Fun Waffle pizza!

               I have been wanting to try something new with my waffle maker, because we never eat waffles. I figured it cooks bread...Right! So I was outside working away and realized it was dinner time and I had a few of the kids friends over. They had been helping me pluck rocks out of my grass, so I wanted to let them eat over and try something different.
Dough recipe
3 cups of flour
1 TBLS yeast
2 TBLS oil
1 tsp salt
1TBL sugar
1 cup of water/ you can also use milk or half milk half water.
1 egg (optional)
1/2 tsp baking powder (optional)

Dissolve yeast and sugar into bowel. Add egg, oil and salt (mix well) Put in 2 cups of flour and then work the dough as you go to get the consistency so you can form the dough without it sticking to you. If you feel like you are adding to much flour try pouring a little oil in your hands and then work the dough.  Knead the dough until nice and ....you know what it should look like!  Roll it out AND....


 Throw that dough on, clamp the waffle maker down and cook it like a waffle. Add  your sauce and toppings (I chopped my pepperoni up so it would fall into the holes instead of covering them)and then bake  on 425 until  melted (the crust should be cooked through when you take it out of the waffle maker) so you can stick it on the top rack if you are in a hurry. If you want it more crispy then let it cook in the middle rack for about 10 minutes and WALLA... OMG....it was so yummy!  You have this crust that is soft and crunchy and the pockets of the waffle maker give you uneven sauce and cheese ...creating the perfect bite!

I put the toppings in this on and then folded it over. The sauce bubbled out before it was done,   so I did a second one and left the sauce out. After it came out of the waffle maker, I put a layer of sauce and cheese on the top and baked it for a few minutes. 

              The kids asked for dessert, and I had a ton of dough left (I more than doubled my batch) so I rolled out more threw it on the waffle maker. Then topped it with butter and honey! It was like a healthier version of the scone. (Just minus the grease) both pizza and scones were a huge hit! One of the kids friends said "I was the coolest friend mom"   Big hit ...  And best of all it was so easy! I have a hot roll mix that I keep in a huge 5 gallon bucket that would work for the crust as well. All you do is add egg and water to it. I will post that recipe later!   I had tripled the amount of dough. I fed 8 starved kids, 2 adults and I brought one of each over to a neighbor to try. I still have three whole pizzas left over and I gave a chunk of dough to my neighbor to try out.

Life saver Pancake mix

I double this recipe and then keep it in a huge container. I have found that this recipe tastes better than store bought and it is way cheaper.    
10 Cups of all purpose flour
2 1/2 cups of instant non fat dry milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup baking powder
2 tbls salt


When you are ready to make the pancakes you just add your wet ingredients.  I do not measure. The thing that is good about this recipe is. You can add just water if that is all you have and they will turn out.  I like to add a couple eggs, oil and milk.
I will drop in a few chocolate chips after I flip one side. I have also used apple sauce, berries of all kinds and pumpkin puree for the liquid. I still add the egg but not oil.

If you are not good at just throwing stuff in. 1 1/2 cup of mix. 1 egg, 1 cup of water, and 3 tables of oil.

for puff oven pan cakes
4 tbls butter or margarine, 4 eggs, 2/3 cup milk, 2/3 cup mix. heat oven 450.  put 2 tables of butter into 2 9 inch pie plates. in blender combine remaining ingredients. pour batter into plates bake for 18 minutes or until golden brown and puffy.  You can top it with any type of fruit topping.

I have also used this mix for waffles. I just use less water and add an extra egg.

I usually make a double batch of pancakes in the morning and the kids snack on them or eat the rest the next day. I have made 4-5 batches at once let them cool on a cookie rack and then freeze them. You have toaster pancakes! They freeze very nicely.

Canned Chicken today!

As a mother of 6 kids canning meat is a life saver. I usually don't spend more than $1.49 a pound for boneless skinless chicken breast. Canning your own Chicken is so much cheaper than buying it at the store. I have also bought canned chicken from the LDS cannery and I think my canned chicken tastes better or just the same.
SO today I did the chicken a little bit different than usual. I usually just use all boneless skinless chicken breast and I trim any fat that I see off. I was told that it is the fat that gives the chicken it flavor and you need some fat to flavor it. I love the darker chicken flavors the best. I found boneless skinless chicken thighs for $1.05 a pound so I trimmed as much fat off a whole bag of that (they were pretty fatty) then I cut up 3 family packs of all white meat. I did trim the big pieces of fat off just because I had fat from the dark meat as well.
So here is the directions if you would like to try it yourself! First you do need a pressure cooker. Meat can't be canned in a steam bath!
Get your jars and wash them out. Get your lids ready and set it all aside. I like to put my canning funnel on the jar and just put the meat in as I cut it up. The funnel keeps any meat from getting on the mouth of the jar. You are going to want to leave about a quarter inch space from the bottom of the last ring in the jar. After you have filled all your jars add 1 tsp of salt to each jar. Then add water, fill it up just to the point where the lid rings start. Then take a spatula or butter knife and work all the air pockets out. Gently push the knife around through the chicken until the bubbles and pockets are gone. Make sure you don't have any salt or chicken on the mouth of the jar. Make sure your lids are clean. Then put your lids on. Don't screw your lids down to tight. Put your jars in the caner, add enough water so that it is about a quarter high up the jars. Make sure your pressure caner lid is on securely and get to cook in. You are going to want to cook it for 90 minutes from the time the pressure is at the right spot.
When it is done just let it naturally cool on the stove. If you try to cool it in the sink to get the lid off you will loose the liquid in your jars. They say if it is canned properly it should be good for 1-2 years. Mine never lasts more than 6 months. I have also done pork and beef and you pretty much follow the same steps.

A day of target shooting and rock hunting with my girls!

Someone gave me a cloth bag of really cool rocks from around the world this last week. I had baried my love for rock collecting around the age of 12. I use to have these piles of rocks that I thought were so cool that were really just gravel. Hattie and the twins have found the same hobbies. The funny thing is....We have a deal that if I have to go clean the bedrooms, I get to throw away whatever I want too. I always throw out the rocks sitting on the dressers and the big grocery bags full of rocks. It was not until this last week that I felt a little guilty about that, because I had forgotten how much I loved my ugly rocks a as a kid. So I put all these pretty rocks that this person gave me on my piano and for the last few days my kids have been trying their darnedest to find some rock that measures up to those so they could include them with the piano rocks. Me feeling a spark of my love for rocks. Knowing that my kids have a love for rocks and thinking I don't want rocks from my drive way sitting on my piano. I decided on a rock hunt adventure.
It turned out that it was just Hattie, Belle and Me. I got on line and found a possible cool spot over by the shooting range on the west side of Utah lake. We packed up a few things and last minute I grabbed a box of 22 shells, my Rugger 22 and some paper targets...just in case the rock thing didn't work out.
So we drove to the first spot...Total disappointment. Then started around the lake. This did not start off in our favor either as I got pulled over and got my first speeding ticket in like 9 years...Great way to start off our day! We tried the cove I read about but there was way to many target shooters and rocks are not worth any of our lives. So we decided to drive down the road a little further. We found a dirt road turn off. We parked a couple of time and walked around with no rocks worthy of the piano. Onward ...we finally decided just to set up the target and shoot ...Seeing how the day started out and was still going with luck probley not the best idea. I taught Hattie how to load, unload, line up her targets and shoot a 22 riffle. She was way off the first couple shots but got the hang of it and was at least hitting the paper. Then it was Belles turn. She was smaller than the gun and could not hold it on her own. I gave her about 4 shots before the kick was to much for her shoulder....Funny because I remember that kick when I was tiny. I think shooting it now "how the heck did that ever knock my shoulder at all?" We could have drove home and been perfectly happy at that point but decided to pull off the road and hike up to a ridge of rocks.
We walked up this mountainside that had all these ridges in it. I kept saying "this must have been an old dumping sight"... but "How the heck did they get all these huge slabs up here?" Turns out that it is shelving from 100k years ago that was created from water. Pretty cool! We ended up making it all the way to the top of this ridge. We found a big blast spot or something that was all white granite hidden underneath what looked like grass and dirt. It was amazing. We also found this old rusted out bus. From the looks of the tail lights it was really, really old. It looked as though someone had lived in it. There was 2 sets of iron bunk beds in the back, an old wooded shelf about to fall from the wall and a rusted out old wood cook stove.

All in all, Speeding ticket aside...We had a great day! We came home with some really neat rocks. We saw some awesome fossils of old reef. We also found 3 white almost completely clear crystals that are piano worthy. Let me just throw in how heavy the back pack was! We hiked about a half mile up to this ridge. We had a hammer, water and a few other things in it. We were putting rocks in as we hiked up. Before we hiked back down I told the girls they had to leave some rocks behind. They would not all fit in this big back pack. Belle says as we are leaving "I will carry it for awhile for you" She could not even lift it off the ground it was so heavy. Needless to say the rocks that fit stayed and I got a workout of a life time! And I only fell down the hill once. Swollen ankle, bruised shin, nicks and tiny cuts in both arms and hands, but we have rocks : ) O...and Hattie says she is more than likely the only girl in her class that knows how to shoot a riffle all by herself, and better yet her mom is the one who taught her. She wants her own now...in pink!

The grass is not always greener on the other side, it is greener where you water it!

I recently have felt like I was maybe alone on my journey here on earth. This thought seems so silly because I have 6 kids. I should be feeling more like "when can I be alone?" My husband goes out of town a lot! He is in town for 2 weeks and he leaves on the third week form Monday until thursday night. He also has quarterly meeting which usually last a few days. He is a trainer so every so often he has to go out of town for the entire week to train some one. He has had to go to training meetings out of town as well. So this last month he was gone 3 nights, home 2, gone 5 nights home 2, then his boss was in town for the next week (which seems like he may as well be gone) Plus he is stressed and ignores everyone as he is scrambling to prepare. Then he was gone again for another week. I can say the few days home in-between leaving again were far from quality time.
It was the last week that I found myself questioning everything about this man I am married to. I want to feel loved and missed. I want to occupy his mind. I want him to ravish me when he walks in the door.
NOW....I am not complaining or talking negative about the poor man. I am about to tell you that I am an idiot and chances are if you are a woman you have the same tendencies to feel the same way regardless of weather your husband travels or not.
I am a stay at home mom. My husband goes out of his way most of the time to get me anything I want. He makes sure I have what I need and that I am taken care of. My husband works full time, I can count on one hand the number of times he has called in sick on one hand since we have been married. (ten years) He works so hard and is so eager to please his boss and co workers. He is usually on the top as far as sales goes at work. Me....I stay home all day, I cook all the meals, clean, help kids with homework, laundry. It is a rare occasion that I ask Matt to help with anything around the house. I even mow the lawn and help with the house hold repairs that I can do. I just want him to love me. The hang up is...I want him to love me in ways I don't love him and in ways he does not know how to love me. This is where "the Grass is not always greener on the other side, it is greener where you water it" comes in.
I can not tell you the last time Matt walked in the door and I walked up to him and kissed him or gave him a warm welcome. He usually walks in the house gets ignored and then gets showered with how horrible the kids were that day. I think the wall goes up about then and stays up. He immerses himself in work stuff or other interests on line. I watch him smile at emails even laugh out loud to them. He will take a phone call and his tone will be so happy but with me I get the cold tone. I think day to day that I do not deserve this. I deserve someone who loves me and wants to give me undivided attention. He gets credit all day for being great at work, I get nothing. I wants some credit. I want him to tell me I am beautiful and I want to hear how grateful he is to have married me. I never once stopped to think. "Am I emotionally giving anything to Matt to deserve to hear those things"?
I came to the horrible realization that I was asking something of Matt that I could not give myself. I was only doing my part. I wanted the greener grass but I was not even watering mine. I was doing what I had to do so my house was clean and in order and that was it. So I sit and think about the greener grass and want it so badly while the entire time all I had to do was water mine. I talked to Matt and took blame for the emotions gone wrong in our relationship. I have made the efforts to say things and do things I want him to say or do to me and guess what? That grass I was checking out was no different than what I had. He is like a changed man over night, the funny thing about that is....I am the only one who changed anything. I don't tell him all the kids mishaps that happened while he was gone. I have made efforts to compliment him and to let him know I appreciate his hard work so I can stay home with the kids. He is looking at me with more love in his eyes. He is giving me more attention instead of shutting me out and he says little things to let me know he appreciates my work as well.
I would not have come to this realization without the help of a book called The Proper Care And Feeding Of A Husband By Dr Laura. I also read a couple others but for any of you who have read this and are struggling in any way in your marriage check that book out or look at what you are doing and what you are expecting in return.

Link to a second blog

I have thought that Avri has such a greater purpose than to keep me on the straight and narrow! I have watched her grow leaps and bounds this last year and I want to share that with some one, any one who ever thought some thing was not possible, or that life is to hard! I started to document her life on my blog and decided she deserved her own! So for anyone who read any of the first posts I wrote they are now on the "A life without limits" blog link! Her life has been so full so far that it will take me a few days to get caught up to her current life!