Food

The last week or two have been pretty difficult around here.  Sickness did its spin around the house, so far with only Nathanael escaping.  We had the thought that if we could teach him to do the cooking, cleaning, phoning, paperwork and all the other things that need to be done, that we’d be all set!  But we decided to let him be a kid for a while.

Even today I’m trying to do some work in short bursts, because I’m having trouble sitting up for too long a period of time.  Hannah seems to be more or less better, and Shari is getting there.

We’ve been very busy with ministry related things, and also have had some challenges with the children – I’ll leave it at that rather than taking 12 pages to explain!  But I will tell you about one of the more dramatic yet less serious mini-disasters from the last few days.

On Friday, Shari and I were both not feeling well.  We ended up having a busy day anyway, and by the evening we were both very tired.  I decided I was going to get Hannah to bed early so that we could all get to bed early.  I thought I would motivate Hannah to get ready quickly by making a simple JELLO recipe with her.  She likes to cook.

Everything was going great.  We were right on schedule, until we got to the Tupperware JELLO mold.  I had forgotten that this particular recipe used Coca-Cola.  Did I get all the fizz out of the Coke before I put it in a sealed Tupperware JELLO mold, you ask?  Well…er…in my weakened condition it wasn’t until the next day that I actually made the connection.

I wouldn’t say it was an explosion.  Basically, the bottom fell out of the JELLO mold.  Yes, it would be an exaggeration to say that purple JELLO was everywhere.  But it was under the sink, on the kitchen floor, on the hall carpet, on my pants, sweater, socks and shirt, on the stove and fridge, in the fridge, on the counter, on food cannisters, on cupboards, and under appliances.

So my late evening was spent scrubbing out clothes (thank you, Shout), mopping several times (it’s still a little sticky down there), scrubbing various things in the kitchen, and cleaning our carpet (pour club soda on the stains – it works wonders.  This is a Queen of Clean tip.)  Needless to say, this was not an early night for us!

On another note, the next day we finally made the JELLO.  It turned out very well, after we learned not to seal it in a JELLO mold.  If you want to try it, check out the recipe I’ve included in the extended text…

We had some roast beef the other day. We probably don’t cook it enough, it can be an easy and inexpensive meal if you do it right. Anyway, we tried a variation on a common recipe – if you haven’t had roast beef for a while either, why not try it?

We used a slow cooker, but you should be able to use waterless cookware or a roaster. First we seared the meat in the waterless cookware, then placed it in the crockpot.

We then mixed up the following ingredients: 1 can low fat mushroom soup, 1 can Coke, 1/2 envelope of onion soup mix, and some salt and pepper. Wisk all that together, pour it on top of the roast, and let it cook.

If you’re using a slow cooker, add some potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms during the last hour of cooking. If you’re using waterless cookware, put them in a few minutes into cooking (assuming the roast takes about 45 minutes). Then take it all out and eat it.

There you go!