Chicken Potato Soup
Thursday night I was in the mood for soup but not wanting to stew something for 3 hours to get it. I wanted a quick and easy soup. I looked at a couple recipes but nothing fit the bill. So I got my brain working. I looked around to see what I had... I had a large piece of chicken breast, thawed, two baked potatoes (left overs from Tuesday night's dinner), and a can of corn. Not a whole lot more. I figured I could make a soup with that so I tried. It probably took close to an hour to make, but not 3.
Ingredients:
1 large piece of Chicken breast cut into bite size pieces (or 2 small ones)
2 Baked Potatoes. (peeled and sliced) (you can you not baked potatoes it will just take longer)
1 can of corn
1 tea salt
1 tea pepper
1/2 tea garlic powder
2 tbl butter
2 tbl flour (or 1 tbl corn starch)
1 1/2 cup milk
4 cup water
Directions:
Boil all of the chicken in a large skillet with 1 cup of the water. In a large pot add corn (including the juice from the can, all of it), the potatoes, the remaining 3 cups of water, and the seasoning (if you want add more seasoning I was wanting a soup light on the season, so I didn't add a lot). Let it come to a boil, reduce heat some but let it boil for a good 20 or so minutes. When the chicken is cooked add it to the pot, the water that the chicken cooked in add it too. Not we will make it creamy. Melt 2 tbl of butter in a sauce pan, add flour and milk to the butter. keep at medium heat stirring often until it thickens some. Once thickened, add the cream to the soup, stir in thoroughly, let it cook for another 5 to 10 and then let it cool for 10 to 15 minutes, and enjoy.
Variations:
Onions and carrots are to staples that are in most soup, but I didn't have in the house so I didn't put it in the soup. I you don't want to and the cream that's fine, or you can use a cream of (whatever) right out of the can in it's place. Spice to your heart's content... enjoy and let me know what you think.
Spring Break
So this week has been spring break. A chance to just relax before the last 8 weeks of school, yes it's coming to an end quickly. Monday Renae and I picked her brother Tim up from the airport, and then hung out with her parents for the evening and had coffee with ruth a little bit later that evening. Tuesday morning I got up and went in to Bethel to work on the new youth ministry room. I was going to hang a shelf but things weren't going quite right so after a few hours of frustration I went home and spent some time with Renae. Tuesday night Renae and I spent back at Bethel doing some work on the computer and helping Spencer work on his weddding invitations. Wednesday we ran errands and prepared for the Beach Blast that the youth group was having. Some plans changed we still had the activity but becuase it was so cold and windy we didn't stay the whole time. This morning I went back to Bethel and sucessfully finished hanging the shelf and set of speakers. This evening holds a quiet evening at home with my beautiful loving wife; I'm going to cook her dinner too. Tomorrow evening I have a youth leaders meeting, that i'm excited about. I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow morning, we'll see.
On a side note this is post number 100. My first post, published on March 7, 2007. With is exactly 770 days ago. That was slightly before I purchased the domain. I have averaged a post about every week. that's not to bad. I'll have to try a bit harder to fill you in on some more stuff, we'll see. Maybe I'll put some more recipes up... hmm....
Have a great day.
hold nothing back.
Strawberry Chocolate Pizza
So this last Saturday Renae and I were going to a get together with several other young married couples from our church. It was going to be a potluck were everyone brought a separate course of the meal. I was given the responsibility of bringing the dessert. This is quite the challenge, I make some pretty good desserts if I can say so myself, but there was an expectation given that I was going to bring something amazing. So I put my thinking cap on and the dessert pizza crossed my mind. I've never made a dessert pizza before and so I went in search of a few recipes. Many of them looked the same, some added different things or another. I finally found a simple recipe that had what looked like interesting flavors from Diana's Desserts: a Strawberry Dessert Pizza. Here is her recipe:
For Crust:
1/2 pound (2 sticks/1 cup/8 oz/226 g) unsalted butter
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flourFor Topping:
8 oz. package cream cheese
1/4 cup strawberry puree (about 4 fresh very large strawberries pureed in a blender)
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 pints fresh strawberries (medium to large size strawberries)
Basically what you do is cream the butter with the sugar, (works best if the butter is already at room temperature). Then blend in the other ingredient saving the flour until last, to make the crust; make sure the batter is smooth. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes to let the batter thicken. Place the batter on a greased cookie sheet or pizza pan. Get your hands dirty and make it looks like a pizza crust. Not super thick but not cracker thin either. Place it in a pre-heated oven at 350 F for about 20 minutes the crust should be golden brownish. Now you have made a giant sugar cookie for the pizza crust.
Now the filling,put the cream cheese, pureed strawberries, sugar and honey and blend until smooth. Don't spread it on the crust until that has had time to cool off. Slice the strawberries to get them ready as well. Once the crust has cooled spread the filling all over the crust (evenly please), then cover with the sliced strawberries. Now this is were I veered from the reciped
I rarely follow the recipe to the "t". In fact improvisation in cooking like my favorite pasttime. I wanted some chocolate on my strawberry pizza so I found a recipe for a chocolate glaze in one of my at home cook books. It wanted 4 oz. of melted chocolate (melted with 3 tbls of butter), 1 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, and 2 tbls of hot water. Mixed until drizzling consistency. (If necessary add a little bit more hot water. (do this right before you are ready to use it other wise it will harden and not drizzle correctly).
So I had the pizza all ready to go, snapped a picture and took it to the get together. We had salad, bread, enchilada, and lasagna. all of which were amazingly delicious. After dinner we had a bible study and then it was time for the dessert. There were 10 people there and everyone enjoyed it, There was none left over for me to take home even. It tasted delicious. The crust was a little on the hard side as we cut it but we really didn't notice that once we started to eat it. It was an an awesome recipe, that I found; and I considering trying other stuff with it too.
Tweaking My Site…
Ok, so I decided that I wanted to tweak a few things about my site and I started work on a few minor things today. A picture will appear on the screen with the post. A cool feature I think, for all previous post there maybe some lag time before they get the facelift image or the will just get a default image. That was what I was working on when my site crashed this morning.
Also I have changed the way the comments appear. I had been using a plugin for the picture of you reader by the post, but was unhappy with the way things looked, so I began looking for the code to implement it on my own. I was using the the codex help at http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Gravatars but that still left me hanging. I finally found a site that helped, Connor Wilson had the code just the way I needed it. So then I tweaked a few other things like moving the time and date down to the bottom, and made the picture bigger.
Ok so that's what I have done, now it's your turn, well sort of, if you do not have picture by you e-mail here is what you need to do. Go to gravatar.com and register and upload a picture. It's easy and there's no spam. Then when you comment the picture show up by you comment. So if you have not done that yet, I would greatly encourage you to go check it out.
Ooops I crashed my site
ok this is is a temporary flash back to an old theme while i fix the mistake I made on my other theme. did i mention i don't really like this theme so i hope it won't stay this way for long.
sorry
Field Trip
On Tuesday, March 24, the fifth and sixth grade classes went on a field trip to the California Science Center (CSC) in LA. (It's right next to the Memorial Stadium, home of the USC Trojans and I believe the 1980 Olympic Games. Correct me if I'm wrong.) It was a lot of fun. There were 30 total students and 8 adults. The CSC has hands on exhibits that help make science fun. They currently have a CSI (Crime Scene Investigation) exhibit based on the hit TV show. The are three crimes that have been committed and your group is assigned to one of them to try and solve it. It was exciting and the kids really got into it once they understood what they needed to do. There were other many other exhibit also: transportation, structural design, sound, the science of life, etc. It reminded me of San Francisco's Exploratorium (another hands on science learning museum).
We wandered the museum from 10 to about 12:20 then we went downstairs where they have a McDonald's, a Taco Bell Express, a pizza place called pizza π, and a Rose Garden Cafe (a soup, salad, and sandwich place). The lines were long but we finally were able to eat.
After lunch we let the kids explore the gift shop, for about half an hour and we headed out and back to Bethel just before 2:00. I definitely enjoyed the trip as did the kids. However when I got home I took a two hour nap. I really didn't think I was that tired but it has been a long few days. Here are some pictures from the trip. Renae has a post up about the trip too if you want to know more.
- hold nothing back
Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich
For as long as I can remember I can not stand eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Yes that is right I utterly dislike the classic PB&J. All of my family including Renae can attest to this. Growing up, for lunch at school I would just have a jelly sandwhich, until after a few years of that I could not eat it that anymore becuase it was just to bland. So I back away from jelly all together. Ham and cheese seemed to suit me much better as long as there was no mayo or mustard on it, but that's a different story since we are talking about PB&J. I honestly could not remeber that last time I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, until tonight when I got a suddent urge to eat a PB&J sandwich. I have no idea what brought it on. Renae was out hanging out with friends so there was not a need to cook a big meal, I thought about doing grilled cheese but I used the last of the cheese yesterday. Then the urge hit, "I must have PB&J." So I pull out our Peanut Butter (chunky) and Jelly (Strawberry) and made a sandwich. Honestly it was not that bad, slightly bland which I probably why I disliked it as a kid. Well Renae just came home and she brought some food back for me, awsome. I Love You, honey.
Oh on a side note my little sister, Ruth, decdied to move away from here wordpress.com site and go self-hosted. She is still running a wordpress installation. Her new web address is http://thehonestruth.com Yes, it's a play on word the honest truth, the honest ruth, pretty clever. Renae's cousin Jeremy thought of it. Make sure you go visited her site and give her some comment love.
-hold nothing back
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Barbecued Chicken
So for a month I've been trying to barbecue some chicken. Tonight I was finally able too. It has been a busy week. A WASC evaluation committee came and visited the High School, from Sunday through Wednesday. Also on Monday through Wednesday of this week my class has had a 2 hour drama practices for the our play. Then on thursday we practice for 4 hours and had our performance at 7:00 pm. Friday was a normal day of school but then we had a youth came and worship night. So I was really tired by the time we got home last night around 10:30 I was ready for bed, and I slept till noon. I felt so much better. When I got up we ran some errands and had in-n-out for breakfast well it was the first meal of the day. (3:oo) I had a 3x3 animal style no picles, fries and a dr. pepper. We then ran to the apple store, and stater bros Once back home I played on the wii for a little bit and then I decided to bbq some chicken. here is was I did.
2 pieces of boneless skinless chicken breast.
spiced with garlic salt, and McCormick's barbeque seasoning
and some Famous Dave's sweet and sassy sauce.
A Famous Brother
Okay so he doesn't have his name on the walk of fame in Hollywood. but he is featured in an article on his school's website. The article is called Scool in Pajamas?. My brother was really excited. He goes to Maranatha Baptist Bible College and is majoring in Math Education with a minor in Digital Media (Something like that (yes I'm jealous (not about the math part))). Any ways I thought I would just spread the word a little bit. Make sure you visit Daniel's site, DASH Prod, and congratulate him. Have a great day.
-hold nothing back