Smiling

Things that have made me smile today:

1) the scent of blooming Gardenias
2) fresh blueberries from my blueberry bush
3) ice cold watermelon
4) my sweet girl covered in dirt
5) hearing my sweet boy say "mommy I love you sooo much" - he has been gone for a week

Recipes

I know we are all looking for something new to add to dinner menus and this one works great if you have to cook for a crowd or you can half it easily. I usually make this after I make roast chicken as to use up all the left over chicken, espically the dark meat it is not really anyones favorite- but when in a hury I use a roast chicken from the supermarket. So many have requested this recipe that I thought everyone would enjoy it, so here is the recipe for Chicken Tetrazzini.

Chicken Tetrazzini
½ roast chicken, torn in bite size pieces
6TB Butter
1TB olive oil
8oz sliced fresh mushrooms
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 TB fresh thyme, chopped or 2 tsp dried
3 TB flour
4 c whole milk
1C white wine
1 C chicken broth
1 C heavy cream
1/8 tsp nutmeg
12oz pasta, I use penne or corkscrew any kind will do
1C grated parmesan
1/4 c fresh parsley chopped
¼ C Italian style bread crumbs

9 x13x2 baking dish

Bring large pot of salted water to a boil add pasta cook about 8 min, drain .

Meanwhile, in a large fry pan over medium-high heat melt 2TB butter with olive oil, add mushrooms sauté until the liquid from the mushrooms evaporates and mushrooms become golden. Add onion and garlic and sauté until onion is translucent about 8 min, deglaze with wine and simmer 2minutes. Transfer mushrooms to a bowl.

Melt the remaining 4 TB of butter in the same pan over med-high heat. Add the flour and whisk for 2 min, whisk in milk, broth, cream, nutmeg and 1 3/4 tsp salt and ¾ tsp pepper. Increase heat to high. Bring to boil, then reduce to simmer whisking often until the sauce thickens slightly about 1 min. Add thyme and parsley.

In baking dish add the pasta, chicken, and mushrooms, pour on sauce and mix well. In a small bowl, stir the cheese and bread crumbs to blend. Sprinkle the cheese mixture over casserole. Bake uncovered until golden brown, about 25 min

ENJOY!

Let me know how this works for you

Ramdom stuff

Ok so this is really late, but you know me:)

1) I slept with a bear until I got married

2)When at the CIA I shared an apartment with a Russian guy

3)I find a clean and organized refrigerator highly satisfying

4)I once catered for Swedish diplomats

5)I have catered for Hank Williams JR - I have seen both end of the spectrum

6)I once had dinner with 7 Italian guys they cooked and brough guitars and sang Italian songs

7)I experienced the birth of my neighbors baby..we are now much closer

I want to know your random stuff, post it in my comments

Caleb's Graduation

I can't believe it is already Summer 2007 where has this year gone?

In the fall Caleb started 4K-his first experience away from mom and he loved it, now here we are and he has "graduated" and will be starting kindergarten my little boy is growing up! The graduation program was soo cute, anytime you get 4 year olds on stage it is going to be fun. Just as soon as I can figure out how to post movies I will include one that is sooo funny

Baking

So here is my first tooth cake...it was fun. A chocolate cake with white icing and of course a cavity and filling:)

Thoughts for this week

Just in case any one of you out there questioned your worth here is a monitary value for you, but all mothers know you are worth soo much more in the lives of our family.

Stay-at-home mother's work worth $138,095 a year
NEW YORK (Reuters) - If the typical stay-at-home mother in the United States were paid for her work as a housekeeper, cook and psychologist among other roles, she would earn $138,095 a year, according to research released on Wednesday.

This reflected a 3 percent raise from last year's $134,121, according to Salary.com Inc, Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts.

The 10 jobs listed as comprising a mother's work were housekeeper, cook, day care center teacher, laundry machine operator, van driver, facilities manager, janitor, computer operator, chief executive officer and psychologist, it said.
The typical mother puts in a 92-hour work week, it said, working 40 hours at base pay and 52 hours overtime.

A mother who holds full-time job outside the home would earn an additional $85,939 for the work she does at home, Salary.com.

Last year she would have earned $85,876 for her at-home work, it said.
Salary.com compiled the online responses of 26,000 stay-at-home mothers and 14,000 mothers who also work outside the home.

Baking

This is the wedding cake I did on Saturday, it was a good reminder of why I don't like wedding cakes...they are just to much work and stress. I like just baking soooo much more.

My Kids

Our day at the Botanical Gardens...what little cuties! Oh how I love these kidos
just click on the pictures to see close up

Thouths for this week

The Goal of God's Love May Not Be What You Think It Is

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By John Piper October 14, 2000


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Do people go to the Grand Canyon to increase their self-esteem? Probably not. This is, at least, a hint that the deepest joys in life come not from savoring the self, but from seeing splendor. And in the end even the Grand Canyon will not do. We were made to enjoy God.

We are all bent to believe that we are central in the universe. How shall we be cured of this joy-destroying disease? Perhaps by hearing afresh how radically God-centered reality is according to the Bible.

Both the Old and New Testament tell us that God's loving us is a means to our glorifying him. "Christ became a servant ... in order that the nations might glorify God for his mercy" (Romans 15:8-9). God has been merciful to us so that we would magnify him. We see it again in the words, "In love [God] destined us to adoption ... to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Ephesians 1:4-6). In other words, the goal of God's loving us is that we might praise him. One more illustration from Psalm 86:12-13: "I will glorify your name forever. For your lovingkindness toward me is great." God's love is the ground. His glory is the goal.

This is shocking. The love of God is not God's making much of us, but God's saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God. True love aims at satisfying people in the glory of God. Any love that terminates on man is eventually destructive. It does not lead people to the only lasting joy, namely, God. Love must be God-centered, or it is not true love; it leaves people without their final hope of joy.

Take the cross of Christ, for example. The death of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of divine love: "God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Yet the Bible also says that the aim of the death of Christ was "to demonstrate [God's] righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed" (Romans 3:25). Passing over sins creates a huge problem for the righteousness of God. It makes him look like a judge who lets criminals go free without punishment. In other words, the mercy of God puts the justice of God in jeopardy.

So to vindicate his justice he does the unthinkable – he puts his Son to death as the substitute penalty for our sins. The cross makes it plain to everyone that God does not sweep evil under the rug of the universe. He punishes it in Jesus for those who believe.

But notice that this ultimately loving act has at the center of it the vindication of the righteousness of God. Good Friday love is God-glorifying love. God exalts God at the cross. If he didn't, he could not be just and rescue us from sin. But it is a mistake to say, "Well, if the aim was to rescue us, then we were the ultimate goal of the cross." No, we were rescued from sin in order that we might see and savor the glory of God. This is the ultimately loving aim of Christ's death. He did not die to make much of us, but to free us to enjoy making much of God forever.

It is profoundly wrong to turn the cross into a proof that self-esteem is the root of mental health. If I stand before the love of God and do not feel a healthy, satisfying, freeing joy unless I turn that love into an echo of my self-esteem, then I am like a man who stands before the Grand Canyon and feels no satisfying wonder until he translates the canyon into a case for his own significance. That is not the presence of mental health, but bondage to self.

The cure for this bondage is to see that God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act. In exalting himself – Grand Canyon-like – he gets the glory and we get the joy. The greatest news in all the world is that there is no final conflict between my passion for joy and God's passion for his glory. The knot that ties these together is the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Jesus Christ died and rose again to forgive the treason of our souls, which have turned from savoring God to savoring self. In the cross of Christ, God rescues us from the house of mirrors and leads us out to the mountains and canyons of his majesty. Nothing satisfies us – or magnifies him – more.