Week 4: Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken, Fried Rice, and Cherry Crumble

I'm an overachiever this week.  I tried 3 recipes to make one killer dinner and a delicious dessert.  It could be that after 3 full weeks of at least one person being sick in our household, we are all finally well ::knocks on wood::.  It could also be that with the start of a new semester at work, the feeling of starting fresh is all around me.  Or it could just be that I miss those special Sunday dinners my mom would cook growing up and wanted to get back into the habit of doing those for my family.

This week was different.  With Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Evan being released from the hospital on Monday, we geared up for a short week of work.  My mom and Scott's mom took shifts Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to watch Evan at our house since he couldn't go back to daycare yet, and luckily with final exams this week, I was able to stay home on records day on Friday since I had my grades done Thursday.  A big thanks to our parents for always helping us out when we're in need!

Thursday, Scott and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary.  Unfortunately, he had to have basketball practice after school, so I had put together a lasagna and red velvet cake Wednesday night so that we would have a really yummy, but quick dinner on Thursday.  We've always decided against gifts for one another for anniversaries since the date is so close to Christmas and Scott's birthday.  But, I couldn't resist doing this easy Pinterest idea to make Scott feel special.  5 Mylar balloons from the dollar store.  The white one is from the year we got married with a picture from our wedding and my favorite wedding memory on the back of the picture, the other red ones are for each year we've been married with a picture from each of those years and my favorite memory.

Saturday, we were lucky enough to snag a date night with the boys away for the night.  We grabbed dinner and drinks at Compari's on the Park in Plymouth and then went bowling.  So, by Sunday, with the boys back home, laundry done, grocery shopping done, and everything ready for a full week of work and a new semester, I knew I wanted to try out some of these recipes I've been hoarding in a pile.

This week's meal I made was AMAZING.  Scott was totally skeptical because I've tried a sweet and sour chicken recipe before that wasn't anything to write home about.  But, man, I'm glad I tossed his opinion to the side and stuck with my gut on this one.

Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken and Fried Rice:

For the chicken...

1 package of chicken breasts (4) that I rinsed with water and then cut into cubes.
salt + pepper

1 cup cornstarch

2 eggs, beaten

1/4 cup canola oil

For the sauce...

3/4 cup sugar

4 tbs ketchup

1/2 cup distilled white vinegar

1 tbs soy sauce

1 tsp garlic salt

       Start by preheating your oven to 325 degrees. Rinse your chicken breasts in water and then cut into cubes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Dip chicken into the cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs.  Heat your 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet and cook your chicken until browned but not cooked through. Place the chicken in a 9x13 greased baking dish. Mix all of your sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and then pour evenly over the chicken. Bake for one hour and during the baking process you will need to turn the chicken every 15 minutes.   

While the chicken was in the oven, I started the rice and the dessert.

For the rice...

3 cups cooked white rice (day old or leftover rice works best!)

3 tbs sesame oil

1 cup frozen peas and carrots (thawed)

1 small onion, chopped

2 tsp minced garlic

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1/4 cup soy sauce

On medium high heat, heat the oil in a large skillet or wok.  Add the peas/carrots mix, onion and garlic. Stir fry until tender. Lower the heat to medium low and push the mixture off to one side, then pour your eggs on the other side of skillet and stir fry until scrambled. Now add the rice and soy sauce and blend all together well. Stir fry until thoroughly heated!  

Delicious!

And for dessert, we periodically get postcards from our realtor who sold us this house we're in now with recipes to try on them.  It's a cute idea since their slogan is something along the lines of "We're your recipe to success in real estate".  Their recipes are always tasty and pretty easy to make!

Easy Cherry Crumble

2 cans Cherry Pie Filling (21 oz. each)

1 box of Vanilla cake mix

1 stick of butter, melted

1 cup almonds

Simply spread the cherry filling on the bottom of a 9x13 cake pan.  Then mix the melted butter with the cake mix and almonds.  Put the cake topping on top of the cherries and bake in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.  Serve with vanilla ice cream!

What a great way to end the week and start another!  I can't wait to have the leftovers for lun

Pin the winter blues away!

I love the winter.  I really do.  I mean we chose to get married in the winter, in the snow.  However, since kids have come along, winter isn't quite what it used to be.  Gone are the days that we could go and hit the slopes for some snowboarding after a fresh snowfall.  And with illnesses continuing to plague our house every winter since Sean was born, it's better sometimes to just to lock ourselves indoors and stay home.  But, I can't help but feel cabin fever creep over all of us.

And then I found Pinterest.  Suddenly, being stuck indoors isn't so bad.  With ideas for new and creative meals and millions of activities that we can do with the boys in the very comfort of our home, I'm not feeling so depressed about missing those black diamonds.

After finally getting some of these pictures off my phone, here are some of our favorite pins we've done this winter so far:

Candy sleighs for a few colleagues!

A treat while watching The Polar Express on Christmas Eve's Eve!

Christmas Eve morning breakfast - a breakfast wreath!

Chocolate, Peanut butter chip, Pretzel cookies!  Our absolute favorite cookie recipe.

Broccoli cheese soup in bread bowls!

One of Sean's Christmas presents I made him - a matching game with transportation vehicles.

Another one of Sean's Christmas presents I made him - Parking Lot ABC's!

An easy breakfast for Sean - peanut butter banana roll-ups on wheat tortillas!

A snowman made out of shaving cream and glue!

A snowman made out of paint using Q-tips!

Glow sticks in the bathtub!

Cloud dough with dump trucks!

I think it's safe to say we've been keeping busy for the months of December and January!  Trying to stay healthy and warm, while staying entertained and well-fed.  What did we do before Pinterest came around with all these amazingly, easy ideas???  Seriously...I'm forever grateful, Pinterest.  And so is my family.

Week 3: Sausage, Egg, and Cheese McMuffins

Whew!  What a week!

This week was a continuation of last week with everyone in the house getting over some form of cold/sinus infection/upper respiratory infection.  Sean was finishing off a prescription of amoxicillin, Scott and I were taking as many decongestant pills we could take in a 24 hour period, and poor Evan was left to fight off his cold by himself.  It took a toll on all of us, but it really did a number on Evan.

It's said that RSV is the equivalent of a heavy cold for an adult.  It's just that babies don't have the ability to fight off the cold the way we do and they certainly don't have ways of coping with the amount of congestion we all had these past two weeks.  Poor Evan didn't stand a chance.  Despite running a humidifier at night, dressing him warmly, keeping him on his sleep and eating schedule, he was getting worse each day.

By Thursday, I could see that Evan was working to breathe so we didn't hesitate to take him back to the pediatrician for the fourth time since the beginning of the month.  Yes, fourth.  He was diagnosed with RSV/bronchiolitus.  It's not the first time we've had to deal with that particular diagnosis.  In fact, just this time last year Sean was hospitalized for what started with RSV and ended with pneumonia.  I swear, we do take care of our children.  We feed them well, dress them appropriately, put them to bed early, etc.  I'm not sure what kind of punishment we've been given, but it seems really unfair to experience a version of this with both kids.

Sean last January.

By Saturday morning, Evan had a fever and was still working hard to breathe despite giving him breathing treatments every four hours.  Another trip to the pediatrician early in the morning confirmed that we needed to take him to the ER.  I kind of knew this was coming.  Poor thing.

Evan this January.

I can't express enough how difficult it has to been so see both of my boys hospitalized at such young ages.  More so, it's absolutely heartbreaking to see the ones you love in so much pain, connected to so many monitors, and needing oxygen support.  It was an exhausting 48 hour stay with very little sleep and meals consisting of fast food and carry out from various local restaurants.  Surprisingly, I didn't gain a single pound from this gorge of a weekend.  But, I'm happy to report that Evan was released this morning and is on the mend.  He was in such a fabulous mood all day today with tons of smiles, giggles, and squeals.  He's back to his normal self and I loved every minute of my time with him today.  And looking on the bright side of things, at least this happened over a 3-day weekend that allowed Scott and I to be by Evan's side constantly without worrying about what we were missing in our classrooms.  Though this wasn't what I had in mind for my 3-day weekend home with my kids.

Anyway, earlier in the week I had somehow managed to find enough time and motivation to put together a very easy breakfast recipe that I could freeze and use as quick weekday morning breakfasts for myself or Scott. We've gotten in the rut of eating bowls of cereal, mini bagels with cream cheese, fruits, yogurt, or frozen whole grain waffles.  I would love to have eggs on a weekday morning since they're such a great source of protein, but getting two kids ready, fed, dressed, and out the door by 6:45am doesn't allow me much time to be whipping up scrambled eggs and bacon.  

So, these breakfast sandwiches are simple:

I used 9 English muffins (that's what I had)

9 eggs

Milk to mix with the eggs

8 sausage patties (again, that's what I had)

9 slices of american cheese

I did a batch of 5 eggs first, followed by the other 4.  Once they started to set in the pan, I cut them into 5 separate pieces with my spatula.  While the eggs were cooking, I was frying up the sausage patties in a separate pan and broiling the English muffin pieces in the oven.  

Once the eggs, sausage, and muffins were ready, I put them all together with a piece of American cheese on top.  And that it's!  I let them cool, then wrapped each individual sandwich in a piece of paper towel and put them in freezer bags.  Now, all I have to do in the morning is grab a sandwich wrapped in paper towel, microwave it for about a minute, and breakfast is served!  I love that I can eat it while driving the boys to daycare or while I'm giving Evan his bottle.  Simple is key on a weekday morning.  Especially since we've all been sick and the snooze button on my cell phone alarm clock has become my best friend.

Valentine's Day Daycare Gifts

"The Christmas tree go buh-bye."

Yes, Sean, Christmas is over.  New Year's Eve has come and gone.  And January always tends to drag by with no holiday to celebrate.  Unless you want to count Martin Luther King Day and I don't think a 2 year old is capable of understanding that one.

So, we've officially moved on to Valentine's Day in this household.  It's always perfect timing too.  Scott and I were crazy enough to pick January 24th as our wedding day almost four years ago.  So, it's extra fun to have all of our "love" decorations up for Valentine's Day during January so we can combine it for our anniversary too.  I pulled together all our random Valentine's Day decorations that we've accrued over the years and added a few new pieces this year from HomeGoods.

And of course, the ever exciting decision of what to make for the daycare treats weighs heavily on my mind.  This year I will have to come up with something for Sean's classroom, Evan's classroom, and six daycare teachers.  Oy!  And to add to that, they attend a center that proudly serves only organic food and has a strict no outside food policy.  So much for all those cute ideas of goldfish crackers that say, "Will you o"fish"ally be my Valentine?"

A quick search on Pinterest and I easily found Sean's treat.

This is meant to be.  Hot wheels are occasionally on sale for .88 cents at Kroger.  I already found a PDF file of the cute bag topper on the internet for free and saved it to my desktop.  Now all I need is to wait for the hot wheels to go on sale, buy some treat bags from Michael's, and he's good to go.  My only concern is how Sean will manage with giving away all those cool hot wheel cars...

For Evan, I knew I had to pick something that was age appropriate.  When I saw this pin on Pinterest I knew this would be perfect for the upcoming Spring months outside with babies!

Again, the PDF file for the tags was easy to find online for free.  All I need is a quick trip to the dollar store down the road for some bubble wands or bubbles and I'll grab some ribbon while I'm at Michael's getting Sean's treat bags.  So excited!

Now, for the teachers I had originally thought I'd buy them each a single rose.  But, the thought of getting up any earlier in the morning to go out first thing and get some fresh roses was enough to stop me in my tracks.  Instead, I saw this cute pin on Pinterest and while I was making a quick stop at a small grocery store by their daycare I saw the cans of tuna on sale for .89 cents!  We aren't tuna fans in this house, so I plan on just dumping out the tuna and letting the cans air dry and get that scent out for a few weeks.

I plan on using it for the plant option instead of the candle.  I'll just grab some mini plans from Home Depot the weekend before and I already have a heart shaped die cut for my scrapbooking.  Hopefully, the ladies will appreciate a small plant that will say something along the lines of, "Thank you for helping me grow! Happy Valentine's Day!"

I'm looking forward to having next Monday, MLK day, and next Friday off of school so I can get a jump start on some of these projects!  Now if only it were this easy to think of something for Scott...

Week 2: Coca Cola BBQ Chicken

It's hard to believe January is half over.

And I'm half relieved.

January was not kind to use last year with Sean being hospitalized for pneumonia.  This January hasn't been too kind either since all four of us, yes all of us, got sick over the last week.  It started with a heavy cold that Sean had from the week before that turned in to a nasty cough.  By Monday, Scott had a very sore throat and congestion.  By Tuesday, I felt yucky when I woke up and I had to leave work at 11:30am to pick up Evan who had a fever and wasn't "himself".  Scott took off Wednesday to stay home with Evan.  I took off Thursday to get some sleep since we all know how well kids sleep when they're sick.  Thursday afternoon I took the boys to the pediatrician to find that Evan had pink eye, but was fever free and Sean needed an inhaler for his cough.  Lovely.

You can imagine that by Saturday we just needed some R&R at the ol' Ferstle house.  Scott, unfortunately, had to coach basketball games that morning.  So, Sean, Evan, and I stayed in our pajamas all morning and afternoon, played games, watched some Bubble Guppies, and threw this recipe in the crock pot for a try.  Anything that involves less than 6 ingredients and can be put together in under 10 minutes while I'm home alone with two kids is worth a try!

4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (mine were frozen when I put them in the slow cooker)
1 lemon, quartered
1 onion, quartered
1 20 ounce bottle of BBQ sauce (any brand or flavor you prefer)
1 can of Coca Cola

Peel onion and cut into quarters.  Cut lemon into quarters.  Place chicken breasts in crock pot.  Place onion and lemon quarters on top.  Pour in entire bottle of BBQ Sauce and entire can of Coke.  Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours.

The verdict?

It wasn't my favorite.  I don't know what it was.  It was super moist and had good flavor.  But, for me, if you're going to have something BBQ flavored, it either needs to be pulled pork or something cooked on the grill.

Scott wasn't overly impressed either.  It was tasty, just not all it was cracked up to be.

But, we survived.  It was a warm, yummy meal on the table after a long week of us all being sick.

Potty Training

With some encouragement from Sean's daycare teachers, we took the plunge to potty train Sean over Christmas break.  So, on Saturday the 22nd of December, we ditched the diapers after he woke up and started with a pair of fire truck underwear.  His elf, Cookie Monster, surprised him by sitting on his potty chair in the bathroom that morning.  With a short conversation, a few phrases we taught him to use, and some library books next to his potty, Sean was proud and ready to show us he could do this.

Thirty minutes after we initiated the process, the first accident.  He had pooped his pants.  And to give it the full effect, it ran down his leg and on to our hard wood floor.  He said, "Uh oh" and boy was he right.  A few clorox wipes and baby wipes later, he had a new pair of underwear on and my confidence was restored that he could do this.

An hour later, the next accident.  He had pooped his pants, again.  It's not like him at all to go this often or this close together, so I happened to notice that something wasn't right.   

This happened two more times over the course of the day before we realized he had some stomach bug.  It wasn't easy to figure out since he had no fever, no vomiting, was still eating and drinking like normal, and was happy as could be.  But, after washing out four disgusting pairs of little underwears, I decided he would do better with pull-ups.

At the end of the first day, realizing he was sick, we had a decision to make.  Abandon potty training until he felt better or deal with the diarrhea and keep going.  I thought it didn't make much sense to tell him to use the potty and that diapers were for babies, but then stick a diaper on him the next day.  He's smart enough to know what we're saying.  So, we opted to keep him in pull-ups and to hope for the best.

For the next week, Sean was very successful with going pee in the potty, but was still having diarrhea.  We finally called his pediatrician who asked us to keep him on a carb diet only for 48 hours and to make him drink watered down Gatorade after each bowel movement.  Sure enough, within 48 hours, he seemed to be back to normal with his bathroom issues.  But, he still wouldn't go poop in his potty chair.

So, we had another decision to make.  Abandon potty training until he was more "ready" or keep going.  And again, I had a hard time just stopping completely.  I had to let go of my hangs up about Sean being potty trained in 3 days or some unrealistic time frame like some of these "strategies" and books teach you.  I had to just go with the flow and realize that Sean would just take longer.

It's been three weeks and he now tells us when he needs to go pee in the potty.  He hasn't had but very few pee accidents (mostly after naps).  He still wears a diaper at bedtime because we aren't ready to tackle overnight potty training yet, but he has woken up dry on more than one occasion in these three weeks.

He's successfully pooped on the potty twice!  While it isn't consistent and he still has lots of poop accidents, we made sure to celebrate his victories!  He now gets one M&M each time he goes pee in the potty and he knows that if he poops in the potty he gets chocolate milk.  Can you tell this boy has taken after me with a chocolate obsession?

I know this will be an ongoing process for the next few months and I'm confident that we made the right decision to keep going with potty training him.  He loves the excitement of being a big boy and wearing Pull-ups.  He loves showing Grandma or Nana that he can go in the potty.  And I'm pretty sure he's loving the rewards we give him for going!  So, for now, that's good enough for us.