Monday, July 26, 2010

Blessings

So, I'm totally stealing inspiration from my friend Hannah's blog...in light of the fantabulous summer we have had, I though I would share what's happening in our lives since our big move!

*Andrew started his Pathology residency at Wake Forest Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem, NC. We have gotten all moved and settled into the first home that is truly ours.

*I have been hired as a fifth grade teacher at a beautiful, new school that is less than fifteen minutes drive from our home. The building is sparkling clean because it's so new and I will have access to some amazing technology that I have never been able to teach with before!

*We are finally able to begin paying back our loans from school!

*Our new house is within two hours driving distance from Asheville, one of our favorite places to visit and home to our good friends, Rick and Kristen.

I personally am enjoying the last part of my summer before going back to work and taking time to appreciate everything God has blessed us with this year.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

This and That

Ugh, I know. It's been a year since my pitiful little blog has been updated. I'm sorry...It's like whenever I used to get a new journal and would write in it faithfully every day for about a week and then...well you know.

Since so many people share recipes on their blogs, I thought I would share some too. Cooking is a hobby of mine (along with many other things), and I'm always looking for yummy, easy recipes that don't take a lot of time or ingredients to make. SO tonight was a new one: baked ziti. Quite yummy and paired with meatballs, so it wasn't a complete carbfest.


Ingredients:
1 box of ziti noodles
1 jar of marinara sauce
1 onion
a few cloves of garlic (the number is really up to your personal preference)
some fresh basil (again, as much or as little as you want)
1 package of Parmesan cheese (the good kind in the zip-lock bag, not the tube kind)
1 package of shredded mozzarella cheese

*Disclaimer: I never said it was lo-calorie
*Hence the walk we took the dog for this evening, and we both skipped dessert (thus far)

Cook the noodles according to the package.

Meanwhile, (in a saucepan) saute the onions about 5 minutes and then add the garlic and basil for another 2-3 minutes. Sort of watch the garlic to make sure it doesn't burn, because this makes it bitter.

Turn off the heat on the onions and throw in the whole jar of sauce. Mix this with the noodles and the Parmesan. Put everything in a 9x13" casserole and top it with the mozzarella. Bake it at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until the top is slightly brown and it's bubbling. The meatballs are easy too. Mix a pound of lean ground beef with a dash of garlic salt, some pepper, an egg and about 1/4 cup breadcrumbs. Shape it into balls and cook over medium high heat about 3 minutes on each side or until they aren't pink in the middle anymore.


For lack of anything better at the moment to put in my blog, I figured it couldn't hurt to put something useful up. The next recipe I want to try either tonight or tomorrow are Muffins That Taste Like Doughnuts from Tastykitchen.com. I plan on making them mini and then freezing half of them, since honestly I'll probably end up eating most of them myself, what with being home all day and hubby not being much of a sweets fella (more's the pity, but what can ya do?).