No Knead Bread

I have a no knead bread recipe where you bake the bread in a coffee can. I enjoy making it, but the bread is a little on the heavier, spongier side for bread. Sam at Becks and Posh just posted her favs for 2006, and this recipe for bread was one of them. I found this terrific five minute New York Times video that has the author of the above recipe, Jim Lahey (owner of Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhatten's Hell's Kitchen) showing how to prepare this very recipe. The video segment is hosted by Mark Bittman, who is huge with foodies. Update (1/4/07): Here are the "fine tune" tips Bittman wrote to help with the recipe.

Spaetzle

Tried the goulash. Kids don't like goulash. I think it's the complex flavors. Little kids don't really care for a lot of flavors. That's why they like Kraft Macaroni over really good homemade Macaroni and Cheese made with three different cheeses and nutmeg and eggs and evaporated milk. Baby did like the spaetzle plain and dry. Tae just liked the carrots. Jax didn't much care for any of it; although he did eat some spaetzle. I may try to modify goulash so it is simple so the boys might like it.

The spaetzle- I love making spaetzle. I whisked together 4 extra large eggs and 1 1/2 cups milk. Then I added 4 cups of flour and 2 tsp of salt and mixed it all together with a wooden spoon. I spread several scoops of the thick "batter" on a cutting board. Then I used this to scrape small sections of batter into boiling water (you'll dip the edge of the scraper in the boiling water, and the noodle will fall right off). After all the spaetzle floated to the top, I used a mesh scoop to fish out all the spaetzle and put it in ice water. There was enough batter to make five batches. My guess is that just as crepes are best really, really thin, spaetzle pros probably pride themselves on really thin spaetzle. That Graham Kerr Bash n Chop made it easy.

So thumbs up on the spaetzle- thumbs down on the goulash.

The picture above is my rendition of goulash next to a glass of "the Little Penguin" shiraz which is a pretty darn good cheap Australian red wine. I liked it better than the Llano Estacado cabernet we got. I think the next time I try making goulash I won't use balsamic vinegar and I'll tone down the spices. BTW "the Little Penguin" wines would make good Christmas gifts. The cork has little penguin "footprints" on it. Too cute!

Ghoulash

I was readling my bloglines and got inspired by this post to make goulash. When researching goulash, I found it is a very different dish for different people. When Puddleglum makes his mother's goulash, it is really a baked pasta dish with shells, tomato paste, ground beef, and cheese, and it is flavored with Lowrey's. My guess is that it was Puddleglum's mom's fall back dish when there wasn't much to make, and she just called it "goulash". When I think of goulash, this picture to the left is what I imagine.

Elise from Simply Recipes had fluffy dumplings with her goulash, but I decided to make Spaetzle instead. Click this link to see one way to make spaetzle, and click this next link to see a video of two German guys making spaetzle. The show in the video below also shows how to braise veal and lamb as well as how to make spaetzle, and I am going to use some of the techniques on the video to make my goulash. It's a 28 minute video, but you can move the arrow to fast forward to get to the good parts. I hope the goulash turns out, and I hope the boys like it.

This video is kind of funny because at certain parts there is some tension between the two hosts, and it's easy to think in SNL mode and come up with some funny things the younger guy is thinking. If this video were an SNL skit, then they would wind up in an insult match toward the end that results in a brawl.

Snow Day!

I left early to get to work on time, and the roads were a mess. It was dangerous in spots. The schools were running 2 hours late. I called Puddleglum and told him to keep the boys home. We have to drive across town for both boys' school, and it would have taken over an hour to deliver both boys. Then when I got to work, it was so slow, I got to come home early. I stopped by the store and picked up some things. When I got home Puddleglum had made a nice fire, and we played and roasted hot dogs and made smores.

Before dinner we all had another round of playing in the snow while our chicken and dumplins cooked. Then we came inside and took off all the wet snow gear and had hot chicken and dumplins. After hot baths, all three boys are now in bed!
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Mama's Homemade Chicken and Dumplings

(Takes as little as an hour and a half or you could start it earlier when Baby is napping and cook on low. If you take the chicken out in the morning and put in the black stock pot with hot water, it will thaw by just after lunchtime).

Rinse one of Alan's organic whole chickens and put in red soup pot breast up. Fill with RO water until just about 2 inches of the tip of the chicken is sticking out (you don't want the pot too full so it won't boil over). Add sea salt, parsley, white pepper, and three bay leaves and bring to a boil.

Put about 2 TBSP butter in the big copper saute pan. Add about 1/2 an onion chopped and 1 or 2 chopped celery stalks (cut stock in thirds lengthwise and then chop) and 1 or 2 carrots chopped. (You could also add chopped turnip and even some garlic cloves). Sweat the veggies, then add to soup pot.

After everything comes to a good boil, lower heat to low and put cover on. You can cook on low for a few hours or keep the temp about med low at a low boil and cook for about an hour.

Remove chicken from pot and put in the copper saute pan to cool. Use a soup ladle to ladle out as much of the yellow chicken fat at the top of the soup pot while not wasting good broth. Find the bay leaves and remove. Take the mesh strainer and scoop out as much of the onion as you can (little kids don't like too much onion in their soup and you already got all the good flavor of the onion out). You could strain out some of the celery, but never remove and carrot because the boys will eat that.

When the chicken has cooled enough to handle, remove the skin and start getting your chicken meat. Tear into small pieces and add to the soup pot. After you've removed all the good meat (paying attention to get as much of the good dark meat), give Sasha the skin and any yucky or tough pieces of meat and pour the skimmed chicken fat over all of it for her.

Make Quick Dumplins
2 c. flour
2 tsp baking powder
2/3 c. milk (gently warmed in microwave)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter

Combine and cut in butter. Roll out on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut in 1 inch long strips. Then crosswise into about 2 inch strips.

Add one small container of organic chicken broth to the soup pot and bring to a boil. (If you are just doing soup without dumplings, add a can of corn, and make a pot of rice). If you have it, squeeze the juice of one lime into the soup pot (but no more than one- maybe even just half). Salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil. Add your chicken and reduce heat to low. Put cover on soup pot. After a few minutes, add your dumplings. Cover the pot again so the dumplings will steam and get fluffy, and cook on low heat until the dumplings are cooked through.

If you are doing Chicken Noodle Soup, add half of a 1 lb bag of egg noodles before you add your chicken. Boil for 10 minutes until the noodles are soft.

Tuna Fish

I was looking at some old photos, and I saw these. Tae and Jax were probably both four or so at the time. I was trying to document some family recipes for a homemade cookbook (that never got made), and I wanted to include my recipe for Tuna Salad. This is a recipe I have come up with myself. I think it makes tuna yummy. You chop a couple of dill pickles, a couple of carrots, a fourth of an onion or so. Mix in tuna, mayo, a shot of pickle juice, a couple of big dashes of dried parsley, and salt and pepper to taste. The tuna in this picture is Chicken of the Sea albacore, but albacore has a higher mercury content than smaller tuna. We have switched to Tongal tuna over Chicken of the Sea because Tongal tuna is wild caught while I believe Chicken of the Sea is farmed, and farmed tuna has much more mercury than wild caught. You must toast the bread for these sandwiches. Serve with good chips. My tuna salad is in the same class of food as my favorite childhood sandwich- sliced dill pickle rounds and bologna with mayo. Aren't the boys so cute in this shot?!

Beignets

Puddleglum has been wanting to make beignets for a while now. This morning he got everything together and started before I even got out of bed. He used this recipe from cooksrecipes.com, and the beignets turned out well. They were very light and not too sweet. One batch is the perfect amount for all five of us, but I imagine it won't be too long before we'll have to make two batches.

We're not going to Sunday School. We haven't been going to Sunday School in a while. I guess we're heathens that way. We're usually just glad to make it to church on time. I often wonder how other people seem to always have it together. Probably because they don't have a blog...

Puddleglum made a big pot of coffee, and the beignets were so good. We don't have chicory coffee, but what we have was fine. I guess I could have made cafe au lait, but I like my coffee black, and any saved calories is a good thing. I've gained two pounds in the last week. Tae is my little running/workout buddy, and he really enjoys our runs. I have been lazy the last couple of weeks, and I am off my game. I need to get back in there.

I have my makeup done, but I better go get ready for church. Jon has picked out a very interesting ensemble. He picked out a dark blue t-shirt with yellow trim. He has a matching clip on tie, and a red cardigan on top. Puddleglum has just informed me we have to leave in 15 minutes. Gotta run!!!

Rainy Sunday Morning

This morning as we were making the muffins, I kept admiring the view from our window. I know it doesn't look like much, but where we live this is as good as it gets. This picture doesn't make it look as pretty as it really is. This is the east horizon, so atleast we can watch the sunrise most mornings, even if our neighbor's brick wall is always in sight. From the street you can't see the horizon, but our house sits on a ridge so we can see above it. When the appraisal district tried to raise our appraisal value, we fought it so our taxes wouldn't go up. Puddleglum took a picture of the brick wall from the street level. The amount that they wanted to raise our home value to was ridiculous, but the photo of the wall along with a well-written letter got them to keep the value where it was before they raised it.

This week we're getting some warmer weather. I like the warm weather, but I am ready for more mornings like this. I like it when it is foggy out in our little "valley" or when it's covered in a blanket of snow. We never get blizzards, but we do get a couple of good snows every year. I am looking forward to making hot chocolate for the boys and snuggling up to a fire with Puddleglum.

Pumpkin Muffins

This morning we were trying to decide if we should make waffles or pancakes. Then I suggested we have pumpkin pancakes with the other half of the pumpkin that we used for the soup last night. Tae made a face at that. Puddleglum pulled out his favorite cookbook and asked, "how about muffins?" That sounded good.

We started with a basic muffin recipe;
1 3/4 cup flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 beaten egg
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup cooking oil

The recipe calls for 1/3 cup of sugar, but we substituted 3 Splenda packets and about 1/2 tablespoon sugar. To make pumpkin muffins the cookbook recommended 1/2 cup canned pumpkin and 1/4 cup chopped pecans. I decided that we should use 1 full cup pumpkin puree and 1/2 cup chopped pecans. We also added cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger. This made 12 muffins.

The recipe says not to put the batter in paper muffin cups, but rather you should lightly grease your muffin pan and pour the butter directly into the pan. You bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. With our oven, 17 to 18 minutes would have been enough. They were really good, but I think they needed to be just a tad sweeter. They would have been really good with the recipe as we made them, but with a generous sprinkling of brown sugar on top. We'll do that next time. The boys liked them except that Tae picked out all the pecans and gave them to me. He choose his own clothes for church. I thought he did a good job.

Pumpkin Soup

Yesterday Puddleglum and I baked one of the pumpkins we bought with the boys at the pumpkin patch. It was a medium large pumpkin. We cut it into quarters and baked it in a 350 degree oven for about an hour. Then we turned off the heat, and we went to the park by our house. It is a small park that is usually pretty empty of people. It has an inline hockey court, a tennis court, a basketball court, a volleyball court, an area for baseball, a covered area with picnic tables and a nearby grill, and a small playground. It is right next to a cotton field. Puddleglum brought his roller blades and his hockey stick, and the boys brought their skates. Baby had his three wheel scooter. A few years back (before I got pregnant with Baby) I bought a pair of roller blades on sale at Target for $10. They are well-made, good skates. Then I got pregnant and couldn't use them, and then I was too big to use them. I got them out of the box, and I had so much fun with them and the boys. Puddleglum and I couple skated around the rink while we sang "Once. Twice. Three times a lady..." It was just like those old roller rink days of the late 70's/early 80's. The boys had their hockey sticks and played around. It was fun! Then we went to get ice-cream. I wasn't going to get any, but when Puddleglum asked them to put coffee ice-cream in his sundae, that sounded so good. So I had one scoop of coffee ice-cream in a cup. It was dee-li-shus.

When we got back to the house, I took the pumpkin out of the oven. Puddleglum and I peeled off the skin. Then I got the idea that we should have pumpkin soup. I put 3/4 stick of organic salted butter in our ceramic soup pot (a Le Creuset knock off that is pretty good). Then I put in 1/2 a large yellow onion chopped. When the onion was very soft, I added one 32 ounce carton of Pacific Foods organic chicken broth. When that came to a low boil, I turned down the heat and pureed it all with a hand blender. I had to keep checking the consistency with a metal spoon to make sure the onion was fully pureed. Then I put half of the baked pumpkin in the pot. I used the hand blender again to puree it all together. I used the high speed after it was all mixed. You want it to be very smooth. At this point I wanted to put in some brown sugar, but we were out. So I put maybe 1/2 tablespoon of black strap molasses (not too much). Then I stirred that up. It was very thick at this point. 1/2 a medium large pumpkin is actually A LOT of pumpkin puree- like maybe four cups atleast. I added milk until it had the consistency of a thick and hearty soup. I added maybe 1/4 cup of organic maple syrup, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, and a dash of sea salt. This made enough soup to feed about 12 people! I had one I Love Lucy moment when the soup started to boil, and it was so thick a big bubble made some of the soup splatter the back splash and me.

When I served it to the boys, I added more milk. For mine I added some tumeric and curry powder. It was so good but also really rich. I could only eat one bowl. I had a bowl after church today, and it is even better the next day! Baby liked it so much, he decided the spoon was too slow.

Another Cool Cooking Site

Back in January I wrote a post that linked to a neat Norwegian website where you can watch videos of them cooking different dishes. I like the videos because they are quick and to the point. I found an Italian website with similar videos. They are narrated in English and maybe a minute each. The narrator has a pleasant Italian accent. Here is the link http://english.incucina.tv/ and you just click on the video recipes page. All the measurements are European and some of the ingredients are a guess, but atleast it would give you an idea, and I always like to learn better technique.

Real Men Make Quiche

Here is a photo of the quiche that Puddleglum has made. Puddleglum has perfected some dishes, and quiche is one of them. To save time he uses Pillsbury's pre-made pie crust that is in the refrigerated section. You just unroll it and put it in the pie plate. It is very good, flaky crust. He will use leftovers or frozen or fresh veggies, so it's different every time.

Healthy Breakfast

Puddleglum has been a gourmet this week. This week he served delicious baked chicken with rice, chili and cornbread (Puddleglum doctored some organic turkey chili with butter beans, red beans, and corn, and he put fresh grated parmesan on top), homemade pizza (everyone got to make their own pizza and the boys all loved smoked oysters on theirs except Baby who ate them off his pizza before it could get baked), our version of taco salad (fried tortilla bowl filled with rice, seasoned ground beef, lettuce, tomatoe, black olives, cilantro, avocado slices, cheese, sour cream, and salsa), and last night he made pulgogi. It was funny. A couple of weeks ago he went to the Korean market to buy ingredients for pulgogi marinade, and the owner said, "why don't you just use this? This is what we use." He uses a commercially prepared marinade. It is delicious. Reminds me of back when Puddleglum and I used to make our own homemade mole sauce (pronounce m0e-le not mole). It's a Mexican sauce that is a true process to make made with ground nuts, Mexican chocolate, and dried chilis (which are roasted, and then reconstituted, and then pureed). When I was talking to my friend, Juana, who grew up in Mexico, about it, she said, "Why don't you just buy it in a jar and add a little peanut butter. That's what I do." That's what we've been doing ever since. Simplify. Right?

This morning Puddleglum made pancakes with homemade strawberry sauce made from fresh strawberries, and he served it with fresh peach and kiwi slices. It's hard to stay low carb around here, but I only ate one bite. I am sticking with my low carb breakfast and a hot cup of coffee this morning. It's not bad. I cut a pita in half, then stick each half in the toaster. I drizzle in a bit of olive oil and put a fried egg in each. Eat it while it's hot. It grosses Puddlegum out that I like the yolk runny. To each his own.

Before and After Kitchen

Puddleglum is very handy when it comes to home remodeling. He built a wall around the opening to the basement because the rod iron railing around it was not safe for little kids. He just knew how to do it, and I was amazed. Here is what he did with our dining room and kitchen. The "Before" picture is one that we took when we were deciding on whether or not this was the right house for us. It definitely is.

Shish Kabob and Scorpions

I never make shish kabob, but Puddleglum does, and he does a great job with it. Sometimes he uses pearl onions, green peppers, cherry tomatoes and beef. Other times he has used chicken and tried different combinations. Here is a picture of his latest creation. He used large sea scallops, shrimp, pineapple, and maraschino cherries. Yum. He served it with rice and tater tots. Not what I would have chosen, but if you have little kids, it's a good choice. For future reference the only thing that would have made it better would be to go ahead and use onions too. Pearl onions would be good, or even squares of red onion or 10-15s would be yummy.

Also, I wanted to mention that I got stung by a scorpion Thursday night. I was wearing short pjs, and I jumped into bed. The next thing I knew I felt something like glass tearing into my skin on the front left side of my upper left thigh. I quickly jumped out of bed knowing something had got me and brushed around the area. Not seeing anything on me I pulled back the sheets, and there it was. It was one of the biggest ones we've seen. I yelled for Puddleglum. He was my hero. He grabbed my little pink house slipper and killed it. We were thankful to God because Baby had been in our bed earlier in the day watching a video.

The sting wasn't that bad. Puddleglum said that I probably was on top of it, and it didn't have a chance to grab a hold of me with it's pinchers. Again, thank God because then it could have been very bad. Speaking of scorpions, I'd like to remember one of my old favorite bands, the Scorpions. Wind of Change is a classic.

German Sausage Dinner

I made sausage with fried potatoes and red cabbage. Not low cal, but it sounded good. Puddleglm was going to make mashed potatoes for the barbeque chicken yesterday, but he would up making spanish rice and refried beans. He had already boiled the potatoes, so I told him I'd make fried potatoes today. I decided that a German meal would be good. The red cabbage recipe I used is at Allrecipes.com. It has apples in it. I added more vinegar than the recipe called for and less sugar. Some of the reviews recommended that, and they were right. The recipe says 8 cups of cabbage, and that is one medium cabbage. I don't know why they didn't just say one medium cabbage. I used three apples instead of two, and I used brown sugar and apple cider vinegar instead of white sugar and white vinegar. For dessert we had strawberry shortcake. Of course we used real whipping cream. Ever since I found out what Cool Whip was made of (Mom's favorite), I can't eat it. Baby ate all his strawberries and some of mine, but he didn't care for the yellow cake. Tae and Jax loved it.

Mouse, Boad, Pog

I think Baby grew an inch taller while I was playing with him in the backyard. It's like he is growing up in front of my eyes.

Tonight was one of those magical nights. Tae and Jax were inside playing some games on Yahooligans, and Puddleglum was mowing the lawn. Baby let me rock him in the glider rocker while I sang to him. I like to do that or hold him on the swing with him facing me laying his head against my chest and sing to him. He is so still and quiet when I do that. The birds were singing as they were beginning to roost. Then he wanted to go play. The sky was turning pink and orange, and I walked to the top of the ridge in our yard and sat down. Baby sat beside me. It was so peaceful. The grass is so soft in that part of the yard. I said, "let's roll!" So I held him and rolled down the ridge. He loved it. He was giggling so hard. I ran inside to get the camera and had Puddleglum stop mowing to take a shot.


Baby is talking more and more. He says "Dance Party" (his favorite Wiggles video- he LOVES the Wiggles). When I was giving him a bath tonight, I named outloud the objects I gave him; Micky Mouse, boat, and a frog. He started playing, then he stopped. He grabbed Micky and held him up to me. "Mouse". Then he picked up the boat. "Boad". Then he picked up the frog. "Pog". After a minute or two, he held up Micky and said "mouse" again. Then he threw him out of the tub. I guess Baby is not a Micky Mouse fan. He played with the frog and the boat. There was a dinosaur on the counter, so I gave that to him. I said, "dinosaur". Baby held it up and went, "Grrrr! Didodo!" He played happily with the boat, the frog, and the "didodo". I thought about what a boy he is. When I wrapped him in his towel, he got a playful look in his eye and said, "bye Bath", and waved to the bathtub.

Oh, another cute thing is that he can say five now, except he says, "pive". He asked me to give him five (high five) about ten times tonight. He tried to count sing songy, "piiive. twoooo." (those are the only two numbers he knows). He can name body parts too. When the Wiggles sing that song Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes, Baby can point to everything especially when they get to the part that goes eyes and ears and mouth and nose. It's cute.

Puddleglum got Baby's pjs on him, and they played with a "bouncy ball" (as Baby calls them). He would not part with it. And so, here he is as he fell asleep with his bouncy ball. Oh, kids are hard work, but these are the moments I need to remember!

Moon Tae Sung 's Birthday 4-3-99

We gave Tae a birthday party at the science museum in town. It was terrific. The bakery didn't make the Korean flag just right, but we'll forgive them. We decided to only invite his class, but we did invite the entire class. There were two young women from the museum who helped with the party, and they did everything. They did a demontration about liquid nitrogen that ended with making ice cream. It was the best time. This party and Jax's second birthday party are both in the Party Hall of Fame. We may do another party in a month with friends outside of his school for a "Gotcha" party or what we might call a "Home At Last" party. His actual gotcha day is 4-30-03, but we got home to the U.S. 5-1-03.

Korean Mother Sauces

I found a blog written by an American living in S. Korea called Zenkimchi. It is a food blog, but there is also information about the ins and outs of living in Korea without being able to speak fluent Korean. The latest post is about the three basic "bases" in Korean cooking, toenjang (soybean paste), koch' ujang (red pepper paste), and kangjang (soysauce). On a previous post he shows how to make kelp stock or dashi (also called sun dried anchovy stock- so that's why Mom always had packages of dried fish!) which is one of the two stocks used in Korean cooking (the other being White Beef Stock). He uses photos so it's easy to follow how to do it. He links to another blog called Ya Rayi Our Rai that has a more indepth article about the three Mother Sauces and the two basic stocks used in Korean cooking. If I ever am able to really get into cooking, I'd like to become good at cooking Korean food.

Paella Soup

When I showed Jax how the clams protect themselves by closing their shells tightly when I tapped on them, Jax spoke to the clams. "Don't worry. We won't hurt you. We're Christians." I explained to him that we were going put the clams in the soup and eat them. I was afraid that he would be bothered by this. We had a talk about how God made animals for us to eat. He enjoyed the clams as much as the rest of us.

My favorite part of the soup was the andoille sausage. I enjoyed the flavor of the broth, and I think it wouldn't have tasted as good without everything in it, but I would have been happy with just the sausage. I used 1/2 pound of sea scallops (because Puddleglum likes big scallops), 1/2 pound of bay scallops, one pound of clams, one pound of shrimp, four chicken tenderloins, and a full 12oz package of andoille sausage. I considered buying the saffron, but I figured my boys did not have palates sophisticated enough to justify the $12 for the teeny bit of saffron. I put in paprika and curry powder to give it some color, so really we didn't have paella soup. It was a seafood curry soup, but it was very good. In all the ingredients cost me $35, but it would have cost more for this much seafood at a restaurant. I don't think I will make this a lot because it isn't very budget conscious, but it was delicious for a special meal. For future reference, the red 5qt stock pot isn't big enough. Use the 8qt copper pot. Also, as unculinary as this sounds, I substituted peach flavored white grape juice for the white wine. Like I said, it was delicious...so back off.

Spring Break

I showed a schedule to Auntie Puddleglum, who was here for the weekend, and she called the schedule our Spring Break Survival Plan. If we don't do planned activities like this, the boys make us crazy. The idea isn't necessarily to stick to the schedule to the minute (although sometimes that is a good idea). I didn't finish out the week. We'll play by ear. Every day will have a theme. I used the schedule as my shopping list when I went to the grocery store Sunday with Auntie Puddleglum. When I got home yesterday (Monday) from the office, the boys were excited about having had "Space Day" with Puddleglum. I don't know that "Nature Day" was as exciting, but I think they had a good time.

For lunch today the salad was a huge success. I bought that Butter Lettuce that comes with the roots still attached to show the boys. We had a salad bar with beets, black olives, baby gerkins, sliced egg, real bacon, cherry tomatoes, pecans, black eyed peas, and cucumber (Baby ate all the avocado yesterday). Jax wanted everything except egg. Tae wanted everything except the black eyed peas, pecans, and cucumber. Baby mainly ate the olives and the egg. Of course, being that we're Texans, we had Ranch dressing.

The boys loved the snack. I put Oreos in a ziploc bag, and the boys beat them with spoons. We poured the "dirt" onto Vanilla Bean ice-cream, and I let the boys arrange the gummy worms on top.


Baby is taking his nap and the boys are having free play. I may update this post with a picture of the cellophane noodle beef soup if I have time. I hope it turns out yummy.

Quick Flan

Speaking of flan... Don't start cracking the eggs and separating the yolks out. Don't make a hot water bath for your custard cups. Don't start making your own caramel. Just go to the Mexican section at the grocery store and buy some Con-Gelli. It comes with a package of caramel to squeeze into your custard cups, and all you do is bring four cups of milk to a slow boil and mix in the packet. It's just as good as the stuff I used to serve at Vargo's (Houston). Having two six year olds, a one and a half year old, and a thirty seven year old (all boys) to take care of, any time savers are appreciated. Add some raspberries and a small sprig of mint, and you have something special. I think Jax would have liked it, but he heard me tell Puddleglum, "Mmm. This reminds me of that egg custard pie at House of Pies that I used to get all the time." Then Jax took a few bites and said, "it tastes like eggs." Then he wouldn't eat any more. I guess for him, eggs and dessert don't mix.

First Photo Together

Here is the first picture of my two oldest babies taken together at AMSA in Seoul, South Korea in late April 2003.

Puddleglum's Pooch

This morning the boys were concerned about our dog. We love her. I tell the boys she is the only other girl in the family. We've had her for 7 1/2 years. We rescued her from the local dog pound, so we don't know exactly how old she is. She is probably almost ten years old. She is such a good dog with the boys. I am so thankful for her. Anyway, she doesn't seem herself this morning. Tae asked if we could pray for her. So we put our hands together, and Tae said a little prayer.

Sweet Corn Chowder with Shrimp and Red Peppers

I love this soup. It's called Sweet Corn Chowder with Shrimp and Red Peppers. Tae ate two and a half bowls. Puddleglum ate two large bowlfulls. Jax ate maybe three or four bites (but he did eat all of this shrimp). Baby made a pretty good dent in his bowl. I had Puddleglum pick up some hot French bread again on his way home from the office. It's not the best French bread in the history of bakeries, but atleast it's fresh. Remember Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days to stay home and Puddleglum's days to work. I work Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Here are the ingredients;

2 TBS olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 large potato, peeled and diced
1 whole bay leaf
1/2 tsp dried marjoram, crumbled
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
2 cups chicken stock or broth
1 can (17oz) cream style corn
1 can (17oz) sweet corn
2 cups milk
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 jar (7oz) roasted red peppers, thinly sliced
1 lb large shrimp, shelled and deveined
"Sweat" the onion in the olive oil. Add the potato, bay leaf, marjoram, nutmeg, and chicken stock and bring to a boil. Lower heat and cover. Keep at a gentle boil for ten minutes or until the pototo is just tender. Add all the corn, milk, and black pepper. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat then add the peppers and the shrimp. It takes maybe three minutes for the shrimp to cook. Be careful not to over cook the shrimp. Serve immediately. Puddleglum did pick up some O'Douls Amber which is surprisingly good for non-alcoholic beer, and it's only 90 calories! I can't get over that.