CHAOS & CRAZINESS

Good morning to you my lovely lads and lasses! How are you this blissfully beautiful day? I am doing alright… a touch of fatigue and a lot of pain makes for an interesting morning! BUT… two of the kids are off to school YAY…which puts me in a good mood! My baby is very sick so he is home and I am keeping a close watch on him. He was up most of Saturday night since about 1am, so I was up with him all night. Then I cooked!

Ok, so yesterday I continued part 2 of the Weekend Cooking marathon! Check out this large amount of craziness!



I started the day by making pink pancakes for breakfast, but Alex wanted no part of those so I made him some normal buttermilk pancakes. I mixed up extra batter and made extras to freeze for him before school days so he would have a warm breakfast too! LOL I have requests now to make different color pancakes for each holiday LOL! They want purple this week too for Mardi Gras… Green for St. Patty’s Day, R/W/Blue for 4th of July, etc. They are CRAZY! I’m sorry but I’m not sure if I could do GREEN pancakes LMAO!



I got 4 packs of 3 small pancakes and 1 pack of 4 larger ones. Boom- in the freezer! Hey if Eggo can do it, so can I, right? LMAO



Then, I dug through the lovely deep freezer in the kitchen and found more cutlets YAY! So I made more CFS soup! YUMMMYYYYY! My DD and I had 2 BIG bowls for lunch and made ourselves sick… and VERY sleepy LMAO! I also made MORE Mulligatawny Soup that everyone was raving over… and pulled out more foods to make more TV dinners; sausage, ribs, etc.



I made Pricky Pear Cactus ribs for dinner. They didn’t last long enough to take a picture of them completed! So here they are marinating.



I also made mesquite BBQ ribs. I paired them all with roasted baby reds and garlic mashed potatoes and roasted baby carrots with a molasses and brown sugar glaze.



And, of course, I made the buffalo steaks for my hubby for his V-day dinner. He got the carrots and potatoes too!

I had to come to a brief stop cause the DS14 started running a fever and coughing and stuff, so I had to be nurse mommy. I get real nervous when he gets sick because of his medical history with the meningitis and autism and such. I gave him an Ibuprofen and some cough syrup and put a cool rag on his head until his fever broke. Then I maintained a vigil all night on him. So that makes the 2nd night without sleep, but its ok, cause I couldn’t sleep even if I tried! I worry too much.



For those of you who don’t know, he had a cold and ear infection when he was 10 months old. The pneumonia germ got into his spinal fluid through the ear infection and he got VERY ill. I took him to the ER and he was diagnosed with Spinal Meningits. He had a serious seizure and during that he had 2 strokes. It resulted in brain damage and they suspect the scar tissue on the brain is the reason behind his autism. But it is too deeply in his brain to even try to operate. Ever since then I am a nervous wreck when he gets sick… especially in the fall and winter months because that’s when it happened! I know its silly, after 13 years to be so scared, but it was a major stresser and I blamed myself for years… that maybe had I just caught it earlier, etc. So yea, I go overprotective overboard LOL! And we have become self-educated about Autism and big activists as well.

My legs are really paying for 2 days of cooking, so I don’t think my body minded that I had to stop cooking. Today is going to be sit-on-my-butt-and-take-a-break-day! I’m gonna declutter my desk and sort through a couple of boxes. I’m gonna sit at the table and work on finishing the started scrapbook pages for my DD and then maybe start some more. So like I said… its sit-on-my-butt day LOL! Of course I will be taking care of the DS too, so I won’t totally be on my hind end LOL! So there isn’t too much to share as far as crafts, etc. I (if my legs can handle it) need to finish up with my cooking cause I still have a few things left to use up for this round. But I do have a very interesting recipe I would like to share with you today… its for a side dish and it’s from The $5 Dinner Mom’s email… it’s a great recipe and I think you will enjoy it… especially if you like Rosemary (like she does and I do as well!)



Roasted Red Potato Salad
(Courtesy of Erin Chase & $5 Dinners.Com)

Ingredients

13 small red potatoes, diced
3 sprigs of rosemary
Salt and pepper
Drizzles of olive oil
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup milk
1-2 Tbsp Dijon mustard

Directions

1. Dice the red potatoes.

2. Using your fingers, pull off the rosemary leaves by sliding and pinching your fingers down the sprig. Chop the rosemary leaves.

3. Add the diced potatoes to a baking dish. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and some of the chopped rosemary. (You’ll need more rosemary for the sauce.) Drizzle some olive oil over the top. Toss in the baking dish.

4. Roast the potatoes at 400 for 25-35 minutes, or until softened.

5. In a small bowl, add the mayonnaise, milk, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper.

6. Whisk and then add the remaining chopped rosemary leaves. Mix in the rosemary.

7. Pour the sauce over the roasted potatoes.

8. Toss the sauce with the potatoes.

9. Serve Roasted Red Potato Salad warm…or chill for at least 2 hours and serve cold.

If you haven’t checked out $5 Dinners, I highly recommend it! Erin Chase has lots of great recipes, articles, etc. I get the email newsletter and she does a great job! She just put out a recipe book that I hope to get soon. I wish I could get it today as she is doing a book signing in Houston tonight at the Downtown Library from 6-8pm! I would love to meet her! As for me, well I think I’m gonna get off here and check on the boy. If all goes well, then I’ll hopefully get him to eat a little something and then we can watch some cartoons and do some scrapbooking! You take care and stay warm today! Until tomorrow… HUGS!