All Quiet on the Blog-front

Look over to the right side bar...notice anything different?

My "About Me" has been updated to reflect the arrival of our newest addition!  LittleBro joined the family last week and we couldn't be happier, or more tired.

This post is just a heads up that the blog is going to go quiet for the next month or so as we adjust to being a family of 6. 

I hope to return to posting once I can sleep for a couple hours continuously and form/remember a coherent thought :-)

Courtney

A Letter to My (No Longer The) Baby

Dearest Little One,

You are about to become a big sister.  You say you are excited and yet I know you know.  Things will never be the same.

You will no longer be the baby.

At just over two, you let us know that you were ready to use the potty.  Your favorite phrase is "I'm a big helper".  You feed yourself and take your plate to the counter after dinner.  You sometimes have an attitude and I get to experience those terrible-twos with you.  We have conversations that make sense, most of the time.  You run and jump and play with the best of them.

But there are moments when it's still there.

In the quiet of the afternoon, when I come in to wake you from nap and you're still sleeping and I get to watch.  Watch your sweet face, still with its baby cheeks.

When you get upset and curl up next to me on the couch with your blankie.

On our way to the bus stop, when you slip your hand into mine and we walk together, just the two of us.

When we go shopping together and I see your eyes light up when you see bananas in the produce section.  And we make monkey sounds together.

It's those times when you return to being a baby, my baby.

The arrival of your sibling if going to change your world, our family dynamic. My undivided attention will be remarkably divided and the "just you and me" time will diminish.  As much as I am going to miss having you as the baby, you've transitioned into an awesome, fun and precocious big-girl.  I know you'll be a great big sister and I'm even more excited to see what sort of person you'll grow into.

Know one thing for certain though, you will always be my baby.

Love
Mommy

Recipe: Easy Chicken Pot Pie

Weeknight meals, if not already prepped and frozen, need to be easy.  Easy to assemble and easy to get to the table.  Delicious helps too!

This recipe is all those things and more.  Versatile, easy to assemble, hands off once in the oven, one-dish kid friendly dinner -- yep, winner winner chicken pot pie dinner :-)

Easy Chicken Pot Pie
     serves: 4-6
     time: ~45mins total

Ingredients
- 1 box (2 crusts) pre-made refrigerated pie crusts
- 1 can of cream of chicken condensed soup
- chicken
   * 1 large can of chicken breast, drained
   * leftover chicken from a previous meal
   * raw chicken, cut into 1/2inch pieces and cooked
- frozen mixed vegetables

Directions
0. Preheat your oven to 400* and place your pie crusts on the counter to come to room temperature.
1. If using raw chicken, cook the chicken through in a skillet and season as desired (see Notes).
2. Place one pie crust in the bottom of a 9" pie plate.
3. In a medium bowl, stir to combine the condensed soup, chicken and vegetables. 
4. Dump the filling mixture into the pie plate.  Unroll the second pie crusts and place it on top, sealing the edges together.  Use a knife to cut a couple of slits in the top crust to allow any steam to escape.
5. Bake at 400* for 35-45minutes until desired shade of golden brown. 
6. Allow to cool slightly before serving.

Notes

• I didn't include measurements for the chicken or frozen mixed vegetables in this recipe because you can make it as meaty or veggie-full as you want.  This is a fantastic recipe for using up any meat that might have been left on a rotisserie chicken or those scrappy looking chunks of chicken that you get when you clean up any boneless, skinless chicken breasts from the supermarket.
• The filling and chicken can be seasoned however you desire.  I usually stick to "traditional" chicken flavors -- poultry seasoning, rosemary, herbs de Provence, montreal chicken, etc but have definitely made this before with curry powder.  
• For easier removal from the oven, and clean up if there is any spill-over, place your pie plate on a cookie sheet.
• Do NOT add any additional liquid to the filling mixture.  It will loosen up on its own while cooking, adding liquid will result in a soupy mess instead of a thicker filling.
• This recipe expands nicely to feed a crowd.  Feel free to up the filling amounts, dump everything in a large casserole dish and top with a pie crust either whole or as lattice strips.

#MomHacks -- Sick in the Car

Red solo cup, I fill you up

Let's have a party, let's have a party

In my life as a mom, I esteem the red solo cup quite highly.  It let's me entertain with less dishes, can be used for crafts, planting sunflower seeds and many other assorted uses.  However, today's #momhack is meant to highlight my most helpful use of the red solo cup.

Red Solo Cup = car vomit receptacle AKA "the sick cup"

Kids getting sick in the car is just about one of the worst things that can happen in day-to-day life, especially if they are still in car seats.  All you hear while driving is the heaving sound as you know multiple surfaces and, more than probably, every buckle crevice is being coated in stomach expulsions.  If your family is anything like us, each kid has one carseat with no spare since you've got the one family car.  Which means that you either have to deal with the stench for awhile or immediately change your plans and execute a deep clean of the fouled carseat.  No matter which you have to do, those buckles, straps and crevices are going to have to be cleaned and it's never pretty.

Enter the red solo cup.

I keep a couple in my center console.  The minute any audible indication of being unwell is made, the cup gets passed/tossed back to the child.  Obviously, not the easiest concept for the younger children but even my two year old has successfully told me "I don't feel good" in time that the majority of her vomit ended up in the cup. 

So, next time you are having the type of party where one of your children is filling up a red solo cup, I wish you well and stand with you in solidarity!

My Trip to King Arthur Flour

So even just writing the title to this post makes me smile from ear to ear!

King Arthur Flour Baking School

I got to go to the one, the only KING ARTHUR FLOUR (KAF) in Norwich, Vermont and it was awesome.  Let me tell you all about it. :-)

This little adventure started back in December when I got a birthday card with instructions on the outside to not open until my husband got home.  Do you know how hard that is?  To check the mail at 3pm and have to wait until 7pm to open it knowing at this point that it had to be something good!  Ack, I was dying with anticipation.  Well, my most awesome friend MJ who lives in the Boston area had conspired with my husband to put together the most incredible birthday surprise ever -- a girl's weekend away to King Arthur Flour.  Many thanks to her, her husband and, of course, my husband for making me feel so special.

I flew to Boston by myself, with just a carry-on (I felt like I was missing something or lots of somethings!) on a Friday and we drove up to Vermont the next day.  After a delicious lunch in the KAF Cafe, MJ and I proceeded to class -- Rolls: Sweet and Savory.  On the menu were sweet orange rolls and savory focaccia rolls.  Our instructor, Becca, had been working at KAF for 10 years, starting in the bakery on the 3am shift and then moving over to the Baking School.  She knew her way around the kitchen and yeast dough.

Mixing dough by hand, Finished sweet orange rolls, Focaccia squares ready to bake

The class format was pretty relaxed.  Becca took us through a recipe at her work station and then we each returned to our work stations to make our own batch.  Ingredients and tools were all provided at the table so there was no need to look around for anything.  Dishes were picked up when we finished and taken away to be washed.  We made the sweet orange rolls dough, made the savory focaccia roll dough, took a coffee break and then came back to finish up our creations.  The orange roll dough got rolled into a rectangle and filled with a butter and orange zest/oil filling and rolled up like a cinnamon roll while the focaccia was ever so gently patted out and cut into squares so as to preserve the air pockets.  To speed the process along, the dough was placed in a giant proofing box and then later baked in a giant walk-in oven (it is a bakery after all).  The best part -- every participant got to take home her cooking untouched as we sampled the instructor's finished products.  My family was happy to see me when I flew home and even happier to eat my creations!

Even though I've been making yeast dough for a couple of years now (my first attempt is now known as the hockey puck incident of 2007) I learned quite a bit.  I have always used my KitchenAid stand mixer with dough hook to make my dough but it was surprisingly easy to make the dough by hand.  Multiple times throughout the dough making process, if I had been at home, I would have added more flour as the dough seemed too sticky.  Luckily, our instructor coached me not to and just like magic with some gentle kneading and a light flour dusting of the work surface the dough became smooth and elastic.  Had I been using the stand mixer or added more flour it could have become overworked or too heavy which would have results in a dense final product.  There was also a very informative discussion about using the water temperature to help control the speed of the dough rising through the yeast activation.  If you need the dough to take longer to rise (errands to run or other things to do) use cooler water.  Makes perfect sense but not something I had considered previously.

Overall it was a great weekend with a great friend.  If you happen to be in the Northeast, try and check out King Arthur Flour, maybe to take a baking class, maybe to try one of their raspberry danishes.  You won't be disappointed either way.  And since you're in Vermont and it's a small state, make sure to stop by some other fun little tourist spots like Ben & Jerry's, Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Maple Grove Farms, Dartmouth College (technically in New Hampshire), and Simon Pearce glass

King Arthur Flour Baking School

Recipe FAIL: Instant Pot Spaghetti & Meatballs

Just keeping it real friends...

Let me tell you, I had this blog post all drafted in my mind before I even put any ingredients in the pot.  I was going to tell you how I was a mom-hero and arrived home from gymnastics practice to perfectly cooked spaghetti and meatballs.  How I dumped everything in, set the time delay, and basically won the internet. 

Except I didn't.  There was no #winning

I dumped everything in, set the time delay, we didn't go to gymnastics since the athlete wasn't feeling well so I checked the pot the instant it beeped and I was dismayed to find that nothing had cooked.  The meatballs were even still a bit frosty and the pot had not come to pressure.

Luckily, since we didn't go to gymnastics, I had accelerated the timer by half an hour so I had some wiggle room on the expected serving time and the three hungry bellies that were sure to start growling.  So, what did I do -- add more water (not coming to pressure is usually a product of not enough water).

I went through the motions again.  [Manual] 5 minutes.  And when it showed the timer starting I checked the pressure valve...not at pressure AGAIN.  Seriously?!  This was to be my weeknight success.  Spaghetti and meatballs!  How can you screw up spaghetti and meatballs?  If anything I am stubborn persistent so I added another cup of water and repeated the process.  Again no pressure. FAIL.

The Culprit of My Failure

The Final Product

At this point, I had corndogs about to pull out of the freezer and heat up for dinner but decided to taste test the final product.  The sauce was bubbly and hot, the meatballs heated through and the pasta tender.  All in all, it resembled school cafeteria spaghetti in terms of sauce and consistency.  Given that I was feeding little people who think buying lunch at the school cafeteria is awesome, I served it for dinner and the night was saved.

After serving dinner, I discovered the culprit of my failure -- the burnt mass of spaghetti and sauce at the bottom of the pot.  A thick crust of burnt goo will prevent heat from transferring well from the bottom heating element which would prevent the contents from being able to reach pressure.

In retrospect, here is what I think led to this partial failure (we still ate spaghetti and meatballs for dinner so not a total loss):

• not starting with enough liquid
• I originally started with 1 28oz can of pasta sauce, 1 14.5oz can of diced tomatoes and 1 14.5oz can of water.  The second go round I added another 14.5oz can of water and for round 3, I added another 8oz of water.
• I should have started with 28oz of water.  I think by round 3, the bottom was so burnt over that additional water didn't matter.

• using the time delay
• having the time delay meant that the pasta had time to sink to the bottom of the pot and absorb some of the much needed water which was minimal to begin with

•  not giving up sooner
• let's face it, running the cook cycle 3 times just added to the burnt goo at the bottom

Will I try this again?  Maybe, if pasta and sauce are on a screaming good sale and I've got time to spare and a back-up plan for dinner, maybe.

Happy Cooking!