Lettuce wraps

To keep with my food theme this week, I figured I would show you something we have become obsessed with.

Lettuce wraps!

Here are two wonderful examples.

And the kicker is baby girl eats it too!

 So this is a beef and broccoli in a hoisin based sauce.  With white rice and we used butter lettuce.  We tried the nifty living lettuce stuff from the produce department.  It was... okay.  I mean, nothing spectacular!  But the whole meal was so delicious.

This meal was brought to us because apparently I  bought everything else for chicken lettuce wraps... but the chicken.  Soooo, we did beef and broccoli instead.

Great culinary mistake!

This is my favorite lettuce wrap meal ever!  Chicken lettuce wraps.  It's a soy and hoisin based sauce with ground chicken and water chestnuts.  Again with white rice, which you can totally leave off we just happen to love rice.  This right here is the cream of the crop, best meal I make right now.  At least to me.  (The husband says my "Hunter's chicken" is still primo.)

Anyway, these are two more samplings of the meals we have weekly!

Pot roast in the dutch oven

I love cooking.

I think we have established that.

I also love pictures of things I cook.  I am not great at getting recipes together, but I am great at taking pictures while I do it so you can see what I mean by a pinch or whatever.

Pot roast in the dutch oven is one of my favorite meals.  I have zero clue why I made it this week... meat must have been on sale or something.  Usually I only make it in the winter... because it's warm and filling and perfect for a snowy winter's night!

But anyway, here is a step by step.  My recipe is super simple!

Start with browning your meat.  I put about a tablespoon of butter in the pan and threw the meat in on one side.  My meat was a little frozen still.  Don't forget to thaw your meat before supper...

While your meat is browning, take the time to slice your potatoes.  I love these little creamers.  They are so easy to split.  

Flip your meat!

Then my secret weapon...

This is honestly my favorite thing ever.  My cooking has changed since finding this stock base.  I highly recommend all their flavors to everyone!

So I had roughly 2 tablespoons left in this particular jar.  So that's what I used!

Melt it down in some hot tap water.  The jar says 1T to 1 cup water, so my almost 2T fit nicely in 2 cups of hot water.

Take your meat out and put it on a plate to rest.

Another case of using what we have on hand!  Along with those tiny creamer potatoes I used some baby carrots.  Husband takes those every day for work, so it's what I had in my kitchen!  Plus there's no prep work for them in this recipe!

Butter in the pot for the potatoes.

Potatoes in the pot.  I halved most of them, but some needed to be cut into thirds because they were too big.  Basically get them all the same size.  

Cook them until they look like this.  They are no where near done, but they got a little color, which means flavor!

Carrots in the pot!  Stir them around.  You just want to cook up a bit to release some of the carrots sweetness.  

Deglaze your pot with a bit of that yummy stock you made!  Basically pour a small amount in the bottom and then scrape to release any stuck on bits of meat or potatoes or carrots.  This is the flavor in the brown you always hear about.  

Make a little well in the potatoes and carrots and put your meat back in the pot.  Then use the rest of that stock to fill it up!  I tend to fill the pot roast up to almost covering.  

Bring it to a beautiful boil!

Lid on and in a 275 degree Fahrenheit over for a few hours.  Yes, I have no set time.  That depends on the size of your roast, beef or pork, and a bunch of other things!  This roast took about 5 hours to cook to tender.

Pull out the meat to slice it up!  Some people like to make their shredded, and that's perfectly okay!  It's yummy either way!

This was the kid plate for baby girl.  She ate exactly zero, but damn husband and I loved it!  It was so good and tender and the veggies were sweet and perfect.  

And the stock made the best ladle sauce ever.  

So there you have it!  Pot roast Parenting Life style!  

A bubble extravaganza!

Alternately titled

Papa gets out the bubble machine because he's tired of blowing bubbles.

Do you remember when you were so carefree that running through bubbles in your driveway was the best thing ever?

Yeah, neither do I.

Having a kid really makes you appreciate the little things again.

Running through the sprinkler, sliding down a slide, and running through bubbles.

The good things in life are the simple things.  And kids really show that to you.

Baby girl absolutely loves bubbles.  To the point I find myself light headed some days because all she wants to do is have me blow bubbles for her to pretend to eat. 

Oh yes, she pretends to eat them.

And as we were sitting in the driveway the other day, I remembered something.

We bought a bubble machine for her 2nd birthday!

Nothing fancy, just a Walmart special for like 9 bucks.

But the best 9 dollars I spent that year!

So off to the office, where everything goes to die, to find the machine and hope we still had batteries!

Lo and behold the batteries still worked!  

A little miracle bubble and she was off!  Enjoying bubbles in a whole new way.

And much faster than papa could ever blow them!

I watched my daughter dance through the bubbles in the light and just couldn't stop smiling.  

Because she was enjoying life.  

And that's my goal as a papa.  To raise my kid in such a way that she grows up to enjoy life.  

A little photographer

Apparently baby girl got my phone during my last doctor's appointment.

I downloaded my pictures and was really confused.

Then it hit me.  She took pictures!

This one is kinda artsy and gave me the idea that I need to get her a camera and see what happens!

Stay tuned for further updates on her picture taking!

Finding beauty in the mess

Life isn't perfect.

Life is often a mess.

And there is nothing we can do about it.

Except finding beauty in the mess.

We have had a hard time keeping up with our flower gardens.  When we moved here the gardens were immaculate.  The previous owners obviously took such great care of their gardens.

We have a 2 year old.  There is not hours spent weeding in the gardens.

So as we work through the mess, and work harder to stop getting letters f
rom the HOA about our shitty gardening abilities, I often get discouraged.

It obviously goes greater than the gardens.  We all get discouraged as we wade through shit.  But sometimes that shit turns out to be a good thing and there is always something beautiful in that shit.

As we deal with things not going great in other areas of our life, I am so heartened to see a single rose bloom.

I love roses.  And in our garden we have plenty, but they are often choked out by every other thing you can imagine.

But this little rose, right next to our porch, has thrown down this year with the first bloom of the season.

And look how beautiful it is.

No matter what you are going through, no matter how much shit you are wading in, remember that there is something beautiful to be seen.  It may not be as perfect as a single rose, but it is there.

Find the beauty in your mess.

Replanting

As you learned, we had a pretty massive garden failure of all our spring crops.

It sucks.

But it gave me the chance to replant the seedlings inside and try again.

I think my failure was the weather wasn't right for them to sprout.  Not enough sun, not enough water, not enough of anything.

So I'm trying something new to see if that helps.

I have replanted everything inside, in a seed pod, for now.  And when they sprout up an inch or so, I will transfer them outside.  

So in a week or two, max.

This gives me the ability to say, yes, everything I planted was sprouted when I put it in the ground! 

Any future failure will not be because of a failure to sprout.

Which gives us the ability to figure out what else can be going wrong, if we do have another failure.

Along with replanting our spring garden indoors, I went on and started out seeds for the summer garden in doors.

My theory is that giving them the same ability to sprout indoors gives them a bit of a better chance.

Will it work?

Beats the hell outta me!

But all of gardening is guess work.

Especially that first year!

So here's to hopefully a beautiful and bountiful summer harvest!

Here are some sprouts!  It's so rewarding to see them taking off!  Hopefully they'll survive the transplant!  

Making tea

A whole post about making tea?

Yes.  Because this tea is delicious.

And I'm not even a big bagged tea fan!  I prefer my loose-leaf amazing stuffs.

But this tea company I found on a whim, after falling down a rabbit hole, researching something completely unrelated to tea or Natives.

How's that for a the opening of a tea story?!

Anyway, here is a step by step of making tea.


So we ordered this sampler pack for Native American tea company.  Worth it.

Tonight I had the teepee dreams.  It's a peppermint tea that's supposed to be good for sleeping.  Since I don't sleep well, I figure why not give hot tea a try!

Tea kettle and filling it up!  I love our kettle.  It's new and just perfect.  I am honestly loving having a kettle again.

Set on the quick boil burner.  

Next to the muffins we mad today.. and a dirty cast iron skillet I haven't cleaned yet from supper the other night (Bison tacos!)

 I mean, look at these muffins!  Chocolate chip on one side, blueberry on the other.

Oh we are also trying out our new silicone muffin liners!  I'll let you know what we think once we try taking one out.

Also, look at this cute felt alphabet thing I found at Target for baby girl!  She loves letters, and this just is perfect for her.

Oh right, back to the tea!  While the water is warming, I got down my gigantic favorite mug ever.  I've had this mug for probably 15 years now?  Love it.  And dropped my tea bag into the mug.  All waiting on the water!  

 Water's done!  I don't let it get to the full whistle for herbal teas.  I typically just like it steaming, but not full on rolling boiling.

Poured over, and now we wait.

5 minutes later, tea!  

I use my spoon only to stir the tea around.  I don't add anything, but I bet a little honey would be delicious in this tea.  

Enjoying my tea while playing my game.  The game that probably makes it harder for me to sleep because I play it so late.  

All well.  It was delicious.  

I highly recommend these teas to everyone!  They taste great.  

Oh, and my poor loose leaf tea brewer.  My husband picked this up for me in China almost 9 years ago now.  It's leaky but awesome.  A little jealous right now since I'm using bagged tea, but it'll get a work out soon enough.