Super Easy Dinner

I eat with my eyes first. so if a recipe doesn't have a picture, I have a hard time being sold on it! So for those of you who are like me, here is a picture of our dinner tonight. After I took this picture, it was GONE!

Ever wonder what to do with left over cooked spaghetti? Here it is...one of the tastiest, SIMPLEST, budget friendly meals.

Chicken Tetrazzini

Ingredients:

1 pound cooked spaghetti

5 chicken breast, cooked and cubed (shredded rotisserie works well, too)

2 small cans cream of chicken soup

2 1/4 cup water (I use a mix of milk or heavy whipping cream...whatever you have)

1/4 cup butter

2 bouillon cubes

1/4 cup shredded cheese (I ALWAYS put in more cheese...everything is better with more cheese)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Spray 9x13 baking dish. Put cooked spaghetti on the bottom. Then put the chicken on top of the spaghetti.

2. In medium saucepan, heat together soup, water (milk), butter, and bouillon. Bring to a boil. I add a little cheese into this..about 1/4 cup. I also like to put fresh cracked pepper in, also. Bring just to a boil and pour over the chicken and pasta. Put remaining cheese on top and press down just a bit.

3. Bake at 350 for about 25-30 minutes.

I just ADORE this baby!

If you know of a baby contest/open call/baby model.....just let me know because THIS kid would take it.. HANDS DOWN!

we're A-W-E we're S-O-M-E

We're AWESOME! We're AWESOME! Like to-ta-lly!


Avery has LOVED cheerleading. Its helps that Shanda is her coach. The first practice, she was a little iffy....but she has come out of her shell. She is front and center and yells her little cheers like a seasoned pro!

Flag Football

Duce is # 84, wearing the green shorts with a white stripe. Jett is # 62, wearing green shorts, too.

The boys are in flag football this year. The city puts it on and it is pretty low key. There are only 2 flag football teams, so we will just play them over and over again. Shanda is the cheer coach for the girls so Avery just had to do it! The games are fun to watch....a bunch of little kids chasing whoever has the ball (whether its their team or not) Duce is one of the biggest kids on the team. I didn't want him to do tackle yet. Maybe next year. Jett is quick, but easily distracted.

Jett is already chasing skirts! When the game was over, he came running over to us....and kept on going...right over to the cheerleaders. I guess there was a girl he knew from school.

HOW DO YOU LIKE THEM APPLES?

Shanda SLAVING away over the apples.....Avery was our apple tester


Jo was a helpful tester, too. The best part was picking the apples...all the kids got in on the action. too.

Our apple tree has given us such an amazing harvest so Shanda and I decided to can it! I've never done canning without my mom, so this was venturing beyond my comfort zone....but I had Shanda...so I knew we could do it!

We managed to get three laundry baskets worth of apples....and there are still more on the tree that aren't quite ready. We did LOTS of peeling, coring and slicing. Everyone got involved....even go-dad! He was a peeling machine!

With all these apple peelings and cores, I didn't want to just waste it. Dad said, "You're mother would be thinking of ways to boil this down" To which I replied, "That's exactly was I was thinking." I'm turning more and more into my mom...which is NOT a bad thing. As it began to boil down, Shanda casually said that she loved the smell of the boiling apple carcasses! (there is always a chicken carcass boiling away on my mom's stove)

Instead of using water to cook the apples, we used the juices from the apple "carcasses".

Using a hand blender, we pureed the cooked apples, which is what we used in making the apple butter and apple jam.

This is the TASTY applesauce! Duce LOVED it!

This is the juice that we ended up with after cooking the apples. We used this in all of the canning....for the apple butter, the apple jam and the apple pie filling. There was even enough left for drinking....the kids all loved the fresh sweet taste!

This is the finished apple pie filling!

This is the apple jam. Its a little runny. I didn't follow the recipe to a tee and I ran out of pectin....but it also is DELICIOUS as a syrup. I made french toast for breakfast and we used this on it and everyone LOVED it!

We bought teeny jars for the apple butter (did you know apple butter actually doesn't have any butter in it at all) It is the perfect size fore giving away as gifts. Next time we make this, I think I will experiment with using butter so it has more of a buttery flavor....think honey butter...just with apples instead of honey.