Monday, October 1, 2007

October 2007


  • mmm, mmm, good

    Current mood:hungry
    Last night I took advantage of the fact that it is fall-ish and made a yummy pumpkin coconut curry for dinner.  It was a little bit spicy, so for those of you who do not like the spice I would reccomend staying away from this dish, but I thought it was FAN-freakin-TASTIC!  It is always nice to take advantage of seasonal produce!  So.....here's the info!

    INGREDIENTS
    2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into small chunks
    1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
    1 tablespoon olive oil
    1 (2 pound) sugar pumpkin -- peeled, seeded and cubed
    1 tablespoon butter
    1 onion, chopped
    2 cloves garlic, chopped
    1 (1 inch) piece fresh ginger root, finely chopped
    1 tablespoon ground coriander
    1 tablespoon ground cumin

    1 tablespoon ground curry powder
    1 pinch ground turmeric
    1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
    1 can coconut milk
    1 1/2 cups chicken broth
    salt to taste

    DIRECTIONS
    Season the chicken pieces with poultry seasoning and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken to the skillet; cook and stir until browned on the outside and cooked through. Remove from the heat and set aside.


    Melt the butter in a separate skillet over medium heat. Add onion, garlic and ginger; cook and stir until onion is transparent. Season with curry, coriander, cumin, turmeric, and red pepper flakes. Continue to cook and stir until spices are fragrant. Add pumpkin, cooked chicken, coconut milk and chicken broth. Season with salt to taste. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes over medium heat. Serve over rice or noodles.
  • The fisherman returns

    Current mood:content
    My husband has returned home from his fishing trip up north.  He was gone 5 days and we missed him terribly!  I would have rather him come home without snot drippin from his nose (thanks Chris) but he is home and I am happy!  I guess it was a tough time for trout fishing due to the weather being too warm, or the area being too crowed......not quite sure what the deal was, but they caught 3 trout and were given one by a dude that only catches them and doesn't eat them.  Weird.  So we currently have 2 trout cut up and in our freezer, we also have 40 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breasts, 10 pounds of Italian hot sausage, 10 pounds of chicken legs on the bone, 5 pounds of provolone cheese 10 pounds of red and white potatoes and 2 bags of homemade sauerkraut perogies.  There is a farm up in Erie, PA that sells meat and such really really cheap so we stock up on things that will keep for a while.  My freezer has never been this full of meat; ever!  Guess what we're having for dinner tonight?  Can you say trout?  Yumm.  If anyone wants to come over for dinner, we'll be having chicken for the next 2 months!  lol.

  • Day on the farm

    Current mood:happy
    Yesterday Maddie and I went to a local farm here in Smithfield and had a jolly time feeding goats, seeing baby pigs and cows, playing in a corn maze, picking pumpkins and going on a hay ride!  We had a fun time although Maddie seemed more interested in the bottle of hand sanitizer than the goats, and she was more interested in playing with the millet than choosing a pumpkin.  I think that next year might be more sucessful when she is more aware of how fun animals are, and how boring hand sanitizer is.  But it was nice to get out of the house and in the sunshine and I had been looking forward to this little trip for a few weeks now.  Photographic evidence is below.  And yes, my little elf named Maddie had taken my camera battery and stashed it in a very safe place......under the couch.  Stinker!  lol









  • The birds

    Current mood:crazy
    I woke up this morning.....well Maddie woke me up this morning at 7:30 and it looked like it was still dark outside.  I peered out the blinds and saw that it was drizzling and wet.  We get up, I get Maddie her milk, put on cartoons.....we need them to get our butts in gear.  After a little while I look out our back door to see if the weather is clearing up and can't help but notice that our entire backyard is COVERED with black birds.  They were everywhere.  I have no idea where they came from or what they were doing in our backyard, but they were there, and there were seriously like 300 of them.  I held Maddie up so that she could look at the birds and we just watched them for a little while.  They were pecking at the ground which is weird because our soil is horrible so who knows what they were getting down there.  Then I got the genius idea to let the dogs out to chase all the birds away.  Tyson and Henry were more than happy to run after birds and Maddie and I got to watch 300 black birds flying off to our neighbors yard.  The dogs are still out there to defend our land, but why on earth do you think so many black birds decided to come over to our house?  WEIRD!!!
    Oh, I was going to take a picture of all the birds in our backyard but my camera battery is missing.  It was on the charger yesterday and this morning it has mysterously disapeared.  I think a little elf took it.  Sorry, no photographic evidence of the massive amount of birds......but they were really there, I promise!
  • Beginners luck?

    Current mood:creative
    Last night I made my first ever homemade soup.  I've been wishing that the weather was fall like instead of in the mid eightys so I decided that making some soup might bring on the chill.  It didn't work......it was still warm today phooey, but the soup was delicious and I am really proud of my first soup attempt turning out so well. 
    It was an Itlaian sausage soup with tortellini.  It also had zuchinni, onion, carrots, spinach, tomatoes and fresh basil and parsley.  I used fresh whole wheat cheese toretllini which I think was a good call.  Now I have a huge vat of home made soup and I'm all by myself this weekend. Anyone wanna come over for some soup? 

  • Our very own alarm clock

    Current mood:tired
    I know that it's been a long time since I've blogged, but honestly, I am too tired to do it.....that is when I'm not feeling nauseous which usually lasts at least half the day.  No throwing up, but that gross feeling like my stomach is going to implode.  So between that loveliness and feeling like I am going to fall asleep standing up almost all day, I don't have the time to blog.  Oh, and I have a 1 year old to take care of too.....and a husband to cook for, and a house to keep at least semi clean.  You catch my drift.
    This morning we had the wonderful opportunity to get up at 4:15 am.  Maddie woke up burning up with a fever over 100 degrees and not wanting to have anything to do with sleep.  Not even in our bed.  She head butted me a few times, kicked me repeatedly and almost crawled herself right off the side of the bed.  I figured it would be better to get up than deal with the abuse, so needless to say it has been a LONG day so far.  I don't know why she has the fever, but she doesn't have any sickie symptoms, so I'm going to guess that it has something to do with this last molar she is trying to cut.  Her spirits seems totally fine after she took a morning nap, but you should have seen her this morning, she looked like a zombie.  It was pretty funny.  But not as funny as the fact that I will look like a zombie for the rest of the day because of my early casting call.
    I'm going to try harder to blog more, both for my faithful readers (thanks mom and dad schultz) and for myself.  We have had lots going on in our family that would be fun to blog about, and Maddie is growing faster than a weed.  She can actually reach up and grab things off our kitchen counters now.  Lovely!  Such a big girl.  Dan is going fishing this weekend, so maybe I'll use some of my evening alone time to blog.  But maybe I'll just read and go to bed early.  Can't guarentee what kind of excietment might happen in the Schultz house! 
    Happy Wednesday and very early mornings!
  • The things we forget

    Current mood:exhausted
    So this morning we get up, putz around, drink coffee.  I made some oatmeal, the baby had some blue berry muffin pieces.  We decided that we needed to go to Lowe's to get a new set of keys made for the front door.  While there we looked at all the Christmas stuff on display....I LOVED it all!  We drove through Hardee's (Carl's Jr. for you West Coasters) and then drove around a neighborhood looking at pretty old houses.  We get home, put the baby down for her nap, Dan played on the computer, I watch some TV off the DVR.  Around 1:20 we get a call from Dan's mom wishing us a happy anniversary.  Huh?  Well DUH!!!!  Today is totally our anniversary!  lol  I have no idea how we could have forgotten other than the fact that we have so much going on in our lives, but seriously.....we forgot our anniversary!  Now I could understand if it had been a long time since we got married, but this is only our second anniversary, and we should have remembered.  Oh well.  We ended up going out to dinner to a Chinese place and our friends watched Maddie for a while.  It was a nice makeshift anniversary celebration.  I am currently so tired I keep making typing errors and really stupid ones at that, so I need to go to bed.  It's funny though that last year on our anniversary we had a 3 week old and this year on our anniversary I am pregnant!  Yep, for those who didn't know.....
    I AM PREGNANT!!!
    Goodnight.

County McCounterson