Christmas Christmas

This year Todd finally agreed to go and cut down a Christmas tree so I finally decided to throw out our fake one! So here it is... keep in mind Todd is 6'9"!

I know it's not the fancy, beautiful theme trees that some of you come up with, but really, we were never good at that kind of stuff anyway! Homegrown, homemade Christmas is a little more our style, even if we think the fancy trees are so so so pretty!

The Most Requested Recipe We Have!

The great part about this recipe is the fact that it makes so much and can last in your fridge for up to 6 weeks. It makes in excess of 75 muffins! We LOVE this recipe.

Refrigerator Bran Muffins

6 c. 100% bran (Todd ONLY buys Kellogg's All Bran Original, don't try anything else!)
2 c boiling water
1 c oil
2 c sugar
4 eggs
4 c milk
5 c flour
5 t baking soda
1 t salt

Pour boiling water over bran, cover and let sit to soften. Meanwhile cream sugar and oil in VERY large bowl. Add 4 beaten eggs, milk, and softened bran. Stir it up really good. In separate bowl combine flour, soda, salt and add all at once to wet ingredients. Fill oiled muffin tins and bake at 350 degrees for around 20 mins. Serve with honey on top. YUM! First batch might take a little less time. After that, since batter has been in fridge it usually takes a little longer to cook. After first batch, refridgerate covered and you don't need to stir it ever again if you don't want.

Modifications -

Todd has been subsituting whole wheat flour in. He has gone up to 3 c whole wheat, 2 c white and he feels like the muffins were a little too dry. The rest of us didn't mind! 2 c whole wheat, 3 c white was non-noticable.

Just Because the World Should Also be Able to Enjoy!
(The Fruits of Todd's Genius that is!)

So we had these waffles this morning and I really felt guilty that I had yet to share this recipe with my friends and family that are so dear to my heart! Todd initially found this recipe online but of course has made some major modifications to it and this morning at the breakfast table there was no talking, no whining, no crying... only Savannah and Nate and Jenny stuffing their mouths as fast as they could and sputtering, "More Please" every time we saw another waffle come out of the waffler maker! Todd didn't even get to try the first 5 waffles from this batch! They were soooo delicious! So here you all go, enjoy.

Whole Wheat Waffles

1.5 c whole wheat flour (Todd has tried and tested and is set on Gold Medal Whole Wheat Flour)
1.5 t baking powder
.25 t salt
.25 t cinnamon
.25 t ginger
.25 t nutmeg
.25 t all spice
.5 c oil (Todd uses Canola in all his cooking now)
2 c milk
2 eggs - separated

Combine dry ingredients. Combine milk, oil, egg yolks - stir. Add all at once to dry ingredients. Stir thoroughly until no lumps. Batter will seem quite thin. (This has proven necessary to Todd for Whole Wheat Waffles for the desired lightness.) Beat egg whites until soft peaks. Do not over beat. Fold into batter. Cook as waffle maker instructs. Best served with homemade syrup, as are all waffles! Enjoy!

Homemade Syrup

1 part white sugar

1 part brown sugar

1 part water

some Mapleline - Maple flavoring from Walmart will NOT due!

Boil.

OH - and an Update!

P.S. Nate is finally walking. At 16.5 months he finally is walking from room to room. Although the doctor kept telling us this was within the normal range, Jenny was getting quite worried about him attending Nursery and getting ran over! As is, since Jenny was called as a nursery leader Nate is going already and is one of the biggest kids in there! Of course...

Breakfast Burritos - Oh Yum just thinking about them!

This is a delicious breakfast. Todd has put the brakes on it lately as he doesn't fill like it gives him enough carbs but I convinced him he wasn't going to be doing anything too physical this weekend so he made it. It was sooo good I think he might be open to making it again in the more near future! I guess I could suggest he have a couple pieces of toast the mornings we have it?!

Saute diced, salted bell peppers. While those are sauteing mix raw eggs, canned chopped green chilies, salt & pepper and add to sauted peppers. Cook until desired consistency and serve over warm tortilla. This picture doesn't show it but we usually add a sprinkle of fresh chopped cilantro on top. Don't add too much. You can also top with sour cream and salsa, but plain is definately worth a try! Definately one of the best parts of this dish is the tortilla. An extra special thanks to Whitney, we now know of the raw, uncooked tortillas you can purchase at the store and cook at home. These are so so so delicious we will most likely never go back to premade/precooked tortillas again. (Plus they are less calories than some tortillas and only like 20 calories more than others! Just an extra bonus!)


And Savannah loves them too!

Al-Pesto Pasta with Grilled Bell Peppers


This is a great, quick pasta dinner. We make up a "Pesto" packet from Knorr and an "Alfredo" packet from McCormick separately. Then we mix them together and serve the sauce over our favorite whole wheat pasta and top with grilled bell peppers. We just do the normal to grill the peppers: put olive oil in a pan and salt and saute until desired tenderness. It's so fast and really yummy! We love this dish.

Just Before School Starts...

We got 1 last run in before school started and took my brother's family skiing. It was a beautifully calm day and the best water we've had in a long time. His 2 oldest boys, Colton and Shaun, got up on kneeboards together and it was so much fun to see them out there. It kind of makes you realize how old everyone is getting!

Savannah loves the water and is getting less and less nervous of everything all the time. She usually gets in while we are changing skiers, etc.

Justin, their youngest boy, also got up on a kneeboard. He got up last year too, but he loved it all over again. It was pretty funny watching him plane before the boat was even going!

Nate loves the water and is very curious about everything. We had to chase him down from up the shore a few times trying to convince him to hang around where we were.

We eat lunch on the beach and usually the kids play around while we're there. This time was especially fun because they had just purchased fishing nets and there were a ton of baby fish swimming around. I love this picture as Shaun is intensely trying to catch the fish, Justin is really hoping he does, and Ashley is eating her sandwich with her heel popped knowing that if Shaun does catch a fish, he'll show her first! The fish along with the seagulls kept everyone entertained for a long while!

Savannah and her cousin, Ashley, play pretty good together, even when Savannah throws sand when she's not supposed to!

And of course everyone was wore out afterward!

Kodiak Cakes...
Mmmmm, Kodiak Cakes. 100% Whole Wheat with Oat Flour, mmmmm. They are our favorite pancakes. Try some today! You can even get them on Amazon.

Oh Crap!



And it begins...

My Carb Corner!

This is a corner of the kitchen. We put all our bread, etc there. The other day I got a kick out of how it turned into the 'half way down the counter' corner! There is burger buns, sandwich thins, homemade bread, store bought bread, fancy bread, some veggies from the garden, avocados, red potatoes, and sweet potatoes!

Oh Yum!

So what we had for dinner last night is not for the faint of heart. It is a rich, high flavor, high fat dish. Just up Todd's alley! Sorry I forgot to take a picture, I really should have with this dish. We never have side dishes with this dish as we usually eat until we're sick anyway! Usually this dish calls for chicken, but for the first time we just left the chicken out and still loved it.

Pepper Primavera (we replaced the "Chicken" with "Pepper") recipe:

Saute 4 cut red, orange, yellow bell peppers, 5-6 sliced mushrooms, 3-6 chopped green onions, 1/4 c butter, 3 mashed garlic cloves until desired tenderness. Add 3 c heavy whipping cream, 1/2-3/4 t salt and layer the surface area with dried basil. Cook over medium heat until reaches desired thickness, stirring occasionally. Serve over noodles.

So we usually eat this over Angel Hair pasta, but last night we did it over our spaghetti whole wheat noodles. Better over Angel Hair but still good over whole wheat. Enjoy!

What we ate today!

Sorry no pictures. So for dinner Sunday night we had...

Meatless Spagetti with whole wheat noodles and sauted crookneck from our garden on top.
Recipe for meatless spagetti sauce:
2 T melted butter in sauce pan. Add in 1/4 c grated onion and 1/4 tsp salt. Cook over med/high heat until onions are golden brown and liquid is gone. Add 2 mashed garlic cloves and cook around 30 seconds or until fragerant. Add 1 big can of crushed tomatoes and 2 cans of stewed tomatoes undrained and 1 small can of tomate sauce and 1 T sugar. Add in 1/2 tsp or so of dried basil. Heat to low boil and reduce heat and simmer until the rest of dinner is ready?! Right before serving add in 2 T olive oil.

We also had new potatoes and peas, fresh fruit, whole wheat 9 grain bread, and Jackie's sauted squash casserole.
Receipe for sauted squash casserole:
slice up some crockneck, zucchini, onions, and mushrooms and saute until tender with seasoning salt of choice. Remove from heat and add fresh diced tomatoes and some shredded parmessan/mozzerella and replace lid until chesse is melted? That's kind of what we did!

That was our Sunday night dinner for those who care!

So What Are You Guys Eating?

This is the most common question we get now so I thought I'd post a little bit about it for all you inquiring minds. I have also received a few requests for recipes or ideas on different meatless options so I thought this would be as good of a place as any to let you all know! And I will post the recipes as we consume them!

So I'll start with Saturday's menu so far: Breakfast was delicious with Honey & Wheat pancakes with pecans on the bottom and sliced bananas on top (cooked in). So what we do for this is spread out a few chopped pecans on the griddle and pour out a pancake of batter on top of them. Then place sliced bananas on top of that. Then spray the griddle with Cooking Spray where you are going to flip it as the bananas tend to stick a little. Then flip the pancake over with the bananas now cooking on the griddle. Then cook as normal. These are also very good with fresh blueberries!

Lunch was the best we'd had yet with grilled Black Bean patty burgers (Morning Star). On a grilled whole wheat bun with avocado, fresh chopped salsa (tomatoes, garlic, green onion, cilantro, lime juice, salt) grilled red pepper, grilled green onion, and a spoon full of flax seed. They were so good we didn't even add ketchup, mustard or anything else!

What We Have Been Taking Pictures of!

This post isn't necessarily an update as a lot more has happened than this, but here is what we have been taking pictures of! Yes, Nater turned 1 the end of June. We did celebrate, but of course I forgot my camera! He had a little family party with his cousin that is a day younger than him and really enjoyed himself I'm sure! He is standing now and Savannah is helping in every way she can think of, including just plain encouragement!

And he is still tired from all the growing.

We went to the diesel races in Redding, CA a while ago also. My sister in law, Jana, watched the kids for us for the weekend and just the 2 of us went. It was so much fun. It took around 15 hours to get there pulling Rocky on a trailer and around 13 to get back. Redding was so so so hot. I don't think I've ever been to a place that was so hot all day long and be outside the whole time. Todd raced Rocky and it was good. He did well until Rocky wouldn't go back into 4WD, which equates to not being able to get traction off the line and having no shot at winning the race. At that point he was out. But it was a great road trip nonetheless.

Nate is also learning to walk with everyone being very much a part of the equation! Savannah and Nate are very good friends and they pretty much just follow each other around doing whatever the other one is doing. It has been so much fun to have them so close. We don't regret it a bit, in fact we wish our situation would allow to have the next 2 so close as well, but 2 years apart is where we are at from now on!


And we finally went boating for the first time this year. With the cold spring we had and then Todd trying to be an active member of the National Hot Rod Diesel Association, we just hadn't got time to go yet.

We took my sister's family and everyone had so much fun. It was easy going with some time on kneeboards, the tube, and the beach. We love Sand Hollow and are so lucky it is so close. Well 45 minutes close! Kate and Carter both got up on the kneeboards and loved it!

And the latest and greatest thing we did but only got pictures of on the way home was...The Annual Welch Family Vacation. Yeah, we just got this picture of a Dirt Devil on the way home! But it was a lot of fun in Bear Lake and Twin Falls catching up with Todd's family and doing a variety of fun activities!

Strawberries or Actuallies

Yes, that's what Savannah is calling strawberries, "actuallies" is exactly what it sounds like! She is very familiar with them too as we have a good producing patch in our backyard now!

We have a good sized patch growing and Savannah is no stranger to picking them!

I made 2 batches of jam with them the other day too and it was so fun. It's the best tasting jam ever!

A few other things we've been up to:

Savannah is potting training, but we are NO good at it. Anyone have any book suggestions as we obviously can't figure this out on our own! She's fine to sit there all day, but definitely wants down when she has to go!

Nate is growing faster than Savannah. They have been in the same size diapers for most of Nater's life, but now they are in the same clothes. Even so much as the other night when Savannah puked on her PJ's she wore Nate's!

Father's Day was just the other day and we did Savannah's hair up cute w/ an adorable hat and matching dress and colored a card for her Dad. Todd is really a great Dad and it was so cute to see her give it to him and look at it together. She's a pretty lucky girl!

See what I mean about Lucky Girl! Yes, this is whipped topping that Savannah is licking from the beaters provided to her by her Dad. And in case you are wondering how she got so good at it... it's not her first time!

And finally we have a real live garden. It's so much fun. Stuff is sprouting and growing and we are looking forward to harvest! We planted corn, tomatoes, crookneck, zucchini, butternut, and potatoes! Yum Yum!

This isn't the Todd I Married!

or the Todd you once knew! What is the 1 thing in this world that you would think Todd would never give up? Well there might be a few, but if you know him well, you'd know he'd never give up his burgers! Well as long as never means June 1, 2010! Yep that's right, Todd went burgerless last week. And now for the rest of the story...

It all started with CrossFit, our new workout gym. You can google it if you need more info. We started doing it, which means we started an intense workout program. With this new gym they recommended what's called the Zone diet. You can google that too if you want. They said it was the perfect diet for the workouts we were doing. So Todd got curious and my dad ordered the books for everyone to read. (My dad often does this in hopes everyone will read them and then tell him what he should do!) Todd read the first 5 pages and thought it couldn't be the truth; it couldn't be a good way to live. The problem being it accused grains as being the great evil. That we should only eat meat, vegetables, and fruit. The diet incorporates grains but feels they should be limited. This didn't sit well with Todd since he was familiar with D&C 89 which says that grains are ordained for the use of men, and didn't like idea of diet plan that thought they were so bad.

This led to much contemplation as to what he should be eating, etc. As he kept going back to the Word of Wisdom he kept thinking that there should be a Word of Wisdom diet. He joked with my mother that he should write a book on the Word of Wisdom diet plan, or at least someone should! My mom, having every type of book for every type of righteous situation, said, "Oh, I have that book! I'll let you borrow it." So Todd left with "The Word of Wisdom Food Plan. A Medical Review of Mormon Doctrine". You can google that too!

Well he read it and it highlighted out some good verses in Section 89 such as something like Grains are not only ordained for the use of Man but the Staff of Life. Indicating to Todd that not only should they be consumed but should be the main source of food. And it made him revisit all the verses that talk about when we should eat meat. It pointed out in verses 12, 13, & 15 when we actually should eat meat. Todd originally thought it just said "sparingly" which he hadn't really ever thought about. But in reading it he realized just how much it talked about it and how it didn't really mean 2-3 times a day and sometimes for snacks! The book also points out how much more often meat is mentioned in the Word of Wisdom than everything else that we know to be sinful.

The medical science presented in the book showed statistics that were very sobering to Todd. Talking about how we have cured age old diseases such as polio, measles, and small pox and now those diseases are just getting replaced by new diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. All of which are preventable through diet. The book also quoted prophets and apostles specifically speaking about abstaining from meat.

So there you have it, we are off meat, and are anxiously awaiting winter and Todd is praying for a famine! Just kidding. He is actually doing great and feeling great and eating grilled vegetables like never before and whole grains and complex carbs like previously consumed burgers and fries! He is really hoping the blessings predicated upon adherence to these principles will be realized in his life!

Savannah and I are hoping it doesn't go any further than this as this morning was the third morning in a row we have had oatmeal, and Savannah cried when she saw breakfast this morning!

Wow, 1 Month Already!

I am trying to get back into this blogging thing but already 1 month has passed. I can't even believe it. One interesting point is as I was looking at everyone else's blog it seems as though I might not be the only one with this problem!


But I thought I would update on my recent trip to Alaska. A last minute an opening came to go Black Bear hunting with my dad, my brother, Jason, and a co-worker, Chris. I jumped on it and am so glad I did. We had so much fun and it was such an incomparable experience. Alaska has so much wildlife and scenery, it's really like no other place I've ever been. Although I have been to Alaska a few times before, I have never experienced it quite like this.

We went on a 50' boat and cruised the Prince William Sound looking for bears. We stayed on the boat all week unless we saw a bear and wanted to hunt it or if we were going to just go look for bears on our own.

I did get a bear. I was actually the first one. I really prefer to shoot animals that I spot as I feel like it's much more my own and I was so glad that I spotted this bear first. I really wanted to get a bear and didn't have too much of a preference on how big it was, so long as it wasn't a baby! Their hides are absolutely amazing this time of year as they are just coming out of their dens from winter. It was so thick and beautiful, I don't know if I'll even need to go bear hunting again!


We caught shrimp the whole time and had fresh shrimp everyday. They were huge and so yummy, but you'd never think you could get sick of eating shrimp, but we did!

There was so much wildlife. We saw a little bit of everything! These are Mountain goats on the hillside if you can see them! One is laying down toward the top and one is eating toward the bottom.


We rode around in a little raft when we got off the big boat. I wore a life vest every time we got in it! I was the only one, but the ocean is big and cold and I didn't want to utilize my swimming skills with all my hunting apparel on!

Some of the things we saw were more like what you'd see in a picture! I missed the family quite a bit and was very glad to get home. It was a whole week away and by the end I was starting to say things like, "I am NEVER leaving home for a full week again" and "I'm starting to wonder if this hunting thing is overrated!" Now that I've been home a while I'm back to normal though!



Jason and Chris both got bears as well. It was so fun to see and hunt so many bears. We ended up seeing almost 40 Black bears! I felt like I was in the middle of a bear factory with a few of the best hunters I know! It was a pretty jam packed trip to say the least!

We saw a lot of icebergs. It was definitely a new experience. One time we were just navigating through an iceberg field. It was spooky and a little too Titanic like! The water temperature kept dropping and is was the time I was most glad to have a captain driving the boat instead of me!