Yummy Chicken Enchiladas

IN THE KITCHEN today my cute little helper and I are whipping up some yummy Chicken Enchiladas! After roasting the chickens earlier in the week we now have a basis for a quick meal. I am all about quick fix meals!! Move over Rachel Ray, I can whip together these Chicken Enchiladas with a helper in 20 minutes or less! Plus the fact it's so economical to get several meals out of two chickens. Genius! Wouldn't you say!!

Here's my quick fix recipe, caution I usually make things "by gosh and by golly" so feel free to improvise or go with your families taste.

Yummy Enchiladas
2 cups of cooked chicken                   3/4 cups your favorite salsa
1 cup sour cream                                1/2 cup grated cheese
1 pkg of flour tortillas                         2+ cups of grated cheese to cover

Mix the chicken, salsa, sour cream and 1/2 cup grated cheese in a large bowl until evenly mixed. Spray a 11 x 17 pan with a non-stick spray. Then spoon some salsa in the bottom of the pan to make a thin layer. Fill each tortilla with chicken mixture and place in a sprayed 11x 17 pan. When the pan is filled with enchiladas cover with grated cheese and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until heated through. Serve with a fresh green salad and or some fresh fruit for the kiddos and you're good to go!Enjoy!

Sampling the cheese from our creation!

Fast Free Waffles!

CONTINUING WITH THE Fast FREE theme we are indulging in my kids favorite breakfast WAFFLES!! Doesn't everyone love waffles. This is a quick and easy recipe, but beware it is extremely high in calories. So if you're watching your waist line you may want to move on to another Blog now!! Ha! Ha!

I borrowed this recipe from my mom years ago and it has become a family favorite. I'm not sure of the original source, so I'm not meaning to plagiarize anyone out there!! We just call it "Mom's Waffles".

Mom's Waffles Recipe

4 eggs                                             1 cup milk

1 cup melted butter                        1 cup sour cream

1 tsp baking soda                           1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt                                         2 cups flour

I put all the wet ingredients into my blender and pulse a couple of times to blend them. Then I add all the dry ingredients and blend well. Scrape down the sides of the blender and blend again until well blended and smooth. For my waffle iron I put 1/3 cup of batter in each side and then cook until done! Delish!! Enjoy!

In the Kitchen...

FAST FREE WEEK means meat!!! At least for my hubby and my oldest. So in honor of Fast Free Wednesday I roasted chickens. Most women I know aren't really big on purchasing and cooking a full chicken. I remember when I was first married I had never purchased a whole chicken. I didn't know the first thing to do with it. While I had cooked chicken lots of times and lots of ways, I had just never dealt with a whole bird before. In fact on our first Thanksgiving I got up at o'dark thirty to deal with our lovely turkey, only to have to go wake up hubby to ask him which part was the breast. Leave it to a man to know the breast! Ha! Ha! So my wonderful hubby put Ms. Bird on his hand and used it as a puppet to enlighten me on the anatomy of the naked bird. I must say I felt pretty dumb, but I was able to get it cooked and it was delicious, even if I do say so myself!

Anyway, back to the chickens. Roasting a chicken is the easiest thing in the world and if you're not so savy in the kitchen you can look like you are!! The other great thing about roasting chicken is that if you do two at a time, like I do you can have precooked meat for a couple of meals during that week. Usually I would prepare the chickens on a Sunday morning and set the timer on the oven and we'd have a lovely Sunday chicken dinner. Then I would have chicken for enchiladas and chicken salad for later in the week. If I was really ambitious I would also cook the bones Sunday evening and we'd have home made chicken soup for lunch the next day. So we would get three good meals out of one day of work. Throwing the stuff together for the future meals is a snap when the meat is already cooked.

For my roast chicken I wash the bird and pat it dry and place it in a sprayed pan. I then stuff the bird with lemon and/or onions and fresh herbs if I have them on hand. Then I sprinkle some seasonings on the skin and bake in a low oven (225 degrees) for 4 hours or so. If I want a complete meal I season some carrots and potatoes and place around the chicken and roast them all together. Many a new mom has received this meal after giving birth and they have loved it. So if you haven't roasted a chicken, give it a go. Nothing could be easier!!

As a side note I was able to finish my first COMPLETE quilt. I've been working on all these quilt tops and then trying to get them quilted since the beginning of the year. Now I'm able to start binding them and seeing the completed fruits of my labor. I think it came out pretty nice.



Enjoy your day!!

Cottage Industry...

OVER THE WEEKEND I was busy crafting and just thinking of how I could keep my crafting habit going!! Crafting is a bit like a drug to me. I love it and can't spend enough time doing it. So in some ways I guess I impose my craziness on my kids and make them do it too!! But I guess that it is now paying off since my oldest is now helping me with my new endeavor.

Since I really enjoy making things, I now have the problem with what to do with them. I mean how many quilts do you really need?? Luckily with the knitting, children grow so I can always be knitting something that someone needs. For a little while any way. So I'm hoping to post and sell some of my items in different places and see what happens.

My first completed thing is knitting markers. I just love beads and shiny things so I thought I'd make my own. They turned out so nicely that I thought I'd sell them as well. The only problem was that the little rings I put the dangley things on I could not seal shut. I looked for a solution, when it hit me my oldest knows how to solder. So I put him to work and it worked perfectly! Now I'll have to see if other folks agree and want to purchase my creations.

I plan to offer some beaded items, quilts and quilted items. We'll have to see where it leads. Maybe just a dead end, but all I can do is try. Now that the kids are in on my endeavor it's a family affair so we'll see, but in a homeschooling household are most things a family affair??

Enjoy your day!

Spirit Monday...

THE HOUSE IS now quiet... and I can now organize my thoughts. Doing this blog thing does take a lot of time, but I'm enjoying it. However, trying to do it with the buzz of children during the day seems not to work for me. I can only keep so many conversations going at a time. Three chatty boys and trying to chat with you, well you should get the picture. But now the house is quiet... How I love the quiet! There are days that I think that if someone could just lock me in solitary confinement in a room full of yarn or fabric, some knitting needles or a sewing machine, that as long as I had a bathroom and meals I could be happy for a long, long time. Ha! Ha!

Today is the beginning of Spirit Week. After each Great Feast of the Church we celebrate the one that made the feast possible. So today, being Spirit Monday, we honor the all Holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, Who descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost. This was the fulfillment of our Lord's promise to send the Comforter to His disciples (John 14:16). At the services of Pentecost we return to singing

"O Heavenly King, the Comforter the Spirit of truth,

who art every where present and fillest all things,

treasury of blessings and giver of life, come and abide in us,

and cleanse us from every impurity

and save our souls O good One."



I especially love this prayer and it is such a comfort to hear it again during our services. It's one of the first prayers I teach my children to sing. I love to hear their little voices singing it during our evening prayers. Don't you just love to hear children sing. It's so sweet. Why is it that adults singing off tune doesn't sound nearly as sweet? Hmmmm....

Anyway, all in our home especially love Spirit Week! A whole week with NO fasting!! For those of you non-Orthodox reading, we fast each Wednesday and Friday during the year. Except during fasting periods, where we fast everyday for a period of time. So fast free weeks are very special to us. I hope to make some fun and more special than usual non-fasting meals on Wednesday and Friday this week to share with you. So stay tuned.

To celebrate the Feast of Pentecost Sunday we were able to get out and just enjoy the day. We had a lovely walk and then a nice meal afterwards. Even though it wasn't a particularly sunny day, it was warm and nice to just get out and admire God's creation.

Don't you just love buttercups...

My kids thought that this was the "X" tree, must be treasure close by...

Now I'm back to planning the week ahead... I hope you have a wonderful day and I hope your are able to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit visit upon you today and everyday!

Pentecost...

THIS IS THE WEEKEND of Pentecost... What a glorious feast of the church! One of the ways I help to make this feast more significant to the children is to put the emphasis of celebrating the "birthday" of the church. We make a cake and talk about the Gospel reading for the day. Years ago when my oldest was six or seven a group of ladies and children from our church decided to make a special plate for the feasts of the church. I'm sorry to say the only two I completed were the "Liturgical year" and Pentecost. However, I now can not find the one made for Pentecost.

The Liturgical Year plate shows in colors and symbols all of the seasons of the church year. It's a wonderful visual to show the fasting and celebration seasons of the year. I should find a ceramic shop and make the other feast day plates so I could have a special plate for each feast. Hmmmm... have to think about that. Anyway when we make our "Pentecost Birthday" cake we use this special plate for the feast. We also go out and find greenery and flowers to decorate to signify "that God’s divine Breath comes to renew all creation as the “lifeÄcreating Spirit.”  Just another way to make the feast more meaningful for the children.

So after the wonderful services of Pentecost Sunday the children will help to prepare our special meal with a special dessert, usually a cake. What's a birthday without a cake, right? Then on Spirit Monday, the following day, we would usually travel to our historical Holy Trinity Church for Spirit Monday to continue the celebration of the feast. This year, however we will be home, due to a lacking of transportation. There's a lovely picnic lunch afterwards and another day of celebration. I'm sad to be missing it.

On this weekend of Pentecost I wish you a blessed feast and pray that we all honor the visitation of the Holy Spirit upon us throughout the year.

Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God, who hast revealed the fishermen as most wise

by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit:

through them Thou didst draw the world into Thy net.

O Lover of Man, Glory to Thee (Troparion).

When the Most High came down and confused the tongues, he divided the nations.

But when he distributed the tongues of fire, he called all to unity.

Therefore, with one voice, we glorify the All-Holy Spirit! (Kontakion)



Small Victories...

TODAY WE WERE celebrating small victories. The other day I posted about learning challenges and and the webinar that I watched. Learning and learning challenges are all brain driven. I'm sure you're thinking, "yeah, no kidding!" But if the brain isn't firing quite right things don't get through and children don't always "see" the same things that you're seeing. Case in point, while my oldest was going through occupational therapy there was a day that he was presented with a simple activity. What happened was fascinating to me. He was asked to recreate parallelograms and other shapes with stirring straws. What was created by the therapist was to be copied by my son. There were several examples that he could just not recreate. Not only wasn't he able to copy them, he argued that what he created was in fact the same as what the therapist had made with the straws. He was visualizing something completely different from what was in front of him. I was amazed. It never occurred to me that when I was asking him to do something what was "going in" wasn't always what I meant or intended.

I think that many parents of children with learning challenges don't even consider what it's like on the other end of the learning spectrum. As parents and teachers, we put forth the curriculum and it makes sense to us and we expect that through our explanation it makes sense to them. At least I did. I would go over and over things and only to be frustrated because, "He's just not paying attention" among other things that I thought. When you, yourself don't have a learning challenge or maybe you do, but instead of getting the help you needed you just chalked it up to "I'm just not good at ______" (you fill in the blank). You don't even consider that they may just not be comprehending what you're asking. This was all BREAKING NEWS to me. I felt terrible about what I thought and even, how at times, I behaved when faced with challenging moments.

There are so many developmental things that go into learning. Physical things that most first time parents don't know. I also don't think that parents are educated well on how important these things are. Like crawling for example, it is so important for a child to crawl as a baby. It works both hemispheres of the brain and helps with learning things like reading when the child gets older. Playing in general is so important! Physical activity. Using the big muscles. All these things help build pathways in the brain and help the learning process.

So getting back to small victories... Today my seven year old mastered the monkey bars. You may not think that's a big deal, but let me tell you why it is. Being able to swing and control your body is a BIG brain builder. When I was doing occupational therapy with my oldest some of the activities he had to master was swinging and controlling his swinging. Some times he had to swing on a platform and swing in a clockwise motion. Controlled and steady. Then other days he had to do it counter clockwise. On other days he had to sit on a seat on a rope swing and swing in a circular motion and while tossing bean bags at a target. All these activities required control of ones body and they are all brain building activities. Often times I would take "school" outside and do it on the trampoline or on the swings in our backyard. I would read-a-loud or he would recite math facts, etc. while he was able to move. Amazingly enough he was able to concentrate and accomplish lots while doing these things and having the freedom of motion. Sitting on an exercise ball while doing school work can work wonders too!

So the next time you feel frustrated or like your not good at teaching, get curious. Maybe there's more going on than you think. And celebrate those victories!! They are important!!

As an FYI, I am now an Amazon Associate, which means if you link to Amazon through any of my links and make purchases you are supporting me. If you have a blog you can do it too! Who doesn't need more money for books and curriculum?? Thanks and enjoy your day!