I love...
1. Sitting in a library watching leaves fall in swirls off the trees
2. Doughnut day and apple cider
3. Apple crisp and apple products
4. Pumpkin Spice Latte and any and all pumpkin products
5. Soup and stew with saltine crackers
6. Sunshine and a crisp breeze
7. Chilly rain, especially when combined with 4) and 8)
8. Wearing a sweatshirt and being just the right temperature
9. Seeing people's fall decorations--the pumpkins, scarecrows, mums, and straw
10.Cinnamon and nutmeg, especially when combined with 2), 3), or 4)
11. Thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas
Eleven! Eleven Ways! AH-AH-AH!
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
What I've Been Reading Lately
Inspired by recent related posts by Sarah at Dancing Through Life with the Downs Family and Lindsay at Bytes of Memory; I thought I'd give you...what I've been reading lately. Two posts in one month--whew! Don't get used to it. :)
- The Gospel of Mark. Reading through this one for small group; disturbed by how long it's been since I've spent any concentrated time in the Gospels. Have I forgotten who Jesus is? In some ways, of course not! In other ways, yeah. Putting my nose in here has been a good memory-jogger. Reading straight through a book like this has also reminded me of the more perplexing passages that I'd be hard-pressed to explain to others. More research required.
- www.simplycharlottemason.com. After a summer of putting it out of my mind, I've had a mini-renaissance of thinking about parenting and specifically about educating the kids. This is a cool website devoted to making a particular philosophy of education --19th century British educator Charlotte Mason's, to be precise--um, simple. My mother-in-law has the complete 6 volume set of her writings in the basement, and I've often eyeballed them curiously but not picked them up due to my experiences with other educational philosophy books a la John Dewey. Now, however, I will abscond with them at my earliest opportunity. This website offers some free e-books (read, pdf files) that really give the ideas and the methods in a nutshell. I've inhaled these over the last week or so. If you're interested, you can check them out here. (Note, while I did download, print out, and read all the others; I have not done so for "The Swedish Drill Teacher.") I am highly tempted to buy their other resources, but this will involve some saving up. What IS this educational philosophy, you ask? Oh ho ho! You'll have to go see for yourself! ;)
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Another Recipe: Chicken-Spinach White Pizza
My tastebuds delighted in this recent invention. I hope you enjoy it too.
Chicken-Spinach White Pizza
Toppings:
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 chicken breast, cut into 1/2" pieces
1/2 red onion, sliced
2-3 large handfuls (maybe 5 oz?) fresh spinach
White sauce:
1 cup boiling water, more as needed
8 oz cream cheese, more as needed
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, more as needed
Dough for 1 pizza, or premade pizza crust
In a large skillet, saute the chicken and onion in oil over medium heat until chicken is cooked through and onion is quite soft. Add spinach and cook, stirring frequently, until spinach starts to wilt--probably less than a minute. Remove skillet from heat and remove chicken mixture to a separate bowl.
Return the skillet to the heat and add the cup of boiling water, scraping the brown crusties from the chicken and onions off the bottom of the skillet with a flat-sided spatula (a wooden one works great). Add in the cream cheese and stir to dissolve it in the water. Turn the heat down to low, and add in the Parmesan cheese--stirring to melt it in. As this cooks down into a semi-smooth sauce, add more water to make it thinner, more cream cheese to make it thicker, or if you feel like you need more sauce than that. (*Confession--I did not measure any of this stuff; I'm just guessing on amounts)
Spread cream cheese sauce on prepared dough, put on chicken-onion-spinach mixture as the topping. Bake at whatever temperature and time is appropriate for your pizza dough, until dough is cooked and chicken/onions/sauce are hot! (My dough recipe calls for prebaking just the dough for about 10 minutes at 425 degrees, then adding the toppings and baking another 10-15 minutes or so.)
Chicken-Spinach White Pizza
Toppings:
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 chicken breast, cut into 1/2" pieces
1/2 red onion, sliced
2-3 large handfuls (maybe 5 oz?) fresh spinach
White sauce:
1 cup boiling water, more as needed
8 oz cream cheese, more as needed
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, more as needed
Dough for 1 pizza, or premade pizza crust
In a large skillet, saute the chicken and onion in oil over medium heat until chicken is cooked through and onion is quite soft. Add spinach and cook, stirring frequently, until spinach starts to wilt--probably less than a minute. Remove skillet from heat and remove chicken mixture to a separate bowl.
Return the skillet to the heat and add the cup of boiling water, scraping the brown crusties from the chicken and onions off the bottom of the skillet with a flat-sided spatula (a wooden one works great). Add in the cream cheese and stir to dissolve it in the water. Turn the heat down to low, and add in the Parmesan cheese--stirring to melt it in. As this cooks down into a semi-smooth sauce, add more water to make it thinner, more cream cheese to make it thicker, or if you feel like you need more sauce than that. (*Confession--I did not measure any of this stuff; I'm just guessing on amounts)
Spread cream cheese sauce on prepared dough, put on chicken-onion-spinach mixture as the topping. Bake at whatever temperature and time is appropriate for your pizza dough, until dough is cooked and chicken/onions/sauce are hot! (My dough recipe calls for prebaking just the dough for about 10 minutes at 425 degrees, then adding the toppings and baking another 10-15 minutes or so.)
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