chicken salad

 Chicken salad:

4 chicken breasts, pre-cooked (grilled is good or rotisserie is also)

2 - 7 oz boxes of small circle noodles cooked per directions on the box

1 1/2 cups chopped celery

 2 cups each fresh broccoli chopped small and fresh carrots also bite sized

1 fresh onion, chopped

1/2 cup real bacon bits

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1 cup cashews

Dressing:

3 cups mayonnaise

1 1/2 cups sugar

3/4 cup vinegar

3 tsp salt and 3 tsp pepper

Stir it all up and  you have a large container of salad, enough to feed at least twelve people.  Take some to the neighbors.

Vegetarian version?  Hold the chicken and bacon to the side until the end and scoop out a portion without meat.   Then add the meat and stir it up again.

Enjoy.  

Love, Val

sunny saturday

 It was cold and bright.   This morning was shopping for our youngest grandchild's birthday gift.   What would he like that they don't already have?

And I didn't want to buy some permanent toy that will take up room forever.  What would be fun in the short run and then non-sentimental and easily tossed when it's over?   And what would a one-year-old enjoy?

We found a few things.

Then there was a little real estate, always a good time.

In the evening, we went downtown to have dinner and listen to jazz.  That was truly lovely.   The bar is little with lots of dark wood and stained glass windows.  The music is original and has personality.  I'm fond of the piano player. There's a TV over the bar--and tonight was a baseball game, but usually it's old movies.

One night we watched, without sound of course, Some Like It Hot--Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon--those two guys dressed as women half the time.   We have no idea what it was about, but it was fun. 

Another night they were playing a black and white Titanic movie.  The boat tilted this way and that way, dishes slid off tables, people ran around.   We laughed, even though it probably wasn't meant to be  a funny movie.

 Then we came home and Tim was there in a coonskin cap, working on a bird house kit.   Julia helped cut the potatoes for the potato salad for the party tomorrow.

The recipe for the potato salad:

10 pounds of red potatoes, peeled and boiled, cut in small pieces when cool
8 eggs hard boiled, likewise cut up when cool
4 stalks of celery chopped
1 onion chopped

Dressing:

3 c Miracle Whip
9 T sugar
1/2 c vinegar
4 T mustard

Stir the dressing up, and then fold it into the potatoes.   Transfer it to a pretty bowl and garnish with slices of radishes and paprika (or not.) 

Okay, good night.   love, Val

mock chow mein on thursday

We had these cute brothers here for supper on a Thursday night.

When Jay heard a lot of people were coming for supper, he doubled the recipe.  It was about perfect, just about right for fifteen people, though some of the little ones don't eat very much, some of the big ones make up for that.  Still, there's a little leftover in the fridge right now.

But this is supper Jay loved from when he was a kid, so before he started cooking, he phoned his mother to make sure he had the recipe right.    He did, just not the exact amounts.

The guy in the orange shirt was really here mostly for the Yo-J.   They don't buy this nonsense product at his house.  In fact, the only reason we ever bought it in the first place was because I desperately had to wean Tim who was biting to the point of drawing blood and there was some screaming (his and mine,) and  I was pregnant with Julia couldn't go on.

(Some toddlers were civilized and nursed all the way through, so then I nursed a little baby and a toddler too.  It's fine. Sometimes it works out. These were people who did not BITE.)

Anyway, Tim  found Yo-J to be an acceptable substitute for breastmilk, thank GOD, which says a lot about it.

But then it became a staple of life around here.  At one point when Tim was about five we had to quit buying it entirely because he wouldn't even eat anything else. Nope, just swill that Yo-J.

A man can live on that.

 Here's that plush, luscious baby.  He's fast though. Try getting a picture of him.

 Here he's trying to grab the camera.

 And the smile was missed, but he's still pretty cute with his thinking face on.

 Here are a bunch of kids under the table, behind the bench, eating crackers and laughing a lot.  Those are Julia's long feet in the green and gray socks, and p.j. in the pink.  At one point even the baby was under there and all the dogs, including Kirsten's, were stalking the crackers.

Why would dogs be so interested in dry, plain crackers?  They totally were.

Oh, the keyboard.   See the guy in orange to the side?   He jumped on the couch, which he's too little to hurt, but his face--he hit his mouth on the little wire music rack and wow, I winced.  That definitely hurt.

He recovered amazingly fast.  I'd probably still be at moaning about my teeth.

 Aww, and here are two cute cousins eating popcorn.

 Here's the recipe for the casserole.

Mock Chow Mein
     a recipe from Jay's sweet mother, in a quantity to feed 15

2 pounds of hamburger, fried and drained
3 cups of rice
2 cups of chopped onion
2 cups of chopped celery
2 large cans of cream of chicken soup
1 large can of cream of mushroom soup
1 can of water
1/2 cup of soy sauce

Spray a big roaster pan with non-stick spray and stir all this up in the pan.
Bake at 350 for at least 90 minutes or until the rice is cooked.

And that is the end of that.

Today is Lori's birthday, that beautiful sweetheart we will love forever.

And it was a very nice evening, spent with crazy squirrels and their parents.

Happy Thursday.   love you all so, Mom, and Dad too

mirror lake

 We made our way to the lake Thursday.  The water was so still it felt almost spooky.

 Standing on the dock, I could almost feel it pulling me over.

 Inside the house there was this:

See that pan of dip in the middle of the table?  This is the recipe:

8 oz cream cheese spun in the mixer with 8 oz. or sour cream. Add a packet of taco seasoning and as much salsa as you like for spreadable consistency.

Spread it over a cooky sheet and top with shredded cheese and finely chopped lettuce, and tomato if you want.

Black olives are good too, but kids seem to hate them.  Serve with tortilla chips.


She's holding up a fresh apple grown on my parents' apple tree, bumper crop this year.

 And then before dark, the sand box.

And a fine Thursday it was.  love, Val

hot tonight

I found this picture on my camera and it's here for no particular reason, except I like it.

It's 12:03 and I can still hear Julia's giddy little laugh from down the hall.

It's steamy-hot here tonight, one of those handful of nights we never have the chance to really get used to. I jumped in the car late tonight and the temperature thing on the dash said 87 degrees.

At 11 at night?

Yep.  I drove home with the roof window open and the a/c off just to enjoy the balmy night.

Jay was cooking tonight because we're celebrating my dad's birthday tomorrow.

The deviled eggs were located in the fridge in the office.   Oh, my gosh, I ate four before I stopped myself and came back upstairs to run bath water.

Okay, the recipe:

Boil 18 eggs.

Cool and peel.

Cut in half lengthwise, popping the yolks into a separate bowl.

Arrange the egg whites however you can to steady them on a plate or a dish.

Using a potato masher or a fork, mash the yolks with a big spoonful or two of  Miracle Whip.

Add a tablespoon or two of mustard.   Stir and mash until the consistency is creamy.

Slice a few stalks of celery, and a couple very thin slices of onion into bits. Stir in.

Scoop a spoonful of this onto each egg half.

Sprinkle softly with cayenne pepper.

That's it.   Divine. 

Good night.  love, Val

valentine's day, 2012

 These two boys came over today.  I was both surprised and happy when they were at the door.  I'd forgotten I was babysitting.

Whoopsy.

It didn't matter.    We were here anyway, and we had fun.

He did yell for ice cream, which is always a good thing at Grandma's house.  This however, is one of the suckers he brought to celebrate Valentine's Day with the kids.

 Okay, later we had the vinegar and baking soda rocket launch.  I thought they'd forgotten all about this thing.

 Well, they didn't.  And the Dr. Dreadful Zombie snack kit?

I was informed the brain is moldy inside.  It wasn't rinsed last time they used it.

Ish! It really was too.   I found an old bottle brush and cleaned it out.

Yeah, that was me, scrubbing mold out of a brain.  On Valentine's Day.

 Here are a couple cute pictures of p.j. and Julia.

 Oh, and now with Auntie Kirby

 Here's Kirby's dog, little Pey-pey.  Joe says her sweater should be reported to PETA.

 And she got a haircut today, cute as ever.

And then she helped Maria dye her hair, which I think is beautiful.   Her regular color is lovely, but this is just plain fun and looks good besides.

 And finally, here's my Valentine, my own best boyfriend cooking supper.

 He roasted corned beef and chicken with tomatoes and chilies.  It was really good.

 He also made deviled eggs and pickle wraps.

And seven-layer salad.

The pickle wrap recipe from my friend Lorene:  spread cream cheese on corned beef sandwich meat, and wrap around dill pickles.  Slice.  Delicious.

Seven layer salad:  In a pyrex  cake pan layer lettuce, peas, celery, green pepper, onion, hard boiled eggs. The mix together 2 c. Miracle Whip and 2 T sugar and spread over the top.   Sprinkle with cheddar cheese and bacon bits.

 Okay, what day wouldn't be a day at all without some weird squirrely nonsense?

Tim was overheard telling Julia, "The tongue is the part of the body with the most bones of all."

????

Not true.    He said, "But the tongue is very bendable."

Yeah it is.  But it's only muscles in our tongues.

Oh.

Then there was chocolate.

And that is the end of that.    Happy Valentine's Day.   love for always, Val

wheeee

dan walking heidi's baby around

It was a big, loud party.

Chicken divan:

chicken, approx six breasts, cooked and cut in little pieces
broccoli, two very big frozen bags, boiled for two minutes
cream of chicken soup, four large cans
miracle whip, half the biggest jar
shredded cheddar cheese, 2/3 of the big bag
onion, chopped
curry powder, two containers, probably 4-5 tablespoons.

First cook the chicken and boil the broccoli. Cut up the chicken and put both in a big pan.

Then mix up the rest of the ingredients and pour over the top.

Heat through.

Serve over rice. This much sauce creates the need for 21 cups of rice:

7 cups of rice, 14 cups of water. Cook as usual.

We also had watermelon and a couple salads Heidi made. One was a pasta salad, spicy with chilis from her neighbors, and the other tomatoes and cucumbers with Green Goddess dressing, pretty delicious. My mom brought watermelon and Special K bars with chocolate frosting. (It ended up being a feast.)

So what is it about kids and dirt?


And it was also nice and loud.


opening gifts






Dan and Alicia's dog is a sheltie, and she's crazy about wrapping paper. Lori had a sheltie too who was just this insane about leaves tossed into the air. He'd go nuts as long as we kept tossing them up, exactly like this dog.


Here Little Jay is showing him a book about Marie Curie. Okay, that's a weird book to find on the coffee table.


Lighting the candles--

First, Dan--


Here it's Heidi and her nephews getting ready to blow out candles--




And of course we've got this guy, full of big ideas.


When I told him this wasn't a class on how to scoop ice cream, as a chunk flew backward onto his shirt, he said, yes it was.


All in all, it was the same doggone party we have all the time.

Loud. Messy. Wild.

Today when I talked to my mom, I told her she should bring a dog along if she could find one.

She laughed. The neighbor dog was unavailable. Too bad too because it's a greyhound I see sleeping in the window. Probably it's very fast.

Dan and Heidi, happy birthday. Best wishes for the year ahead and all the years that follow.

We love you so, Mom and Dad