Blessing #21- My Sous Chef

This summer, I read that getting a picky eater involved in cooking may help them to eat. Because Brandon is so picky, I thought I would give this a try. Because he’s four, and has a very short attention span, I didn’t expect much, but surprisingly, he loves to cook.

Now, every time I cook he is right beside me. Shad calls him my sous chef (assistant to the chef). Shad knows what a sous chef is not from a cultured upbringing, but from the Pixar movie Ratatouille. When we cook, B's first question is always “What’s my job Mom?” Which is followed by his next question, “Can I cut?” After giving him the Four Year Old’s Don’t Touch Knives lecture again, I give him a job. He usually gets to dump all the ingredients in the bowl for me. Because he asks the name of every ingredient, he’s getting really good at identifying things like flour, sugar, and brown sugar. However, one time, when his cousins asked what we put in our cupcakes he said, “Stink bugs and sluggy slugs.” I will attribute that to either not wanting to share his cupcakes, or just being a boy.

Often as we cook, he will tell me, “Mommy, you’re a good cooker!” Just when my heart starts to swell he also adds, “I’m a good cooker too…Can I cut?” I then repeat the Four Year Old’s Don’t Touch Knives lecture.

His two favorite parts of cooking are crushing the empty egg shells, and, of course, licking the mixer thingys. I’m still amazed that he enjoys it so much, and I love that cooking is our special thing we do together. Now if you will excuse me, after writing this I realized I have to go put my knives on an even higher shelve just in case my sous chef decides he’s the main chef.

Saturdate with Southern Plate- {chicken planks}

Last week, I started cooking through the Southern Plate cookbook. If you missed it I explained it here. This week I decided to make chicken planks. This recipe is on Southern Plate so if you want the recipe just click here.

Because I make chicken fingers about once a month, I was hesitant to try a different recipe. Here is a picture of the first few chicken planks I made.


They are…what's the right word….burnt! I took a little too long on the prep work, and my oil got too hot. Just pretend like you didn’t see that.

After that fiasco, I opened up the windows to clear the smoke out, turned the oil down, and kept cooking. (I’m not joking. I really did have to open the windows…in January!) Here’s the finished product.

Aren’t they pretty? (Just ignore the ones in the back.) I know they look good, but the main question is, “How did they taste?” Brandon is a very picky eater, and he only eats Chickfila chicken. He has never eaten my chicken fingers, but when I put these chicken planks in front of him, he ate them right up with no fussing. Success! This is now my go to chicken recipe.

I also made comeback sauce to go with the chicken planks. I was alarmed by how much pepper this recipe used, but it really just adds to the flavor and not to the heat. Shad and I really liked it. You can find that recipe here.
By the way, we ate the burnt chicken planks, and even they were good.

Give me five Friday- {okay}

There is one word in my extensive vocabulary that Shad does not appreciate, okay. He claims that I “overuse” this word. I totally disagree. Okay is a versatile word that can mean many things. However, I realized though that in Shadese (the language of Shad) okay only has two meanings. (1. Yes 2. To agree with.) In Stephaniese, Okay has multiple meanings all based on tone and body language. So for the sake of clarification, here are the meanings of okay in Stephaniese.

{five meanings of okay}

1. {*sigh*okay}- This means, “I don’t agree with you at all, but I am choosing to give up.” The sigh could also come after the okay.

2. {okayeeee} - This means, “Wow, great idea. Let’s do that!” Listen for the drawn out e.

3. {okay}- This is my conversation filler. Some people use uh huh or mm hmm. This lets you know that I’m listening.

4. {okaaaaay}- This means, “I’m getting annoyed.” It’s usually a good idea to take this hint, and stop whatever you are doing

5. {oooookay} - This means, “I think you are crazy.” It is often accompanied by an eye roll.

I showed this to Shad after I wrote it. He stills holds that there are only two meanings of okay. What’s my reaction? *sigh*okay

Blessing #20 - A Set Table

When I took down all our Christmas decorations our house just seemed bare. In order to help my bare little house, I decorated and set my table. I used to set my table before Brandon became a curious toddler, and I decided it was time to try it again.


It may sound silly, but this table is a little spot of sunshine in my house. Every time I walk by my table, I smile for two reasons. First, I’m so excited to have a place to display my favorite things, dishes and canning jars. Second, everything on that table except the silverware came from yard sales, Goodwill, or Walmart’s 75% off Christmas clearance, and I just love a good deal.


**You may be wondering about the peanuts in the canning jars. I needed to fill them up, and peanuts were the only thing in my house I had in abundance. Peanuts the new potpourri.

Project Life- December 27 - January 2

This weeks pictures were clustered only on certain days, but I do like the pictures I got. I just need to work on spreading them out. As always to look at more Project Lifes, you can head over to The Mom Creative.

December 27- This was after trying to take a bunch of self portraits with Collin. He seems to be saying, "Please, whoever is in that camera, make my mommy stop!"

December 27 (again)- This was the first day he discovered that the birds were up there. I think he's yawning in this pic, but It looks like he's amazed.

December 27- I don't know why this is left aligned, but I looked out my kitchen window to see this sunset. I'm so glad God loves color.

December 28- It may look like our yard was covered in snow from this picture, but this was the last spot of snow. Brandon was playing outside, and started making snow angels on his own. I had to take a picture.

December 31- B was playing outside, while I watched him through the window. He loves to collect sticks, that is what he is doing on my blog header. I couldn't see where he was stacking all the sticks, but I found out when I opened the door.

December 31- Shad and B were trying to make Collin smile. I love the look in all of their eyes.

December 31- They were determined to make him smile, no matter what it took.

Blessing #19- Warning Signals

In my last Brandon related post, I talked about Winter B, the more mischievous seasonal counterpart to my sweet little son. Sometimes Winter B just wants to get in trouble. He’s just itchin’ with it. Sometimes he is up to no good. Fortunately, Winter B gives certain warning signals that he is up to no good. When I hear or see one of these signals, I know I need to act fast, or in about ten seconds there is going to be some stolen candy, a huge mess, property damage, or damage to Brandon himself. It may be odd to calculate these warning signals as blessings, but they help me stay one step ahead of my little guy.



1. If he walks into another room and closes the door behind him, he is up to no good.

2. If I enter the room, and he starts jumping up and down, that is him trying to act casual, that means he was up to no good.

3. If I ever ask him, “Were you being good?” and he answers me, “Yes,” while standing still, then he was good. However, if he answers “Yes,” while jumping up and down, that’s him trying to act casual again. Rest assured, he was up to no good.

4. If I walk into the room where he is, and before I can say anything he says, “ I wasn’t fill in the blank. “ He was up to no good. For example, I walked into the living room last week only to hear B say, “I wasn’t playing with the computer.” That means he was playing with the computer.

5. If I hear a chair sliding across the kitchen floor, he is up to no good and CLIMBING. That’s a terrible combination, so I need to get in the kitchen fast.

6. If I ask Brandon, “What are you is doing?“ and he clearly says, “Nothing.” He is being good. However, if he says ”Nuffin’,“ he is up to no good. I guess he is so concentrated on his up to no good-ness that he can’t enunciate well.

7. In the worst cases, I will miss the signals before he was up to no good. In these cases he gives a signal after the up to no good act, the preemptive apology . For example, when he was two, he walked up to the door of the bathroom while I was in the shower. He simply said, “Sorry for the eggs, Mom.” You can guess what I found when I got out of the shower.

8. If I suddenly, I hear really fast and really heavy steps, B was up to no good.

9. If he excessively says, “Mommy, I love you,” he’s up to no good. I know this sounds weird, but I promise it’s true. A few I love you’s is sweet, but a bunch of them means he’s trying to butter me up, and I start to get nervous.

10. If B yells,“Bus driver, move that bus,“ he is up to no good. Ultimately, he is thinking about his favorite part of Extreme Home Makeover, demolishing the old house, and he is about to act that out on my house.
***other signal phrases include “Demolition” “Demolition dervy” and “I’m a construction worker”

11. If he is in another room and he is quiet, this is the biggest signal of all. He is DeFinEtly up to no good.

Saturdate with Southern Plate {chocolate pie}

Have you ever seen the movie Julie and Julia. It’s the story of the woman who cooks through Julia Child’s entire cookbook. Ever since I saw that movie, I wanted to try to cooking through an entire cookbook, but every cookbook just seemed too fancy for me. Recently though, I found The Southern Plate at my local library. It’s a cookbook from Christy Jordan the creator of Southern Plate blog. Surprisingly, I read this cookbook cover to cover, and had to buy a copy for myself. She doesn’t just give recipes, but gives a background to each recipe. She connects food to southern heritage in a way that makes you want to stand up, put your hand over your heart, and sing Dixie. Oh…maybe that was just me.

At the same time I found this cookbook, I made my 30 before 30 list. For #9, I decided to try to cook every recipe in the Southern Plate cookbook. I’ll be posting this project on Saturdays, and of course I had to come up with a catchy name for it.

The first choice for my Saturdate with Southern Plate was obvious. As a good southern girl, I decided to honor the tradition of eating black eyed peas and turnip greens on New Year’s Day by making “pot o’ beans.” (click on the recipe title for the recipe and a great explanation of the tradition) I’m not a fan of turnip greens so I decided just to make black eyed peas. I did not worry about getting the black eyed peas, because I figured not many people would honor this tradition in Maryland. I was wrong, really wrong. I went to four different grocery stores and they were all sold out of black eyed peas!!! This shortage started to make me think everyone up here honored this tradition, but every grocery store employee I asked was clueless of this tradition. They had no idea why the black eyed peas would be sold out. At one store, Shad ran in and asked, "Do you have any black eyed peas?" The worker said, "The singing group?"(I'm not trying to be funny. She really said that.) So who was buying all the black eyed peas? There must be more southern transplants up here than I thought! Where are they? Why haven’t I met them? I know they must be here, the empty black eyed peas shelves prove it. Maybe they have a club I don’t know about.

All was not lost though. I still made a Southern Plate recipe, Lucy's chocolate pie. This recipe is only in the cookbook and not on her blog. This is a fantastic chocolate pie! I loved that I already had every ingredient except for the pie shell in my pantry and fridge.

Here's my finished product with the picture in the book. I should have beat the meringue just a little longer, but it's still pretty. Well, it was a rough start to a new journey, but plan B has never tasted so good!