Chicken Nuggets for Breakfast????

Breakfast.  It is always such a fun time at our house during the week.  I can often be found brushing hair while pouring milk, or throwing socks at child who is trying to drink their milk.  So needless to say we don't always have the best or most balanced breakfast meals.  I try to get some fruit in my kids before we head out the door but of course it doesn't always happen.  They usually want Uncle A cereal (fruity pebbles) or something equally full of sugar.  But last time I went to the store I decided "That's it!!! No more sugary cereal" (for this week) So I bought some Kashi varieties.  The kids like them for the most part but I think they are already sick of them.  Not to mention that the bowl of heart to heart that I had this morning looked exactly like cat food!  Anyhow, this morning cereal didn't sound good to Jude.  I offered cereal, toast, yogurt, you know the regular breakfast options and he didn't want any.  So he took matters into his own hands and went and checkout the fridge.  Nope, nothing there.  How about the freezer? AHA!! Chicken Nuggets, or in this case Chicken Fries.  Yep, I guess my desire for healthier foods in the house disappeared somewhere between the cereal isle and the frozen foods isle. So Jude decides that he would like chicken fries for breakfast.  My first thought was NO! You can't have nuggets for breakfast.  But then, I started thinking, are chicken nuggets any worse than uncle a cereal, or white bread with butter and jam?  I don't really think so.  At least he would be getting some protein.  And if I would serve the nuggets for lunch/dinner why wouldn't they be okay for breakfast?

This led me to google.   I typed in 'chicken nuggets for breakfast' and the whole first page was about a lady who freaked out at McD's for not serving her chicken nugs for breakfast! Hahaha haven't we all been there?  Except I am the opposite.  I roll into the arches at 10:29, so ready for a sausage biscuit and just then I see it, they flip the menu and just like that they're gone.  And the rage rises! I beg, please can I order breakfast? Nope it's 10:30 breakfast is over.  So mad!!!! But unlike this lady I have self control to not climb through the drive through window and beat the employee.
Anyhow, what I did find on google was this blog and soon did not feel so bad about serving Jude chicken nuggets for breakfast.  What do you think? I kind of feel like chicken nuggets might be better than most of the cereal and toast we usually have.
On another note I made a really healthy dinner last night! Ha, it included gravy if that is any indicator of health.

This would be what I would call "spontaneous international fare"  I don't know how Bavarian this actually is but it tasted wonderful and was quite easy to make.

While strolling through the meat department I ran across this pork chop special.  And on this package was a recipe for Bavarian Chops.  I know my husband likes pork chops but I never make them because I don't really know how.  I have made them a few times and have never had a great outcome.  But this looked fool proof.  If the recipe can fit on a piece of paper the size of a piece of gum surely I can make it work.

And there you have it

Bavarian Chops!

The review from the family was as follows

Matt

Madeline

And Jude

We served it over noodles and also had broccoli.  The recipe did not include the gravy but Matt LOVES pork chop gravy so I had to make some.  I would definitely suggest adding the gravy!  Without it I was a little boring.  I will leave you with the recipe.

Bavarian Chops

5 min prep 15 min cook

4 pork chops

2 T flour

1 t butter (i used way more, just trying to keep it healthy)

1/2 cup green onions, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

8 oz mushrooms, sliced

1/2 t thyme

8 oz beer, room temperature

salt

black pepper, freshly ground

Buttered noodles, optional

fresh parsley, optional

Lightly flour chops.  Melt butter in nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until foaming.  Brown chops 1-2 minutes per side.  Remove, reserve.  Add green onion, garlic, mushrooms, and thyme, saute for 2-3 minutes until onion is soft.  Return chops to skillet, add beer, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat, cover and simmer 6-7 minutes until internal temp is 145, followed by a 3 minute rest time.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serve with buttered noodles garnished with parsley.  Serves 4

Yep that is me in my Bavarian cooking outfit!  

My Very Own Alice

Deciding what to make for dinner is always a chore for me.  But for the most part I have an arsenal of items that I make and so it is not a super long process.  Enter Pinterest. What used to be an chore is now a wonderful portal to distraction.  I ask myself, what should I make for dinner?  Hmmmmm Maybe I'll check pinterest for a fun chicken idea.  Sit down at the computer at 3pm, type in chicken,  and I see this

Which makes me think of how much my sister hates birds/chickens and how funny it would be to cut one of these out with my cricut and stick it up on her wall someday when she wasn't looking! Bahahaha seriously that would be so funny.  So now I am thinking about cutting vinyl and how fun it is and how I would like to label everything in sight.  But I am going to focus and go back to finding my recipe.

Uh oh, just saw this and chicken is no longer on the menu

(side note, Jude just saw this chicken picture and said those kind of chickens are for valentines day!) HAHA

Now since chicken is out I decide to go to the food and drink category hoping to not find any nasty pictures.

BAD IDEA!!!

I have now been officially sucked in.  There is no turning back.  It is now 5:00 I am no closer to a dinner decision and have spent about 1 million dozen grand dollars in my mind and am making mac and cheese for dinner.  Sorry family that you are eating food from a box for dinner but I have some really great ideas for decorating our house, birthday party ideas, and lots of meal ideas that I have none of the ingredients for.  

This is basically what happened for the most part while Alice  I mean my mom was here. 

 We were planning our meals for the weekend and went to the P.  We pretty much spent a million hours looking for recipes and in the end we made frito chili pie, pizza rolls, french breakfast puffs, sunday dinner (roast, mashed potatoes etc) and tuna sandwiches.  All things we have made many times.  But we sure had a great time looking for new recipes.  I would also like to mention that we used the pioneer woman cookbook for the majority of these recipes.

One thing that we made from the P was a scarecrow mix.  Although, my mom had made it before she came here and my kids scarfed it so we had to make more.  It was soo yummy and easy to make.  Jude got in on the fun too.  He helped pick out some of the treats to put in and also with the mixing.

I did not see the original recipe that my mom used but I think our mixture was delish!!! We used
Candy Corn

These wonderful little morsels
White chocolate M&Ms along with
Peanut M&Ms and Pretzel M&Ms

 

Reeces Pieces, Killian Krunch popcorn (which is basically like the Moose Munch and ever bit delicious)
We also used a pre made chex mix, teddy grahams and some hazelnuts.  Not only was it the perfect mix of sweet and salty but I think it is so fun to look at too!

 

Our actual recipe

Scarecrow Mix

I bag Chex Mix traditional party mix

1 box Teddy Grahams

I bag Killian Krunch (or moose munch or just plain caramel corn)

1 bag Reeces Pieces

1 bag Peanut M&MS

1 bag Pretzel M&MS

1 bag Candy Corn M&MS

1 bag Candy Corn

Hazelnuts

You can add anything you like.  Matt suggested adding more chex mix.  Our mix was mostly sweet so I think some more salty would be great.  

We had lots of fun in the kitchen but also got some other projects done.  

Most of my walls are still bare here so the first thing on the list was to get some pictures and shelves hung in the living room.  

Planning it out 

And after.  I need to add to it.  For now it is a little empty but I'm not sure what else I want up there.  Maybe I should check pinterest. :)

Saturday night we got to go to Mark and Carly's for a party for Mr. Waylon! He turned the 2!  We had lots of fun fighting over who gets to hold baby Anna as usual, eating these yumm-o cupcakes,

And last but not least

We got to watch the Beavs beat the Cougs!!!! Fun stuff

Sunday we went to our new church and again enjoyed it quite a bit.  It was so lovely to come home to our yummy smelling roast in the oven!  And had a wonderful day relaxing. The kids were excited to share family night with Grammy and so had our popcorn and milk shakes and of course played rummikub! 

Monday mom went home but not before making sure all of the laundry was taken care of, sheets washed, dishwasher emptied, linen closet organized and basically taking care of anything else she could shine up! Thanks so much mommy! I had so much fun with you and am already looking forward to your next visit.  

Next up!

Nunu is coming!!!!! Can't wait to see you sissy.  Let's see if you can organize and clean as much as mom. :)

This here's a family tradition

I love the thought of family traditions.  I love starting traditions, planning traditions and talking about traditions.  But following through with traditions? Well that's a different story.  I guess it's kind of like a habit.  They say it takes about 66 times of doing something to form a habit and if that truly is that case then I don't see myself forming any habits in any time soon! I know the kids love tradition and routine as well.  If I mention that we are going to have pizza on a Friday night Madeline will say "Is today Friday? So maybe we should say that every Friday we have pizza"  They thrive on routine and pretty much have their whole lives.  Too bad they have me for a mother huh? hahahaha But one thing I can say we do on a regular basis is popcorn and banana milk shakes.  Now it isn't always on a Sunday night, but usually it is.  Sometimes we will watch a movie (and I fall asleep) or we will watch Planet Earth (and I will fall asleep) So tonight I decided maybe the kids are old enough to play a game. (I love games so definitely no falling asleep!) So down I went to the basement to find a game.  And there it was RUMMIKUB!!!! Now I don't want to exaggerate but this might be one of the greatest games.  When I was a little girl I went through a phase of wanting to play this all the time.  I remember playing at my grandparents house and I loved it.  I loved it so much that for Christmas one year I got the Rummikub Tournament Edition!!!

 It was a beautiful, padded faux leather case, engraved tiles, you know the works.  So when I saw that beauty in the game box I knew what we were going to do. 

 The box said ages 8&up but we all know how advanced my kids are so I usually ignore those guidelines.  

Before we started the actual memory making I did a practice round with the kids to make sure it would actually be enjoyable.  :) They seemed to get the concept so on we went to......

.....Making the snacks.  

Traditionally Matt is the milk shake maker and I am the popcorn maker.  

Yummy!

And I would say these bananas are ripened to perfection!

  

And could this fella be any cuter?

 Sweet buttery goodness, and don't forget the parmesan cheese!

Now the real fun begins!  The kids did pretty good.  Madeline really started to get the game and she was doing lots of switching and figuring out her moves on her own.  

 I think Jude had fun but he didn't last quite as long as the rest of us.

 But he eventually ended up on the floor, in the other room, and under the chairs at one point!

In other news Saturday we attended our first WSU football game.  Unfortunately they did not win but we sure had a lot of fun.  The kids each got a WSU flag that kept them pretty entertained most of the game.  

Sunday we finally made it to church!Yippee, we really enjoyed it and are planning on going back next week.

So please, do tell me about some of your family traditions! I would love to think about trying them out at my house. :)

Mrs. Clean Mrs. Clean

Every once in a while I have to remind my family that I went to school to learn to do hair.  It doesn't seem like something that would have to be argued about but it comes up more often than you would think.  For instance when I am giving Matt a haircut, for some reason he thinks he needs to check to make sure I am cutting the correct amount EVERY time.  And many times when I am combing Madels hair she will try and tell me I am doing it wrong, or that the style isn't cool!  It kills me.  And as you can see from this portrait of me above I have wonderful hair!

So aside from all of the wonderful hair styling information that I absorbed in that year, I also picked up some very valuable information about sanitation.  A couple of days a week we would spend a couple of hours in the morning reading "Oregon Law"  It was mind numbing. But recently it has started coming back to me I come to realize that it is my civic duty to pass on this information to others.  It is also important for me to point out that ALL of this information is on the labels of each of these products.  It is not a secret, or something you have to go to beauty school to learn! 

 I know you may think that this doesn't apply to you, but believe me it does.  Last weekend a little virus passed through the kids and I wanted to get the "germs" out of the house.  So what do I do?  

I grabbed this can of disinfectant.  And went to town. Please note this is a disinfectant.  Now disinfectants will  destroy  infectious bacteria, but not necessarily their spores. But, and this is a giant BUT, in order for this to actually work even a little bit, you must allow the spray to remain on the surface for 10 minutes!!!! This is a long time.  And the surface must stay wet.  Then you can wipe it off with your rag.  So the problem lies in the fact that usually when I go to kill germs during and after a sickness sweeps my house I walk around the house with the lovely can and spray all the door knobs, light switches, faucets and so on.  I immediately wipe the surface and guess what? I've officially done nothing.  All I have done is made them smell a little nicer.  Which, after the sickness is usually a welcome gift.  So this time, I went ahead and read the directions on the can to make sure I was getting the best result and did the 10 minute wait time.  

Next I am going to discuss these beauties

These are also in the category of disinfectant.  I LOVE these wipes.  I love to keep them under each sink in the house so I can quickly pass through the bathroom with a wipe and have it CLEAN and DISINFECTED!!!  But guess what? In order for these to work they also follow the keep the surface wet  for 10 minutes rule.  Crazy!!!! I tested this out on the kitchen counter the other night.  I tried to keep the surface wet for as long as I could and guess what? It didn't work.  The wipe itself was completely dried out within the first minute.  I think it would take the entire can in order to actually disinfect your surface.  

Again you will have a nice wiped down surface and it will smell nice but the germs will remain.  

After I started reading these labels I started thinking, what do they use at the gym? They very likely use a high level disinfectant like quaternary ammonium chloride that is used in salons for tools and such but, still in order for these products to work they must remain wet for a long(ish) period of time.  And I am guessing that the little spray into a towel and wipe I used to do on my spin bike didn't quite cut it.  SICK.  

Am I a germ-a-phobe?? No not really.  But I just don't like the thought of going to all the work of wiping everything down with a clorox wipe to just make it smell good.  I think I will keep using the wipes simply because I like the disposableness of them but I will just have to make sure to use the spray and let it sit when I really want to kill something.  

And in case you couldn't tell, yes I am still a little bored.

Welcome to episode one of Cooking With the Kings!

My kids LOVE to help out in the kitchen.  They always want to be the one to crack the egg, pour the sugar, or any thing they can do to help me out.  Usually I am a lame-o mom and I don't have them help me.  I know I should and I want to more, but most of the time I am just trying to hurry up and get something finished.  So today I decided to have the kids help me make a pumpkin coffee cake.  I didn't have any time constraints and so I decided to first measure everything out in bowls so they could just dump!  As I was prepping everything the wheels started turning.  We should do a cooking show!  A real one!  And video tape it!  

So the kids were excited about it until I told them they were going to have to talk during it.  But with a little bribery we got it going.  

We had so much fun!  I thinking we may have to make it a regular thing.  Perhaps a weekly episode of Cooking with the Kings is in order.  If you have any recipe ideas you would like to see in an episode let me know. :) 

I hope you enjoyed the show.  Please pay no attention to the coughing, nose wiping and licking of spoons or rather the blatant sticking of fingers in the batter.  When you're as cute as these kids germs don't count.

As you may have noticed after the cooking show we went to the Reptile Man

Now I am not a big fan of reptiles.  But thankfully we were at a nice safe distance that I didn't feel scared.  :) The kids however got a nice front row seat and loved it.  I thought it would be fun to get Madeline's perspective so I left the camera with her.  But first I snapped this cute picture of her and her friend Maysen and her brother Even.  You can also spot Jude in the top corner. 

There was a lot of excitement and screaming involved! 

And this morning we enjoyed the fruit of our labor

Can anyone tell me why on earth I would eat this for breakfast? Cake? seriously?  Sugar? 

Pumpkin Coffee Cake

Ingredients

• 1 package (16 ounces) pound cake mix
• 3/4 cup canned pumpkin
• 6 tablespoons water
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 
  TOPPING:
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 3 teaspoons butter, melted

Directions

• In a large bowl, combine the first six ingredients; beat on low speed for 30 seconds. Beat on medium for 2 minutes. Pour half of the pumpkin mixture into a greased 9-in. square baking pan.
• In a small bowl, combine the topping ingredients; sprinkle half over the batter. Carefully spread with remaining batter. Sprinkle with remaining topping (pan will be full).
• Bake at 350° for 35-40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack. Yield: 9 servings.

This is a taste of home recipe.  And if you would like to look at the nutrition facts look here

Carving Pumpkins!!!!

Last night we took on the task of carving our pumpkins.  I had purchased one of those little stencil/tool kits last year so we could get a little more detailed.  I wasn't really sure how it would but we jumped right in and I think they turned out pretty great.  

This here is our favorite Jack-o-lantern! 

The detail people!

Madels' ghost pumpkin.

Here you have a pretty good picture of what our family is like.  

Matt and Madels working on perfecting their project, Jude riding his scooter and me taking pictures.

M&M still working

And Jude not working

Matt's finished project.