Scion Holiday Mail Drop for Military Heroes

This is the "care package" that I signed up for my husband from Scion's Holiday Mail Drop for military members.

I recently ordered him a gift from Amazon.com. He kept harassing me, asking for hints and wondering when it was going to get here. Today we got home to a box next to our front door, he grabbed it and ran inside, ready to rip into it and spoil his surprise.

Then, as he opened it all up, I half wished I could have let him believe it was his gift.

Look at all this stuff! 

I know I had to put in a T-Shirt size when I signed up. And I know it advertised a bag, a beanie, and an hour of prepaid internet service, but I didn't think it would be of such good quality. There's a 2GB flash drive, ear buds, some sort of video game, a clippy pen, and chap stick. The T-shirt isn't some large Scion logo on cheap fabric. The logo is discreet, the shirt is soft, and my husband loves it. 

Now I just hope that the gift I bought actually stands up to this gift pack.

Stuffed Peppers

 

I want it publicly known that I have always despised my mother's stuffed bell peppers.

My mother is a great cook. Everyone who has ever eaten her food will say so. And, for some reason unknown to me, she loves stuffed bell peppers. Me, I can't quite choke down that much bell pepper in one sitting. I love the flavor, but I hate having to bite into a piece of bell pepper, cooked or raw. I get the flavor into the few recipes in my repertoire by finely chopping it. And I mean fine.

My mother's recipe, just like the recipe of my husband's mother, and every other stuffed bell pepper recipe I've ever eaten called for plain white rice, ground meat, and a marinara sauce to be stuffed into hollowed bell peppers and baked until the cheese on top is bubbly and browned. And it always seems like such a waste of time, for very little flavor.

I, obviously, could go the rest of my life without eating another stuffed bell pepper. However, my husband, he loves them. So, while flipping through some random magazine aimed at stay-at-home moms, I found a recipe for stuffed bell peppers for a slow cooker. (I'd call mine a crock-pot, but I don't own name brand appliances, so let's go with slow cooker.)  They were red, yellow, and orange, so I thought that maybe the sweetness of a red would balance out the blandness of the white rice and and that the slow cooker would melt it into something edible.

After spending a disproportionate part of my budget on these colorful bell peppers, I came home from the Commissary only to realize that I didn't have 6 hours to slow cook them. I guess I could have waited until the next day to make them, but I had gone to the trouble of getting all the ingredients in order to surprise my husband, who was on his second week of extra duty (not discipline related, just extra duty that randomly goes around the division), so I decided to push on and bake them in the oven.

But I couldn't get the idea of mushy, over cooked, under seasoned plain white rice out of my head. The only other option I could think of was pasta, but then, who really wants to go to the trouble of eating spaghetti out of a bell pepper? It's a pretty idea, but I wasn't exactly going for pretty. After starring at my pantry for a while, I spied a pack of  Ra men Noodles. Up until recently, I thought Ra men was for the sick, the hungry, and the poor, mainly college students, who'd rather spend their money on beer. I only keep a pack or two in the house as an emergency. But a few weeks ago, I came across an Alton Brown (from the TV show Good Eats) recipe that called for a pack of Ra men in place of rice in a Broccoli and Cheese casserole.  And voila' I get my replacement for the rice.

Add broken up Ra men to a mixture spiced ground meat (I used ground pork seasoned with salt, red pepper, and sage) and diced tomatoes that has been simmering on the stove for at least a half an hour, and stuff the peppers. Bake for 20 mintues, add any kind of Italian blend cheese you can find (I prefer mozzarella and provolone) and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until all golden and bubbly.

I did discover that I should cut the bell pepper in half, length wise,  to create more surface area. My family likes the bubbly cheese the best, and more surface area equals more cheese. I also found that there is not enough of a difference in sweetness to bother spending your money on red bell peppers. Green peppers work just as well, for a third of what you would spend on a red, yellow, or orange.

I'm amazed at how a 16 cent package of Ra men can transform a dish I have loathed for most of my life.
By the way, I still didn't eat the pepper.

Flat Brat Christmas Tree Ornaments (Part I)

I found this template for a really cute military Christmas idea. You use the template to create an ornament for each home you've spent Christmas in as a military child. I'm going to spin it my own way, and probably won't even use the template, but thought I should at least give credit as to where I originally found the idea. 

Flat Brat Christmas Tree Ornament

Chicken Noodle - The Campbell's Kid Has Grown Up!

Chicken Noodle Soup was my favorite food growing up. My family tells me that it's all I would ever eat, and, looking back at some of my childhood photos, I believe them. 

My Granny kept Campbell's Soup on the lowest shelf in her pantry, just so I could pick it out. My Papa told everyone I knew, even after I had out grown the habit, that you could circle the Earth with the empty Campbell's Soup cans eaten from throughout my life. You couldn't mention my love of Campbell's Soup without him telling everyone in the room about the time I hid my Granny's keys behind a can of Chicken Noodle Soup.

Apparently, my Granny let me, at about the age of two, play with her keys one afternoon, and after doing so, couldn't remember if she'd gotten them back or not. All she could remember is that I had them. So she called my mom, who lived less than 10 minutes away, and asked her to see if I would tell her what I'd done with the keys. All I would tell anyone who asked about those keys was, "I hided 'em."  It took two days to find them, and when they did, they found them behind a can of Campbell's Soup.

In all honesty, I still crave the stuff when I'm sick. Only now, I'm old enough and have enough of a culinary palette to know that it's basically mush in over-salted yellow congealed liquid.

Now I know to saute chicken, bone it, skin on, at medium high heat. I know to add black pepper and a little bit of salt. I learned to add onion, carrot, and celery before I add liquid, to intensify the flavor. I know to de-glaze the pan with chicken stock, not water, and that the brown stuff I'm scraping up as I do so is not evidence of burnt chicken, but flavor in itself. I know to add thyme, and lots of it. I now understand that I must pull out the chicken pieces, discard the bones and the skin, coarsely chop what doesn't shred into pieces and add it back to the pot.  Finally, I know to add good pasta to the mix, turn the heat down to a simmer, and let the pasta cook to al dente in the chickenie goodness.

Vegetable Beef Soup

It has been a rainy, wet, and relatively cold day here in Hawaii. Reminds me very much of my home in Florida. It was quite wet and wild last night, too. This inspired tonight's dinner, Vegetable Beef Soup.

My paternal grandmother passed away just about six weeks ago. Everyone talks about her cooking, and how great it was, and how much she loved to do it. And they are partially right. She cooked out of necessity. She loved it when an experiment turned out. And, to hear her tell it, she couldn't boil water when she was first married. By the time I came along, you couldn't tell.

Anytime it got the least bit cool, she'd get out her big canning pot and make Vegetable Beef Soup. She'd start with the cheapest cut of beef she could find, bones if that's all she could get, add a "Sweet Vidalia Onion," and a jar or so of her home grown, home stewed, and home canned tomatoes. Add potatoes, carrots, and more home grown, home canned green beans, salt and pepper, and let it simmer. If green beans weren't available, she'd substitute English peas.

And she knew I loved the stuff. If she had leftovers in the fridge she'd let me know and I'd take them home. Tonight's meal was supposed to be like hers. Only, I didn't realize when I started that I had only one can of tomatoes. Luckily, my husband had mistakenly picked up a box of vegetable stock at the commissary last week, so I was able to substitute. Only, while it still tastes great, it doesn't quite taste the same and makes me miss my grandma even more.

My First Hobby, Only Technically Advanced

Christmas came early this year! My Kindle arrived this morning. When I ordered it last week, I chose the Super-Saver Shipping option because it's FREE. The only downside to free shipping is that you are at the mercy of the vendor and the US Postal Service as to when it will arrive. Amazon's priority right now are all those folks who get the over night and two-day shipping, so it was estimated that my Kindle wouldn't even leave it's origin until December 10th. Expected arrival 5 - 10 days later.

But it arrived today! 

Then, as I introduced it originally as my "newest" hobby, I realized something else. I've been reading since I was 4. I usually keep a book with me all of the time. It goes along with school being something I've accomplished, as they pretty much go hand-in-hand. And I usually finish every book I start, so I can rest a little easier knowing that I do finish things every now and again!

It's a Norman Rockewell Christmas...

Quilting is probably the newest hobby that I've started. This Wall Hanging/Throw was my second attempt at a quilt topper, but my first attempt at putting it all together.

I created this quilt to donate to my old high school's annual art auction, which, ironically, is taking place tomorrow morning.

You can't see the detail very well as this was taken with my cell phone. I didn't take any other pictures of it before I mailed it off. I used quilt squared of iron transferred Saturday Evening Post Christmas Illustrations that I found on eBay, some greed plaid (in two sized) and some candy cane prints. I hand-tied the quilt together and the final product covered the recliner that I put it on to take the photograph.

Over all, it was okay. It was obviously a beginner's quilt. I'm glad I'm not there to witness any inspections. I learned that the iron is my best friend when I'm working, to only cut enough for one square and test it. Calculate for seam allowances, and test the ones included in any pattern, they could be wrong.

My son has requested a Thomas and Friends blanket. That was actually my first quilt topper, but I ran out of binding and worked on the Norman Rockwell while I waited for it to arrive. Then, par for the course, I haven't bothered to start it back up since I finished this quilt.