A group of my friends gets together every week to eat a meal together. One household cooks the meal and everyone else is left to enjoy a night without food prep or cleanup. One of the unofficial rules of community dinner is that you come as you are. Had a rough day? Just come. Feeling tired or more than little introverted? Come anyhow. And stay for as long or as little as you’d like. Sometimes one of us will show up with tupperware, eat a quick meal, then carry some take-out home to an ill roommate, husband or wife. The dinners have pulled us together in a unique way and have created a family where one didn’t exist before. Because of this family attachment, the deep friendship formed over shared meals, we still greatly miss Brook and the O’Donnells.
A year ago we started Needs More Butter as a way to keep track of community dinner recipes. Stop by the site for new meal idea—and to enjoy Renae’s abundance of posts for NaBloPoMo. I’ll post the following recipes on Needs More Butter eventually.
Chicken Lasagna Florentine
Zion Cookbook, Carrie Moseman
- 6 lasagna noodles, prepared according to pkg directions
- 10oz pkg frozen spinach, thawed and drained well
- 2 C chicken, cooked and chopped
- 2 C shredded cheddar cheese
- 1/3 C onion, finely chopped
- 1/4 – 1/2 t nutmeg
- 1 T cornstarch
- 1/2 t salt
- 1/4 t pepper
- 1 T soy sauce
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
- 8oz carton sour cream
- 4oz fresh mushrooms, sliced
- 1/3 C mayonnaise or salad dressing
- 1 C parmesan cheese
- butter pecan topping (recipe below)
In a bowl, combine spinach, chicken and all remaining ingredients expect parmesan cheese and butter pecan topping. In a lightly greased 11×7 dish, arrange 3 noodles. Spread half of chicken mixture over the noodles. Repeat procedure with remaining noodles and chicken mixture. Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and butter pecan topping. Bake lasagna at 350 for an hour, or until heated through.
Butter Pecan Topping: Melt 2 T butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add 1 C pecans and cook 3 minutes. Cool completely.
French Bread (with an Italian flair)
Zion Cookbook, Kristie Strahm
- 3 1/2 C flour
- 1 T sugar
- 1 t salt
- 1 T Italian seasoning
- 1 T rosemary
- 1 1/4 C water, lukewarm
- 2 1/4 t yeast
Place ingredients in a breadmaker on dough cycle. Remove, punch down and roll into a rectangle shape. Roll dough in a jelly roll shape, cut slits in the top, and place on a baking sheet to rise for an hour. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes, then reduce oven to 375 for 4-8 minutes. Brush melted butter on top and sprinkle lightly with garlic salt.
Charity has her word of the year. Livia has her word of the year, too:
Lightricity.
As in, “Wow, look at that ceiling fan with six bulbs. It must use a lot of lightricity!”
Very smart, my girl.
Watching The Secret of NIMH with Livia.
Unscrewing one burned out light bulb and
Replacing it with another.
Baking pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and
Thinking they’re a bit underdone.
Pondering twice-baked pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.
Cooking meatloaf and
Deciding that uncooked meatloaf looks really disgusting.
Believing the title meatloaf is gross, but oh my goodness, all the
Smelling I’m doing right now is making me hungry.
Looking forward to
Worshipping with Redeemer tonight,
Renewing my soul with praise to the Creator.
I’ve noticed that mothers like photos of their children that others may not understand. I am no exception. There are other shots in this series that are easier to like, but I absolutely love this one. Livia has an air about her, a tousled-hair-tired-kid expression that makes me look at her in a new way. I snapped this shot 18 months ago on Father’s Day (note the tattoos) when Livia was, apparently, all tuckered out.
A quick run around the blogosphere this morning reveals lots of plans to vote, a small amount of fear regarding America’s future, and a whole lot of campaign exhaustion.
I’m not exhausted by the campaigns of 2008. Why? We’ve had no access to any television channels… until last night. I picked up a $9.99 antenna from Target and, yippee!, now I can watch the election returns from my own living room. While I’m thrilled to access the world of Oprah, Good Morning America and Jeopardy without paying cable fees, I also realize what a blessing it’s been to have avoided all the paid campaign commercials over the past year. CNN Online and conservative talk radio have made me groan enough—CNN hearts Obama, clearly conservative talk radio hearts McCain, blah blah blah. I can’t imagine how worn out I’d feel after all the negative ads on tv.
After googling “candidates on the issues,” I feel comfortable casting my vote for John McCain.
And you know what I’ll feel comfortable doing after that? Drinking a free Starbucks in the coziness of my own living room. Thank you, cheap antenna.
Good Monday morning! I present to you, for your bloggy viewing pleasure, some of the last non-purple photos from my Canon Powershot. I now have within my possession two more cameras, loaned with generosity from my mom and the Moreheads, but I still feel like I’ve lost a body part with the death of my camera. I’m slow to make decisions that require spending a large chunk of money and yet I really need to make up my mind soon. Ack! Moving on…
World, meet Winnie, my parents’ 3-4lb half Bichon Frise/half West Highland Terrier/full canine cutie. She’s crazy about the outdoors, nibbling on Livia’s pigtails and cuddling with on anything connected to her Mama Claudia.
Livia sees Winnie cuddling and figures she needs a bit of lovin’ too. In the shot below, notice that Liv is telling a story. Her pointer finger is out and Nana is wearing her I’m-listening-to-your-very-serious-story face.
The following photo is the last one from my camera. It is blurry and not so great, but still, I love the delighted look on Livia’s face. She placed little Winnie in a little basket and was quite pleased with herself.
Liv keeps talking about how we’re going to “SLICE THEM UP.”
And then I have to remind myself about the Pumpkin Carving we’re hosting tonight.
Slice ’em, dice ’em, cut ’em up. Let’s do it.
This is what death looks like.
My sweet little Canon Powershot S1 IS saw no tunnel, no white lights. Rather it saw a dark screen with horizontal purple lines.
RIP, my small, silver friend.
(Let’s hope the blog doesn’t die as well.)
I spent a little time last week photographing aspects of our garden, all the while aware that the colors would soon be fading under the cool Nebraska nights. It’s been a really mild autumn so far and I can’t remember the last year our garden and lawn looked so vibrant for so long. As a final farewell to warm temps (it’s high time, the water in the birdbath was frozen solid this morning), I present a few pics from Prairie Box Gardens 2008.
Last up, a few shots of butterflies. Livia has retained a “pet” butterfly, grasshopper or caterpillar for most of the warm months. She doesn’t catch her prey, er pets, though; that’s a job for mom, dad or grandma. So if you drive by and see one of us looking like a total goofball, running around the yard, arms furiously swiping an empty butterfly net in the air, just know that we love this four year old very much. There is some strategy involved in netting a butterfly. I hope I remember how to do it right next year.
These aren’t the best butterfly shots I took, but I think they’re the most interesting. The head-on angle is my favorite—look at the insect’s pug-nosed appearance. Note the fuzzy back and the fact that we do feed our pets well. I want to always remember Four Year Old Liv as a girl who loved bugs and spending time outdoors, dirty fingernails and all.
The sweetest sound in the world is hearing your child go to the bathroom all by herself. No “Mom, I need to potty!” or anything. Praise Jesus, my child is potty-trained.