Summer Weekend Three: Father's Day Weekend & some recipes

As I mentioned before, we celebrated Father's Day with my Dad earlier in the week.  He and my mom left for New York City to take 200 kids there for a mission trip.  (There were also 30 other adults, but still...  That's a lot of kids!)  This weekend, I made two recipes from a cook book my Aunt Laura put together for me as a graduation gift.  It has lots of recipes from family and friends all in one place.  I love it!  I thought I'd share the recipes, so they're mixed in with this post.

Friday night, I made Lemon Roasted Chicken for dinner for me & AMP.  This is the third time I've made it, and I finally figured out the secret: use a small cooking dish, not a 9 x 13 pan!  It's not hard, but it does require a bit of chopping and you just need to be near the oven since you keep adding things.  (It's not one of those things you can just pop in and walk away!)

Lemon Roasted Chicken

Ingredients:

1 1/2 lbs. new potatoes, cut in cubes

3 T butter, cut into small pieces

Salt & Pepper 

2 lbs.  chicken tenderloins

1 lb. asparagus, trimmed and cut into 2 in. pieces

1 lemon (you can cut into wedges, or you can do thin round slices like I did, above)

6 sprigs of Thyme (I always forget to buy this at the store, and it tastes fine without it!)

• Preheat oven to 475 degrees.  Place potatoes and half of butter in a casserole dish & season w/ salt and pepper.  Do not cover.  Roast in oven, tossing once, until potatoes are golden, 20-25 minutes.
• Place chicken on top of potatoes and season with salt & pepper.  Roast until chicken begins to brown, about 15 mins.
• Scatter asparagus, lemon, remaining butter and Thyme around chicken. 
• Continue roasting until asparagus is tender & chicken is opaque throughout, 5-15 mins.
• Serve chicken, veggies and lemon drizzled with pan juices.  
• Serves 4-6

Saturday, we hung out at my parents' pool with Mark, Laura and Anna a bit.  Their pool has gotten more use this summer than in the 10 years we've lived in that house, combined.  It's a popular place to be!  It was a fun day to relax and hang out.  We are appreciating the Flagg Family's donation of pool floats to the house, most definitely.  :-)

We went on a date to Carrabba's that night, too.  Yum!  I felt all gross from being outside, so I took my time getting ready.  Adam came and knocked on my door and asked what I was doing.  He said, "Um, are you ok in there?  What'cha doin...it's been 50 minutes?!"  I laughed and informed him that really that wasn't very long for a girl going on a date to get ready!  :-)  I needed to feel girly, ok??

Sunday I sang at church.  This is one of my absolute favorite things to do.  Mark, Laura, Anna, Papa and Jonita came, and it was a treat to get to have them there.

Then Laura hosted Father's Day lunch for us, grilling steak and chicken kabobs.  Anna made fruit salad and I made Nanny's peach cobbler (recipe below).  

{Mark and Papa get new clothes for Father's Day}

I spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with them while they watched the PGA Tournament.  I just did some wedding-idea browsing on the computer.  It was so nice to be around family and just hang out.  Have I mentioned that we love having the Flaggs back in D-town?  We do.

Here's the peach cobbler recipe.  Nanny won first place with this recipe in the "Mrs. Lubbock" contest.  We are so proud.  :-)

Shirley's Peach Cobbler

1/4 lb. margarine

1 c flour

3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup sugar 

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

3/4 c milk

2 cans sliced peaches (29 oz size)

Cinnamon

• Melt margarine in 9 x 13 pan.  
• In a large bowl, mix 3/4 c sugar, flower, baking powder & milk.  Pour mixture over butter.  
• Spoon both cans of peaches over the mixture.  Save the peach juice.
• POur half to one can of juice over everything in the pan until mixture is covered.
• Sprinkle additional 1/2 cup sugar over mixture
• Sprinkle cinnamon over the top.
• Cook at 375 degrees uncovered for 45 minutes to 1 hour.  Best served with Blue Bell Vanilla!

Sum-Sum-Summer

For some reason, working during the summer has come as a harsh reality this year.  Perhaps it's because Claire is busy but not working a job most of the day like last summer.  Sometimes on his days off, Adam hangs out at the pool for a bit before I get off work.  Knowing that they're both off having fun without me is a bit of a bummer!!

Perhaps this reality is hitting extra hard because I'm saving most of my vacation for September to go on our Honeymoon and don't have the luxury to take a personal day just because I feel like it.  Whatever it is, I find myself racking my brain for a profession that would ideally be part-time hours for full-time pay.  (Hey, a girl can dream, ok??) 

So, in an effort to combat my summer blues, we (Claire and I) have declared all days after 4 p.m. and certainly all weekends as SUMMER.  This includes eating at fun restaurants, trying new recipes, swimming, popsicle eating, back-porch sitting, taking walks at night and getting frozen yogurt at 9 p.m.

Last week, Adam and I made breakfast for dinner and had Claire and Anna over to my parents' house while they were gone.  They have a big griddle and lots of counter space, and it was just fun to have free-reign of the house!  He makes some mean french toast, and we had fruit salad and bacon to go with it.  It was quite tasty!

We ate out on the back porch by the pool and talked and laughed to our heart's content.  It was a great evening.    So here's to lots more of those!

Whoopie Pies and Other Snow Day Entertainment

Snow Day 2 was even better than the first one.  Claire made Whoopie Pies from a mix a student gave her for Christmas.  {To.Die.For.Delicious.}  We ventured out down the road for a trip to Sonic Happy Hour and then stopped by my aunt & uncles's house for a bit.  I didn't mind driving around, but it's just slow goin' around here, and you never know what other people are going to do out on the road.

We had some rice milk in our fridge from a gluten-free friend that came over earlier this week.  Claire thought she'd give it a try.  For a girl who doesn't like milk to begin with, we're not sure why she tried it in the first place.  Silly girl.

Adam pulled up right as we got back from our Sonic/Aunt Laura excursion and became our chauffeur for the rest of the evening and proceeded to entertain us. We ate dinner at a little local restaurant, thankfully still open!  Then we went to the grocery store for cinnamon rolls and a bottle of wine--two good things to have for another snow day, and finished up by playing a game of Bananagrams all together.   We've become the three musketeers lately!

Nothing's melting, the (non-rice) milk has gone sour and the store was out last night, too, but we're still smiling and working from home all bundled up and thankful for heaters and no power outages.  Here's to Day Three!

Just Call me Betty Crocker

This weekend, I think I'm getting things back in order from the holidays, and it feels really good.  Granted, it's the end of January, but that's ok.

This morning, I made room in our kitchen for this:

I made a chocolate-chocolate-chip cake this morning with my new mixer.  

Let me just tell you it smells divine.  

I have a few "go to" meals that I cook, and I get tired of the same old stuff.  But desserts?  I can do that.  I'm so excited about this mixer!  The book has several recipes in it, and you can make pizza dough with it, which I've made before, but not with a stand-up mixer.  I loved how effortless it was to use.  (I guess that's the point, right?)  So yes, you can just call me Betty.

Now, moving on to another domestic item...

Socks.

Terribly exciting, right?  

Last night, SMoo and I went to dinner at Pei Wei and had every intention of coming back and watching Gilmore Girls.  We got as far as the couches, and proceeded to talk until 1:30 a.m.  Claire came in around 10:30 and joined in the fun.  We covered an incredibly wide-array of topics, per usual.  It was fabulous.

If I invite you over some time, I promise I won't start folding my laundry in front of you.  But I had a basket full of clean clothes and good friends to talk to, so I made a chore into less of one, and started in on the mound of clothes.  {Clearly I'm quite comfortable around this girls.}

As I got to my socks, Claire observed that I "folded" my socks funny.  Now, I've lived with Claire and Smoo at one point or another for two years, and we've never discussed the art of sock folding.  What ensued was a sock-folding demonstration.

In the above photo, the purple socks are mine--I fold them over each other.  I threw SMoo a pair to see what she'd do, and she did this tuck-one-sock-into-another business.  That's her mom does it.  Claire does some sort of roll-then-tuck action, which is...you guessed it...how her mom does the laundry.  Oh, the things you learn! 

Hope your weekend has been one of laughter, fun and friends.  It definitely made mine sweet.