Spaghetti Pie (“Busy Mama’s Lasagna”)
Wondering Wednesday Podcast: Q & A–Using Audios With Children
Donna Reish, of Character Ink Publishing and Raising Kids With Character seminar and blog, answers a reader’s question about using audios of all kinds with children beginning with two and three year olds up through young adults/teens.
The Secret to a Clean Refrigerator
The secret to a clean refrigerator is FREQUENT attention! That is, the secret is in the frequency with which you deal with said refrigerator.
A refrigerator is a lot like a toddler. It doesn’t need long, drawn out time periods from us–it just needs lots of little snatches of time! I can remember when my littles especially were toddlers and preschoolers. It was easy to get busy with the olders and not spend as much time on the littles. I made it a point each day to put in my schedule little snatches of time that I would devote to the little guys. A quick story. A little rocking. Getting out something interesting for them to play with or do. Putting Lego heads on their Lego men. Just little snippets of time—but lots of snippets throughout the week!
Chicken Noodle Soup
Hopefully, you have enjoyed the ease of my shredded chicken method! It is so simple to put chicken in the crock pot overnight or in the morning and come up with a speedy meal when it is done cooking. There are actually times in which I put the chicken in without even knowing for sure what I will do with it the next day since I know I have so many options that I can turn to at the last minute. (Plus, having it cooked forces me to do SOMETHING with it!) If nothing else, I can pour some bottled BBQ sauce over it and have BBQ chicken sandwiches!
Did you try the Arroz Con Pollo? Jonathan and his new bride are here for two weeks on spring break while Jonathan works at the factory and Maelynn does her junior practicum at a local middle school. I will probably be making that Arroz Con Pollo next week for them!
In addition to the BBQ chicken mentioned above, when all else fails, I know I can pull out some chicken broth, enrich it with chicken base (always!), boil some packaged noodles in the broth, and come up with a pot of chicken noodle soup in no time flat. Here is how I do that quickly.
Dishes, Laundry, and Trash–Twice a Day!
Twenty-five years ago when I was a young mother, housewife, and homeschooler, I had trouble getting all of my work done every day–while teaching a young son to read, keeping a curious preschooler out of everything, taking care of a toddler, nursing a baby, etc. Truly the statement “the days are long but the years are short” was never more real to me.
I had problems that many people who are “self employed” have–plus the added “benefits” of having a lot of littles around making messes and needing seemingly-constant attention. (I really do think they are benefits–but when a man is self-employed, he usually doesn’t have to take care of a home, feed a crew, and provide constant care and supervision to little kids! He just, well, works!)
“Arroz Con Pollo”—A Shredded Chicken Recipe
This is the first follow-up recipe to my post about cooking chicken to use in shredded chicken recipes. In that post, I shared that I have been compiling recipes for my two sets of newlyweds. I thought you might like to see their sweet faces (as I ALWAYS love to see their sweet faces!), so check out the pictures at the end of this post.
When the married or college kids come home for a weekend or holiday break, I always like to make things that they like, or things that are special to them. I have been scouring the internet for a couple of years to find a recipe that is similar to the Arroz Con Pollo that our newly-wed son always orders at our family’s favorite Mexican restaurant. I was unable to find anything like it. (The ones I found were large chunks of meat more in a red sauce as opposed to a shredded chicken dish in a white sauce.)
So….I combined a couple of other recipes that looked similar and came up with one that worked—and that all of the kids really liked. (And my Arroz Con Pollo son thought was a good knock off!)
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