Comfort Food - Macaroni & Cheese Pie

 

As the fall air is setting in and we are preparing for a super cold night, Im reminded of my all time favorite comfort food: mac & cheese pie. 

How I wish I had a bowl full right in front of me, but since I don't, Ill just blog about it instead.

Its full of butter & cheese, and cheese, and did I mention cheese?

Which is the south butter & cheese are staples.  And this counts as a vegetable.

Seriously.

 

Ingredients:

16 oz box of elbow noodles

1 stick of butter (divided)

1 pound block of sharp cheddar cheese

16 oz block of mild cheddar cheese

1 egg, beaten

12 oz can of evaporated milk

1 TBL of salt

1 teaspoon of pepper

 

Cook noodles until done.  Drain and mix with 3 Tbl of butter.  Add milk, salt, pepper & beaten egg.  Mix in 1 lb of sharp cheddar cheese.  Pour into large buttered casserole dish.  Top with the mild cheese and dot the top with butter.  Bake uncovered at 350 for 30-40 minutes or until lightly browned.  This serves almost 14 people so you can save some for leftovers or cut it in half and freeze what you don't eat for another day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

School Lately..

 

I feel like the last 2 weeks have flown by!  We have been so busy with life in general so I didn't get to document everything we did during school, but heres a small review.

 

We have been really working on a set chore list for Marleigh.  She dosent get an allowance, but if she keeps up her hard work (with no complaining) and has a good heart by helping others she will get random rewards.  To make sure her behavior stays in check and to make sure she keeps up with her duties we made a behavior chart for our fridge that looks like this:

 

Its pretty basic.  Their names are glued to clothes pins.  If they get 1 warning they get moved to yellow, 2nd time to orange, and once they get to red they can choose a consequence our of the consequence jar which has different chores, a go to bed early card, or a "its your lucky day...no consequence this time" card.  If its later in the day (after dinner) then they go right to bed if it lands on red.  It works WONDERS and my 3 year old even understands it.  He got his first taste of early bed time last night when he made his way down to red and he has been pretty good today.

 

And we use THIS Melissa & Doug responsibility chart.  I usually change out some of the chores every other week.

 

 

We have been LOVING the fall weather here in the mountains and have really enjoyed daily nature walks.

 

During science we explored different trees and did bark rubbings.  It was really fun exploring the textures.

During this time we also gathered leaves in our nature basket.  When they got home they had to sort the leaves in different ways.  For example, first they had to separate smallest to largest, by color, by tree type, etc...Then they picked their favorites & we ironed them between wax paper to preserve them and glued them in our science book.

 



        

 

We came across 2 praying mantis' and had a fun doing a nature study on them.  It was really fun seeing Marleigh add them to her nature journal.

 

 

 

We totally hit the jack pot and found books for 12 cents at the thrift shop.  We purchased as many as we could and spent one afternoon in our fort reading away.

 

 

My boy turned 3 on September 27! I really couldn't believe it!  One cool thing about homeschool is on really special days, like birthdays, we take the whole day off!  We don't do birthday parties, but we spend the whole day celebrating.  Maddox woke up to his traditional birthday pancakes.

 

 

And his big gift was this awesome tee pee I scored on Craigslist for $25!  Score!

 

 

After a lazy morning at home Maddox got to choose the rest of the days activites which included a trip to Toys R Us to spend his birthday money, lunch at Chic fil a and a trip to the book store.

They love books and stayed here for almost 2 hours!

 

2 days after that I turned 25!  Holy crap!  Where does time go?

 

Marleigh picked me these sweet flowers and my husband gifted me a pretty red mixer I have had my eye on.  Isn't it funny that once you are older kitchen appliances are like the best gifts ever??

 



 

She also got some pen pals which we are really excited about!  She has been doing a great job writing and reading small words so this is a perfect opportunity to work on her handwriting a bit more. 

 

She has also been helping more in the kitchen.  She proved to me that she can be careful and got rewarded her own special kitchen cutting knife and has taken over the veggie chopping prep at lunch and dinner.

 

Our days have been followed by lots of outdoor play and exploration!  The kids made a club house in the woods by our house and finally took me to see it.  They feel like the coolest kids on the block...probably because they are the only kids out here in the mountains.  ha!

 

Not to mention the light is pretty lovely at their secret hide out.  Just another plus!

 

Our neighbors have these awesome cows and they come right up to our drive way.  We love feeding them in the afternoons!  We named this one Basil!

 

We spent school at this spot a few days ago!  It was fun getting out of the house and taking our lessons else where.  I cant believe this spot has been hiding just about 5 minutes from our cabin!  I cant wait to spend the summer there!

 

We caught crawdads and saw lots of minnows!

 I loved Marleigh's nature journal entry from our day at the river!

 

 

 

 This sweet cat started showing up on our wood pile and looking at us in the window this past week so we apopted him and named him Peeping Tom.  He is still with us 3 days later so I have a feeling he is here to stay.  We did a study on him too and found out he is a Minx cat.  Marleigh had no idea that there were different types of cats so this was a fun discovery for her!

 

And that sums up bits and pieces of our past couple of weeks!  Ill hopefully be adding some more detailed posts next week!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homemade Play Doh

We had a lot of outdoor plans for this lovely Monday, but of course I didn't think to check out the weather when planning the week and we woke up to rain, rain, and some more rain.  So it came down to some last minute planning to keep these little hands busy and I came across an awesome homemade playdoh recipe.  The original recipe I found called for cream of tarter and I didn't have that so I doubled the salt and it worked out great!  As soon as my littles sunk their hands into it the first thing out of their mouths was "Mom! This is way better than the store kind!"  So its totally mom + kid approved!  It calls for everyday pantry ingredients and only takes about 10 minutes.

Ingredients:
2 cups of  all purpose flour
1 1/3 cups of salt
2 cups of water
2 TBL of cooking oil
food coloring

Mix flour & salt in large pan.  Then add in water and cooking oil.  Stir on medium heat and it will get THICK.  If you want it all one color then add your food coloring now.  If you want it different colors then once its all mixed, grab some gloves and separate the dough into each bowl and go to town mixing and kneeding in your colors.  The kids would actually love to do this part and it would be fun for them to mix their own colors. 

We store ours in mason jars. 

And I will never ever buy store playdoh again. 

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Sometimes I think we buy banana's just to watch them turn brown and black on my counter.  We are the world worst at buying them with good intentions and then letting them get too ripe before we can eat them.  Im a bit picky and only like them green so once they turn yellow I kind of forget about them.  I hate throwing food away so I decided to whip up some banana bread Saturday morning.  Its super easy and moist and I personally think that it tastes better the 2nd day when its cold, but that's just me.

Anyway, heres how we did it:



Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup of apple sauce
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups of all purpose flour (reserve 1 TBL)
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup of white chocolate chips (or you can do 1 cup of whatever kind of chips you have on hand)


Directions:

Preheat oven to 350
combine bananas, apple sauce, vanilla & eggs in large bowl.
mix flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon  in a different bowl.
slowly mix in flour mixture to the banana mixture.  (I put the banana mixture in our standing mixer bowl, turned it on low, and let my daughter slowly add in 1/2 cup of the flour mixture at a time...she loved getting to help!)



Add the 1 tbl spoon of flour with the chocolate chips.  This will help them from sinking to the bottom of the bread.  Then fold the chips into the dough. 



Pour into greased loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes.
Let cool and store in the fridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knock Knock Cake

You know those smells and tastes that can take you right back to your childhood?  Well, this is mine.  My aunts famous Knock Knock Cake.  When I was a kid we got it twice a year.  Once on Thanksgiving and once on Christmas.  I would eat my dinner as fast as I could so I could try to get the first slice of this heavenly, chocolately, amazing, goodness.  Now, if you don't like chocolate or if you are a health guru that may pass out at the sight of sugar then run away now...run far, far away and don't look back at this post.  Because well, this cake is not the healthiest thing on the market, but damn, it is good stuff and is perfect for a special occasion.  I wish I had better photos of it, but we simply gobbled it up too fast and I wasn't able to snap one.  Now I cant tell my aunt this but I cheat on her recipe with box cake mix.  I have tried and tried to get a cake from scratch to work and I just cant do it so I buy 2 boxes of a golden butter cake mix and make it as it calls for.  I bake 4 thin layers in 2 9 inch round pans.  My aunt is a knock knock cake master and does 7 layers, but I just dont have my game together yet.  You can of course do the cake however you want, but Im telling you now do the layers.  How the icing melts in-between them is part of the amazing part of this cake. 

Now for the icing...this icing is tricky and the first time I made it I failed terribly, but now I have finally nailed it. 

You will need:

4 Cups of sugar
1 1/3  cups of evaporated milk in the can
5 Tablespoons of butter
8 HEAPING tablespoons of cocoa
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Now mix all of that in a big pot and bring it to a boil for about 3-4 minutes.  Keep stirring constantly.  Then turn it down to medium heat and stir for about 20 minutes.  DO NOT LEAVE the icing.  It will burn really easily.  I promise the cake is worth the labor. 

Since it has so much sugar it will start to get hard if it isn't on the heat so this is the tricky part.  Go ahead and have your cake layers ready and cool. This is like a fast assembly line process.  Put one layer down, pour icing, another layer, pour icing, and so on and so forth.  Don't take time to make it perfect down the sides...just pour it and go with it while the icing is hot.  If you do wait too long and it gets hard in the pot just put it back on low heat and maybe add a tiny bit of water.  Let the cake cool in the fridge and when it cools do the knock knock test.  My kids love this part.  You should be able to knock on it, but when you take a bite it will melt in your mouth and is SO good.  Oh my heavens.

 I hope this brings you & your family many wonderful memories as it has us!