Late Thanksgiving Post

I know it's a week after Thanksgiving, but I'm continually being reminded of everything we have to be thankful for. For Thanksgiving we visited my sister and also celebrated Christmas with my side of the family. We had lots of yummy food and great gifts. I felt extremely blessed and thankful after our weekend together.
But it wasn't until yesterday evening that I was truly humbled in my thankfulness. Our church is for the first time a host site for a homeless outreach called Port. Churches partner together and combine forces to host the homeless (they get to sleep at the church), and feed them at least dinner and breakfast the next day, sometimes they send them with bag lunches. I was on the cooking team. It was a great team. They were very easy and enjoyable to work with. We served them fried chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls oh and chocolate cake. I served the gravy on the line. The guests were very kind and thankful. Many of them had on uniforms or work clothes and I assume they are trying to pull themselves out of this situation.
One family just broke my heart. A mom with two young boys. One I would guess was 3 and the other a baby like 9 or 10 months old.They walked to the church (it was 40 degrees out) and had only thin coats on. The baby only had one sock on. The mom looked like she could have been my age. I can only imagine the things that could have brought them to this point. She had a maid's uniform on, so I know she is trying. We got the mom some clothes for her baby and of course everyone got a hot dinner and breakfast. The social workers heard her whole story and can get her some more help.
Then I put on my Columbia jacket, got in my Honda Pilot littered with many more baby toys then we really need, used the GPS, and listened to XM radio, went home to our warm house, played wii on our HD tv, had a snack, and went to bed in my cozy bed. We have SO much to be thankful for.

A few new recipes

Here's what we ate this week: I admit, I'm lately copying a lot of my recipes from a blog called Heavenly Homemakers.


Easy Alfredo Sauce- from Heavenly Homemakers blog, This is YUMMY, definitely not fat free, but yummy.

1/4 cup butter

One pint of cream (2 cups)
1 garlic clove

2 Tablespoons cream cheese

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
Bring the butter, cream, garlic and cream cheese to a boil.  Turn down the heat, simmer and stir for about two minutes.  Add the grated cheese and stir until melted.  Simmer the sauce for 15-20 minutes until it becomes “thick and saucy”, stirring occasionally. When I boil the noodles, after about 2-3 minutes of the noodles cooking I add about 1/2 a bag of broccoli and boil it with the noodles.

 Quesadillas
Chicken Veggie Quesadillas-
1/3 cup chopped red bell pepper

2 T. chopped onion

1/4 cup chopped sweet green chili pepper
2 T. olive oil

3/4 cup corn

1 cup cooked chicken, cut into bites

1 medium tomato, cut into bite sized pieces

3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese+ more cheese for assembling
3/4 cup sour cream

1/2 t. chili powder (more or less according to your taste)
10 whole wheat tortillas
Saute peppers and onions in olive oil for 3-4 minutes.  In a medium mixing bowl stir together corn, chicken, grated cheese, tomatoes, sour cream and chili powder.  Fold in sauted veggies.
In a skillet, lay down one tortilla.  Spread filling onto 1/2 tortilla and then sprinkle with a little more cheese, then fold over tortilla. Cook over medium heat for about one -two minutes on each side, or until filling is warm and melty and tortillas are slightly crispy.  Continue until all tortillas are filled.
 
Meatloaf from the freezer

Chicken Nuggets- I don't remember where I got this recipe.

Chicken Nuggets   
        1 large eggs
        1 large spoonful of mayo
        2 cups of rotisserie chicken (in large chunks)
        1/2 small onion
        1/4 cup or so of shredded cheese (I normally just toss in a handful)
        3/4 to 1 cup seasoned bread crumbs (I made homemade, just save your bread heels, let them get stale, and use your blender to make them bread crumbs. I have a few bags frozen that will last me a while.)
        salt and pepper to taste
Putting it all together:
        Heat oven to 400 degrees.
        Grease pan with butter.
        Pulse chicken, onion, salt, and pepper in a food processor until finely chopped. (pulse. If you hold it down it will turn into a rubbery gross mess that you will not want to eat!)
        Add chicken mixture to eggs and mayo and stir until combined. Add in cheese.
        Shape into nuggets and roll in bread crumbs.
        Bake for about 18 minutes (turn them over halfway through to brown on both sides)
I actually like these quite a bit, as do my hubby and kiddo. Can be baked ahead of time and frozen for quick dinners later. If baking from frozen state, bake at 425 degrees for 10 minutes or so. And I’m also fairly certain you could fry these up to if you’d like, but I stick to baking them.



Last week we had this new recipe for Stromboli. I'll just give you the link for this one.
http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/cheesy-turkey-sausage-stromboli
I did not make the dough like she says. I used some of my pizza dough recipe. I also added about 1 cup of frozen spinach for a little added. This was very good and we ate this for two meals. It makes a lot. Yes, I did follow the recipe to make the homemade turkey sausage and I've done that a few times. It's good and very easy.

Enjoy

Kefir Smoothies

I know. It's getting cold out I should be posting about hot chocolate or soup or raking leaves or something. Don't worry, maybe that will come later (except the raking leave, I don't do that). And, what the heck is Kefir. I will explain. Lately we've been having smoothies with breakfast. I started serving these because well, we need more fruits and veggies, and these also incorporate more probiotics in our diet in the form of a drink called Kefir. I heard of Kefir on a health food blog. It can come in a flavored water form, but usually you can only buy the milk based form. It's like a milky, tangier yogurt basically. I have only ever found it in Trader Joe's. Maybe you could find it in like a Whole Foods or some other kind of trendy healthy kind of store. Kefir has a lot of probiotics in it like yogurt. When we first got it I tried to drink it straight. I choked down a cup full and quickly decided I needed to go another route in order to drink Kefir. Straight it's very tangy and a little bubbly. Hence, the Kefir Smoothie.

 

This picture is the Kefir and a smoothie. Here's the recipe and my strawberry explanation.

1. Get out blender.
2. Put in blender. 1 banana (peeled of course), about 7-10 strawberries (explanation below, I use frozen at this time of year), about 1 cup of Kefir (I use strawberry flavored), 1 splash of milk.
3. blend it up, until you get like a swirl that looks like a tornado. If it looks too thick add another splash of milk.
4. Serve

Now, that wasn't hard now was it! Now, let me explain my strawberry experiments. The best smoothies I've gotten with fresh strawberries. Then, it started to not be fresh strawberry season any more so I've moved on to frozen strawberries. Wal-Mart's frozen strawberries made for a basically yucky smoothies. I've since tried Trader Joe's frozen strawberries. They tasted much better, and actually made a brighter red smoothie. The picture above is with the Wal-Mart strawberries, you can see it's not very bright red. Next year maybe I'll get motivated and buy strawberries in bulk while they're fresh and cheap and then freeze them myself.

Try it. It's not hard, it has only 4 ingredients, and it will incorporate more fruit and probiotics into your diet. For a breakfast we have like boiled or scrambled eggs and/or a piece of toast along with it. (oh, and to my surprise the expiration date on Kefir was good for like a month, so a bottle will last you a while so you don't have to have like 4 smoothies in a week to use the bottle.)

I've started trying to do all my shopping at Trader Joe's because they just have healthier options; much better meats with grass fed or pastured animals and better priced cage free eggs. For us, this does mean planning ahead so we can do our shopping while we're in Newport News for church. 

Here's just a random picture of Elijah, mostly for my mother' enjoyment. 

This was last month when we had like 4 stray cats make home at camp. They have since been adopted by our neighbor.

Catching Up

Yes, I have been a slacking blogger. But I do have a few good excuses. Last weekend my mom and dad visited from Thursday-Sunday. It was great to see them and have them around. They are somewhat discussing the idea of moving up here, but I still get the sense that my dad is a little hesitant. If they could find jobs I know they'd be up here. While they were here we celebrated Elijah's birthday with a little dinner and cake (pictures soon, when I get home long enough to download them from my camera).
 
Okay excuse #2. On the Monday after they left we left for North Carolina for the IACCA conference. That's the International Association of Conference Center Administrators. Explanation: they have training for conference center professionals, and no Piankatank does not have a conference center, but it's a similar kind of business because camps and conference centers are often together and book events kind of similarly. For example this year's theme was about marketing, so we've learned a lot about marketing that we can use for camp (well, mainly Steve learned it, I took care of Elijah in the hotel room). We especially came this year because Steve got his CCCP certification, which is a "certified conference center professional". Meaning, it'll look good on a resume if he ever needs it. He took the classes for like the last 4 years. It's been a nice conference and was at Caraway Conference Center, which is where our good friends Jeremy and Michelle Jackson live with their two daughters. Elijah has loved playing with Violet and Lily this week.
We go home tomorrow and I will literally have to wash all our clothes because when we left I pretty much packed all our clean clothes. Then, I will be heading to Lynchburg on Saturday to recruit summer staff at a collegiate ministry retreat. Steve will stay home with Elijah and the 25 guests staying at camp this weekend. Don't worry I'll be back in time for church and trunk or treating on Sunday.
Then, the following week we go to Hampton for the BGAV annual meeting (the organization that owns Piankatank's big yearly meeting with representatives from the 1300 or so churches that support them). That'll be 4 whole days.

Now, do you get the picture why in my head I want to smack people when they ask us, "So what do you all do in the off season?" Off season? I'd like to see what an off season looks like, actually I hope I never do because that would mean we probably wouldn't have a job. Like they think we just sail the boats and climb the rock wall everyday or sit by the river drinking coffee. Um, NO.  We manage a non-profit with bills to pay and bosses to please and guests to serve. Oh yeah, and 90 acres and 15 buildings to take care of, not to mention our family (which is first priority).
Okay, sorry for the rant!
P.S. I haven't been on a sailboat since 2004.

The Lord is good and his blessings endure forever.........no matter how busy we are, and I'm thankful for that!

Apple Crazy

Well, last week we had a lovely day on our way home from Lynchburg. We stopped at Dickie Brothers Orchard. It was off the road quite a bit but it was worth it. We chose this one from the list because they also sold honey and pumpkins. The drive out there was absolutely gorgeous with the fall leaves on the mountains. And the trees full of bright red apples, gorgeous!
We bought:
1 bushel of apples (this is roughly 40 pounds) we bought "seconds" which means some of them had green spots or were picked fallen and not picked off the tree directly. They were $10 for the buschel (first quality was $20), the lady said if you're going to cook them seconds work just fine, and when I opened them I was quite surprised that they look very good.
3 pints of raw honey; $5 each, two of which are for my sister, raw honey is supposedly very good for you and helps with allergies; though you can't give it to babies
1 pint of apple butter and 1 pumpkin
all for $36, which I thought was pretty good

His full little bag, the handle broke soon after this.

We got Rome apples, there were TONS of them on those trees.

A yummy snack on the way home... a "bapple" he calls them.

He fell asleep eating it. He ate the whole thing, I had to pry away the core and seeds so he wouldn't eat those too. 

So, today I finally have time and energy after the time away so I got busy appling. My plan was to can! I borrowed about 10 quart sized jars from my mother in law and her pressure canner (though you don't need that for apples, I hope to make soup soon). I already had about 6 empty pint jars at home.

This is me setting up my peeling station. I thought, if I'm going to peel this many apples, I'm at least going to be comfortable doing it. Elijah was "helping", meaning, he snuck and ate one. I peeled into a bowl on my lap and then put them into a pot of water on the floor and later cut them up in the kitchen. 

My tips for those who want to start canning: Borrow or buy the jars used. You can buy just the rings and lids pretty cheaply. I did buy a 12 pack of pint jars last month, but I now wish I hadn't because now I know to buy used or borrow. I saw a big box of them at the DAV I now wish I had gotten.

My second tip is to actually use tried and true canning recipes. Canning can be dangerous if done incorrectly you can get very sick from eating spoiled food. Buy the Ball Blue Book on preserving or visit their website. http://www.freshpreserving.com/pages/all_recipes/215.php?catID=Home-Canning&pageNum=1 There are a lot of recipes and resources on this website.

So here's what I made:

This is (from the left):

Sweetened apples for baking (there's more jars of this in the pantry, not pictured)

Apple Pie filling

Unsweetened Gala/Macintosh applesauce (with peeled apples)

Lightly sweetened Gala/Macintosh/Rome Applesauce (with unpeeled apples) 

Here's a close up of the difference between applesauce with peels and without. Left is peeled, Right unpeeled. Unpeeled saves a ton of time, adds nutrition and doesn't taste that much different. Applesauce is so easy to make. 

Cut (just in quarters), core, and peel if you want to. I used a big pot borrowed from camp and could fit about 30 apples in a batch. Boil them in just enough water to cover the apples. Boil until the apples are soft. In batches blend in food processor. Put sauce into saucepan to keep hot and add spices/sugar if you'd like. I added 1/4 cup sugar to what ended up being 4 quarts of sauce, a little goes a long way. Then follow the directions for a boiling water canner. Boil jars in water for 20 minutes. The link above will give you better directions.

My favorite of the day had to be the apple pie filling! This is the link to that recipe. http://heavenlyhomemakers.com/category/canning-and-preserving

There are some other good canning recipes on this page too.  I ended up using 1/2 cup brown sugar plus 1 cup white sugar instead of her recommendation. She says this will make 3 quarts and says to use 25 apples. I used 20 apples and got 4 1/2 quarts.

This is my low point of the day. Though it's a quite blurry picture. When peeling apples, my left thumb nail got in the way and was victimized. Ouch. It didn't bleed, but looks yucky. And NO, the nail did not get in the apples. My mother always told me to be careful when peeling. Luckily Steve helped me peel the rest after this incident.

We now have enough apple products in the house to keep up our vitamin C intake in the event of the next nuclear disaster (yikes, I hope not). It's been fun and I figure it's less than 75 cents a pint for that applesauce and that will save us tons of $$! In the spring I hope to do peaches and maybe green beans.

On The Road Again

Well, I'm here at Eagle Eyrie in Lynchburg, the big sister conference center to Piankatank. The same organization that owns Piankatank owns Eagle Eyrie, so we're here for a board meeting. Needless to say Elijah cannot join the business meeting so we're here in our room watching PBS for a little while. We're going to go to the swing set soon.

On the road I'm still trying to eat healthily and save money. My two homemaking goals lately. I thought I'd share my plan. I brought some snacks. Including:
A few slices of banana bread I baked this weekend
peanutbutter and triscuits (I like triscuits because they have three ingredients and I can actually understand what they are, wheat, soybean oil and salt, that's okay with me. Unlike our Ritz, which had hydrogenated oil in it along with about 5 other ingredients that sound like chemicals, though I do use Ritz in a few recipes I may look for an alternative soon. Anyways that was a long explanation.)
Bananas- Eliah likes the peanutbutter on his bananas lately
A little dried fruit- I have craisins, Elijah loves them but I do have to limit these because they lead to NASTY diapers.

We stopped on our way through Richmond to eat at Bottoms Up Pizza with our friend Joel. It was delicious! My choice was the vegetarian pizza with white sauce and a salad. I didn't want anything too greasy for the road. Elijah and I shared, and yes he does like salad. It was so good! Generally stopping at a sit down restaurant has healthier choices, but sometimes we need something a little faster and have to get fast food. We probably will have to on our way home. I cringe at the thought of what is in this food, but a few times a year it just happens to be the only option. I do love a good hamburger, I am my mother's daughter (she'd eat hamburgers at every meal if she could). Our favorite is Chick-fil-A. It's good, and somehow I feel like it's healthier than some of the others. I know they use real chicken breasts and not processed chicken.
I'm not trying to lose weight or anything, I'd just rather put healthy food in my family's body's (and mine).
While at the conference we'll get to eat the conference center food. It's okay, but definitely not home cooking.

Here's the most exciting part. On our way home we're stopping at an apple orchard. A bushel of apples is $20, Steve said this is like 40 pounds or like over 100 apples. That totally beats the $1/pound I got at the store last week. I'm going to be brave and can some more applesauce and apple pie filling. Yes, my friends in small group you should expect apple pie or apple crisp next week when I'm cooking. Love ya'll. I'll post on my apple shenanigans next week. I'll post pictures.

P.S. I spent $15 last week on a short trip to the store and I'm still using my freezer meals for probably the rest of the month.

Two weeks, less than $150

Howdy friends. Last week I planned two weeks worth of meals so we could only make one trip. We went to Trader Joe's last week and spent $89 and once again today just to restock a few perishables (fruit, milk, eggs) and spent $30. So, that's two weeks worth of food for about $120. Let me preface this by saying we don't eat at home on Tuesdays and Wednesdays now and when have guests at camps we can eat with them.
Well, here's my plan for the coming weeks. This week we had to buy four new tires for our car ($500), and Elijah's and Steve's birthdays are this month; so the budget is pretty tight. This is a great time for me to use what's in my freezer over the next few weeks and pinch some pennies. We have a small family, but I tend to cook like I'm feeding a family of five. So, I often freeze half a casserole or leftovers. This makes it easy on nights we need to hurry (without buying expensive overly processed sodium rich frozen meals) and also when we need to save a little money, just grab what's already made.

Right now in my freezer I have stocked up over the past couple weeks:
Shepherd's Pie, Chicken and Biscuit Casserole, Vegetable Soup, Tomato Soup, Meatloaf, and homemade chicken broth (to make chicken noodle soup).
I also have ingredients in stock for: Homemade Pizza, Lasagna, Salmon Patties and Turkey Burgers

Oh yeah and last week I canned some things for the first time. I canned five jars of spaghetti sauce and three jars of applesauce (I'll post pics soon). Slowly but surely I'm making over my pantry to get rid of processed foods like canned soups, mixes, boxed meals, etc.

I expect this food for dinners at least to last us about two weeks. That means I'll only go to the store for perishables like fruit, milk and such. I expect to spend about $20-$30/week for the next couple weeks. I'm going to post some pictures of some of my happenings this week.

Meatloaf, the one on the left we ate that night and had leftovers, the one on the right is in my freezer. It's a very yummy recipe. This is before the glaze went on it. Elijah loved it too.

This is Elijah enjoying a new favorite lunch. Pop a potato in the microwave, while it's cooking make cheese sauce and broccoli. Next time I'm going to try cooking the broccoli and potato in the microwave at the same time. If I add broccoli to this as a mac n cheese I just boil the broccoli with the noodles. He ate the whole thing and actually fell asleep in the chair. Here's my go to cheese sauce recipe. I use it for a lot of recipes, mac n cheese, chicken divan, and this.

3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 cup cheese, cheddar usually or a cheddar/american blend is very yummy
1/2 teaspoon salt

Make a roux by melting butter then adding flour. Then add milk, cheese and salt. Stir until thickened. When making mac n cheese cook 2 cups pasta.

We are now a waiting family!!

We got the email today that we are now on "the list"! I'm so glad this step is behind us. It took us 9 months to do all the paperwork, I thought would only take us 6 months... God's timing is perfect, and he will lead us to our child.
They didn't tell us what number we are on the list, which I'm okay with, that would just drive me crazy. Last year the wait for boys under 6 months, was 8 1/2 -10 months, so that is what we're expecting. Which unfortunately that puts us to get a referral in the summer, which is bad because we're not allowed to travel in the summer. The agency knows we can't travel in those months. I'm not going to worry about this. Like I said God's timing will be perfect to lead us to the child that is perfect for us.

We thank you for your prayers. I know it's a long time to wait, but this is a huge thing for us. Just think, it's possible that somewhere in Ethiopia there could be a woman pregnant with our sweet baby. I think about this woman often knowing that she is maybe scared or confused. She is about to make a very big decision in her life. I think she must be brave and loving to soon make this decision in her life. Ironically as I'm typing this the movie Juno just came on. Haha, definitely pray for the birthmother in this time. It's a good movie if you've never seen it, though our adoption is a much different situation.

Blessings!

9-19-10 What's Up

So, here's what's up in our lives this week. The big news from last week is that our dossier was submitted and this time was accepted because all the documents were correct... whew! So, now the documents are in Washington DC and it will take up to 2 weeks for them to be processed. Then we'll be waiting.
I've been thinking a lot about it. It's totally possible that somewhere in Ethiopia there's a woman pregnant with the baby I will someday call mine. For now he is hers, though we will always share him in spirit. I am praying for them both, the Lord knows who she is! CHI sent out a newsletter last week with some pictures of babies already home with their families. They were so beautiful! I kept the newsletter so I can keep remembering to pray. I showed the picture to Elijah and told him his brother would be adopted and maybe look like these babies. He acted excited, but he's still totally clueless. He acts excited when you tell him anything... he's a funny guy!

Here's what we're eating this week. I've been reading more about eating "naturally". I've decided to buy some of my fruits vegetables organic. I've also looked up local farms with grass-fed, organic meat. There are two farms that I might try out soon. One sells pork, chickens and eggs, the other sells beef. I'll keep you posted on that. For this week I have some meat in my freezer I need to get rid of.
This week I shopped at Food-Lion and spent $66, which I was actually bummed about because whenever you spend $75 you get a special ticket and when you get 6 tickets you get a $25 gift card. Then I had to go to Wal-mart to get dog food and dog shampoo (the shampoo need a gross story I will spare you).

Update on last week- the chicken soup was fantastic, we will definitely be doing that again this winter.

Monday- Quiche: I'm going to use this recipe http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Spinach-Quiche/Detail.aspx It got great reviews, so we'll see how we like it. Our family loves quiche in general, yes as a dinner.

Tuesday- Chicken and Biscuit Casserole: I'm using this recipe http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2010/01/27/once-a-month-cooking-prep-cream-of-casseroles/ Yes, I'm planning on trying to make the canned soup substitute. I'll probably freeze half.

Wednesday- Dinner at church

Thursday- Spaghetti- and I am going to make my own sauce and I'm going to freeze the left overs for another night, or a few other nights.

1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup dried parsley
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 Tbls. olive oil
1-2 lbs
2 large cans diced tomatoes (28 oz each)
1 large can tomato sauce (28 oz)
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper

Saute onions, green pepper, garlic, parsley and celery in oil until soft. Add meat and cook until pink is gone. Add remaining ingredients. Cover and simmer for several hours, stirring occasionally. Serves 8.

Friday- My plan was to get Salmon filets, but Food Lion did not have good salmon and Wal-mart was remodeling and didn't have any either. I might just pull out the shepherd's pie from the freezer from two weeks ago or we might have leftovers.


Have a great week!

9.13.10 Menu and Happenings

I just returned from the Women of Faith conference. I met my mom, sister, aunt and cousins, and two great family friends in Philadelphia, PA for the conference there. My aunt lives close to there so we stayed with them. It was great to see my mom and sister and everyone. It's just a great reminder to me of how, at least for me, how important family is. No matter how long it's been since we've seen each other we can always just open up and be ourselves with one another. Plus, they've known me my whole life, so I can really be myself. It was great! The conference itself was great also. The messages were encouraging and hopeful. I wish they had more Biblical content, but I guess they can't go into that too much with a multi-denominational setting. Steve took great care of Elijah while I was gone and even did some chores while I was gone. Life is good!

I just made my menu for the week and went shopping. Here's what the Gourley's will be eatting. This week I looked in my pantry and I'm trying to get rid of a few things, so since I had a lower grocery list I splurged on a few things like cage-free eggs and real maple syrup, yum. Still I only spent $77 (and that even included big boxes of soap and trash bags). This is for four meals, because we're having a group at camp for the weekend, so we'll eat with them for the weekend dinners.

Monday- I didn't get to leave Steve with the chicken last week, so we'll have it tonight. I put the crockpot on high for 5 hours with 1 whole chicken, an onion, a little garlic, pepper, and 4 chopped carrots. I made mashed potatoes as a side dish. I saved the broth and the leftover chicken for tomorrow.

Tuesday- Chicken Soup I'm kind of an "eyeball" cooker, meaning I just eyeball it a lot. I'll use the chicken broth from yesterday and might add some canned low sodium broth if i need more. Then I'll add the chicken leftover from yesterday, carrots, noodles (which will cook while the soup heats up) I bought whole wheat shells, because they didn't have whole wheat egg noodles. Served with homemade bread toast. We'll see how we like it.

Wednesday- Dinner at church

Thursday- This is one of my favorite recipes I've ever found. No-rise Pizza Crust- a homemade pizza crust that doesn't take all day to make
1 packet active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup warm water
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups bread flour
2 Tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 450. In a bowl or mixer bowl dissolve yeast and sugar in the warm water. Let stand 10 minutes. Meanwhile get ready the other ingredients. Stir in flour, salt and oil. Beat or mix by hand until smooth. Let rest for 5 minutes. Turn dough into a greased pizza sheet. You decide how big and thick you want the crust. Add your favorite ingredients. Bake 12-15 minutes or until done. Let pizza cool 5 minutes before cutting.

Friday- Chicken Alfredo with spinach- so easy, though next i think I'm going to try to make the sauce. The sauce masks the spinach flavor pretty well, so don't be scarred if you don't like spinach. It's extra nutrition.
3 chicken breasts, cut into strips
italian seasoning, maybe a little garlic salt
spaghetti noodles- I use whole wheat
frozen chopped spinach (it comes in blocks or bags, I use half a block or a few handfuls if in a bag)
1 jar alredo sauce

heat a tablespoon of vegetable oil, cook chicken and sprinkle with a little italian seasoning and garlic salt. Meanwhile, boil the noodles, when I think the noodles are about halfway cooked I add the spinach to the noodles then allow to re-boil and cook until the noodles are done, drain. When chicken is done, mix everything together and add as much sauce as you want.

My little extra I made this week was homemade granola bars. I used this recipe: http://www.kitchenstewardship.com/2009/06/16/recipe-connection-homemade-granola-and-granola-bars/
It's at the middle of the page, called Katie's Granola bars. This time with 1/2 cup each of peanut butter, chocolate chips, walnuts, and blueberry craisins as the add ins. They were a little crumbly, but yummy (I think the crumbliness had to do with my butter not being soft enough. I think I'll experiment a little with this next time. I did get like 20 bars out of it and I froze about half of them so they don't go bad.

Enjoy!

This Weeks Menu

I discovered a new blog this week that I've enjoyed reading called The Passionate Homemaker. She posts her weekly menus for others to get ideas. I plan my menus every Sunday or Monday (or whenever i go to the store for the week). I thought some people might get some good ideas from us. I have a master list of favorite dinner meals so I use those meals a lot, but I also add in new meals when I see good ideas. Here's this week's dinner menu: (for lunches we usually do sandwiches or leftovers with fruit and crackers/chips and salsa.

I spent $60 this week when we went, which I thought was pretty good. This did include a few staples like fruit, eggs and milk. We make bread in our bread maker once a week, which is super delicious and cheap.

Sunday- I made homemade tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches- I would share the recipe for the soup, but it was my first time making it and it's not perfected yet. And, as we were sitting down to eat Steve mentions that he's not a huge fan of tomato soup, so this might not be a regular meal.

Monday- Salmon (delicious with just a little Tastefully Simple seasoning salt), rice and broccoli

Tuesday- Turkey burgers on bread, with baked sweet potato fries

Wednesday- Dinner at church (But I'll be cooking this day to prep food for Steve and Elijah because I'll be leaving to go to a Women of Faith conference with my mom and sister for the weekend, YAY!)

Thursday- Steve and Elijah will be having this recipe for Shepherd's Pie. I'm going to freeze half for another night like she suggests. http://www.passionatehomemaking.com/2009/02/shepherds-pie-revised-updated.html

Friday- Crock Pot Chicken-
Whole Chicken, 3-4 carrots, 4-5 small potatoes, 1 clove of garlic, 1/2 an onion, some water, chop all the vegetables and put in the crockpot for 6-8 hours on low or whenever it's done. They'll eat probably 1/2 the chicken and vegetables in this recipe, then I'll make chicken noodle soup with the left overs next week. Since I won't be there I'll pre chop all the veggies and leave Steve with the directions to turn it on.

I also try to make one nice breakfast every week to eat the leftovers throughout the week. This week I made blueberry waffles. Here's that recipe (adapted from Cathy Gourley's waffle recipe):

4 eggs
2 1/2 cups milk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup all purpose flour
4 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup frozen of fresh blueberries, next time I'm going to try also adding some mashed banana.

Mix together wet ingredients- eggs, milk, oil, then mix together dry ingredients. Then mix them all together. Try to get out all the lumps. Then fold in the blueberries. Then use on your favorite waffle maker. We have a belgian waffle maker and it makes 12-14 waffles. I freeze the left overs and then when i want to use them I let them thaw for a few minutes then toast in the toaster oven until nice and hot. YUM! For us, 1 belgian size waffle is enough, sometimes with an egg or sausage on the side for some good protein.

Positive Language in Adoption
Using positive language reinforces the message that adoption is a healthy way of building a family. When speaking with others about adoption, whether family members, friends or co-workers, using the following positive terminology in place of the "traditional", assists with the understanding of what adoption truly is for everyone involved, from a very real and human standpoint.

Below are the positive language terms to use connection with the adoption of a child. Though please don't feel we'll be offended if you use this language, we know everyone is still learning. It's healthier for the child to hear positive language about himself and his background.


Not Real parent, but Birth parent- "His birth parents are from Ethiopia"
Not Natural parent but Birth parent
Not Own child, but Birth child "Elijah is my birth child"
Not Adopted child; Own child but call them both My child "Elijah and _____ are my children"
Not Illegitimate but Born to unmarried parents
Not Give up but Terminate parental rights "His birth parents terminated their parental rights soon after he was born"
Not Give away but Make an adoption plan "His birth parents chose to make an adoption plan for him."
Not To keep but To parent "They chose to parent instead of making an adoption plan"
Not Adoptive parent but Parent
Not An unwanted child but a Child placed for adoption
Not Is adopted but Was adopted

Dossier Submitted Yay!

We are so excited to have submitted our dossier today. Yay! It took us 8 months to get in.
Later this week it will be sent to Washington DC to get authenticated again. Then, we will be what's called a "waiting family". We will be anxiously waiting for 8-10 months. The timeline with all adoptions is uncertain. 8-10 months is the timeline as of now. 8-10 months is kind of like the length of a pregnancy, which is kind of special to think about. In the adoption world they call it being "paper pregnant".

Then, we will get a referral. Here's how a referral works, as I understand it. The babies are placed for adoption by a family member or abandoned. They are then sent to a Ethiopia run orphanage. There are several orphanages in the country who do their best to take good care of the babies and children though many of these are overly crowded. The country of Ethiopia then gives the baby and children medical tests. Then if the baby is deemed adoptable they refer babies and children to the 4 adoption agencies that legally work in Ethiopia (CHI is one of them of course). The agencies then match those referrals to the waiting approved families. It tends to work that the next person on the list gets the next baby that meets their requests (you can request certain ages, gender, and special needs). The older the child and the more special needs you are okay with the sooner you will get a referral. Boys also get referred sooner because more people request girls. Our only requests are that we'd like a boy under 6 months of age, and there are certain special needs we're okay with.
After a family accepts a referral then the baby moves to the CHI House of Hope to be cared for a little better. A few weeks after we accept a referral we will travel for the first time to Ethiopia. This recently changed, when we first started the process you only had to make one trip to Ethiopia, but now you have to make two. During the first trip we will meet the baby and then go to court and meet with a judge to officially declare that we will adopt this child. Then we will have to leave him with the capable caretakers at the House of Hope for 6-8 weeks. During this time they arrange our visas and schedule our second court date. Then we will go back and bring him home forever! What a great day that will be!

The next step- PAPERWORK!

So, Elijah is at his grandparents house for a few days, so I have extra time to blog. So, now that I've updated on our decision to adopt let me update you on where we've been since then.
After being accepted by Children's Hope International (there was a small application and commitment fee). Next they sent us a packet with instructions on getting all of our paperwork together. The first step was to get a home study. A home study is where a social worker investigates us and our home to make a recommendation (or not) to allow us to adopt. We found a local adoption agency called Coordinators 2 that would conduct our home study. As part of our home study with them we had to attend several education classes. We had to complete an autobiography and also some other written activities. We had to get two background checks, one of which took our finger prints. We met with our social worker 3 times. The second time was in our home. The meeting in our home was a breeze, I of course cleaned up quite a bit, but she didn't inspect with a white glove or anything. She wrote the home study that recommended us to adopt. The whole process of the home study took about 6 months. This is a little longer than a home study usually takes, but ours was delayed for two reasons. One, my finger prints had to be taken twice and then still the second one didn't work, so they had to investigate my background another way. Also, we took a few weeks longer to do our written assignments. Meanwhile I was also preparing some of our other documents we needed for our dossier.
In June we received our home study! Yay!
The next big thing we had to do was to apply to USCIS (immigration services). We are basically immigrating a child born in another country to become an American citizen, so we have to get a special visa. We had to have our favorable home study before we could apply for this. We applied right away. We had to go in and get fingerprinted again (to make sure we're not criminals).
Meanwhile we were preparing our dossier. For the dossier we have exactly 20 documents all of which had to be notarized and state authenticated. The documents include doctors letters (saying we're healthy), 3 reference letters, a power of attorney to the agency representative, more education classes, original birth and marriage certificates, and other legal documents. On August 5 (or so) we received our approval from USCIS. YAY #2.
Today we took everything to be state certified. This checks the notarization.
I'm hoping to get everything back by like next Tuesday and then we'll submit our dossier! YAY!!!!
After that, it goes to be certified again on the national level. Then, we will officially be a "waiting family". We will wait about 8-10 months to be matched with a baby boy (yes, we've requested a boy). The waiting time is not because there are not enough babies to be adopted, in fact there are many babies and children in Ethiopia who could be adopted and aren't. The wait time is a legal processing time. They just takes a long time to process the families who are adopting.

Our Call To Adoption

One of the main reasons I wanted to start this blog is to document our next big adventure- our adventure to our next child through adoption. So, this is the first installation on why we decided to adopt.
Even before we were married we talk about adoption being a beautiful thing and something we might consider in our future. When we decided to begin having children there was some discussion about if we should even adopt our first child. But, at that time we decided we wanted to experience a pregnancy and birth of a child, so without much trying Niki became pregnant and our wonderful little Elijah was born in October of 2008.
Elijah was only like 6 months old when we were already talking about having another child. At this time the thought and calling of adoption Niki really started thinking about a lot. I started researching it. We knew there were children who needed homes and we had a loving home with a desire and room for more. We knew this was a huge decision that would affect our family drastically! We needed to take a step back and really talk, PRAY and think. Around this time our church had a series called "40 days of prayer and fasting". We decided that this was a perfect time for us to seek the Lord and think about this decision. At the end of the 40 days Steve and I both knew that adopting was the right thing to do. We were both called to scriptures about God's love for children. We had a peace about adopting and a calling that "this was the right thing to do" children should have families and we can help one. The cost of adopting was a big barrier in our thinking. It costs $15,000- $25,000. We don't have that kind of money hanging out in a savings account. If God called us to do it, we would do it, and trust that He would provide. It was not all due at once, but over the course of about 2 years and you get a tax credit in the end (to the tune of about $12,000, which helps). We looked at our finances and decided that with a little squeezing we could save enough each month; which over time, along with some savings we already have, would be enough.
So, on with the journey.....One of the first things we found out was that many adoption agencies do not allow you to adopt out of birth order, meaning, the next child has to be younger than the children already in the home. Many studies have said it's emotionally unhealthy for the children. So, with a young child already we knew an adopted child would likely be a baby and we thought that was a good thing. At first we really researched domestic adoption. We soon found out that there was already a long list of people wanting to adopt infants domestically. Today, birth moms get to choose the family who adopts her child and we would likely be chosen quickly, but was that really the way we wanted to do it? One of our main reasons for wanting to adopt was to meet a need in the world. After some continued research and lots of prayer we expanded our view of adoption to a world-wide focus.
There are many countries that allow for international adoptions by Americans. One of the first countries to jump out to us were the African countries, Rwanda and Ethiopia. All countries have requirements, for instance most Asian countries only allow people 30 or 35 years of age or older to adopt. We were 26 and 27, this narrowed down our search to basically two countries Ethiopia and Bulgaria. Ethiopia was then the clear choice for us. My sister had recently worked in some orphanages in Uganda (Ethiopia is Uganda's neighbor, Uganda does not currently allow international adoptions) and her stories were a big part of our decision to adopt in the first place. Ethiopia is a beautiful country and the children adopted are generally pretty healthy. In Ethiopia we would get an infant as young as 6 months, in Bulgaria the child would be at least 2 years old. Some people in our church lived in Ethiopia for a while and told us how wonderful and resilient the country it is.
So, after we had decided on Ethiopia we started researching adoption agencies. We chose Children's Hope International due to their stellar reputation both in America and in Ethiopia. Their staff have been great to work with.
So, now that we're that far, i'll post another update on where we have been since then.

About Us

Hi, We're the Gourley's. Our family consists of Steve, Niki, Elijah (born October 2008) and Gus (the Golden Retriever). The head of our house is the Lord. We seek Him for guidance in our lives. We were married in 2006 and it's been an amazing journey since!
We live at the summer camp where we work, Camp Piankatank. Camp Piankatank is a Christian camp. We minister to about 700 kids in a summer and hundreds more in "retreat season". This blog is not about Camp Piankatank, but is about us as a family and our adventures, some of which happen to happen at Camp Piankatank. We try not to let camp rule our lives, but at least in the months of June-August it pretty much does.
Some of our interests are growing Godly children, our church, family, camping, friends, adoption (more on that later) and home schooling. Niki is interested in homey kinds of things, cooking, baking, cloth diapering, mothering, etc. So, as the main blogger Niki may post about things she is interested in.
Our little boy Elijah is currently 22 months old. He is a hilarious little guy with tons of personality. He's loud, adventurous, lively and sweet all at the same time. He's a little boy all the way! He's a joy and sometimes a challenge, but what child isn't challenging sometimes.