Author Archive

Spring Festival and Iron Chef

Posted on: by James 1 Comment

Last night was Bethel Baptist School’s Spring Festival 2009.  It was a blast.  We had a 30 ft. inflatable slide,  a jump house, a splash zone, can knock down, ping pong ball toss, dunk tank, and a ton of food.  I was asked to volunteer for the dunk tank, so why not…  just 15 minutes…  It was pretty fun.  I had told my class all week to be saving up there money to get me wet. At least 8 of my students tried to dunk my and several went 4 and 5 times if not more.  I did the first 15 minutes of the festival just to get it done with; but I had a blast.  Once I was out of the water I was helping supervise the dunk tank.  About 2 hours later there was an empty block so I jumped in it again for another 15 minutes.  My students all came running back to dunk me.  This time I didn’t get dunked for like the first 10 minutes. still had fun though.  One seventh or eight grader who had been trying to get people dunked all day, got up to try and get me in.  I told him if he missed with all his throws I would jump in… so I had to jump in. after his third miss.  By the end of the day, I was tired and exhausted.  We went home; I forced myself to stay awake until the Giants had finished their games, beating the D-backs 5-1. And then Sleep.

Today is an event I have been looking forward to for nearly two months. Are youth group is having a “Iron Chef” style of event.  We’ll meet at the church around noon.  Pastor Matt will let us know the secret ingredient, and then we have about 3 hours to go shopping, go to our designated kitchen and make 4 courses which each contain the secrete ingredient.  After the time is up we meet back at the church and have potluck with the prepared dishes.  Each dish is judged by everyone and the group with the most points wins.  I will probably write tomorrow to let you all know how it went.  Complete with picture I hope.

- hold nothing back

Three 3.0+ Earthquakes

Probably my first memory as a kids was an earthquake.  The Loma Prieta Earthquake 10/17/1989,  I was not even 4 years old yet.  My mom was cooking dinner, my Dad was doing some work in a library, and my older sister and I were probably playing.  And it shook hard.  Nothing broke in our house but there was a lot of damage throughout the Bay Area.  Earthquake have always facinated me.  I think it’s quite the sensation to fell the ground quaking beneath you.

Tonight there were three earthquakes magnitude 3.0, 3.8 and 4.0 just some 20 miles from our apartment.  I felt the 3.8 and the 4.0 for sure; the 3.0 followed the 4.0 by only a minute so I may have felt that one too.  It got me excited and I thought I should share with all of you.

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 flour

For 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.