Fry bread and beans!

Mmmmm...

Amazing beans on top of some homemade fry bread :) I use THIS recipe for the beans. I do modify it a bit. I add extra jalapeno (typically 2 or 3), half the salt and I usually just sprinkle in some garlic powder instead of minced garlic. What can I say... I'm lazy :) or running late a lot. We LOVE these beans. We make them all the time. I think my crockpot permanently smells like them. This is probably my most asked for recipe.

I use the fry bread recipe from THIS recipe. I get 4 out of the recipe, we had already dug in :) Good eats!

Then just top with whatever you like! We typically do lettuce, cheese, salsa and sour cream. Guacamole is yum too!

Veggie Scramble

One of my fave egg dishes is what I call veggie scramble. Today I had zucchini and yellow squash that I sautéed a bit in EVOO and then tossed in eggs and scrambled it all. So good.

My absolute favorite combo is to use leftovers from when we BBQ. We will grill zucchini, yellow squash, bell peppers and onions in foil packets on the grill and I use the leftovers in my eggs. They give it a slightly different yummy smokey flavor. I also prefer one whole egg and 3 egg whites. All person preference. This also used to work for sneaking in veggies with my toddler. She has caught on by now but sometimes I can still sneak in just the yellow squash for her :)

Pizza Night!

Hubs good buddy's introduced us to awesome homemade pizza a few years ago. Before that I don't think I had made pizza since high school haha. It's basic. Homemade dough and then top and bake! We don't use precise measurement s beyond the dough. When we roll out the dough we roll the edges of the dough up a bit to create a little crust barrier so cheese and toppings don't drip off. Nothing like a grease slick going all over your oven! Not that we have done that more times than I care to admit... Once you have the dough all rolled out transfer it to a pizza paddle that has a generous amount of corn meal sprinkled on it. I like to check to make sure the dough isn't sticking at this point, just give the paddle a little jerk and make sure it slides a bit. We prefer marinara sauce for sauce and then pile on cheese and toppings. Again once it is topped I like to make sure its going to slide off so I jiggle the paddle a little make sure the pizza slides just a little. Then we stick in the oven on a pizza stone. We set the oven to 425 and you want to preheat with the stone in there. Then we just watch the pizzas. I really have no idea how long it cooks, told ya we aren't precise with our pizzas! We do one pizza at a time too. Also a word of warning especially if you haven't done it before, the corn meal on the paddle can come off and right into your oven very easily as well as toppings and stuff can slide off onto the stone and it can all burn a bit. Nothing to worry about really but if you are like us and have a very sensitive smoke detector you may want to turn the oven vent on and open some windows before baking. Our dogs and toddler freak when the alarm goes off :) Our shih-tzu took off down the street once, she hates it that much!

Dough recipe (makes 2 pizzas):
4 1/2 cups flour
1 3/4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1/4 cup  olive oil
1/4 C warm water plus 1 & 1/2 C cups water
honey

Combine yeast and 1/4 C warm water and a little honey. I'd say I usually use 1/2-1 tsp honey. Not too much. Give it a mix and let it rest for 10-15 minutes. It should look sort frothy I guess would be the best description. Dump it in mixer and add all the other ingredients. Let the mixer mix on low until the dough has come together and is smooth looking. If it seems really sticky add a little flour and mix some more. Take the dough hook out and cover the bowl with a towel. I let the dough rest for about 4 or 5 hours. Then split it into two equal parts and roll out on a floured surface.

Entertainment Center

Hubs finally finished the entertainment center. It's...um... a bit big.. I will have to get used to it! Just happy to have it out of the garage! We used plans from Ana White (here) and tweaked to our needs. Or hubs needs anyway. It was definitely a learning experience along the way. The cabinet doors have this metal mesh stuff (technical term!) rather than being solid doors. My genius idea, thank you :) We have our internet stuff, gaming stuff, sound stuff and cable stuff all in the cabinets and it all gets hot hot hot. So the mesh as well as a fan hubs installed in the back of a couple cabinets help it from heating up quite as much.

Advent Calendar

Just wanted to share a cute advent calendar I found for Z baby. I'd been looking for awhile now. I had one growing up and loved it. We always got a small a gift each day and its something I will continue with my kids. And we started with Z this year! It also was nice to spread her gifts out. We have awesome relatives that didn't mind me giving her some of her smaller gifts as her advent gifts. Z gets a bit overwhelmed opening a bunch of gifts all at the same time so this was a great way to spread it out. The calendar I found at fisherprice.com. Z loves playing with it as well and an added bonus you can use it as a matching game to help learn to match up numbers as each little piece has the number on the back :)

Fuzzy Polar Bears

Another Pinterest idea I found somewhere and can't find again otherwise I'd link it since I can't take any credit for it being my idea. I cut some basic heads on my cricut on white cardstock. I just did a large circle and two smaller ones for ears, welded. Then I washed out some little fruit cups. The small plastic individual ones. Z baby gladly ate the fruit first for me. She's my fruit monster! Then I painted the inside of the cups white and glued them onto the head cutout for the nose. Then I gathered cotton balls for the fur and found a bunch of colored puff ball things I had intending to use those for just the eyes and top of the nose. Z baby and her BFF had other ideas though! We ended up with some mighty colorful polar bears! Love the creativity :)

I just smeared a bunch of white glue all over the head and then let the girls go to town with the cotton balls and puff balls. In hindsight I should have used more glue, many were falling off. Or I could have let them dip each ball in glue and stick them on that way. Next time!

Gobble gobble!

Turkey time! We always brine our turkey and then smoke it on Thanksgiving. This year we had a helper making sure the brine was up to snuff :)

She didn't actually try it, just pretended. Our lil chef Z! We use Alton Brown's recipe for Roast Turkey but just smoke it instead of roasting. Love me some Alton recipes!! We brine it in one of those igloo coolers. The tall tube ones with the spout at the bottom. Just have to be careful not to get too big of a turkey so it fits in! One year we did two turkeys and used one of the regular igloo ice chest things.