Halloween

Pumpkin Cheesecake cupcakes baked with an Oreo cookie

Unfortunately in my opinion they were not as good as they looked, however the household liked them.

Here are some Halloween pictures:

Dinners this week

I don't recall which day what which but here we go...

Penne with some swiss chard and tomatoes we grew

Another night was stuffed chicken and roasted broccoli

Then broiled pork loin and sauteed leeks with gala apples

Last night was vegetarian black bean chili served with sour cream, avocado, cherry tomatoes, and tortilla chips

 All recipes thanks to Everyday Food Magazine.

Oh did i mention there is a new kitty in the house?

Chicken Fried Steak

Tonight my mom and I made chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy. It was all consumed. Today was crazy sock day at the girls school in honor of red ribbon week we can, "sock it to drugs" Tomorrow is PJ day, how cool is that. I do not even need to dress them in the morning! yay!

This weekend I made this for lunch, just looking at the picture makes me crave it! The tomato was from our garden, mmmm I am hungry!

Sophia and Harry the dirty dog, and yes he is wearing clothes!

Fall is in the air!

We harvested another 8 lbs of produce from the Tin-can's garden!

My little shoppers at the Farmers Market today...

It was windy and cold, but we were able to find everything except an avocado for this weeks dinners

Baked Zitti for dinner

Big 3-0?

Today was my birthday.I miss how a birthday felt when I was a kid and I guess I hope that it would still feel that way, however the older I get the more non-exciting they become. I remember the anticipation the days before and not being able to sleep, turning ten and having two digits or turning 13 and deciding I was officially a teenager, and the birthday party's and sleep overs where none of us slept. I know that this one is a mile stone, but I feel no different than I did yesterday. The only thing I think will change is now that I am no longer a 20 something, some people may look at me more as an adult, however I also realize this is still a fantasy. So there!

My mother did make me this beautiful chocolate gnash cake, way better than a brownie

Everyone in the house sang and the dogs were super excited jumping around, but I think they thought they were going for a walk or something.

I took a nap on the sofa, i think for about a half hour with Annabelle asking over and over again if we were going to target to get a cabbage patch doll. We watched the newest Tinkerbell movie (that was their gift to me).

 I take no claim in the originality of this super yummy food. The only original thing I can make is my famous scrambled eggs (I'm not telling you the secret ingredient until after you eat them and find out how fabuloso they are). Still those are a copy of my uncles eggs. Hey I own a lot of cook books and I put them to good use, I am not ashamed! I also love Every Day Food magazine, their "a week of dinners with one bag of groceries" are my favorite!! That's where I got this weeks fantastic dinners from. The burritos were made with cheese, cabbage, cilantro, vinegar and some leftover stew from the other night.

Tomorrow will be fun, the pumpkins for the PTA pumpkin patch get delivered!

Jalapeno!

Woke up this morning and our early plans were disrupted due to my Suegra's blood pressure emergency, come to find out the ridiculous woman decided it was a good idea to skip her meds for a few days. Sheesh.

After all that, and finding out a home blood pressure machine is $100, everything settled down.

In the morning I started a pot of chili stew in the slow cooker with pork shoulder, poblanos from our garden, red potatoes, yellow onion, and carrots. The pot was emptied this evening, practically licked clean!

My suegra and I made jalapeno jelly, here she is gutting the jalapenos (all from our tin cans garden)

Beautiful sterile jars

 sterilizing lids

 ready to be submerged

after 10 minutes boiling away and then being set out to cool

Finished product!

The suction happened almost imediately after they were taken out of the water. How fun and easy, hopefully we did them right, cleaning the ribs and seeds out of the jalapenos was the most time consuming, there was a little left in the pan that we all tasted and it was JUMMY!!

Oh here is a blurry picture of the white baby someone took with the camera today

She is so puuuurdy!

Takeover

This morning the girls and I made whole wheat pancakes for breakfast. With strawberries cooked in maple syrup for on top! Annabelle was the photographer

Please don't take this the wrong way, I love her very much! But, my mother is making me crazy, my routine has been turned on its head! Yesterday I decided to make dinner. I could not find a darn thing, it was so frustrating.
So today I decided to take the kitchen back, I would clean, reorganize and conquer. It took me all day. Nothing would fit in the fridge before my takeover, now it is clean and organized. Do we really need four jars of salsa in the fridge? What happened to finishing the first one? I thought we were over loaded with cereal, no no no, we were overloaded with 15 or more rolled up bags of crumbs!!
I made shrimp with bacon tomatoes and Swiss chard over  rice tonight, it was delicioso. The recipe called for collard greens but I could not resist substituting these beautiful babies from the garden

The girls are in bed, and tomorrow they are back to school. I think its time for me to sit and enjoy

Good night!

Lessons Learned

Good thing I only tried to can three jars of tomatoes. Bad thing it was all the Romas I had on hand.

Look at all the wasted space! Look at the air in the can on the left. Hey, I was pretty ambitious. But, that ain't gunna stop me! Now on to Jalapeno jelly!

But first pancakes for my little ladies with strawberry sauce!

Tomatoes

The weather is crazy, we get a few boiling days and now the heater is on and its raining! It was a hot tea and soup kinda day! In the morning Miss Kendal arrived to visit, and we headed over to the neighbors house for some home made posole, that little house had four families visit. We could not fit, the kids were sent outside to eat, luckily it started to rain after they finished. With so much food and great company we stayed for hours.

After we got home my girls, along with their friends Mayra and Kendal, and I glittered some bones and skeletons. We made quite a mess

I also decided it was time to can some of the Roma tomatoes we grew over the summer.

they are now boiling away on the stove

Wish me luck!!

Yeah that went well.

Here I am again, life doesn't always go the way you planned. Now being PTA President at my daughters school has engulfed my life. I would be upset about it, however the look on those kids faces, and the thanks I get nearly everyday from the teachers really reminds me of why I said yes in the first place. Let me tell you it is allot of work! But, I will not get into that, I fit the rest of my life around it.

Our little veggie patch has gone well this year

We harvested at least 40 lbs of tomatoes