Recipes

Aaron and I love to cook, so we decided that we wanted to make a family cook book. It has taken me almost a year to finish, but it is done!! It is 158 pages long, with two recipes on each page. I designed my own format and am pretty happy with the way it turned out. When Aaron gets paid next we are planning on getting it printed. One of my friends Bekah asked from some new recipes, so I wanted to post some. I hope these help. My format did not transfer over very well, so I had to delete the notes. Enjoy!

CHICKEN SANDWICHES Serves: 6-8

Cooking Time: NA Preheat Oven To: NA

Ingredients:

4 Chicken breasts cooked

½ Cup mayonnaise

½ Cup Green onions

1 tsp. Fresh tarragon

½ Cup cashews

Bread

Directions:

Combine all ingredients and spread over bread.

Lime chicken is one of my favorite meals! We generally eat it with black beans and rice:

LIME CHICKEN Serves: 2

Cooking Time: 1 Hour Preheat Oven To: 375

Ingredients:

2 Chicken Breasts

2 TBS. Olive Oil

2 TBS. Lemon Juice

¼ tsp. Thyme

Pepper to Taste

3 Lime Wedges

Directions:

Place chicken in lightly oiled baking dish. Combine olive oil, lemon juice, thyme, and pepper, brush over chicken. Bake at 375 for one hour, until chicken is done and golden brown. Set aside lime wedges for each piece of chicken. When chicken is done, squeeze lime wedges

This might sound weird, but it is really good:

PASTA WITH BROCCOLI Serves: 4 Cooking Time: 30 minutes Preheat Oven To: NA

Ingredients:

1 Head of broccoli, cut into florets 2 TBS. Butter

3 TBS. Olive oil 4 Cloves Garlic

½ tsp. Pepper flakes 1 lb. Spaghetti or linguini

¼ - ½ Cup Parmesan cheese

Directions:

Cook spaghetti according to pkg. directions. Meanwhile cook broccoli either by boiling or steaming. Drain and set aside. Just before pasta is done, melt butter with olive oil, add garlic and cook one minute, add pepper flakes and remove from heat. Drain pasta and combine with garlic/butter mixture. Add broccoli and “toss” with Parmesan cheese to coat spaghetti well.

These are the beans we generally eat with the Lime Chicken:

CUBAN BLACK BEANS Serves: 6

Cooking Time: 1 hour Preheat Oven To: NA

Ingredients:

15oz can Black Beans 2 Bay leaves

½ small onion, chopped Pepper to taste

1 tsp. Red pepper flakes Splash Tabasco

Directions:

In saucepan, sauté onion until translucent. Add remaining ingredients and perhaps a little water. Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour. Serve over white cooked rice.

CHICKEN CURRY Serves: 6-8

Cooking Time: 30 minutes Preheat Oven To: NA

Ingredients: Fruit:

1 ½ Cups cooked cubed, chicken Mandarin oranges

1 Can Cream of Chicken Soup Bananas

¾ Cup Chicken Broth Pineapple

1 tsp. Sugar Apple

1 TBS Curry Powder Kiwi

½ tsp. Ginger ETC.

1 ½ tsp. Lemon juice

Directions:

Mix sugar and spice with half the soup, then add remaining ingredients. Gradually stir in the chicken broth, cooking over low heat. Add chicken and lemon juice. Serve over rice. About two cups cooked for this recipe and top with fruit.

This is also a favorite of mine. I generally double the spices, and cube the chicken.

MOROCCAN SPICED CHICKEN Serves: 2-3

Cooking Time: 20 minutes Preheat Oven To: NA

Ingredients:

2-3 Chicken breasts 1 TBS Paprika

½ tsp. Salt ½ tsp. Ground cumin

¼ tsp. Allspice ¼ tsp. Cinnamon

1 TBS Vegetable oil

Directions:

Cut chicken into pieces. In a small bowl mix all spices. Coat Chicken with spice mixture. In skillet heat oil over medium heat, and cook chicken, until juice of chicken is clear. Serve with couscous and green beans.

Slacker

A recent pictures of West:

I have been a slacker lately so here is an update on what has been going on. After a roller coaster ride, we finally got in contact with the person that hit Aaron and were able to get her to agree to pay us some money. We made a contract, so she has until May 8th to get us the money, if not we are going to the police, because it turns out even though her insurance company let me file a claim (after I finally hunted them down, with no help from the person that hit us) they called me back and said she did not have insurance. WHAT A PAIN!!!!! So hopefully in a couple of weeks this will finally be over.

Aaron had a phone interview with Wasatch Mental Health in Utah today, he said it went really well. They are planning on doing a couple of rounds of interviews, and told him he should hear from them within the next 24-48 hours. They want the position filled by the end of the week. We are hoping and praying that he gets it, so we can make the move back to Utah, so Aaron can start grad school soon.

In other news I started potty training Jack again. How time consuming. He is catching on, he does have the problem of telling me he has to go potty, when he already is, but hopefully we can get that fixed soon. West has decided that he no longer needs to drink milk. The most he will drink at a time is two ounces, and then he generally spits it right back up. Our doctor told us we should not be to worried, because he is growing and looks like he is retaining fluids. So she switched him to Soy milk, but it has not seemed to help. I can't wait until he can drink real milk, maybe the spitting up will stop. Between Jack potty training and West spitting up all of the time I do Laundry every other day. Because lets be honest, West generally spits up on me three times a day, and I am talking huge amounts. Yesterday he got me right when church was about to start. He drenched me, all I could do was go to the bathroom and try to clean it up as best I could. Its a good thing I love my boys!!!!

Here are a couple of pictures from recently:

Aaron made a chair fort for Jack.

Jack and I in the Fort

Dad and Jack in the Fort

Jack with Mr. Blanket

Easter clothes

Since Easter falls on General conference this year, we dressed the boys up in their Easter clothes this week. They looked so cute:

Jack's new love!

Jack likes watching Aaron play video games. He generally just watches, but Aaron let him play yesterday. He was playing millipede, and actually got to the third level by himself at one point, I could not get past the first level! I must say I was impressed by his skills, considering we have not let him play video games before.





If you listen in the video he says, "Oh no boom boom, it got me!"

I hate being right sometimes!

Aaron and I were lucky enough to get a pretty nice tax return, which we used to pay off some debt. Before we decided how we were going to spend the money, I told Aaron that we should keep some money in our checking account in case anything happened, because lets be honest, any time we get money, something happens.

Well about 5 months ago Aaron's parents gave us a car. They said we could have the car, if we fixed the brakes, which was a blessing. All together it cost us about $900 to get new brakes in the car, which we just finished paying off. Well Last Friday Aaron was rear ended in our Taurus, the car, his parents gave us. It is now totaled. The right back side of the car is completely smashed in, and it will not start. So on to keeping some money in our account, Aaron had been meaning to insure the car, but had not done it yet, so we got a $550 ticket for it not being insured! I understand that it is our fault it was not insured, so I understand getting a ticket, but we did not cause the accident, that is a lot of money, shoot, its more than the car is worth.








Well Aaron got all of the girl's insurance information, and tried to call her insurance company. She is insured under an insurance company called Patriot, or so she said. We called Patriot and they said she was not insured there, even though the police wrote down her insurance information. So Aaron started calling her Monday, and no luck. She gave us her wrong phone number, luckily Aaron got a hold of her friend that was in the car and got her right number. She finally called us back Friday, saying she left her phone in another town, all week. Oh and she said she just found out that her insurance expired right before the accident, and she wanted to settle outside of court.

How did she not know her insurance expired that day? She is tricky!! She did not get a ticket for not having insurance, and the ticket she did get for causing the wreck was less than our ticket. So now we are out a car, it was an old car, but it worked just fine, we lost the $900 we paid to get the brakes fixed, we owe $550 on a ticket, Aaron's back still hurts, so he is going to the doctor, and she does not have insurance. So now we are trying to decide what to do. Do we settle outside of court, or do we take her to court? We don't want to ask to much, but she has been tricky and very unhelpful! Does anyone have any ideas on what we should do? We feel lost.

Aaron called a layer and is waiting to hear back from them. I suggested that we ask the police, but Aaron said that then she would get a $550 ticket. Oh life!!

How Embarrassing!

I must say that this past Sunday was the worst that Jack has every behaved at church, and that is saying something. Sunday Aaron was giving a talk, so I was sitting on a pew on the side of the chapel by myself, with Jack and West. For the past 5 months Aaron has had to work on Sunday, so I have had a lot of experience sitting alone with the boys, but this Sunday was "special." We were sitting three rows from the front, maybe that was my first mistake.

We made it to the Sacrament and Jack and West were both doing really well, but then West had a poopy diaper, so I had to take both of them out. Well Jack did not want to leave, so all of the way out he kept sighing really really loud, and stomping, which created a lot of stares and giggles as we left the chapel. We made it back in without a problem, but had only been sitting for a little while, when Jack started acting up.

No one was sitting in the two rows ahead of us, so Jack climbed under the bench and sat on the row in front of me. I decided to let him stay there because he was being good, and I knew if I tried to move him he would freak out. Well Aaron stood up to give his talk, and Jack made his move to the first bench. He started looking at the stairs with a smile on his face. I was able to make eye contact with him and said, "don't you dare." I was holding West and he was starting to get fussy. Jack then walked over to a couple of metal chairs that were against the wall and started rubbing his hands on them, which made a pretty loud noise. I knew I had to act but it was not going to be pretty.

I stood up and told Jack to come with me, of course he screamed "NOOOOOO," and dropped to the floor, continuing to scream. Keep in mind I was in the very front of the church, not in the back. I had to set West down on the pew pick Jack up in one arm, and then pick West up in the other. So I had a screaming, uncooperative two year old in one arm and a crying five month old in the other. I now had to make my escape! I started making the very long walk down the isle, with Jack screaming and kicking, luckily the RS president met me half way and took Jack from me. I guess Jack was trying to help Aaron with his talk, which was on adversity. I felt so bad for Aaron, but some how he was able to continue giving his talk. It is a good thing we love our kids!

Here is a video of Jack trying to do the Heisman pose. He loves going outside and throwing the football with us so I tried to teach him how to pose:




And here is a video of West talking. He is such a happy baby and loves to talk: