This week’s Gluten Free Menu Swap featured ingredient isn’t actually an ingredient, but it is one of my favorite foods. Soup! This week’s swap is being held by Cheryl at Gluten Free Goodness. I made my menu for the week last Thursday not knowing what this week’s ingredient would be, and wouldn’t you know I have lots of soup on the menu. It’s cheap because it makes so much, easy because of the crock pot, and quick to package up for the freezer and reheat. Cheap, easy, and quick makes for the best sort of meal in my opinion.

Sunday:
Lunch - Pizza
Dinner - Spaghetti with roasted broccoli

Monday:
Beef stew and bread

Tuesday:
Chicken and bean burritos with corn and salad

Wednesday:
Potato soup with ham & cheese melts and sautéed carrots

Thursday:
Cheddar Chicken Divan-ish and baked sweet potatoes

Friday:
Cheeseburger Soup with French bread

Saturday:
Lunch – Leftovers
Dinner – Taco Rice

I went a step further than I normally do with this menu, and typed it up in Word and printed it to attach to the refrigerator. There is something very “official” about it, and I can’t wait to start adhering to the menu as much as possible this coming week.

You can also find other great menus at Org Junkie!

41 days. 43 days, to be exact, if you skip Valentine’s Day. If you don’t, then it’s the aforementioned 41. For me, thankfully there are 43 beautifully devoid of anything to celebrate days before our anniversary. Honestly, we will most likely do something sweet and cliché to celebrate both Valentine’s Day and our one year wedding anniversary. Just a small dinner, maybe we’ll exchange cards and if we’re lucky have sex. Woohoo.

Until then everything will be normal. No more of these weird half days or days off for Chris, no more scrambling to get ready for a dinner I can’t eat at, no more having my routine destroyed because someone was born, or the 8 turned to a 9, or anything of the sort. I wasn’t speaking of Christmas, by the way. We’ve got several family birthdays between Thanksgiving and New Years and each seems to arrive right when I’ve finally got used to how things were.

I’m one of those people who thrive on a schedule. Doing the same thing day in and day out is what I call fun. Don’t be fooled, I love a bit of spontaneity and change, but I don’t love the holidays. They aren’t a one off thing, they are a constant interruption to the way things are and have been. I go a little stir crazy, fall behind on housework, and eat McDonald’s fries (thank you, dedicated fryers!) … on top of being irritable because my routine isn’t working.

Chris, the wonderful man that he is, who will no longer be known as PimpDaddyPain because I hate typing it out all the time… understands. He’s sort of like me. In fact, being off work drives him apeshit. He hates it! So we’re both looking forward to the peace and quiet the next 43 days will allow us. My Mom and Bill are coming for a visit around the 17^th of February or so… no doubt they will bring mayhem and disorder, causing me to pull my hair out… but at least my Mom will understand why I seem grumpy when she shows up on my doorstep.

Hopefully within the next month and a half I will actually get off my tush and get the house back to the way it was before I was working… and hopefully we’ll enjoy ourselves, instead of sitting around doing nothing. That is the one thing I do love about the Season… we step outside of our comfort zones and enjoy things we normally don’t during the year. I do miss the interaction and the love, but it’s still nice to know that for now… the only person’s food I have to eat is my own, and the only reason I’ll dealing with gaudy decorations is because we’re putting them away.

So here is too no holidays, no birthdays, and no reason to celebrate anything other than being alive and happy!

Taking a picture a day and posting it is not a new concept, but it is my new project. Inspired by many other bloggers, and people on Flickr, I decided the best way to show my appreciation for my new camera is to take a picture a day for a year. So far I’ve managed two a day, it’s a good way to start, but it is only day 2… we’ll see how long this lasts. I won’t be sharing every picture here on my blog, because you’d get bored, and I’d never have a chance to write about anything else… but I really liked my Day 2 pictures, so I thought I’d share them here. For the remaining 364, check out my Flickr!

The streets are plowed, and for most people, safe for driving, but I still haven’t ventured out by myself. The mirror for my car is being shipped to us, and it seems to be taking forever and a day. So I’ve had to do a lot of quick shopping when I manage to get out of the house, and then throw together dinners from there. A few nights ago I thawed a bunch of chicken for something, and then realized I didn’t have all the ingredients I needed and had to improvise.

I googled easy chicken and broccoli dinner and found several different recipes, including noodles, potatoes, and rice… but finally settled on making some sort of chicken divan. It’s something I’ve never had before, and was quite interested in giving a try. Of course, I had to make it my own. This is one of those recipes that would be very easy to modify depending on your favorite vegetables and flavors.

The recipe is below. No pictures were taken because it, and the risotto we had with it, were both gone before the night was over.

Cheddar Chicken Divan-ish

• 1 cup sliced carrots
• 2 cups chopped broccoli
• 2 cups shredded cheddar
• 4 chicken breasts, thawed
• 3 cloves garlic, smashed
• 1 tsp poultry seasoning
• 1 cup cream of mushroom soup
• 1/3 cup sour cream (optional)
• 1/3 cup crumb topping (I used a lunch sized bag of Lays Sour Cream & Onion chips, because that’s what we had.)

Preheat the oven to 350.

1. Boil the chicken with the smashed garlic and poultry seasoning until the chicken is done all the way through.
2. Meanwhile, slice all your veggies and shred the cheese.
3. If you’re like me, rapidly thaw your frozen soup in the new microwave you got for Christmas.
4. Prepare the crumb topping, it was rather fun smashing chips on purpose.
5. When the chicken is done let it cool a bit and then either cut into bite sized pieces, or shred with a fork.
6. Mix everything but the crumbs together in a casserole dish (I have no idea what size mine is, I got it from a garage sale. I’d say a 9 x 13 dish would work perfectly.)
7. Top with crumbs
8. Cook for 30 minutes

Devour.

Dear Daddy,

Love forever,
Rachie

A., originally uploaded by Shiny (aka Rachel).

I got to watch the girls for a bit this afternoon, and when A. begged to go play in the snow, I relented. It was a blast, watching them tumble and slip, laughing the entire time. Of course, like any super-old (as A. puts it) cousin, I captured it on video too… they will be the next subject of my new vlog thingy. We climbed through the 5 feet of snow, and finally ended up inside with cheesy popcorn, three blankets, and Wall-E.

Bug tried to fall asleep on me, while A. patiently worked at a silly little plastic canvas project I bought her a few months ago. And then the cable guy showed up to fix the OnDemand, and they turned into monsters who would not stay on the couch. In that moment, I was glad they were mine for the afternoon, and not for life… and then sad, because we’ve been “not trying to try, but not trying not to try either” for a year now, to no result.

I thought for a moment about ending on that slightly whiny note, but decided instead to wish you a Happy 2009! This year was the best of my life so far, and I wouldn’t change a thing about. The number of firsts, and lasts, it contained are to large to list. Without sounding to depressing, I’d like to say that making it through Christmas without crying was the biggest thing I accomplished this year. Thanksgiving was an almost, but in the end I succumbed (while writing a post about not grieving on the holidays)… somehow, Christmas was a success.

There are many other triumphs and failures to discuss, like finally getting my gluten-free act together, or quitting two jobs… or well, you know what… let’s just move on to 2009. I don’t have many goals. Just to eat a little less, walk a little more, and enjoy another year with my husband and our families. Maybe I could do something creative every day… that would be nice too. We’ll see.

On that note, Happy New Years! I love you all.

xoxo