Fried Chicken and mac-n-cheese

My family settled for a time period in Macon, GA. While down there I grew to love my southern comfort food. I have worked hard learning how to cook foods that I really love without having to go out often and friend chicken is one of the hardest things to master. The reason I feel that it is the hardest is because not enough flour mixture the to over cook the chicken and its not good, under cook it and you get sick. If you bake it you lose some of the flavor, making it such a finicky meal. 

I started with my chicken because I was doing oven baked "fried" chicken and it was going to take the longest. 

 I pull out my flour (1 cup) and turmeric (1 teaspoon), paprika( 2 teaspoon) , salt, pepper, small a mount of Italian seasoning. Mix it all together and set aside.

Now for my wet ingredients. I used 1/4 cup milk, 2 eggs, salt and pepper to taste. Mix really well and set aside. 

Now is the time to pull out the chicken and start the long pain staking process of pat dry roll in the flour and set aside and do the remaining. 

After all of the chicken is dusted dip in the egg mixture and roll around in the flour again. Repeat with the rest. 

At this point I toss into the oven and let cook at 350 for about an hour give or take depending on the size of your chicken. 

Now for the mac and cheese. 

I made pasta ahead of time and set aside so I was well prepared to my one hour crunch time. 

I made a quick rue (1 tablespoon flour to 1 tablespoon butter) and added onion, garlic, turmeric, salt and pepper to taste. I get my sauce some what thick and then add the cheese. I love real raw sharp cheddar cheese with dubliner cheese for its bite but for this meal I used the regular cheddar found in the dairy section.  

Mix it until all of the cheese is melted. Add the pasta and mix well. Then I made a quick simple salad. 

This meal came to about $14 for the entire meal. This feed everyone and we had leftovers, making each serving about $2 per person. 

Steak Solvaski

Marley was upset with me that she has ben getting a ton of "not yummy dead cow". Steak is expensive and I want to work with a tight budget to save some for my dream house. I hear a lot of steak salsbury but have never had it and decided to make up my own thing. So here is my Greekish cubed Steak.
                                                               

I started buy making roasted potatoes. I washed and chopped the potatoes. Tossed it with oil and seasonings. Normally I use salt, pepper, paprika, basil, oregano, and thyme.

Now for the steak, put salt pepper and basil on both sides. Add a small amount of butter in a hot pan and cook the steak. 

Set the steak aside and start mushrooms. 

Sautee the mushrooms with onions and garlic with parsley. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add the left over sauce from the chicken solvaski. (If you refrigerate the leftover sauce the grease will harden and easy to separate.) Add the steaks and cook until until the potatoes are done. 

Two pieces of cube steak is $4, a giant bag of potato that gets me 4 meals is $5 and mushrooms are $3.50. Each meal comes to about $3 a person.

Daisy Bridging Ceremony: Part 1

My co leader and I wanted to do something amazing and extraordinary for the girls. We went through a lot as a group and we wanted to make them feel amazing and ready for the next adventure.

For several weeks we practiced a few different songs (Great Big Moose, Little Bunny Fufu, and Go Bananas) and the meeting before our ceremony we did a run through. Lesson learned plan on more than 30 minutes with 6 highly energetic girls for a run through.

As for projects for the event: 3 piñatas, 6 fairy wands with tacks at the end, 6 balloons filled with confetti, cupcakes, brownies, special markers for the girls cupcakes, letters to each girl, certifies, tape game, bubbles, bubble wands, candy flower bouquets and cookies.

This takes much longer than a single day please plan accordingly otherwise you will be extremely tired but it was worth it.

My Girl Scout post will be in 3 parts this being the 1st in the series and ending with our finally meeting with Powder puff Derby. 

Now to begin I am going to start with my simple projects:)

FAIRY WANDS!!!!

We wanted all the girls to pop a balloon and end the ceremony with a big bang, this was it and they will be Brownies next year, except one will be joining our Junior troop.  

I started with $.29 wooden dowels and painted them rainbow themed. I even dipped the tip in gold paint. 

Then we took about 7 different colored ribbons and cut them in long strips. 

I tied a knot in the middle to keep it all together. 

 I cut 2 inch strips of the thicker ribbon because it was going cover up the know and give a finished look to it. 

I glued it to the top of the wooden stick. 

 I then glued a tack to the top so the girls could pop their balloons. After the balloons have been popped the tacks can be easily removed giving the girls a cool new fairy wand. 

This proved to be a fun and exciting moment for everyone involved. 

Another quick thing I did was write a little note to each girl. 

I found a cute Ribbon and flower that I glued to each of the envelopes and wrote their names in cursive. 

I found these amazing cards for $.50 at Michaels and was beyond thrilled. 

Chicken Solvaski

We moved to Maryland 4 years ago for work which was a horrible idea but some good came out of it. We found a prefect little Greek restaurant and it became out go to for eating out all the time. We would order 4 meals because if you bought 3 the 4th was free. Justin would order a gyro and the kids and I would order Solvaski with a falafel meal. Each meal came with the most amazing salad and rice. Out of everything in Maryland I really really miss our little restaurant. They even delivered now I have nothing like that local to me and my delivery man ( which is Justin) complains and his job is moving further from the only greek place we found. So now it is time to take action and learn how to make our own Greek food. I made chicken solvaski for the third time.

So for ingredients:  

• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 olive oil
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 tablespoon smoked paprika or paprika
• 1 tablespoon fresh dill
• 1 tablespoon fresh oregano
• 3 cloves garlic, minced or grated
• 1/2 teaspoon salt + 1 teaspoon pepper

Now mix everything together to create a marinade. Leave the chicken in the marinade for a few hours. 

 I cooked the chicken in the marinade at 350 for about an hour and a half. 

Then I made white rice using chicken stock and added butter and lemon with parsley with sautéed green beans.

I have been working with limited funds so this meal cost me maybe $2.00 per person. We have been buying chicken thighs for $4 and it has about 10- 12 thighs in it. Each person gets one and the bag of green beans was $.99 rice is also nice to keep in the pantry. Save the marinade/ chicken stock for the next meal. (Please keep a close eye on the bottom of the food entries for more budget saving tips and tricks.) 

 

Signing Time

I am trying to make it a goal every Saturday is something related to homeschool even if it is just a review.

Netflix has Signing Time by creators Rachel de Azevedo Coleman and Emilie de Azevedo Brown. 

We have been doing an episode a day and practice it throughout the day as well. The Kids are mastering the letters and numbers. 

We have learned all about signing for a birthday party and the kids have been signing cake in hopes that I give them cake for it. I think they fail to realize it is not going to work. 

My thoughts about Signing Time are all good. So far we love it! I am even tempted to go and buy it Signing Time Series 1 Vol. 1 - My First Signs. Check it all of the other ones too!  This has helped Gil-G  become slightly more comfortable with his speech and Hulk man started talking because he didn't want to try and sign. I have come to love it because I can sign angrily in public and my kids understand that they are in trouble with out making a scene. One of my goals for the kids is by the time they graduate high school they know 5 languages and can go anywhere in the world. Videos like this help with that goal. 

Spanish Lasagna

I have such a hard time letting go in the kitchen. It is my special place a way from the kids and now they want in. It is great that they want to learn because then they know how to cook and it teaches culinary skills and math.  I love food from all parts of the world. My comfort food will always be my Spanish meals. 

This is my crazy lasagna that I made because my perfectly envisioned tortillas were made by my children. They made them a little to thick and not very round.   So I adjusted my smothered burritos to lasagna. Everyone loves that right?

 The ingredients:

Ropa Veja

Red chili sauce

flour tortillas

cheese 

I layered the ingredient. I started with the sauce which I learned after the first lasagna I made was very important. I don't think I am allowed to make traditional lasagna after that first time, somehow the pasta baled and became hard, it was pretty bad. After the lasagna is layered you put it in the oven and cook it until heated through.

Then after it is done cooking top it with guacamole, salsa, sour cream and anything else you want. I think this will be the only lasagna I will ever be allowed to make again. 

Splashing in the rain

People forget the little things in life sometimes, even I do it. We feel like the only things that will make our kids happy are things that come out of a box new from the store. I was never that bad then after losing Mya I just got crazy. For years my kids have gotten almost everything they wanted. I bought so many toys that my house could compete with a toy store. Over the last year I realized they didn't need all of it, they didn't even need half. Most of the time we are not even using the toys. They just sat. One of our favorite things to do is exploring the great out doors. Sometime the weather does not cooperate and you know what? That is okay because slashing in the rain can be so much more fun.

 Some where between me growing up and my kids growing up, people stopped letting kids just be kids. People are so concerned about the next big bug that they failed to realize that we are destroying our futures. Kids are the next generation they need their imagination, creativity and ability to explore.

Not just splashing in the rain and jumping in mud puddles. It is about taking them outside letting them run and jump off things. Letting them discover how to make the perfect mud pies. 

Gill- G pretended to be I think a crab. Whatever it was we were highly amused watching. 

We need to go back to a time of allowing kids to be themselves and explore the world. I look forward to what splashing in the rain leads to. 

Lowes Build and Grow

I am some what handy, my dad made sure I knew what the different screw drives are.  I want to kids to  know how to take care of things for when they move out.  I have started looking for projects and things to do that allows me to teach the kids basic skills. Lowes offers build and grow clinic, the best part is it's all free!!!! So the kids got aprons and little hammers with googles.  Our first project was Iron man's Jet and they turned out amazing. We did not take pictures as we made the project because it was 3 kids to the 2 of us and one of them were in constant need of help. Maybe one day as they feel more comfortable  and we can take pictures from the beginning. But for now I will just tell you how much fun it was and the after picture. It is also a solid project and simple enough for the kids to figure out the only thing was hammering was difficult for them but once they get use to it I think it will be a breeze.