Given an hour…

I can do a LOT of cooking.  Here is what I got done today after church:

Browned & Seasoned 1 pound of ground chicken, then a pound of ground beef, then 1.25 pounds Italian sausage. I do these all in one pot, one right after the other, starting with the most mild flavored and ending with the most flavored.  While one is cooling/draining I start the next, then bag them all into ziplocks, label and pop them into the freezer. 

After the Italian sausage I added water to the pot (without rinsing) and boiled pasta for lasagna casserole (Which despite the name is made with rotini pasta).

Meanwhile I prepped two cloves of garlic and a pound of fresh green beans.  After emptying out the pasta and water I added garlic, olive oil and butter to the hot pan (note I still haven’t had to wash the pan and I’ve only used the one pan) then sauté the green beans for about 8 minutes until green and tender-crisp. Once done I set them off to the side in a pyrex dish for tonight’s dinner. ( I never store anything hot in plastic if I can help it, except for gallon freezer Ziploc's but even then I let it cool down a lot first)

I also rough chopped an onion, then placed a pork roast and a full bottle of BBQ sauce, and then a bottle full of water into a crockpot set on low for 8 hours.  The resulting pulled pork BBQ will become empanada filling.

I also cut up some chicken, rolled it in Dijon mustard and then into equal parts bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. These went onto a parchment paper lined cookie sheet, covered in foil and into the fridge (the beans and chicken were for tonight’s dinner, if not I would have put the entire cookie sheet into the freezer and then after they were frozen I would have moved them into Ziplocs.)

I went ahead and put together the lasagna casserole with the pasta, half the sausage, some cottage cheese, 1 can of V-8 and half a jar of red sauce all topped with mozzarella. This is sitting in the fridge ready to bake off later in the week.

Then I took a 30 minute power nap before getting outside into the glorious weather with my family!

Tonight before dinner I mixed up my first ever batch of empanada dough. I really hope it is good because it used up a lot of ingredients, nearly 4 cups of flour, 2 eggs, 2 sticks of butter (that’s a double batch) After the horrible horrible pretzels incident I am really wary of using up that much on an untried recipe.  The dough is chilling in the fridge, realistically it may be a few days until I have time to form the empanadas – I really hope it will be tasty!

This picture is from my phone, I can’t find my real camera! Ach.

On a completely other note, there is a park at the back of Kingwood that I somehow have never heard about before. Last Friday night we heard all about it at a dinner party and so on Saturday Bella and I grabbed a subway sandwich and went to check it out.

Again, the camera is umm. well, let’s just say it isn’t where it should be at the moment, so these are also from the phone.  It was so calm and beautiful, I had no idea there was a huge park like this in Kingwood! Bella and I walked out past the prairie and a little ways into the woods. But it was getting late so we had to head back home.  Not the best snap of Bella, but the phone is slow and takes the picture a few beats after you think it will.

If this is how it looks in February, I can’t wait to visit again in Spring!  It was so peaceful and quiet (well except for kids and dogs) – my soul felt restored!