering?  Quite distracting.

Also improved is my mood…strange for a Monday (maybe it’s the smell of barbeque…lol).  Yesterday I had a terrible case of the grumpy.  Today I understood a little better WHY that was, but it didn’t make me feel any better yesterday.  LOL.  Do you ever get grumpy BECAUSE you’re grumpy?  It’s a vicious cycle.  I’m happy I’ve moved on from there…and I’m pretty sure my kids and hubby feel the same way. 

Random subject change: I wanna try this recipe…I big fat pink puffy heart candy corn.

Ramble, ramble, ramble.  It’s now shred time for that chicken…my mouth watered again (not sure if it was looking at the above picture or smelling the chicken…*sigh*…I love food)

Hasta la vista, baby. 

Whoa

This anti-inflammatory pill for my shoulder is not making my scale very happy.  Or me either, for that matter.  My MIL wasn’t kidding when she said it’s a pretty common side effect to have increased appetite!  I am stuffed to the gills and I’m still hungry.  Five pounds in five days.  YUCK! 

Anyway, since I’m talking food, we certainly eat better around here when I’m starving…lol!  Here’s what we had tonight:

Crockpot Italian Chicken
(not sure where it came from, it was just typed up in my recipe box…lol!)

• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts (I just tossed frozen ones in…no prep…woohoo!)
• 1/2 stick melted butter (I used a whole stick…I know…naughty!)
• 1 8oz cream cheese at room temp (I used half…to make up for so much butter, plus I only us ed 3 pieces of chicken instead of four)
• 1 10.5oz can Cream of Chicken Soup
• 1 envelope dry Italian salad dressing mix
• Pasta of choice and garlic bread for the side

Put chicken in bottom of crock.  Pour melted butter over, then sprinkle dressing packet over chicken.  Cook 4 hr on high or up to 9 hr on low.  30 minutes before finishing, remove chicken and place on plate.  Mix softened cream cheese and soup into juice in crock until creamy.  Put chicken back in crock and finish cooking.  Serve over pasta (rice would probably work, too). 

Verdict…AWESOME!  It almost tasted like an alfredo sauce but not quite.  Chicken was SOO moist and tender.  Everybody except K-man loved it…and he’s just weird about what he likes and don’t like, so I didn’t think anything about it.  LOL.  I totally recommend it…I’m doing it again soon…it was so easy! 

In the picture is the leftover portion…I should have taken a picture when it was on my plate…it would have been much more presentable…oh well.  It still tasted great…lol! 

Randomosity

Well, I'm bummed out.  I was all productive (well, for part of the day I was) and then tonight around 8:45 I realized I totally missed SNO (Sister's Night Out) with the girls from church.  And I was soooo looking forward to it, too. 

But, no use cryin' over spilt milk, I reckon, so I'll just move right on.  At least I did get to visit with a Sister today when I went over to her house to go through her grandson's outgrown clothes.  And K-man is set for summer shirts now, so that's a double blessing.

I woke up this morning with a splitting headache and after I took the kids to school, I came back and was so sick on my stomach I could hardly even stand the thought of taking migraine medicine, but I made myself take it, and then laid down on the couch and pulled a blanket over my head to block out the light (which helped quite a bit).  Only I fell asleep.  And woke up around 11:30 with only a slight trace of the headache.  Thank God (and Excedrin) for that, at least, even if the day was half gone.

You know, I have some thoughts on that medicine business.  I've heard people say that you should trust God to heal you and not take medicine.  I've heard others say that you can trust God AND take the medicine because God is the one that allows the medicine to work.  And then of course there's everyone else on the "if you don't have faith to believe God is gonna heal you, just take the medicine" wagon.  I'm not sure which wagon I'm riding in...but I was thinking the other day that saying you can take medicine but God allows the medicine to work or not is kinda like saying you can take illegal substances and if God doesn't want you to get high, they won't affect you.  Which is obviously not a good theory at all.  Know what I mean?  Anyways.  I DO think that God gave man wisdom to create the medicine and if it makes my headache go away, I can thank God that the medicine exists.  LOL.  In a round about way, if God hadn't created man, then medicine wouldn't have been created either, so therefore God is responsible for all of it.  However, that would make God also responsible for the EVIL things that man has created also and this is making my head hurt again. 

Moving on.

I took this picture of myself in this new shirt a friend got for me.  LOL.  Anyways, I forgot to post it earlier, and since it fit with this post, I figured why not?  LOL!  Please excuse the snake of wet hair on the right and the brief appearance of my double chin at the top of my neck.  I tried to chop it off but I missed a little bit.  And since it's hard to take a picture of the entire shirt while I was wearing it, it says: Randomosity (random flower) on the first line and then on the next line it says: Because you just NEVER know!!  I love the shirt, it's super comfy (I think that's cuz it's a guys shirt, but that doesn't bother me...comfort is priority...LOL!), and of course the word is rockin.  Not that I'm prideful or anything.  Tehehehe. 

In other news, there's a new addition to the recipe box in my sidebar.  I made the variation so I named it the way I cooked it.  Crock Pot Dr. Pepper Ham.  LOL...go check it out.  It was heavenly.  The bottom of the ham got a little too done I think but that was probably because I left it on high a little longer than I was supposed to.  But of course it still turned out good...anything with Dr Pepper simply COULDN'T taste bad. 

And I did have a Dr Pepper on my birthday.  I've done a little bad over the month of February, so now the number of DP's I've had this year would probably take 3 or 4 hands but that's still good considering we're in month THREE.  I just wanna know who made Dr. Pepper.  They put a little too much addictability in it. 

Addictability: the addictive property of an element.
-Dictionary of Faith

Anyway, this has been your weekly dose of random, hope it wasn't TOO boring.  If it was, you can watch this video and I'm sure your boredom will magically disappear.  Oh and you might want to use the bathroom before you hit play.

Have a pleasant evening!!!  =)

Menu Plan Monday

You know, there is actually a pretty popular regular meme of folks who do this...I really should just link up with them b/c this is definitely something I am going to try to do regularly now that I have realized how much easier it is to sit down and plan out the week's meals.  Maybe I'll get a chance to do that next week. 

On to this week: 1/26-1/30

• Monday: Freezer Dinner Raid (pizza, chicken fries, and pepperoni poppers)
• Tuesday: Garlic Lime Chicken with a side of Macaroni
• Wednesday: Pizza Calzones (note to self: need pizza sauce, pizza dough)
• Thursday: Frozen Mesquite Chicken Pieces (to use up more freezer stuff before it gets old) and uh....I think there is some Whole wheat Spaghetti in the pantry that I should use up.  So Chicken and S'getti.  (note to self: get a loaf of bread to make fresh garlic toast)
• Friday: TaDa...Chicken's on sale this week so I think I'm going to experiment with this Chicken & Corn in the Crockpot recipe...and maybe use whatever's left of the fresh garlic toast from Thursday
• Saturday: leftovers (if I make an extra bit of chicken in the crockpot on Friday, then I can shred it and leave it in the sauce and that will make excellent sandwiches for Saturday)

Eventually I'll get all this old food used up.  By making the menus, I sure feel like I have a better grip on using it to make decent meals that don't feel like you're just trying to use up old food.  LoL!

On The Menu This Week...

Instead of getting those recipes posted, b/c I'm very behind on my updates anyways and don't know when I'll get to it, I thought I'd just try to start posting my menu plans for each week and link the recipes I'm going to try. These posts are purely for my own benefit b/c I am doing a lousy job these days of trying to get myself together at suppertime.  *SIGH*  Or at grocery shopping, for that matter. 

Anyways, if you see a recipe you'd like to try, go for it, and I'll try to post when I try them, how they turn out. 

Week of 1/12

• Monday - Slow Cooked Ravioli  (in the crock pot cooking as I type)
• Tuesday - Cheesy Potato Soup  (note to self: get another type of cheese)
• Wednesday - Sandwiches (church night)
• Thursday - Slow Cooked Enchiladas (note to self: need ground beef, 12 oz jar of salsa, taco seasoning, and another bag of mexican cheese blend)
• Friday - Beefy Taco Joes  (note to self: need 1 can Tomato Soup, the ground beef, and buns for this one)
• Saturday - leftovers or pantry/freezer raid

Last week's recipe that knocked our socks off: Baked Spaghetti (even the kids loved it!)

Turkey Day Details

Better late than never, right?

Well, the turkey in the crockpot adventure went rather well.  I still thought it turned out a tad dry, not as moist as I thought it would be, but the taste was fine.  I'm guessing the dryness may have been caused by the fact that when I was preparing the 8 lb turkey breast for the crock, I was quite grossed out by the skin hanging down at the bottom.  So I thought I'd trim it up a little.  And then I got kitchen scissor happy and skinned the whole thing.  And I'm thinking maybe it would have been a little more moist if I hadn't been so grossed out by the skin thing. 

EW.  Raw meat...that I have to TOUCH....and get real cozy with it.  Oh   *GAG*

Anywho, the other part is that it cooked so thoroughly that it was impossible to slice because it pretty much shredded off the bone when Pawpaw tried to cut it.  So we had turkey particles instead of turkey slices.  AH WELL. 

For a first ever turkey cooking attempt, at least it TASTED good. 

The recipes I kinda-sorta based my efforts on were this one by Crockpot365 and this one that I found on RecipeZaar.  Perhaps if I had just picked ONE and followed it exactly, the presentation would have turned out as good as the taste....LOL!  Hindsight.  It torments me so frequently.

Next we have Exhibit B over here, which is the lovely biscuits.  Thank you again, Mr. Pillsbury.  Where would I be without you? 

Then we have KC's plate...he ate the yummy cranberry sauce that his mom made, but he skipped the deviled eggs.  I believe that may be because he has enough devil...don't ya think?  LOL!!! 

And speaking of the devil....lol...check out this evil glare I'm getting from the handsome devil that is my hubby.  I'm going to guess it's the camera he's glaring at, otherwise I might get a complex.  LOL.

 Then there's the Munchkin with her pawpaw.  You can see mawmaw's right arm over there, but that's all of her that you'll see on here today, or else I would end up like that turkey in the first picture up there--chopped up on a platter....(mawmaw just had back surgery a little over a week ago and wasn't feeling up to par...and the few pictures that she was in proved it...LOL...which is why she would kill me if I posted them here. HAH...I'll just save them for blackmail. LOL).

And over there is me after a day of cooking.  Yikes.  I could totally blackmail myself. 

In my defense, it was a very busy day.  And I was very tired.  And I'm getting old.  It's really bad when you look at a picture of yourself and see your grandmother staring back at you.  ARGH.  The horror. 

Which brings to mind a totally random memory from this past weekend, when my friend, K, told me something along the lines of... "You know you're getting old when you raise your eyebrows at your child to scold him and he reaches up and rubs his finger over the wrinkles in your forehead."

So back to the turkey day post....that pretty much sums up our thanksgiving.  My parents were out of town and I was so busy with all the cooking that I was a very bad kid and never did get a chance to call.  So I called the next day to wish them a Happy (Day After) Thanksgiving.  Oops.  They weren't mad.  Parents are good like that. 

Random Kid Update:

• K-man watched the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving back at the beginning of November and just giggled and giggled through it.  That was totally cute and I got a kick out of it....then I called him Charlie Brown a couple of times when I was playing with him and he would say he wasn't "Cha-wee Bwown."  But then when you asked him who he was, he started saying, "I'm Cha-wee BWOWN!"  Well, tonight, I think it was KC who said something to him..."Get up, Charlie Brown" or something like that and he goes...."I'm not Cha-wee Bwown!  I'm Um. Um. Um. Um. SNOOPY!"  KC and I just looked at each other and BUSTED UP laughing.  He was hilarious.  He is also doing good on the potty training thing...a few accidents but mostly doing good...*knock on wood*...and he is REALLY picky now about his clothes.  Particularly which underwear he wants to wear or not wear.  *SIGH* 
• As for the Munchkin, her hair is getting really long...I was looking at pictures from last Christmas and it was just to her shoulders...now she will actually keep a hairband in her hair and it's about 3 inches past her shoulders.  She looks adorable.  Going through the "telling stories" stage, which is rather frustrating.  Especially when I witness something and ask her about it and she adamantly refuses to own up to it even when I tell her I saw what happened.  Oh well...it's just a stage, it's just a stage, it's just a stage.  This too shall pass, right? 

Anywho, I think that's it and I think this post is quite long enough. 

Goodnight!

A Crockpot Flop

I tried Mac & Cheese. Blech!

It should have turned out right. Smelled good. But it had a weird weird texture and taste that was totally not creamy velveeta. Maybe we're just spoiled.

Extremely funny though that K-man, who doesn't even LIKE mac & cheese, ate it and said it was good.

Oh well. I'm entitled to a few flops right?

At least I didn't do a pathetic job on the house cleaning today. Something in my favor anyways. LOL!

Oh yeah, Munchkin has a viral infection. Not strep, not ear infection (at least not yet, thank goodness). Still fever on and off, so I guess she'll be sticking with me tomorrow, too. If she feels better I may still try to do my errands tomorrow and just let her tag along. I'm sure she'd love that. She told me she would rather do that than go to school. HAHA.

Later!

Monday Is Not My Friend

Seriously. Why is it that Monday must be so difficult? Grrr.

Well, busy weekend and stinky Monday, but on the bright side, I had both crockpots going today (just so I could show KC that I really do *need* two crocks...hehehe).

I tried this Decadent Chocolate Gooey Cake Recipe in the crockpot. On a scale from one to ten, I'd give it about a 4. Kinda "eh" in my book. Not terrible, but I probably won't fix it again. KC seemed to like it and it smelled good. Maybe I'm just not in a chocolate fit....oh well.

The other one, however, is a winner and will be going in my recipe file. The original recipe was Bacon Ranch Chicken but I didn't have any bacon and I'm not big on egg noodles, so I switched it up a bit. Here's mine:

Crockpot Ranch Chicken

1 tsp garlic minced (I used freeze dried and kinda guessed on the tsp)
1 package of Hidden Valley Ranch salad dressing mix
1 can of cream of chicken soup
1 cup sour cream
4 boneless skinless chicken breast (I used 2 large ones and 1 medium sized one...next time I'll use four though b/c I generally don't eat the chicken but THIS time I actually liked it!!!)
Pasta of choice, cooked (I used the tri-colored garden spirals with a light garlic and oil over them to keep them from sticking together....butter might work better with the ranch....might try that next time)

Combine the first 4 ingredients. Pour over chicken in slow cooker. (Wait...hang on before you do that and spray with cooking spray first....I remembered this time...and the recipe didn't even call for it...lol).
Cook 3-4 hours on high or until chicken is cooked through. (I cooked for 3 hours on high and 1 hour on low and the chicken was literally falling apart, but SOOOO good).
Serve over hot pasta.
Makes 4-6 servings.

Things I noted...the sauce was extremely runny....I'm not sure if it was due to the one less piece of chicken or if I did something wrong, but it was still totally delicious. It was more like soup with giant chunks of chicken in it dumped over noodles, but oh well. *grin* I'll definitely be doing this one again.

Anywho. That's it for today....I have a headache and I'm rather grumpy so I'm gonna hop out of here before I get all negative. LOL.

Later!

So I Disappeared

I could say that the apple dish was soooo good that I've been passed out from the sheer delight of it for the last two days.

But reality says that while the apples were incredibly delicious, the real story is that I have been running all over the place and actually DOING stuff for the last couple of days, which hasn't left me much free time for bloggin. Oh well.

Picture one is the little slice of heaven in a bowl....picture two is what was left in the crock after we ate. I was in too much of a hurry to try it out, to take a picture before I started digging in....LOL!!!

Anywho, definitely a thumbs up on this one...just don't get the bottom part too done (I think my crock cooks a little faster, b/c I cooked it the amount of time it said to cook and it ended up being stuck on the backside....like....it turned the mixture into caramel rock in the back bottom part. My pan is STILL soaking. UGH. LOL).

Rainy Days Don't Last Forever

Thank GOODNESS! I get so much more done when the weather is nice and I am not operating under a cloud...either in the weather or in my brain. LOL.

So I finished a project on Friday that has been sitting up on one of my cabinets for nearly six months. (YIKES) I was really glad to finally have it finished and be happy with it. And better yet, since it was a gift for one of my dear friends, I was able to give it to her and SHE liked it. Yay! It was originally supposed to be a wedding gift (wincing...why do I tell on myself like this?) but it ended up being a late anniversary gift...LOL! Better late than never, I guess. (Products Used: flowers: Close to My Heart; gold ribbon: generic variety from Walmart; Husband & Wife rub-on: hobby-lobby; brads: some booth at last year's Scrapbook Convention)

Let's see...what else...oh, in the rainy weather category, the last couple of days have had a few deaths that have been a little rough.

We had to go up to the town where KC works on Friday night to a receiving of friends for his ex-boss's son. That was a tough one. Tough in the cause of death and tough because the family had a LOT of friends and we had to stand in line for over an hour with our two small kids. Especially since our friendly little munchkin befriended everyone in line around us. And you know, when you get her going, it's hard to get her stopped. She can say a LOT in an hour when she's got a captive audience of people that she's never met before. LOL! EEEK. Nuff about that.

Today's major projects: clipped coupons (I HATE that chore, but it saved me about $15 at the grocery store this afternoon), got a couple of books ready to mail for paperbackswap and took them to the post office (only to discover that today is Columbus Day....and I got to bring my packages back home--better luck next time), took some shots of Morgan (more on that as I get some edited), went grocery shopping (saved approximately $30 between coupons and my store savings card), came back and had a sandwich with Morgan while we worked on her math....

THEN...after I got the kids, I made this yummy-licious creation (at least I hope it turns out as yummy as it sounded here (although she originally got it here - which was the non-crockpot version - and can I just say that I have yet to see anything that Pioneer Woman does that I do not just LOVE....*huge sigh*)

I do not know what the final picture will look like yet, as it is just in the cooking stage at this point, but all I know is that me and the vanilla ice cream in the freezer are anxiously awaiting 7:30pm.

The second picture is the dumplings swimming in Mountain Dew, just because I had so much fun with the bubblicious way that it foamed all over the place when I poured the Mt Dew over it.

Ohhhhhhh.....7:30....
will you ever get here????

Oops....I guess I should hop off here and get supper cooked before 5:30 gets here, b/c it's coming a lot quicker than 7:30......

Later!

What To Title This?

Hum. How bout a verse from the book of Faith....

"A quick blog post to cover a multitude of topics should have a catchy title, else thou shalt be in danger of....." oh never mind.

This post beginning is not working out well. I should go back and erase this whole thing and start over.

No, really. I should. But since I occasionally don't do what I should, perhaps I'll just leave that there so you can have a lovely glimpse into the typical start of an average post in which I really don't know what I want to talk about, but feel the urge to say something.

So in the spirit of keeping it real, hang on a second while I regroup and start over (without erasing the beginning...heh).

Anykachoo, I think the best idea would be to do one of them thar (unofficial) Thursday Thirteen things and just make a list. Cuz, that is really what I like to do. Make lists. I particularly like lists in which the things are already done, and not ones in which I have many things to do....cuz those lists are....well....a lot of WORK. And we all know -- no wait, I don't want to go there either. Back to the list of things that happened today.

1. Early start this morning -- Munchkin was crying about 3am. Not really sure what the deal was, but I stumbled in there and talked to her for a minute. I'm not sure what all the conversation consisted of, but I seem to recall me singing a Veggie Tales song about God being bigger than the boogey man, and then praying with her. I think that was after she said she had a bad dream or was scared or something. I'm not really coherent at 3am, so I'm not positive about any of those events.

2. Got up at 7 (that's AM) and started supper. LOL. That sounds so weird. Anyhow, I have gotten into the crockpot dinners recently and I totally did a double whammy this morning. I am so proud of me. LOL. I made crockpot lasagna using a combination of this recipe and this recipe and not only that, but I used the leftover meatballs from Monday night's meatball sub dinner for the meat. Get that. I USED LEFTOVERS! (Did you see that, Mom? Leftover hater me!!! Bet you thought you'd never see the day, huh?) So I got up this morning and chopped the meatballs up and added more sauce to them and used that for the meat sauce in the recipe instead of using ground beef. I also used the ricotta/egg/milk version from the first recipe and the extra liquid on top/6-7 hours on low cook time from the second recipe. It turned out great except that it was done a little too early so I had to keep it on warm a little longer than I would have liked, and the very bottom got a little too done. Next time, I'll definitely shorten the cook time. The kids are loving the crockpot meals. They have asked for seconds or ate every bite of the dishes I've tried so far (and that's huge for mister picky K-man). Oh the other thing that makes me so happy with myself? I'm actually cooking with ingredients and it's turning out yummy (as opposed to cooking with pre-cooked freezer foods and it turning out yummy....LOL).

3. After I finished fixing supper, it was time to get the kids up and ready for school...Munchkin got up and was crying first thing....said her stomach hurt. (Maybe from my cooking? LOL....hope not...haha) But she seemed better after that and she wasn't running a temp or anything so I went ahead and took her to school.

4. Speaking of sick, it's going around at their school, so it's highly possible and perhaps even probable that the kids are going to (or already have) it, so I'm bracing myself.

5. After I dropped the kids off at school, I took the cats to the vet to be shaved....oh my. We've never had Jango shaved, but he was getting to be shedding more than Snowball and the hair problem was getting out of control, so we decided to see if it would help. Boy, they were NOT happy about it either. Both of them had to be sedated (ouch on the pocketbook) in order for the groomers to shave them.

6. Next stop was Burger King for a 3 piece french toast sticks (and they gave me like six...on purpose...cuz they were all, "there's more than three, have a nice day" about it) so my stomach wouldn't be growling in court.

7. Court started at 9. I was exceedingly happy that K-man's case was heard early, since generally I've found that the termination hearings tend to be put off to the end of the day so they can get the quicker cases out of the way and clear the courtroom early. Thankfully, it appeared to be a light day as far as cases go.

8. Was a little confused as to why they made his next date three months away instead of the (what I thought was) typical 30 days after termination hearing. I'm kinda guessing it's because they think she will appeal, in which case a 30 day hearing would be a waste of time since adoption can't go forward until any appeals (if they're filed) are completed. I personally think that any mom who can't even show up to the court date in which she would have a chance to testify for herself as to what was being done (or not done) toward her case plan should not have the right to appeal. I have other thoughts on the whole thing, but I won't share them here.

9. Got out of court and called Kel so we could meet up and work on Morgie's math, decided to meet at the library during G's storytime, so I hit a thrift store to kill about 15 minutes before meeting them...that was interesting. I went to the one in town that is part of a ministry or something that runs a soup kitchen, and apparently I got there about the time that all the "down on their luck" folks were showing up for lunch. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking being in hard times. But for the grace of God, I could be in their shoes. So with that said, I do have a problem with walking through a small group of folks that can't afford to feed themselves, yet magically have the money to loiter on the sidewalk puffing on their cigarettes, and the whole time, feeling a need to button up my jacket (which wasn't revealing anything anyways) and hold my purse a little tighter. That's the last time I go there by myself when the soup kitchen next door to the thrift shop is open.

10. Met Kel & Morgan at the library and got the tutoring out of the way (until Monday or Tuesday anyways)...we keep getting farther behind. It seemed like we were making much better progress over the summer, but then during the summer she was only doing math, not the other subjects. Oh well...we'll get there. Today's session seemed to go much better. Only a moment or two where I felt like we were on totally different wavelengths. LOL. (LOVE YA MORGAN)

11. Went to Subway for lunch (they have a new $5 footlong -- the Chicken Pizziola or something like that...it's yummy)

12. Came home and took a nap (I had one of those sinus headaches, you know the ones that make your eyes hurt...it felt much better to close them. LOL) I slept away the afternoon (bummer) and had this really weird dream in the process. I think I've dreamed it before, b/c it seemed really familiar...nutzoid. At least it wasn't the nightmare that K-man's mom got him back though. I don't like those dreams. This one was a happy sort of dream, but don't ask me about it, b/c what I remember is very vague.

13. Got woke up, then hauled off the trash, paid a bill, picked up the kitties and paid that whoppin bill (oh the price of less hair), picked up the kids, came home, and set the lasagna on the table and had supper. Now THAT was sweet! I could totally get used to that. LOL!

So there it is. My day in thirteen tiny (or not so tiny) pieces. *goofy grin*

And for Kelly's benefit, the potato crockpot dish that I fixed Tuesday night. This was in the Fix it and Forget it cookbook (I think).

They called it Scalloped Taters but I don't really think of them as scalloped since it uses frozen hashbrown potatoes. Anywho, for what it's worth, they were good, no matter the name. And i have two other variations to try, along with the fact that I need to attempt to spice it up a little more since KC thought they were a little on the bland side. (I didn't think so, but he likes his food to kick him on the way down, so I guess I'll play a little with spices on the next go around).

Nuff said, I have to post this before the length of this post goes into overdrive (if it's not already there).

(Makes 6-8 servings)

1/2 cup melted margarine (I used butter cuz I didn't have any margarine)
1/4 cup dried onions
16 oz pkg frozen hashbrown potatoes (I used the southern style chunks versus the shredded style, not sure if it makes a difference or not)
10.75 oz cream of chicken soup
1.5 cups milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese (next time I'm using more...I didn't think this was enough)
1/8 tsp black pepper
1 cup crushed cornflakes - divided (I used a little more than this...I like more crunchy stuff)

Stir together all ingredients except 1/2 cup of the cornflakes and pour into greased slow cooker (I forgot to grease it...cleanup was a little tough) and then top with the rest of the cornflakes.

Cover. Cook on high for 3-4 hours.

I heated the leftovers in a glass dish in the oven the next night and it tasted as good as the first night. (OOH, MOM....didja see that? the LEFTOVER stuff AGAIN!!! Heh! *grin*)

Okay. For those of you who stuck it out this far....Wow. I'm impressed and I love you, too! *grin*

till next time...