Christmas 2012 Recap: Part 2

The day after Christmas I headed to Memphis to visit my parents and brother with the inside puppy dogs since Eric was headed on a duck hunting trip for the weekend.  It was sooo nice to be able to just get in the car and be there in a few hours, as opposed to having to fly there.  They are still getting moved in to the new house, but I have a feeling that it's going to go much smoother since my brother and I cleaned out all of our boxes (mine took up 2 whole rooms!).

We found all kinds of gems from our childhood in our boxes.  I was a journaler as a child and had several different journals (all half filled of course) that cracked me up.  The pictures I saved were pretty great, too.

My BFF and I doing our best bug eye impression?  Yeah I see now why I didn't have a boy friend in high school.  Bowls on your eyes = boy repellent. 

While opening up picture boxes with Mom, we came across my life sized replica poster.  Yes I have one of myself.  Doesn't everyone?  For Senior Day at my high school they made these for us.  I did not think it made the trip to MI, much less a trip back to Memphis.  We cracked up when we found it.  Naturally I posted this picture of myself with my replica on facebook, and apparently my friends like life-sized replicas.  I got even more comments about the picture  from people I saw over the holidays.

All 5'10" of me in my high school basketball glory. That cutout is officially 10 years old this year. 

We spent the majority of the trip inside working on the house, but I was not complaining because it was cold and wet, and even snowy while I was there.

SNOW on the bushes!  I asked my brother if there was still snow when I was driving up there and he said NO, but in my book this counts as snow!

We went out to get things for the house and to eat...and did we eat.  I got to eat at almost every one of my favorite Memphis eateries, which made me a happy girl!  Queso Dip from El Porton, a turkey sandwich and bowl of soup from Bogie's Delicatessen  and a ginormous burger and fries from Huey's all as fabulous as I remembered them. I did not eat any BBQ (surprisingly), but I will make sure to have some next time.

The puppy dogs seemed to enjoy the new house as well.  It has a big backyard for them to run in.  Since we have a 1 story house they were a little unsure of the steps at first.  Hawk ran right up them when we got there, but then he would not come down.  I tried everything I could think of from attempting to pull him down, coaxing him with a big piece of leftover prime rib, to walking away for about 5 mins.  Nothing worked.  He stood at the top of the stairs and whined.

Big baby

I finally called Eric to see if he had any suggestions, and he reminded me that Hawk had slipped down the steep wooden stairs at the river last summer which is why he was so scared.  I finally had my brother pick him up by his chest from behind while I pulled his collar and paws from the front.  It was quite a struggle for all three of us, but we finally got him down.  It was like a light bulb went off in his head.  He started jumping up and down and ran right back up the stairs so he could come back down by himself   It was precious!

It was a wonderful trip and I can't wait to go back! Did I mention how excited I am to have them closer?!

On a sad note, we lost our sweet Cricket Girl yesterday.  She got hit by a car right in front of the house by a kid that plays football for Eric.  It was an accident.  At least he was kind enough to call Eric and let him know.  Eric said he was pretty upset about it.  We were afraid something like that was going to happen since the puppies developed a habit of chasing cars a couple of months ago.  Her brother seems to be doing alright.  We've kept him inside for the most part since it happened and he has done well.  I think we are going to transition him into an inside dog with Hawk and Peanut mainly because I refuse to leave him outside alone.  I know we've only had them for a few months but it still hurts. Now she's running around chasing squirrels in a big back yard in the sky.

We miss you sweet girl

New Years Dinner

I am still working on getting caught up due to my posting hiatus over the holidays.  I got a few new cookbooks for Christmas so I decided to start out 2013 with a few new recipes.  Growing up Mom always made corned beef, cabbage, and black eyed peas on new years.  I decided to forgo the black eyed peas since I don't like them and have no clue how to cook them (hopefully I won't regret it), and focus on the corned beef and cabbage.  One of the cookbooks I received is Slow Cooker Quick Fixes by the editors of Southern Living and it had a Cranberry Corned Beef recipe that looked delicious, so I tried it.

Cranberry Corned Beef with Horseradish Sour Cream

What you need:

15 baby carrots

1 large onion sliced into 6 wedges

1 3-4lb corned beef brisket

seasoning packet from corned beef

1 can whole berry cranberry sauce

1 can jellied cranberry sauce

2 packets dry onion soup mix

1/2 cup sour cream

4 tsp prepared horseradish

Place carrots and onion in the bottom of a 5 quart slow cooker.  Cut excess fat off of corned beef brisket and place brisket on top of carrots and onions.  In a bowl, mix both cans of cranberry sauce with soup mix. Pour mixture over corned beef.  Cook on high for one hour, and then on low for 8 hours.  While corned beef is cooking, mix horseradish and sour cream in a small bowl and let chill for several hours.  Serve with corned beef.

Oh man was this good!  The horseradish sour cream was the perfect match for the cranberry sauce.  Eric decided to put his corned beef on an onion bun and top it with Slawsa and was very pleased with his decision.

For our cabbage I decided I wanted to try something new.  I am not a huge cabbage fan since it does not have a lot of flavor, but Eric loves it, so I googled "best cabbage recipe" and got this one from Emeril.  Let me just say the man knows his cabbage.  It was not the healthiest recipe but it made for some dang good cabbage.

Yes there's bacon involved.

Emeril's Favorite Cabbage

What you need: 

1/2 pound bacon, coarsly chopped

4 cups thinly sliced onions (since I used my onion in the corned beef, I re-hydrated some dried minced onions and used them instead)

1 1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 tsp sugar

3 bay leaves

1 head green or white cabbage, cored and thinly sliced

1-12oz bottle beer (I used MGD 64 since that's what we had in the fridge)

Cook the bacon in a large heavy pot or Dutch oven (used my large frying pan since I halved the recipe), until browned and slightly crispy, about 5 mins. Add the onions, salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper, sugar, and bay leaves. Cook, stirring, until onions are soft, about 5 mins.  Add the cabbage and stir to mix well. Cook, stirring until the cabbage begins to wilt or soften, 3-4 mins. Reduce the heat to medium-low, and add the beer.  Stir to mix. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour. Remove the bay leaves. Remove from heat and serve warm.

I halved the recipe and it was plenty for the 2 of us.  Eric asked me to hang on to this recipe to make again, so I must have hit a winner!

For dessert Eric opted for the same thing he ate for breakfast.  Muddy Buddies in milk.  He said they tasted like Cocoa Puffs.  Who knew?

I have got to get back on the cooking band wagon....let me rephrase that.  I have to get back on the HEALTHY cooking band wagon.  It's going to be difficult with basketball this month, but I am going to try!  If anything I can put together some recipes and meal plans to start using in February.

Christmas 2012 Recap: Part 1

....a week late on my Christmas recap is not too bad, is it? I think we are technically still in the 12 days of Christmas so I think it's acceptable.  I guess today would be the 9th day ...so 9 Ladies Dancing.

via

We had Christmas with Eric's family on Christmas Eve since his brother and his wife were going to be out of town on Christmas Day. I really enjoyed "hosting" Christmas at our house. We stuffed ourselves silly and had a great time!

For dinner we had fried turkey, twice baked potatoes, asparagus casserole (my favorite!), green bean casserole, deviled eggs, chicken salad, cheese ball, cocktail weenies, and crescent rolls.  Needless to sat I was in a food coma way before we started dessert which consisted of pecan pie, buttermilk pie, ooey gooey pumpkin pie, sweet and salty cookie truffle bars, and a ginormous cookie plate. Don't worry, I made sure to sample EVERYTHING.

I guess since his camo has green in it you can call it Christmas-y? =)

Our beautiful tree, SILS, and the whole family!

Christmas morning we slept in a bit.  By a bit I mean 7:30am, which is a lot later than I used to wake up as a child. I popped a couple of casseroles in the oven (which I almost did not make because I was so full after dinner the evening before), and we had ourselves a Merry Little Christmas!

Breakfast Casserole and Hashbrown Casserole
I used the same recipes I used last year but tweaked them a bit.  I put ranch dressing mix in my breakfast casserole and used southwestern hashbrowns in my hashbrown casserole.  They were small changes but added a TON of flavor!

We had a wonderful Christmas, and yes all 4 puppy dogs had a stocking full of goodies! I got a space heater for the bathroom (can you tell I was a little excited when I opened it?), a back seat cover so I could haul the puppy dogs in my car without ruining it, and some new Costas (sunglasses)!  He bought me a pair 6 years ago and I still wear them to this day.  That pair is a bit worn out so he got me some shiny new ones that I love!  (Although I did exchange them for a turtle brown pair the day after Christmas....I don't think I am quite rock star enough to sport white sunglasses--but they were cute!). I got him a Scent Blocker Camo suit, which he was pumped about.  I also got him a few other little nicknacks like a camo fleece blanket I made, the book about the Navy Seals that captured Bin Laden, and the shirt he is sporting above.  It says "I'm here because you broke something." Since he does appliance repair it was perfect!  He said he is going to get that put on the back of all of his work shirts from now on.  I think it's precious!

The puppies enjoyed their bones and balls, and of course naps!

The day after Christmas I headed to Memphis to visit my parents and brother with the inside puppy dogs since Eric was headed on a duck hunting trip for the weekend.  It was sooo nice to be able to just get in the car and be there in a few hours, as opposed to having to fly there. I am going to save rest of the Memphis trip for another post since this one is already a mile long, but I promise it's coming later this week!  And in that post I will explain this:

That would be a life-sized cardboard cut out of myself.  Nice, right?

Happy 2013!

I promise I am still here!  Between Christmas, traveling, and sickness I completely lost track of everything.  Our power went out Christmas Eve and I have yet to reset the clock a week later.

We did manage to have a little new years fun.  We did not feel like doing anything big this year, so we had a few friends over for Boston Butt (what else?) and watched the Chik-fil-a Bowl. Around halftime our neighbors called to say they had some fireworks to shoot off so we headed down the street to ring in the new year with them and had a great time!

The boys in their new years attire. Champagne (of course). A NYE campfire. Ringing in 2013!

Fireworks!  I think the older children (aka grown men) had more fun than the kids did. The New Years horns became duck calls. 

We're hanging out around the house today watching football while our corned beef cooks in the slow cooker for dinner....it smells heavenly and I can't wait to eat it!

Happy New Year!