Email to my Mom

Well, we haven't updated this in forever, but you gotta start (over) somewhere, right, so here's an email I wrote to my mom just now about some fun recipes I've used in the last couple days.

Hi Mom,

I just finished dinner and thought I'd email you with the recipe for what I just made, since it was absolutely delicious!

Last night I was looking at all the fresh chicken you bought that I had thawed and realizing that I REALLY needed to use it before it went bad. So I made two separate chicken recipes that I'd never made before. (I know...its like the first time in my pregnancy that I've actually felt adventurous in cooking!!!)

Both recipes were breaded, so here's a simple way to make yummy bread crumbs. Just take a couple slices of whole wheat bread, toast them thoroughly (mine were browner than I would normally eat and even a teensy bit burned in places), put them in the food processer and blend. (I couldn't find my chopping attachment, so I used the shredding attachment and fed half slices down the chute thing that i normally put the cheese down.) - Sheesh baby girl is kicking the computer. - Then I mixed them with a seasoning that Jamie's mom always buys and that I really like on buttered pasta or in some italian dishes or whatever. Its called Mixed Up Salt. You should be able to find it in the weird salt section. I probably used maybe 3 tablespoons of the mixed up salt to 4 slices of bread. But not sure, since I just sprinkled it in.

First recipe (for what we ate last night). 

Ingredients: thawed chicken breasts, block of cream cheese, chives or green onions, parmesan cheese, breadcrumb mixture, melted butter. 

Directions: Take a chicken breast, and butterfly it. (You could pound it to make it thinner but I didn't have a pounder thingy, so I didn't.) Then put a slice of cream cheese (I used half a block of cream cheese divided between 4 small breasts) and some chopped chives or green onions on the chicken and roll it up, securing it with a toothpick or two. The cream cheese doesn't need to be totally covered by the chicken. Roll the rolled up chicken in the bread crumbs, then put it in a greased casserole dish or something to bake it in. Do that with all the chicken. Sprinkle the tops of the chicken things with parmesan cheese. Drizzle it all in melted butter. Bake at 375 for 40-50 minutes. And be sure to eat the goop. This is the first meat that isn't cut up very small that I've had any desire to eat in a very long time. But I had seconds of this last night!

Second recipe (for chicken nuggets).

Ingredients: chicken, butter, breadcrumb mixture.

Directions: Cut up the chicken into maybe 2 inch cubes. Eh, the size is approximate. Dip the chicken in melted butter (or just dump a handful in the melted butter like me). Coat each nugget with bread crumbs. Put in a single layer on a foil-covered cookie sheet. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes. When they're baked you can also freeze them and rebake them at 350 for 10 minutes when you want to use them. That's what I did for dinner tonight. Yum!

Well, just thought you might like some (relatively) low carb recipes to add to your repertoire. I especially love the chicken nuggets cuz they're super easy, all ingredients that I normally have around, and they're freezable!

Hope you're having a great time at Dad's party! And that Dad is very surprised! :)

Love, Catherine

Autumn's "Best" Weekend

We spent the weekend in Canaan Valley, WV for TFC's fall retreat. It was gorgeous weather, beautiful surroundings, and crazy busy with set up and take down in two different venues. Not quite such a retreat, but still nice to be there for their peak color day...and to drive back home and realize that we're nowhere near our peak color day so hopefully we'll get to experience it twice this year! :)

West Virginia is definitely a different culture from northern Virginia.

Anyway, here are some representative pictures from our weekend.

Wow. Once you get off 66 there is barely anything. This was the gas station where we stopped. There were people eating breakfast in the gas station. :) Yum.

I don't know if you can see it, but the restroom key was a picture of a man with "women" written under it. Further investigation revealed that the woman's skirt was colored in.

   It was a really pretty drive.

  

The surroundings were really pretty!

This is Jenny. She and I are in small group together. And yes, this is AFTER the summer. Kind of scary to think about how pale I'll be AFTER winter.

Ah yih. Its amazing how exciting it can be to drive a golf cart. Ha ha.

Finding out that the guitarist for the Saturday service back at home forgot to show up.

I watched the 3K race with Brian and Doug. :-)

Jamie passed the young girl just in time to win 3rd place in his division. I was proud! :)

And there's Florence, Doug's daughter and our friend!

One of zillions of pictures of them setting up or tearing down or something with all the equipment.

My husband the rockstar. After the evening's entertainment, the guys in the band stuck around to jam. It was super fun.

M Bizzle.

Steven Law. John Yates called him Liberace on steroids. Ha ha.

    

Dancing. :)

    Bill on electric, Jim on bass

 

This is such a classic Bill look, I think. :)

Jamie and Mike sharing keyboard space.

  Later, some relaxation in the lobby.

On Sunday morning we had probably 10 minutes practice time, total. So, we sat down to talk through who would sing what.

   FLORENCE! :)

      And then began tear down. This doesn't look so bad, right?

Not too bad.

OK. This is why I spend my time coiling mic cables.

This is Sophia. She belongs to our friend Aaron and Amy.

This is Olivia, her older sister. It was such a nice diversion to hang out with their family for a few minutes before we all left.

This is Joshua, the youngest of Amy and Aaron's gorgeous children. Isn't he snuggly?

    

This is Aaron and Amy. They have one other boy - Caleb, who comes between Olivia and Sophia. He's the dancing boy if you scroll up a bit.

Don't you love the protective big sister-ly arm around the younger sister?

Can you say gorgeous? Then I asked her to smile...

Ha ha.

I asked Olivia which Disney Princess she wanted to be. She said Jasmine. I can actually kind of see a likeness here...just pretend Jasmine got super pretty blond hair. :)

  

so, then we drove home. We stopped at this restaurant...which was VERY, um, rustic. But they hadn't even taken anyone's order (the restaurant was full) after about 20 mins, so we left because we were HUNGRY and figured we could be driving while we waited and then eat at approximately the same time, just further down the road.

So, we stopped at a Pizza Hut and ate. And then we drove home. Yay!

The end.

Vacation Pictures Finally

We've already put 180 pictures (60 per album, right?) on facebook, but just in case anyone reads this who doesn't have facebook, here's a sampling.

We spent the first 4 days of vacation at Deep Creek Lake with the Minns. A couple from church has a home there that they offered to us for our time away. It was beautiful, fantastic, a super fun time!

Waffles!

  

 

Rosemary and chicken pasta

Normally when I make meals up they turn out, well, edible. :) But yesterday I made something new that I loved! (Jamie didn't really like it, but I'll put it on here so you can try it and vote which one of us is right.)

I started by heating up some (like maybe 1-2 Tbsp?) olive oil in a frying pan. The first time, I left it a little too long and ended up with flaming oil, a very loud smoke detector going off, and an adrenaline rush. But no harm done (other than the smoke detector not being on the ceiling anymore and a pan that might be a little blackened).

The second time I used a non-burned skillet thingy and heated oil again but at a lesser heat this time. I put in probably around 5-6 frozen chicken tenderloins and sprinkled McCormick's Chicken seasoning on it...and then added probably 1 Tbsp of dried rosemary (I think that was the key). I let that cook for a little bit and then turned the chicken. After that (and once the oil started getting kind of burny) I decided I needed to add white wine to get rid of the burny-ness. So, I added maybe 1/4-1/3 cup of white wine and let that cook for awhile.

Meanwhile I was trying to think of what else to make with the chicken and realized I had some bow-tie pasta that was left-over from a meal the other day. It had a little bit of seasoning on it, but I was afraid it would dry out in the microwave. So, I microwaved it for two minutes and then added 1 can of diced tomatoes and the pasta to my wine/chicken mixture and stirred it up. I let that boil for a while until the pasta was thoroughly heated (and the chicken was done...I'm always paranoid that it won't get done) and then served it in bowls.

Yum. Except Jamie didn't really like it.

So I made him monkey bread out of Pillsbury-type biscuits later.

And we both thoroughly broke our no-carb diet. :)

Why did I say that?

Last Wednesday, I had the privilege of playing the formerly paralyzed man (see Mark 2:1-12) at TFC's kids camp. I was told that after a few songs, I would come out and surprise the 120 kids who would be gathered in the Fellowship Hall, and tell my story. I had a busy Monday and Tuesday so I hadn't given much thought to what exactly I would say until the night before.

I figured I would tell them what my life had been like when I was paralyzed, how I had heard my friends talking about Jesus, how Jesus came to my town one day, how my friends brought me on a mat to see him, how he healed me, and how amazing it is to be able to finally scratch my nose, etc.

So Wednesday morning came, I put on my paralyzed man costume, and hid in the kitchen while I waited for my cue.

Once I was introduced, I came running out, did some jumping jacks and push-ups, and began to tell my story. Here is a rough, condensed transcript of my opening words:

Me: Hi Kids!!
Kids: Hi!!!!!!!!!
Me: I'm so excited to be here. I can't believe it!! I can walk! I used to be paralyzed.
Kids: Wow....
Me: Can you say "paralyzed"?
Kids: Paralyzed.
Me: Can you say it LOUDER????!!!!!!
Kids: PARALYYYYYYYYYZED!!!!!!!!

Kids say the darndest things.

Rainbow and whipped cream

Last Monday night we had Julianna and Larissa over for yummy kabobs on the grill. We (the girls) worked diligently to get them all made and were rewarded by two things.

1. A beautiful view from the balcony where we keep our Indoor/Outdoor George Foreman Grill.

 

Can you see the top one?

 

As we sat and looked at the beautiful rainbows we were reminded of God's faithfulness to keep His promises. It was actually really encouraging....which I think was the point of rainbows in the first place anyway. :) (Although we did also discuss going to try to find the pot of gold at the end of it!)

And the second reward for diligent cooking:

2) Delicious food. It was SO yummy! And for dessert we had strawberries with icecream and whipped cream.

What?!? LOL.

A weekend away

Last weekend Jamie had a weekend off, which doesn't happen very often. We had been trying to plan ahead because, more often than not, when we have an extra day off (like I'm off on a Thursday or he has a Saturday off or something) we don't have anything planned and end up frustrated that we didn't use our time off more productively. So, we (read: Jamie) had been looking at different places we could go. We looked at Ocean City, Virginia Beach, New York, even some places in Florida, NC, Montana, etc. Ha. Its summer. Anywhere we could drive or get cheap transportation had expensive hotels. Anywhere with free or cheap places to stay (like Rebekah and Ryan or my grandparents) was too expensive to fly to. We kept looking and hoping and contacting our Marriott friend. :) But nothing.

It got to Friday and we still hadn't found anything that was really affordable. So, we finally decided to stay in town. BUT, Jamie had received an email from Marriott that they had specials on DC hotels. So, we spent Friday kind of how we normally do. Just hanging out, running errands, etc.

On Saturday, we slept in,  packed, got ready and drove all the way to the Westfields Marriott, where we spent the night before we left for our honeymoon almost 2 years ago. (Ha. Its like 20 minutes from our apartment, but we tried to imagine that we were just arriving from a long drive as we got there.) We checked in, ate lunch at one of the on-site restaurants, and then my lavish husband had signed me up for a facial and a massage at their spa. Ahhhh. While I was enjoying that, Jamie sat by the pool where I joined him when I was done. It was perfect weather. Beautiful, hot, but not too hot. And best of all, it felt like vacation: a different world.

After the pool we went to Legal Seafoods for dinner, which was also quite nice. (We justified it to ourselves by reminding ourselves what it would have cost to go to New York or Florida or even Ocean City.)

And then after dinner Jamie ordered chocolate covered strawberries and champagne delivered to the room as a surprise. (I know. I don't blame you for being jealous!)

On Sunday morning we had a rare opportunity to visit another church on a Sunday, so we went to our other favorite DC area church: Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD, where our friends Julianna and Larissa (and Julianna's new fiance, Jason) go. After church it was out for sushi with our friends (although neither of us dared to actually get sushi!) and then home from our mini-vacation.

It was wonderful. Refreshing, relaxing, and just a great time to be together. It was one of those weekends when I just couldn't wipe the smile off my face.

Johnny at 28.5 months old

We visited PA again this weekend. Its such a different place from DC. Everyone is so hospitable and friendly. I mean EVERYONE. Even people who you just meet on the street or just happen to live nearby. Plus, we stay with Jon, Celeste, Izabella, Caleb, Joshua, and Johnny. Pretty different from the way we live right now with just the two of us. Oh, and there's no traffic. Yup, its a great place to get away!

So, we didn't take very many pictures of actually doing stuff, but we do have some fun ones with the kids...or by the kids.

Sitting in the living room talking, playing on the computer, etc.

 

We took Johnny to a play ground while the kids were at school. Most of the time it was just Johnny and me while Jamie went running. Every once in a while Johnny would ask, "Where Jamie?" I'd tell him that Jamie was running. After a while he decided that he wanted to go running too so we ran from tree to tree around the playground. Ha ha. He loved it!

Somehow Jon got a hold of Jamie's camera.

Like father, like son.

I promise they don't drug him.

On Friday night we had yummy chicken salad and the boys and I made delicious dessert (from Celeste's recipe). Johnny loves to wash his hands with the "blue soap" and, after soaping up, stops to smell it saying, "Mmmm. 'mells good!"

On Saturday we went for a long walk with Johnny and Celeste. When we got back we hung out on the porch for a while.

And played with "Bob-kitty" who lives next door.

Before we left we went to Bella's piano recital. Here's the view in the car on the way there.

And here's beautiful Bella playing beautifully.

Aw. I miss them already.

Recent pictures

For some reason lately we've been taking less pictures. I'm not quite sure why. We have been doing fun things. But Jamie is our main photographer and he has really been wanting a better camera than the point-and-shoot that we have now. I think the quality of pictures that we can get is not what he would like (and its not like I wouldn't love to have better quality pictures too...) anyway, that's just my theory - but I haven't checked it with him.

A couple weeks ago we went to the new(ish) Air and Space museum. We stopped right outside it to watch the planes flying over. I took this one with Jamie's iphone.

Our memorial day weekend was crazy busy - but also a ton of fun. Andrew was in town, so we hung out with him a lot. Rebecca Romaneski and her fiance Deric were also in town, so I went to their wedding shower while Jamie was at church on Saturday. Then on Sunday we went out to lunch with them. On Monday the MacGowans came over for burgers and hotdogs. It was fun to actually host them here! Here are a few pictures, again from Jamie's phone.

Tim with the glasses that we love so much.

Jamie laughing at something.

Yum. Food.

Benjamin looking cute getting his back scratched. Me looking weird.

This one probably should have gone first, but here it is. A few weeks ago Jamie and I caved and got crocs. They're actually very comfy, but I don't recommend wearing them for long fast walks. You'll see why later.

This past weekend we went to visit Jon, Celeste, and the kids in PA again. I'll put that in a separate post.