…in a BIG tossed salad! One of my favorite tricks to ensure our family gets its raw greens and things is a big, colorful, fresh salad filled with an assortment of delicious vegetables. Pretty much every week I stop and pull out every fresh item I have in the fridge that can possibly be added to a salad. (I do, however, leave out any type of raw onion and mushroom to accommodate my sons. I keep those separate because I figure if they’ll eat all the other stuff gladly, why have a war over mushrooms and onions?)

This ready-made salad is one key to good health, plenty of fiber in our diets and convenience. Although initially it costs me about an hour to wash, dry, dice and toss, plus all the clean-up involved, it’s well worth the effort all week long when we simply grab, serve and eat.

Here is the current salad we are enjoying – you can see it’s dwindling, so it will be time to prepare another one soon…

This time it contains romaine, mixed wild greens (purchased in a ready-made combination bag at the store), radishes, carrot, cucumber, fresh basil, shredded red cabbage, red and yellow sweet pepper, celery, cherry tomatoes and turnip. I’ve started slicing all the extra-firm veggies in a food processor to save time and get a much thinner end product. My kids remarked how much they’re enjoying the new texture of the sliced vegetables. Just a twist on the same ol’ veggie.

Branch out and add sugar snap peas, diced broccoli, snow peas and cauliflower, cilantro, and anything else that sounds fun. Today I added crumbled feta cheese, kalamata olives, green onions and freshly ground pepper to my portion. Then I tossed it with balsamic vinegar and flaxseed oil. So delicious I forget it’s healthful, too. Design your own version and dig in!

I hate to waste food. Thus, my habit is to fill Ziplock freezer bags with odds and ends such as wilted celery, onions, tomatoes, extra veggies left over from meals, etc. I just noticed that I was accumulating quite a crop of these ‘extras’ so I decided to make soup. I began with some rock solid frozen stew meat at the bottom of my crock pot, and opened up my freezer bags, dumping everything else on top of the meat. I even had a couple of baggies of diced red and green peppers this time for extra kick. Fun! I added a few bay leaves and a couple of tablespoons of beef broth concentrate and crowned the whole thing with 2 bags of frozen mixed veggies (chopped carrots, green beans, corn and peas). Then I turned it on low and went to bed.

8 hours later I got up to make our morning coffee. I could smell the fragrance of stewing meat and veggies through the whole house…mmm…great food for a rainy, winter day. I added about a quart of beef broth to finish out the soup along with some salt and pepper.

All that was left to do was prepare a tossed salad and bake a whole wheat loaf in my bread machine. YUM!

P.S. My boys said my wheat bread was very tasty, but so dense it would make a great weapon! (First time recipe- I think I’ll adjust it next time with half bread flour )

Popper is in the kitchen with Mommer, cooking up our traditional Italian feast for the fam! We were chatting about the holiday fare and deciding if Italian would be on the menu. I said “if the boys arrive and there’s no garlic in the air, their jaws will drop to their knees and Christmas just won’t be the same.” LOUD LAUGHTER! Here’s my man making the meatballs…

Frying up those spicy Italian sausages…My messy corner where the ‘please-Lord-let-it-be-perfect’ sauce begins!

Gently simmering now with the meatballs and sausage…mmmm! Visions of bolognese dancing in our heads!

Never fear – I have my hairnet on as you can see below and I lint-brushed hubby and I before food preparation so no ‘fly-aways’ in Mama Mira’s sauce…

Yes, it’s true, I do possess some obsessive eccentricities But you can feel good about eating when the cook promises never to lick her fingers or double dip a tasting spoon, right?! (No cat hair either, I promise!)

…and afternoon coffee, and evening tea . This is a simple, inexpensive tradition you might like to begin. You can find piles of cheery clearance holiday cups just after Christmas and wrap them up in tissue or bubble wrap for next year. (Discount stores carry them even now at super reasonable prices. I picked up a set of 4 for $7.99 this month. )We pull ours out each year along with all the decorations around Thanksgiving and enjoy our festive mugs each morning when we turn on the coffee pot and grind the beans. They go bye-bye along with all the ornaments, etc., right about New Year’s Day.

A holiday idea you might enjoy!

Yep. I was feelin’ it. Life is flying about me like clothes in a tumble dryer and my to-do lists are growing longer and stretching across pieces of odd-shaped papers grabbed from here, pulled from there. Stress was pounding in my chest so I had to TAKE CHARGE!

I began to list neatly on ONE page every single thing I needed to get done this week from making a grocery list based on the meal list still needing to be completed, to deciding which sheets will go on which bed for our house guests, to cleaning the ceiling fans, toilets and sweeping the front porch. Then, I organized it into four lists: 1-meal list, 2-grocery list, 3-cleaning list, 4-errands to run.

Then, I sent my two teen-agers, shopping lists in hand…

to do ALL the holiday food shopping at two different stores, God bless ‘em!

They came home 3 hours and a few phone calls later (Momma they don’t have sweet-hot mustard…Momma they don’t have summer sausage…), exhausted (welcome to my world, boys!) and victorious. I was so proud of them. One of them had called me in a panic to make sure there was enough money in his bank account to get through the check-out line without embarrassment (been there, done that before!).

Mission accomplished!

Tomorrow they attack the cleaning list! Thank God for teen-agers!

I was reminded as I ate dinner last night of how the best meals can come into existence at the time you are least prepared to create something delicious. Your expectations are at their lowest. Perhaps that’s why it tastes so good!

At the moment we’re in the middle of painting a good portion of the interior of our house.We’ve been waiting for a year to begin this project and it’s so much fun to finally watch the progress unfold. But it’s a tedious, time-consuming job, right smack-dab in the middle of anywhere you might want to be in the main living areas of the house – which makes the simple process of living life a little awkward. I’ve been running a lot of errands to stay sane .

Since the stove and fridge have been covered in drop cloths, preparing food hasn’t been possible the past couple of evenings, so we’ve had to grab meals out. Eating out is such a treat, until you have to! I knew it was time to make something fresh and relatively healthy last night. The only problem was that it was also time to do a little grocery shopping to freshen up the produce supply, and it was Friday and I was booked solid.

So I went through the cupboards and the fridge and evaluated the situation. As I sorted through the fruits and veggies, I found some very tired and limp oranges, apples and assorted items. I loathe wasting food, so it was painful to toss out a few things – but the things I could save for soup were chopped and stashed in the freezer.

I evaluated my supplies and began to prepare. Plenty of potatoes – so I washed a bunch and put them in the crock pot at noon. I always make extra because they’re perfect for next-day fried potatoes, burritos, soup, lunch… I didn’t have cucumbers, carrots, radishes, broccoli, mixed greens or sprouts, but I did have plenty of good romaine lettuce, so I chopped, spun and washed a load. Some hearty celery left from Thanksgiving preparations was diced and added to the lettuce. A can of sliced black olives, too, plus a half of red onion was chopped and added. I rescued 2 firm tomatoes from those begging to be frozen – chunked them and crowned the salad with those.

Then I spread a bag of frozen chicken thighs in a baking dish and baked them ’til they were almost done – drained the juices to save for future soup and topped each thigh with a plop of barbecue sauce and put them back in the oven for a final 10 minutes. In the meantime I steamed the last fresh vegetable I had – a pound of asparagus that managed to stay alive for 2 weeks. We topped the potatoes with butter and sour cream and enjoyed a feast. The flavors all blended so well and although thighs are a cheap cut of chicken, they are moist, juicy and tender, a perfect combination with the barbecue sauce. The salad didn’t have a bunch of glorious veggies, but the simple mix was so flavorful topped with some homemade buttermilk dressing I’d made a couple of weeks ago.

I still have a recipe in my file called Desperate Pasta I created from cupboard gleanings and threw together one frantic night between meetings 12 years ago. I’m sure you have similar creations. Perhaps you’d like to share them with us – it would be fun to gather a few as we enter one of the busiest seasons of the year. They might come in real handy!

I’m about to enjoy a plate of leftovers as I wrap up this edition of the blog. Yum. Happy Saturday!

Wrestling with big/little brothers, hugging friends, filling up our plates, chillin’ with instruments, watching Christmas movies…so grateful for the abundance of good things God has given to us freely to enjoy! May we use everything for His glory and Kingdom.

We’re hosting a Thanksgiving feast here on the home front tomorrow, so there are lots of duties to be done – especially since we’re once again in remodel mode, plus hubby has been seriously motivated to ‘Deck the Halls’ this year with all our kids coming for Christmas Our second-born arrives tomorrow and I can hardly wait! Daddy really wanted the house to be welcoming. YIPPEE!!!! WAHOO!!! EUREKA!!! Absolute chaos. I’ve hardly had space to walk through the house, let alone clean and organize it. God bless MY MESS!

Gregory, my husband of nearly 29 years (on the 29th!) is cutting my prep time in half this year just by chopping stuff. What a major help!!! He made it through the celery without a hitch, but the onions got him! I said, “welcome to my world!” but actually I cheat because I wear contact lenses and I’ve discovered that chopping onions has no effect on me whatsoever and apparently my contacts are the key. Well, he was overcome with the fumes and went out to the garage?!…

I was engrossed in my own tasks, when suddenly I looked at him and saw the swim goggles. OMGosh. He learned that tip from our two boys who often serve as my sous chefs – what a scream!  Isn’t he just so handsome…he still takes my breath away.

I’ve been warning my youngest, “Seth, Wednesday is a WORK DAY so be ready to roll – we’ve got a lot to accomplish.” So after Bible and his Wednesday dog walk for the widow down the block, he began his first task…the dreaded laundry!

His big brother Levi is in school full time now, preparing for a career, so he was busy in the kitchen last night making his lunch for the ‘morrow. He prepares some pretty creative wraps that WOW his fellow students. Chicken, fresh basil, tomatoes, Italian salami, cheese, ranch dressing, sprouts, sweet red peppers, whole wheat Lavosh wrap bread…all sorts of healthy, good stuff. Some days he gets lazy and it’s just PBJ on a bun…

Everyone chipped in tonight to clear the clutter and clean the kitchen – Levi is doing dishes while Seth is preparing a family tradition – ambrosia salad. One of those things the Miras have to see on the buffet or it’s just not Thanksgiving! You can find a lot of recipes for this online. They call it 5 cup salad. It’s easy and absolutely delicious. Here’s how you make it:
Ambrosia
1 cup sour cream
1 cup sweetened grated coconut
1 cup mini-marshmallows
1 cup very well drained mandarin oranges (we throw the juice out – just sugar water)
1 cup very well drained pineapple chunks or tidbits (we save the juice to drink)
Mix the first three ingredients together well in a bowl.
Fold in the fruit.
Chill overnight.
YUM. Great frivolous side dish, almost a dessert.
(We multiply it by 5 or 6 to make a big batch)

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY! HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

With our summer spent away, our youngest son’s special musical performance dates and our major house cleaning (err, liquidating see previous posts) of late, we eased back into the ‘formal’ new school year a few weeks ago. I say ‘formal’, because I happen to believe that most of our son’s life is an education!

All summer long he spent time with friends and family of all ages (socialization, check!), ran his own lawn care job (entrepreneurial, landscape and work ethic studies, check!), spent time outdoors playing, tubing, riding bikes, tennis with Mom and swimming (P.E., check!) practiced his electric guitar tirelessly (music studies, check!) and performed in some concerts (musical performance studies, check!) along with maintaining his Bible reading (literature, check!) and prayer life (spiritual life studies, check!). He also whipped up goodies in the kitchen regularly and handled his required household chores (home-ec, check!). So for our formal school year, we just add some academics and voila’ – there you have it. The Mira Family Home School.

Anyhoo, October 1st I got online to file our Private School Affidavit since it’s required in the state of California if you home educate. As I filled in all the tedious boxes, and tried to decipher the questions (?!) in order to answer accurately, I felt so grateful for the freedom to home school and yet at the same time I felt so concerned that we could be a thin thread away from losing our freedom to do so.

Even if you choose to send your kids to public or private or charter schools, this freedom I’m speaking of impacts you no less than those who choose to home educate. Why? Because at the bottom line, it’s not about home education, it’s all about our freedom to parent as we see fit, and that’s a freedom tip-toeing on thin ice at the moment in our nation.

You may be very surprised – shocked even, to know what’s happening regarding your parental rights. After all, you’ve got bills to pay and gifts to wrap and kids to raise and taxes to file and a house to clean and – what? the groceries are gone AGAIN?! (Why are the groceries ALWAYS gone?) Who’s got the time to keep tabs on what’s happening in Washington D.C. when I can barely keep up with the dishes and diapers, right?

Well, some of my friends are making it their mission to keep up on your parental rights and I’m gonna tell you all about it on the blog this week. Stay tuned.

And in the meantime, don’t forget to enjoy living life with those growing kids of yours!

I probably mentioned that we remodeled our kitchen last year about this time. It was a tired, old 80s version, as were the appliances, along with the grime between the counter tiles!

We replaced our stovetop with a cool-looking one that has what’s called a glass-ceramic surface. The only issue is the difficulty of keeping it looking shiny-clean without any ‘food marks’ lingering. I’ve tried a number of things, but I thought I would check out the user guide to see if there were any helpful tips from the manufacturer.

I opened the booklet to page 4, started reading the Tips to Protect the Glass-Ceramic Surface and began to laugh out loud. Let me share a few points with you:

*Do not allow plastic, sugar or foods with high sugar content to melt on the hot cooktop. Should this happen, clean immediately. (So, what happens when the sauce boils over while you’re chasing the cat, correcting the child, answering the door and calling your mother and firstly, you didn’t even notice it boiled over, then you couldn’t possibly clean it immediately without undue hardship…well let me just say, you are IN TROUBLE little lady!)

*Do not slide metal pans across a hot surface. The pans may leave marks which can be difficult to remove or leave permanent marks. Any marks should be removed promptly. (In other words, do not buy this stovetop if you might have boys doing the cooking; matter of fact don’t buy this stovetop if you’re even thinking of having boys…)

*Make sure the surface and the pan bottom are clean and smooth before turning on to prevent scratches. (When’s the last time you checked the stovetop and the pan bottom before you started slinging the hash?!)

*Never use a soiled dish cloth or sponge to clean the cooktop surface. A film will remain which may cause stains on the cooking surface after the area is heated. (Ear-splitting laughter on this one…)

*If a spillover occurs (IF? IF, you say?!), immediately clean the spill from the cooking area while it is hot to prevent a tough cleaning chore later. Using extreme care, wipe spill with a clean dry towel. (OK, I do not recall pledging my life to this appliance…OMGosh!)

I think I’ll Google search ‘tips for cleaning a glass-ceramic stovetop’ and get some real answers for real people who make serious progress in the kitchen whipping up yummy stuff!