Meal plan

It's good to have a plan!

Wed- Acorn Squash w/White Beans and Sage
Thu- Pork chops, baked squash, green beans
Fri- Pesto, chicken and feta pizza
Sat- Chicken with Scallion Lime Sauce and Sweet Carrot Rice

Shake, shake, shake!!!

You might have noticed my "maintenance" weigh in numbers creeping/lurching up lately.
It's probably not right for me to even call it maintenance anymore since I'm up 15 pounds from my goal weight. ugh!
But there it is. The last 6 months of so much change have left me a little down in the dumps. And having a hard time sticking to old formulas that I knew like the back of my own hand, and KNEW to be effective. Why? I don't know.
But maybe, just maybe what I need to do is shake up even those things.
So it's perfect timing that Weight Watchers has changed their program. It's a whole new ball game and I think it is just what I need to get my head back in the game.
So, expect lots of new recipes coming up very soon.
I've spent the morning flipping through one of the new cookbooks that I got for my birthday and figuring up the points for the yummy looking ones based on the new WW calculator.
So excited!!!

Familial Faces

My Mom came over to visit yesterday and helped me with a project I've been trying to get to for months.
We finally put up the family photo wall.
I'm finding furniture placement to be difficult in the living room. Between the corner fireplace and Roger's ginormous TV, I struggle to figure out the best arrangement.
What we're doing right now is okay but there is this kind of deserted corner in the room.

Awhile ago I decided it would be a good place for our family photo wall. Because we have a lot of family, and a lot of photos, and not so many walls in this open floor plan.
I gathered all the frames I could find for the project. Gotta use what we have.
Budget, budget, blah, blah, blah.
We made templates of each frame with newspaper. Then we used painters tape to hang the templates on the wall and find the best arrangement of the frames.

Then we hung the actual frames.

Then we sorted through a bunch of pictures to fill the frames, making sure we didn't miss anyone.
I spray painted the natural wood frames to go with the black and silver theme.

Here's my plan for the near future... I'm going to add more pictures to fill the space. Kinda like this...

And we have an ancient dresser downstairs that I plan to repaint and place on this wall. Kinda like this...

Who knows what else after that. Maybe a couple of side chairs and a small table on the right of the dresser? We'll see. The way I operate that's either MONTHS away or... tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.
For now, I'm so happy to have those faces on the wall finally.
Thanks for your help Mom! I couldn't have done it without you. At least not in less than 3 days and without a few unnecessary holes in the wall.
So...I put a frame around the thermostat on that wall thinking it would make it less noticeable. What do you think? Did it work? Did you notice the framed thermostat?

The long awaited return of our family table

When Roger and I got married and combined our families we had a small table and eleventy billion 5 kids with plans to add 1 or 2 more kids to the mix. So we purchased this table from the local thrift store.

They sell brand new furniture there as well as used. This was one of the ones they build. Sorry about the tiny pic. This was actually taken in our old house a few years ago. I forgot to take a recent one.
I liked it because it was cheap (which is exactly what we could afford at the time) and very large (7 1/2 feet long with both leaves in) and the top is made of 1 1/2 inch thick solid pine. I figured that would give us plenty of chances to sand down and erase the damage that a large busy family can do to a table top. And damage we did! I put a big DEEP scratch across the top of it loading it in the trunk of the car to bring it home. Ugh! Then there was the nail polish remover, sharpies bleeding through paper, pencils pushed a little too hard left their messages in the soft wood, babies banging toys and silverware, hundreds of arts and crafts projects, etc, etc, etc.
It was a wreck by about a year ago when we took it apart and put it in the basement with plans to refinish it.
We've been living with this "temporary" table since then.

Big enough for our daily use now that there are only 3 kids left at home. But way too small for our new house and ridiculously small for our family dinners every Sunday.
So Roger must have finally given up on me getting the job done. He went down to the basement and kicked up the mother of all dust storms sanding the old table top down.
A few coats of stain and poly later (thanks honey!) I finally made my mark on the project by painting and glazing the base and the skirt.

Tah...DAH!!! A table big enough for everyone! Well, almost. Let's face it, this family just gets bigger and bigger. LOL We only keep one leaf in it unless we're having more people over.

But, you might wonder, what about those chairs? I have a crazy plan for them too. Here's a hint!

Stay tuned. Let's see if Roger beats me to the sanding part.
And a Jaxon funny...
He came downstairs a few mornings ago all sleepy eyed and spotted the vase of flowers from my birthday the week before.

With a look of sadness and alarm he said, "Oh no, Mom! Your little daisy flower is so sad. He wants a drink of water!"
I love that kid.

The birthday dinner recipes: A book review in lieu of copyright infringement.

First just let me say that I DO indeed realize that if you don't already know the blissful deliciousness that is Indian food you may not think it looks all that appetizing. I know, I know. I thought the same thing the first time it was served to me. Luckily, the intoxicating aroma of the restaurant I was in lulled me into submission enough to try a few bites. It's been TRUE LOVE ever since.
All the recipes from the dinner party came from one cook book.* Easy Indian Cooking by Suneeta Vaswani.
I've tried many of the recipes from this book and I've loved them all. They really are relatively easy and the flavors are as authentic as I can determine without ever having been to India myself.

This was where I planned to post the recipes I used for the party. But it occurs to me that 1)That's a lot of work. I'm not a speedy typist. And 2) I guess it's technically illegal. copyright schmoppyright.
So just go buy the book!
Clickety Click
Costs less than dinner for one at my favorite Indian restaurant.
Cook it yourself and invite 30 guests to join you.
Worked for me!


*The recipes I used:
center of plate- Basmati rice with Spiced Cauliflower
(SOOO much yummier than just a scoop of plain basmati rice. Not that that isn't also heavenly.)

clockwise from top-
Chicken Tikka Masala which is made with Chicken Tandoori
(Lots of butter, lots of cream. What's not to love?)

Sindhi Spinach
(spinach, yellow split peas, tons and tons of other veggies. yum! Totally vegan too, if that's your thing.)

Sindhi Chicken Curry
(Mmmmmm! 'nuff said!)

Saag Panir
(Which is curried spinach with homemade cheese. Really! It's super easy to make this cheese.)

I also made these condiments with recipes from the book

Center:
Cucumber Raita
(Made with cucumbers, cilantro and mint. Cools things down)

Right:
Cilantro Mint Chutney
(HOT! HOT! HOT! Heats things up. Because I like it to hurt a little.)

On the left is the peach chutney I made and canned during the summer.

And don't forget about that dessert! It's in the brown bowl at the top of this picture.

Each batch is made with a half gallon of whole milk, a shockingly small amount of rice, cardamom pods and almonds. Cooked for about an hour and a half until the volume is reduced by half. Creamy, fragrant, cool heaven in dish.

My Happy Birthday :)

Last Saturday was my birthday. To celebrate, I put together a dinner party. A real one. With real dishes, real silverware, enough seating for all the guests, appetizers and centerpieces on the tables.  Everything!
We had some RARE mild weather that day, with temps around 60 degrees at dinnertime, so we even had a fire going outside.
If you're a blog stalker like me, you caught the 31 Days Series that was put on by several popular bloggers during the month of October. One of the bloggers was The Reluctant Entertainer. I had never heard of her before, and the first post or two only had me mildly interested. But after a few days I was looking forward to the daily post. Next thing I knew, I had decided that I want to take our entertaining up just a notch or two. I've always loved hosting all the family get togethers. We usually do all the holidays here. And almost every weekend we have the kids and grandkids over for dinner.
But now that our home is a little larger (A big great room was at the very top of our NEEDS list when we were house hunting) I think I'd like to take it just a little farther. Have dinner guests more often. Build those connections with the people in our lives. Slow down a little and enjoy what  those who matter most.
So I kicked off this crazy plan of mine with a birthday celebration. For me!
I chose to serve an Indian Food FEAST because Indian food is one of my absolute favorites.

The Menu

(recipes coming soon)

Appetizers of nuts, cheese, crackers, etc.

Basmati Rice with Spiced Cauliflower

Sindhi Spinach

Chicken Tikka Masala

Sindhi Chicken Curry

Saag Panir

North Indian Rice Pudding

Also traditional Indian "condiments"

Cucumber Raita

Cilantro Mint Chutney

Peach Chutney

I prepared the food over the course of the week prior to the party. Indian food lends itself really well to preparing ahead and freezing. I only had to prepare the rice and the Raita on the day of the party. Easy peasy!
Several of my friends asked me, as if I had lost my mind, why I was doing all the "work" for my own birthday party. Roger even offered to have it catered. But this is TRULY what I love doing. I love the actual cooking. The stir of a wooden spoon in a great big pot. The scents and the colors! And the "gift" of preparing food for people I love. And, I admit, seeing people enthusiastically enjoy what I've made for them kinda strokes my ego. Sue me.
I wanted to invite a few more people than we really had room for, so I had to remind  myself that I want to do this often. So I saved some friends for later. ;)
This time I invited (REAL invitations! Well, real in the way that Facebook is real these days. lol) 

Our neighbors from our old house

Lori and JR

Dennis and Christy

My Mom, Aunt Verna and brother Steve

the three of whom somehow escaped the camera. :(

I was having so much fun I forgot to get the camera out till later so they might have left by the time I handed the camera to Heather and asked her to take some pictures for me.

Of course our girls were there

 Kayleigh and Richard

Crystal and Travis

Heather and David

Jaxon and the grandbabies had a blast playing with his toys and Rock Band with the bigger kids

Jaxon and Caydance

(There's Becky too!)

Tukker and her Mommy

Athena

And Maveryk with his Daddy

I guess Indian food isn't Tukker's favorite because at one point her Mom found her inside a cupboard eating a stick of butter.

Not a bad second choice in my opinion. ;)

I had such a great birthday! I really enjoyed spending the evening with wonderful people. I received some very generous gifts. One of which is a gift card which I'm planning to use to buy The Reluctant Entertainer (the book, not the blogger!) to help me prepare for lots more of these great evenings.

Thanks to everyone who was there! You really kicked off my next year of this crazy life with a bang!

And special thanks to my handsome hubby. I'm not sure this whole "REAL entertaining" thing is something he'd pursue on his own. But he loves me and supports me and helped me make it great. He's one of the good guys. Love you honey!