This Past Week

ok. so I'm just going to catch up on the last week or so in this post.

I put my Insanity workouts on hold because we had to go out of town.

I mean HAD to. no choice.

We had the opportunity to visit with Mamaw(that's like "ma'am awe"), who is Scott's great grandmother.

That makes my girls 5th living generation in their family, and Mamaw had never met Lillee.

She's 92.

I love her.

She is just an amazing lady.

She loves Jesus more than you could understand and she has no shame about sharing her opinions:)

She really loved on my girls, and I am SO happy that they got to meet her.

We also got to visit with some other family while we were in North Georgia for the weekend.

Well, not really North Georgia as in the mountains/blueridge/dahlonega/etc, but when you live in Albany(which, by the way, is pronouced "all-binny", not all-buh-knee), pretty much any where in Georgia is "north".

This is Scott's aunt Dawn.

She has 4 kids (we call them Maddy's kids cause they help babysit Maddy...for example, "hey Maddy, wanna go see your kids today?")

She is a fantastic mother/wife/teacher/aunt/friend and  a great inspiration for me.

She has helped my little family more than she realizes and is truly one of my favorite people.

More to come on her and her family in a later post, mayhaps.

This one is Maddy playing marbles with two of her kids.

She loves them and just cracks up laughing the whole time she is around them.

Dawn is like a master scrapbooker.

Like, if there would levels of scrapbooking, she would be on level NINJA.

She has nearly 20 years worth of scrapbooks from her wedding, family vacations, kids' births and birthdays, proms, summer camps, family reunions, and way more.

I love to look through them because I have come to be very close to their family and now the scrapbooks include me and Scott and the girls as well.

This past weekend, I found a picture from my wedding that I had never seen in any other album.

Dawn happened to take the picture and no one else at the wedding captured it.

 

This is quite possibly one of the best pictures of our wedding.

I love it.

And him.

Since we stayed with my parents for the weekend, I got to help work the garden.

It was actually sort of like slave labor, but I absolutely love working in the garden.

I don't have pictures to share right now, but stay tuned for pictures of the fully blooming vegetable and herb garden in a couple months.

We spent almost our entire day starting seeds and sowing our cool weather plants.

All that work inspired me to grow some things in containers on our patio.

Who says you can't have fresh veggies in an apartment?

More on that tomorrow.

While we were visiting with mamaw, there was a yard sale across the street and everyone wanted to go check it out.

So we hauled Maddy, Dawn, Nana, Mamaw, Me and Dawn's two girls across the road.

And I found a bread machine for just 5 bucks.

Hot dog!

I am in love. 

We go through a lot of bread because Scott takes a sandwich almost every night with him to work and Maddy eats a PBJ or Nutella sandwich almost every day.

Making my own bread has already started to save us money.

Here's the first loaf I EVER made.

It's actually quite tasty.

Speaking of tasty and homemade, I have been trying some new recipes lately.

I took pictures of the first one, but totally forgot on the others.

First is the egg n' biscuit bake.

 You start by making homemade biscuits.

I made minis.

Then you take the tops off and layer the bottoms in a casserole dish.

I could have just used the same dish but this one was too shallow for my eggs.

Then you cover the bottoms with sharp (or extra sharp--YUM) cheddar.

Then put the lids back on.

As you can see, I sort of mixed up some of my lids with my bottoms.

LOL I crack myself up.

Then you beat 6-8 eggs with about a half cup of dairy. Heavy cream makes it wonderfully creamy but plain ole milk is fine too. Also, add some salt and pepper to taste and then pour the yumminess over your biscuits. Then sprinkle with more cheese.

Then you just bake it at 350 for about 20 minutes.

I was planning on putting my pork chop bites inside the biscuits before I baked it, but the pork chops wouldn't thaw out.

So while the casserole was baking, I was frying some chops.

I just sliced a 1-inch thick chop into bite size pieces, coated in a milk-and-egg mixture, then covered it with flour and fried em up in some vegetable oil.

Everything turned out delicious.

Here's what it looked like.

If you don't know how to get the pork chops delicious and melt-in-your-mouth tender, let me know and I'll go into details and such.

These were PERFECT!

 We ate ALL of the chops and got seconds of the egg n biscuits.

My other two recipes that have been wildly successful this week are both crockpot chicken recipes.

So basically I'll just list the ingredients, cause you just chuck em in and leave that joker on low for 6-8 hours.

#1

Salsa Chicken

2 chicken breasts

1 jar salsa

1 cup (or more if you like) sour cream

Shred chicken before serving...you really don't even have to shred it. It's so tender it practically disintegrates when you touch it. 

I served it over rice with black beans.

#2

White Bean Soup

1 lb dry white beans (mine were northern beans...I'm sure there are other names)

about 5 cups water or stock

1 can Rotel

1 tsp each of dry oregano, cumin, and cayenne (seems like a lot of cayenne, but trust me, it needs that much)

1 or 2 chicken breasts ( I did two and it was enough to feed like 6 people)

Just before you serve it, shred the chicken then add a cup of sour cream or greek yogurt and blend it really well.

I served mine with a slice of fresh, homemade bread with some butter on it.

Top with shredded cheese and sour cream.

It was SO good and perfect for a chilly day.

I have so much more to write about, but this post is getting a little lengthy.

I'll post again tomorrow and hopefully that will get me caught up.

love y'all.

kbye.