Thursday, December 22, 2011

Homemade Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookies

Yum, who doesn't love girl scout cookies? This week I get to cross 'thin mints' off my list of recipes to try. This recipe is very delicious and tastes close to the real cookie. Yum yum.
The recipe we used can be found here.

You will need:

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon mint extract
chocolate candy coating (we used dark chocolate mint, yum!)

The how to:
1. Beat butter until creamy. Add the sugar and beat until well mixed. Beat in egg and mint extract.
2. Sift flour, cocoa, and salt together in bowl. Add flour mixture slowly into the creamed mixture and beat until well mixed.
3. Divide dough in half. On a lightly floured surface roll dough into two 1 1/2 inch diameter cylinders. Wrap each in waxed paper and refrigerate for about an hour. Then put into the freezer for half an hour or so.
4. Preheat oven to 350. Slice cookies into 1/4 inch pieces and bake 10 to 12 minutes. We baked ours until they were nice and crunchy.
5. Melt chocolate (you can add mint extract to your melted chocolate if you desire) and frost cookies, dip cookies, or drizzle chocolate over cookies - whichever you prefer. Place on waxed paper to harden.

So photogenic!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Happy Birthday Kate!!

The sisters weren't complete until this little bundle arrived
Happy Birthday to the little sister! Best for last! Wishing you many many more fond sister memories to come! I love you!


Wait! Get back here, we're having our picture taken!!

Sisters all grown up :)

Employed Officially

After the end of the summer I began looking for work closer to home to be able to accommodate watching foster children. I was hoping to find a family to nanny for that would allow me to bring another child to work, or have their child watched at my house. That did not prove successful! In October I reluctantly decided to pursue other options. I was hired mid October (pending background clearances) for a position as a therapeutic support staff (TSS), and now 2 months later (after the longest hiring process I've experienced) I am now finally an official employee. As a TSS I will be responsible for implementing a behavioral treatment plan for children with special behavioral challenges, cognitive disabilities, and children on the autism spectrum. Which means I will be working one-on-one with kids to teach new skills and shaping behaviors to a desired outcome. I'm really excited about this position, but not about the part that means I will have to put our foster kids in daycare or hire a babysitter. I wanted to give our foster kids as much stability as possible, and putting them in daycare is the furthest thing from what I had envisioned. But this is a job I will really enjoy and will also give me a lot of new skills that will be useful for working with foster children, so it's hard to be too discouraged about it.


On another note, one day I could not find Smokie anywhere. Where did he go? This is what happens when we do not make our bed. 

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Bun Thit Nuong (15:03 at PhoGrand!)

Those of you in St. Louis have the luxury of going down to PhoGrand and ordering a nice delicious bowl of tasty anytime you want! I'm so jealous. I am so far away and so crave the deliciousness of number 15:03. In the bottom of your bowl is lettuce and cucumber, that is topped with hot rice vermicelli noodles and charbroiled pork garnished with chopped peanuts and cilantro. Then you add a delicious sauce over the whole thing that turns it into a sort of soup. It is made even more delicious by adding eggrolls to the top. Mmmmm. I was introduced to Bun Thit Nuong Cha Gio (15:03) by the wonderful women at St. John's Mercy Neighborhood Ministry, and it has since been an all-time favorite food of mine! Yum! It was so delicious that I still remembered that number 3 years later. I recently tried my hand at making it, but I didn't have high hopes of it turning out that well. But mmmmMMMmmm, it turned out just delicious! This recipe is a keeper, but I plan to try out a different marinade for my charbroiled pork next time and definitely have eggrolls. I generally followed this recipe http://themealplanner.blogspot.com/2009/05/charbroiled-pork-vermicelli-bun-thit.html
But I added cucumber slices and omitted bean sprouts, and cilantro is a must not an option. Look, a favorite food I crave that is not fried in oil!

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Kimchi

I'm a food marketers best friend. If I see people eating something tasty on TV it makes me want to eat it too. My new favorite TV shows to watch are Korean dramas. Sooo good. They are so much more family friendly than american dramas, and something about Korean culture just fosters a warmth in me. Every show I have watched has followed the same plot: Handsome, talented, rich boy meets poor, untalented but spirited girl. First they clash, but then they fall in love and live happily ever after after getting through some major struggle together. If you want to check one out I would highly recommend City Hunter (it might even be on netflix). 
But back to the food. I've been wanting to try kimchi for over a year, and now I've finally made some. Kimchi is traditionaly spiced fermented vegetables eaten with every meal. The recipe I used is ready in a day so no fermenting for months for me!
Cabbage and Kimchi paste. Just mix together!

Ta-da
It was very flavorful and delicious. I plan to make some kimchi cucumbers this week now that I have a humongo bag of korean pepper flakes. Another thing I made after watching Korean drama is rice porridge. So delicious and warm and comforting! Rice is my all time favorite food. If you are adopting a 5 year old from China you might want to learn to make some delicious rice porridge (congee in Chinese).

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Gyoza and Malasadas

Lately I haven't wanted to make anything too involved, but this weekend I decided it was time to cross some more recipes off my "to make" list. I was so excited when I was shopping at the grocery store to find some ground pork for 1.79/lb to make into gyoza. It was only after I had already emptied it into the pan that I realized it was ground turkey and not pork! Oh well, the result was still delicious and probably a lot healthier (well, as healthy as something fried in OIL could be I suppose). I've also been wanting to try making malasadas for the longest time. For those not in the know, malasadas are a delicious fried Portuguese donut that they have in Hawaii. I know, most of my fun treats to make end up being fried in oil. Oops.

The results of both recipes were delicious! Gyoza not pictured as a result of being too delicious to make it in front of a camera. The malasadas were really good (not as good as Leonard's Bakery, but still pretty tasty). We now have malasadas coming out our ears even after delivering a plate to our neighbor (who happens to be from Hawaii) and with Justin bringing some to school. If I ever make them again I will remember to make 1/2 or 1/4 recipe! I don't know why I read 6 cups of flour and 6 eggs and didn't think to reduce it. I must have been thinking with my belly.

I used this recipe than Nadine sent. Thanks Nadine! I skipped the step of turning over the dough and letting it rise again. Perhaps it would have been even more delicious had I followed the directions.

Next weekends cooking project: Pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting. mmmm.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Smokie's first time ever playing!

Perhaps you've met Smokie. If you have you know that his favorite thing in the world to do is to sleep under a blanket. When I first acquired him I bought him some balls and toys because what dog doesn't like to play? .....apparently my dog...... I'd tried real hard to get him to play or chase something, but he much prefers to lay somewhere warm and not move. Imagine my surprise as I was unpacking some items from some errands I ran and Smoke starts romping around with a little stuffed dog I had bought (not for him but to donate). It was sooooo cute! It was like I was watching a different (exciting) dog. You can tell in the video that we are much more excited than smokie.

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Kids Room

As we inch by on the foster parent process we're slowly inching by on setting up our middle bedroom as the kids room. This week it went from serving as a storage area for crib parts, mattresses, and other household odds and ends to a real bedroom! We bought a bedframe and set up one of the cribs/toddler beds. What a transformation! I also finished gluing buttons shaped as a heart onto an old canvas. The writing says "Every heart has a story to tell". 


Still to do: decorating the walls, sewing a bedspread for both beds, framing the button canvas with something.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Which Season is it?

The Northeast seems to be getting peculiar weather this year. First an earthquake, then a hurricane, and now a record breaking snowstorm in October. There have only been 5 days in recorded history in which snow has fallen here in October. Our 6.8 inches was definitely an all-time record for October! A lot of people are still without power, luckily we only lost ours for about 9 hours total. The trees don't usually have leaves by the time it snows, so tree branches were snapping off left and right bringing a lot of powerlines down with them. A lot of places are running on emergency power now or have no power at all. Lehigh cancelled classes Monday and Tuesday due to lack of power (no heat...brrr), but we didn't have internet so Justin still showed up because he didn't know!

Last week I had planned to go out on the weekend to take pictures of the pretty fall leaves, but what I got was a little different than I expected! Saturday was really quite a beautiful day. We are at the peak of fall colors and to see that mixed with white snow flakes was really a rare chance. I wish I had gotten more pictures!

Saturday morning

I planned to take pretty fall photos of these trees..oh well

Saturday night.

Sunday morning. Snow is melting.
This picture doesn't depict the fact that there are branches everywhere!

Friday, October 28, 2011

Really Cheap Halloween candy at Target

Still need candy for trick-or-treaters? Just thought I'd pass this along real quick. Target has a really good deal you can get right now for some candy.
Use three $1.50 off any mars candies product (snickers, twix, milkyway etc) from coupons.com. The coupon has "walmart" printed on it, but that is just advertising and it can be used anywhere manufacturers coupons are used. The coupon says 1 per purchase (that means one coupon per item so you can use all 3 coupons in the same transaction). You can only print off two of the same coupon per computer, so you'll need access to at least 2 computers to print 3 coupons, but it's still a okay deal to only use 2 coupons too.
Also you can stack a target coupon on top of that deal. Target has a coupon for $1 off when you buy 3 bags of mars snack-size candies. Target has these particular candybars on sale for 2.49 for a 11 oz snack-size bag so it's a pretty good deal!

Buy 3 bags of Snickers (or whatever mars candy you want) at 2.49 each ($7.47 - no thank you!)
Use 3 ($1.50/1) coupons from http://www.coupons.com/couponweb/offers.aspx?pid=15493&nid=10&zid=yn07
use 1 ($1.00/3) target coupon from http://coupons.target.com/
Total price for 3 bags: $1.97 (.66 cents a bag - ah, much better!)


Have a spooktacular day.

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Home Sweet Home - Stairs

I've been pretty neglectful of the work needing to be done on the stairs. They still aren't done, but now they are on my almost done list instead of my to do list. They've come a long way from their original condition. We were going to carpet them with the rest of the upstairs but did not like the price tag so we opted to stain and paint them once we saw that the wood underneath was in good condition. It's been fun to take on home improvement projects and see the final results. Well, really it's just more fun to look at the after pictures and just tiring during the process.
Mmm looks real clean right? Cat hair central.

Our stairs were furry like a muppet monster, but not in a cute way

Goodbye carpet. Hello cat hair in the air!
Justin makes ripping out this carpet look easy. But it was not. The little sticks attached to my body couldn't even come close to helping. Thank goodness for my awesome husband!

3 months later...
Pull out staples, sand, vacuum, wipe, stain, finish, sand, wipe, finish, prime, spackle, sand, vacuum, wipe, paint! Just 15 easy steps!
Nadine started the handiwork

Almost there
Maybe someday I will finish...
Still on the to do list is to finish the railing then paint the tops and bottoms of the spindles. Another project is tackling the upstairs railing that you see in the first picture. I'm really looking forward to having that done, but not so much doing it!

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Bethlehem Doggie Day Parade

It really feels like we've been here a year now that we're starting to go to the same events again. One of my favorites is Bethlehem's Doggie Day Parade. People dress up their dogs and parade them around! What could be better? There were so many good costumes! Here are some of my favorites.
They caught a little shark

Red riding hood, woodsman, wolf in grandmothers clothing!

Squirrel with an acorn!

Smokie's new friend made this dog look small

I <3 little poodles

There were 8 or 9 little chihuahuas on here!

Smokie's new friend

awkward...

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Foster Care Update

I was hoping to already have started doing foster care by now, but buying a house that needed some renovations set us back a few months on our schedule. Where are we in the process right now? Not very far. We've switched agencies and sent in our new application. The first agency we picked out did not work with children under 5 very often. The new agency we are going through said they definitely have a need for foster parents for young children. We're just waiting for our application to be approved and then we'll continue the rest of our meetings and training. It's looking like we won't be able to make it to this next round of training's in November due to a conflict with one of Justin's classes. The next training's aren't until after the new year sometime. So we still have quite a bit of time left. When we started thinking about foster care we were planning on just taking 1 foster child. However, after quite a bit of thought we are now hoping for sibling groups of 2. There is a greater need for homes to accept siblings. We are hoping for one sibling in elementary school and one under 5. The agency we are going through does do emergency foster care so we may get short term placements of just a few days or weeks or we may have the same children with us for more than a year.

We've made it pretty close to our budgeted goal of getting everything needed for a child (or two) birth-5, though we still have a few things to get. We hadn't planned on taking older children so we had not budgeted for a twin bed. That will definitely put us over even though we found a great deal for a new mattress.

Some of my favorite budget friendly finds include: quality clothing for 13 cents a piece, free changing table/dresser, free baby monitor courtesy of grandma Cindy, water table for 50 cents.

This weekend we also got a good deal on a little play house ($25), though it is tied for 4th place as one of the most expensive things we've bought so far. It was worth it! I can't wait to put a kiddie pool at the end and make a water slide!

Yum Yum Falafel Recipe

I had never thought to make my own falafel until I saw it on this website. I tried it, and yum! I don't make it in the crockpot though because it just takes too long for my liking (I also left them in too long one time and they turned into little rocks. oops). I fry mine in a pan and they turn out wonderful. I just made a big batch and I'm planning on freezing half. Next time I think I'll also add in some vegetables like carrots or peas. 

Falafel Recipe
  • 1 15oz can garbanzo beans (chick peas)
  • 1/2 onion, chopped
  • 1 T dried parsley
  • 2 cloves minced garlic
  • 1 egg
  • 1 t kosher salt
  • 1/4 t black pepper
  •  2 t ground cumin
  • 1 t ground coriander
  • 1/4 t cayenne pepper
  • juice from 1 lemon 
  • You will also need breadcrumbs later
The original recipe says to smash your chickpeas with a fork until it's a mushy paste. But because I like to take the easy way I just throw everything in the blender. The original recipe says not to do this, but mine have turned out fine. Blend everything together. Then add breadcrumbs until it's not as sticky and you can form it into balls (about 1/2 to 3/4 cup breadcrumbs). I also used italian breadcrumbs for added tastiness. After you've formed them into patties you can brush each side with a little oil and then fry until golden on each side. (Or I suppose you could just put some oil in the pan). Serve with pitas and a cucumber/yogurt dipping sauce. 

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Home Sweet Home - A New Kitchen Floor

You may remember this...
And this.....


But with a little of this.....

And a very generous coating of dust throughout the house (yes, we cut all our boards IN our house)
And several tricky cuts later and late hours
it now looks like this.....
And this...

All thanks to the hard work and dedication of the Aokis! Thank you so much! Carl was a pro at mastering tricky cuts around radiator and door frames. Nadine and I crafted paper patterns for the radiator cuts, layed the underlayment, and installed the easy boards. Justin was a pro at doing homework upstairs in his office (so he claims).

Yet to come for the kitchen is a new coat of paint. And a chalkboard wall for kiddos which will look very similar to this one! (Picture from http://www.nestofposies-blog.com/)
Love the rats

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Home Sweet Home - The End (Almost)

Last week we spackled, sanded and primed. This week we finished painting. What a relief! Observe the finished results. Of course we still have a bit left to do like finish the railings and stairs, but I'd say our house is now ready for a home study!
Before...obviously

After!

This room just keeps changing