Seasoned with Life

5 Minute Friday: Glue

April 18, 2014 at 9:23 am | Posted in 5 Minute Friday | Leave a comment

Beautiful post from another 5MF author:

5 Minute Friday: Glue.

Cold Dry Bones

February 17, 2014 at 4:24 pm | Posted in Catholic Bloggers Blitz 2014 | Leave a comment

Cold Dry Bones.

Egg for Breakfast

November 21, 2013 at 8:42 am | Posted in Breakfast, Eggs, Ron's Own Creation | Leave a comment

My husband taught me this trick, that’s why I call it “Ron’s Own Creation” instead of mine. I love scrambled eggs and eggs over medium, but whenever I tried to make eggs over medium, they broke when I flipped them. That’s when hubby stepped in with the hint I will teach you below.

Ingredients:

eggs (break into small custard cup, one at a time to avoid the dangerous shell monsters from dropping into the skillet)

1 tbsp.butter (for two eggs)

1 tbsp. water (per egg)

Turn stove on medium-high and melt butter in small skillet. As soon as the butter is melted and begins to sizzle, add the eggs and let them cook for maybe three minutes. Pour in the water and cover the skillet. Depending on how soft or hard you like your eggs – I like mine medium, keep the eggs covered. For medium it takes about three minutes.

Uncover, use your spatula and serve with toast or bagel.

Ta-da!

Mine was a bit more hard than medium, because I was buttering my toast, but it was still edible and delicious.

Biscuits and Gravy for Supper

November 21, 2013 at 8:33 am | Posted in Biscuits, Breakfast, Gravy, Main Dish, One-Dish Meal, Ron's Own Creation, Supper | 1 Comment

This is last night’s supper. I’m about a day behind, but oh well! Biscuits and gravy are usually hubby’s specialty but with him not quite 100% himself, I decided to toss them together last night.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (according to biscuit package)

Ingredients:

One tube of Pillsbury Grands! Buttermilk Biscuits

One pound of Jimmy Dean Premium Pork Sausage

Flour – I don’t measure this!

Milk – I don’t measure this, either

Salt and Pepper, to taste

In a 12-inch skillet, brown the sausage over medium heat; keep breaking up the meat.

Notice that I use a potato smasher to break up the meat; my husband tried this once, and it works really great if you don’t want huge pieces of sausage.Once the sausage is completely browned, you can begin adding flour. I don’t measure and neither does Ron. Just add flour until all of the meat is covered…coated with flour.Put the biscuits in the hot oven and set the timer (13-17 minutes).Turn heat up a bit, to medium-high and keep stirring and let the flour brown. My husband tells me that when the flour and meat seem to be brown enough, they’re not quite ready, and to keep stirring and cooking for a few minutes more.

Slowly pour in milk. Again, I don’t measure the milk. I typically pour in enough to cover the sausage, and then some….see below:Now you must turn the heat up to high – and KEEP STIRRING! Milk will curdle quickly but you have to let it boil, otherwise you won’t get the thick gravy. It should take about 10 minutes to reach a nice low boil. Remember to keep stirring 🙂

By now, the biscuits are ready, so plate them. When the gravy is thick enough, pour into serving bowl and bring to the table with the biscuits.Split biscuits and pour gravy over them. I only ate one, hubby ate two and I won’t tell how many the teen boy ate…he is a growing teenager and he definitely filled up last night!The only thing missing last night – according to the teen – was orange juice. I forgot to purchase some on my race to the grocery store the other day 😦

Not From Scratch Spaghetti Sauce

November 19, 2013 at 8:29 pm | Posted in Alton Brown, Italian, Italian Sausage, Mushrooms, My Own Creation, Spaghetti, Supper | Leave a comment

I haven’t cooked in weeks! You can imagine what my kitchen pantry and freezer and refrigerator looked like when hubby and I came home from the hospital. My mom had been staying over with our son, taking care of him and of the house and the animals….but still, there wasn’t much in the house to prepare a meal with.

I ran to the grocery store without a list – always a scary thing – and just started flinging things into the cart. My memory told me that I had a jar of Prego spaghetti sauce at home – it was supposed to have been for something – don’t ask me what – so I decided to fix it up for supper.

Ingredients:

1 jar Prego Arrabbiata Spaghetti Sauce

1 pound Johnsonville Italian Sausage

1 container (8 ounces) of fresh mushrooms

1/2 yellow onion, diced

2 tbsp. basil

2 tbsp. oregano

2 bay leaves

2 tbsp. white sugar

Dash of salt

1/2 pound Barilla Spaghetti

On medium heat, brown the sausage, along with the onions and mushrooms.Add the spices (including the sugar) when the sausage is completely cooked and browned.

Pour in the spaghetti sauce carefully, because it could splatter.Cover and simmer on low for about 10 minutes, allowing the spices to blend. Taste and adjust your seasonings. My husband sometimes tells me I don’t use enough oregano or basil. Last night, he didn’t say anything negative about this sauce!

Boil the spaghetti in lots of hot, salted water; I used my Fasta Pasta Microwave Pasta Cooker. It only takes about 13 minutes to prepare enough spaghetti for the three of us. If not for the pasta cooker, it would take a LONG TIME for an entire pot of salted water to boil, so I really like my pasta cooker.

Serve with Parmesan cheese and hot, buttery garlic bread.Delicious!Oh, and one more thought before I go…about those mushrooms…I hear people on television and read blogs and websites warning about washing mushrooms – that instead of washing them by dunking them in water, you should “brush” them clean or wipe them clean with a wet paper towel because otherwise, they’ll “soak” up water. Yesterday after I dunked and washed and sliced my mushrooms, I was remembering Alton Brown’s “Good Eats”, and how one night he did an experiment PROVING that mushrooms do NOT soak up any water, no matter how long they sit in water….and look what I found: The Fungal Gourmet transcript, courtesy of The Good Eats Fan Page! It’s amazing what you can find when you search high and low 🙂

Home, Finally Home

November 19, 2013 at 3:42 pm | Posted in Home Again, Hospital, Hubby | Leave a comment

Ron was released from the hospital yesterday!

We stopped for a quick and easy lunch at Panera Bread and then came home. I still haven’t finished unpacking my stuff. Yesterday and all day today, I’ve been trying to micro-manage his medications. He’s on so many – and I had to compare the hospital’s list with what I had listed – and compare the FINAL list to what medications are on his shelf – and then find out what we need to ask our family doctor to prescribe for him when we see her on Thursday.

Then, next week, he’ll see his heart doctor; the following two weeks he’ll have two more medical appointments and I’m waiting to hear from the nurse practitioner at the oncologist’s office about when she wants to see him. Poor hubby, he’s out of the hospital but still surrounded by medical people!

He slept all through the night – he was the first one to bed last night. I was fretful all afternoon – in fact, I told him that I was just as nervous taking HIM home as I was about bringing the baby home over 14 years ago. I’m so worried about protecting him from falls; making sure he takes his correct medicines at the correct times and doesn’t miss any; making sure he eats and eats properly; I’m watching him like a hawk. Over-protective wife and son were getting on him last night at supper time because he was NOT using the walker. He claims that his legs won’t get strong if he uses the walker but I argued that they WILL get stronger even with the walker BUT that they won’t be happy IF he stumbles and falls and breaks something. We have ZERO carpeting in our home. It’s all hardwood floors (bedrooms, hallways and living room) and ceramic tiles (bathrooms and kitchen). There’s no way he’s heading downstairs yet, but that’s still not carpeted either. Poor guy, he’s like a bird with his feathers plucked so that he can’t fly far.

*sigh

I’m just happy to have everyone together under the same roof!

Still in the Hospital

November 17, 2013 at 3:15 pm | Posted in Hospital, Hubby | Leave a comment

Tomorrow will be day #21.

Hubby’s hemoglobin is still around 9, which is pretty good. Not as good as it has been in the past but the doctor seems to think it’s good enough that he might let him out of here either tomorrow or Tuesday. I refer to the doctor as “he” but hubby has a doctor who is a “she” so whichever is here tomorrow – I think it will be “she” but we’ll see.

I don’t even know if that last paragraph made any sense.

For those of you who aren’t my personal Friend on Facebook, I’ve uploaded a picture of my little corner of the world, on the third floor of the hospital:

My little messy corner of the world.

You can see part of hubby’s hospital bed and his IV pole.

The couch opens up to a bed; not the world’s most comfy place but you can see how close I am to hubby, in case he needs me at a moment’s notice. In one corner of the couch is my pink blanket and my pillow with my sleepy sweats on top. You can also see my laptop. On the other side of the couch, my iPod is plugged in. At night, I sleep with the music playing low. I can still hear hubby if he needs me.

We just want to go home.

5 Minute Friday: Tree

November 15, 2013 at 4:35 pm | Posted in 5 Minute Friday | 4 Comments

It’s Friday. I’m sitting here in the hospital room with hubby; we just watched Dr. Phil. Now hubby is watching a movie that looks boring, so I decided to check my email and collect Game Feeds for ChefVille. Finally, I realized that it was Friday and time for 5 Minute Friday, so here I am.

This week’s word prompt is tree.

When we decided to have our home built rather than purchase an already built place, we picked a spot in a new subdivision, in the country. Each house was on a two acre lot; we decided with our neighbors to the north to split the two acres between us, so we each have three acre lots.

Our property used to have cattle. While the house was being built, we’d go out and watch the progress, taking pictures and watching our step – you had to do that because for the first few weeks or so, the cattle were still there and even after they were gone, their gifts were left behind.

There were only a few trees on our property and hubby didn’t like some of them, so we immediately had a few cut down – yeah, I know, it sounds cruel, but they weren’t in “good spots” and they had to go.

Over the years, we’ve planted many. One of our most special trees is one that we transplanted from our previous rental home (don’t tell the landlords). It’s a silver maple (I just asked hubby). Beneath that tree, our beloved pets rest, waiting for us to join them at Rainbow Bridge. Our first Siamese cat (Chiquitita), second Siamese (Desdemona) and our Chocolate Lab (Tiger) rest beneath that tree.

When Shadow (our German Shepherd) was a pup and I would walk her around her territory to teach her what her “home base” was, we’d sit beneath the shade of the maple and I’d tell her of the pets that we’ve loved before her. I don’t know how much she paid attention. Mostly she liked it when I’d rip up grass and toss it for her to catch.

Trees are important. Our maple has grown from a tiny sapling to a huge and gorgeous tree. I can see it from my kitchen window – every time I look out, I think of our four-legged family members and miss them all-over again. If we ever have to move, it’s going to be hard to leave that tree behind…but thankfully, my memories will come with me.

STOP.

Okay. Time to fess up: I went into my Facebook account to find a picture of our silver maple. Believe it or not, I couldn’t find one. So, I raced to find a picture of a silver maple:

Photo credit: Highland Hill Farm

Still in the Hospital

November 10, 2013 at 8:13 pm | Posted in Hospital, Hubby | 2 Comments

Lots of days later and many tests later, hubby is still in the hospital. He received another unit of blood the other afternoon because his hemoglobin was low. They’re slowly raising his Coumadin (Warfarin) mg. so that he gets back up to the 5 mg. he was taking when he left the hospital last month. They still don’t know where the blood loss is coming from and they are seeing if while he’s on the “regular level”, if it will happen again. They want it to happen here instead of home, which makes sense, but still, he wants to be home and I want him home, too.

So. here we are on another Sunday…missing home, missing our teen…but together.

5 Minute Friday: Truth

November 8, 2013 at 9:24 pm | Posted in 5 Minute Friday | 4 Comments

It’s Friday. I didn’t get a chance to join in the fun last week because my husband was in the hospital again. He came in Monday and is still here. Right now, he’s sleeping and I’m sitting here on the couch in his private room. They just gave him some pain meds and I pray that he’ll sleep well for a while.

This week’s word prompt is: truth
John 14:6-14

Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Philip said to him, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?

Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.

Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

~Quote courtesy of Catholic.net

I’ve always liked this reading from the New Testament of John. It’s so simple…all I have to do is believe that Jesus IS the way, the truth and the life.

If only everything else in life were so simple!