Cooking week

Monday we had a really fun family home evening... ultimate frisbee in the park! On the way home Mom and I wanted to stop and take some pictures of the gorgeous flowering trees on our way home. This was answered by groans of despair, until Daniel pointed out that "Mom never asks us to do what she wants okay! Can you ever think of a time where she wanted to do something she thought would be fun and she's dragged us into it?" That procured a silence :-). We topped the evening off with some apple pie (my own creation)... ahhhh, life was good.

Well, my celebrity body wraps adventure came to an abrupt end on Tuesday... after a long and trying day on the phone with a million people scheduling over 25 appointments and answering 20 questions per phone call, Dionne informed me that one of her previous permanent receptionists was returning to work the following day and she wouldn't need me any more. Can't say I wasn't a little frustrated at the short notice, but I had learned a lot, and Dionne had been so patient with me. I guess it just shows how temporary temp work can be :-).

It was still good in a way, since Mom still isn't feeling 100% and I was free to take trips to the grocery store and occupy my brothers while she got some much-needed rest. I made some really good progress in my summer reading, and I had some amazing opportunities to perfect my housewifely arts, notably culinary skills (apple pie was only the beginning). Friday evening Dan and I had a cooking adventure worth sharing...

First we were going to make chicken parmesan, however, we decided we were going to make the chicken really flavorful so we marinated it in this sauce we threw together. Dan went crazy and added some soy sauce into the Italian dressing with garlic and other stuff; it tasted really good... but not quite right for tomato sauce... so we switched to fried rice. We ended up with a huge sticky mass of welll.... challian. Chinese-Italian stuff. It was so much fun! Dan just added the egg a little early (over top of all the rice instead of cooking it before he added the rice) and there was just so much rice we weren't sure if all of the egg had cooked. Our other siblings were pretty skeptical of our creation, but they said it was okay after they brought themselves to try some (Mom and Dad had gone on a date, ironically to a Chinese restaurant). Dan and I both see a great future for challian... it's going to revolutionize the cooking industry completely! After we've perfected it, that is.

Of course today was the day to let my cooking arts shine :-). Laura and I got up at 5am (pretty late for a Mother's Day actually... it's generally more like 4am), and started to develop our Mother's day surprises. I had purchased a bag of Rolos, Mom's favorite candy, while I was doing the shopping for her on Saturday. Laura made little colorful squares of paper with nice things about Mom on them and we made a path with them and the Rolos from her bedroom door to the beautifully decorated breakfast table... complete with a bouquet of roses I had also purchased the day before. I was busy in the kitchen concocting some batter for crepes. Soon I had a whole plate of them, steaming hot... soooo good! It was a new recipe, and I think this one is my favorite so far (I've tried several). Combined with strawberries, blueberries and whipped cream or applesauce and cinnamon sugar they were absolutely divine! Of course Mom's smile was the best part of all. For linner I tried another new recipe... I don't think the recipe has an official name... it's just pork chops baked in a mushroom sauce. When I brought it out, several of my siblings were skeptical, but everyone liked it :-)!!!! That's the best part of cooking in my opinion... seeing other people enjoy the food... unless it's enjoying it yourself :-).

Wow, that was a lot about food... but I love food! Who doesn't love food??

Hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day today...
Love,
Margaret

Challian

Crepes

Pork chops w/ potatoes, mushroom sauce, salad and a roll... yummy!!!