Homemade Miyakos (Japanese Hibachi Style Yummy-ness)

So, I found a recipe on Pinterest for YumYum Sauce  and got the bright idea to try a homemade Japanese Hibachi-style dinner.  It turned out A.W.E.S.O.M.E.  I don’t even say that because I closed the night with wine.  I say that because it was amazeballs.  My 2 year old daughter gobbled it up.  My husband gobbled it up and even my neighbor gobbled it up.  I also happened to gobble it up. 

Chopping up the veggies

Oh, we didn’t eat her for dinner… but the cutest 2 year old EVER. (tell me this isn’t a total look into the future… she looks SO OLD)

The mushrooms, squash, zucchini and carrots all chopped up

The soup (amazing)

The rice… I half cheated and found a recipe for the fried rice in the rice cooker… I swear it’s under there!!!!

The final countdown…. I mean- the end result!  AMAZEBALLS. (also……)

I was shocked at how good it turned out.  It wasn’t all that hard either.  I did NO hibachi skilled tricks.  Blood would have been shed!  It was seriously soooooooo good!!!! 

The recipes are all linked in the descriptions below the pictures!  I ended up using our griddle for the steak and shrimp.  Probably could have used it for the veggies too, but I’m a little too OCD to really allow that to happen.  I needed a skillet with sides and easier clean-up.  I realized with the steak that the griddle was tilted downwards so it made it harder to keep the seasonings on it.  So I decided to just throw all the butter, oil and soy sauce into a bowl with the shrimps and let them sit.  Then I threw the whole bowl onto the griddle.  It worked perfectly!  I also threw a bag of mixed veggies into the rice instead of just corn.  We had planned on adding an egg to make it a true fried rice dish… but forgot.  I also forgot to refrigerate the YumYum sauce overnight.  It ended up being a few hours.  Came out perfectly also.  I plan on making this at least once a month.  It was amazing.  I loved it.  Everyone loved it.  They kept telling me!  Try it.  You will love it!

PS.  The hubs made some awesome homemade bread to go with dinner tonight.  He was upset that I didn't give him a shout out.  I said I was sorry, but I was so focused on the actual Miyakos style dinner.  But really... his bread is always awesome.  He is the baker no doubt.  This bread was french bread with some Italian Seasoning in it.  YUMMMMMMMY.

What’s for dinner?

So, I finally cooked something.  I swear it’s been about 2 weeks.  Something just always comes up and we either go out with my parents or they invite us over for dinner.  Oh, Aaron made dinner a couple times while he was home too.  It has been nice.  As much as I love to cook, I just haven’t been in the mood.  So I decided to try a Pinterest recipe! 

Garlic Chicken Puffs with a few of my own tweaks!  I added in some peas and some grated colby jack cheese.  They ended up being really runny while putting them together, but once they cooked they weren’t.  They were delicious.  Charli even ate them as is.  She never eats anything like that without it having to be cut up! 

 

I should have gotten a picture of Charli eating them!  Sorry, I was trying to Skype with Aaron during dinner!  Stupid internet where he was didn’t want us to :(

 

So, we finally set up an appointment with the Behavioral Specialist for Charli… you damn well know she’s been a freaking angel since!  WTF.  So frustrating.  Very nice to have her behaving and listening to me… but still frustrating.  Hopefully we can get a grip on it.  She has been ridiculous before Aaron left on this trip.  It is to the point where when she is having a temper tantrum… I fear for her safety.  The little shit gave herself a black eye while throwing a tantrum in her crib.  I so want to transition her completely out of her crib, but until we can get this taken I am not comfortable with that.  It is the only safe place in the house to put her when throwing a fit.  Well safest.  ARGHHHH.  A lot of changes coming for her soon.  Baby in the house (not mine) and preschool.  Shiiii about to get crazayyyy!

My baby’s big girl room….

I guess it’s time to admit my baby is really no longer a baby.  She is over 2 years old!  We finally finished off the dresser for her room and set it up.  We had planned on finishing off the babyproofing, setting it up as a big girl room but waiting for this coming weekend to transition her to a big girl bed.  Well, we had put the mattress on the floor to decide where we wanted the bed to go and move the other stuff around accordingly.  We decided to leave it there in hopes to get her used to it being there and it not be such a shock when we put her in it to sleep.  HA.  Shock her, apparently not.  Shock us, YES.  She decided tonight at bedtime that she wanted to sleep on the mattress.  She laid down and got all excited so we decided to allow it.  Mind you, Aaron has to go to work tomorrow and Charli and I are going out of town for a couple days, so I didn’t think it would be a good idea to start tonight.  She has been in bed for an hour and a half.  Yes, she has moved around (thankfully the mattress is only a couple inches thick) and just might end up on the floor.  But not a peep and she didn’t once move to get up at all!  MY BABY IS GROWING UP!! 

    

The work to get to the final project

My cutie bug!!

The final dresser project!

It took a couple days longer than I had expected.  But we LOVE it.  Charli kept touching it and saying ‘Peettttyy Mommy!”

I didn’t expect it to feel this way….

So, I just didn’t expect it to feel this way at all.  I’m not sure why I didn’t see this coming.  Whenever you deal with a loss no matter how early it is, you should grieve.  I never did.  Even the day it happened I tried to ignore it and go on with my day acting as if nothing was going on, even though I was in a lot of pain.  For some reason I felt as if I was being punished so I had to just deal with the pain.  Like I must have done something wrong to have had this happen.  Right after it happened, I acted as if nothing went on and it wasn’t a big deal.  I even waited to go to the doctor.  It keeps blindsiding me.  Every time someone else announces their pregnancy, I get depressed.  I am so happy for them but the sadness and depression just creeps in and all the what ifs go through my head. 

I knew from the moment I got pregnant that I was.  This was during softball and all of the girls had figured it out too.  As well as most of the other coaches (even Daddy even though I tried to hide it).  I was so sick all of the time.  Crazy nauseous and dry heaving ALL THE TIME.  I mean all the time.  It was bad.  Charli was constantly worried when I would have to run to the bathroom to dry heave.  I felt so bad.  She would cry sometimes even though I tried to play it off.  Right about the time that most people find out, I miscarried.  I tried to act like since it was SO early on that it didn’t bother me.  It can be a blessing and a curse when you are so in tune with your body.  On one hand, it helps out when I go to the doctor and such.  But when I am in pain or things like that, it sucks.  This sucked big time.  I miss being pregnant.  I’ve been looking back at pictures of when I was pregnant with Charli.  I miss that big ole belly.  I miss feeling a baby moving around inside of me.  I know God has a plan and someway somehow this was a part of it. 

This happened in April.  I keep thinking about how far along I would be…. I would have been around 22 weeks pregnant now.  We would have just recently found out what we were having.  We would have been due around Thanksgiving.  God give me the strength at that time to be able to handle this.  I didn’t really think I would ever put this out there like this… but I am hoping it will be a step in the right direction for dealing with it.

Freezer Meals!!!!

So I finally broke down and tried out the freezer meal method!!!!  I LOVE IT!  I decided to use a good deal of our stock of chicken and pork!  So therefore all the ingredients I ended up needing cost me about 90 bucks!  I ended up with 16-18 dinners (some can be split again depending on how hungry we end up being) and lots of breakfasts!  The day I did it, I also ended up cooking dinner and put half of that away to freeze!  Tonight I also did that and will tomorrow (hopefully).  The bulk of the cooking was done in one day though.  I started at about 1030 in the morning and didn’t finish until around 7ish.  That wasn’t straight through though.  I took a couple little breaks like for lunch and dinner and just to sit down for a minute (to read 50 Shades of Grey!!).  I made a few things that required shredded chicken so I threw a bunch into a crockpot and let that do its magic while I got on other stuff.  I ended up making Skillet Lasagna (was supposed to be Lasagna Roll-ups but let’s just leave it at regular lasagna noodles and I DON’T get along… it was ugly), Egg Muffins (amazeballs!!!!!), Key West Chicken, Crispy Southwest Chicken Wraps (I tweaked it some), Hawaiian Meatballs, Kalua Pork (I pulled the pork and then added the stuff to it), Colorado Chicken Chili (From Don’t Panic- Dinner’s in the Freezer), Hawaiian Chicken (also from Don’t Panic-Dinner’s in the Freezer), regular pulled pork, and Breakfast Burrito (from the same book).  I highly suggest the book!  I can’t wait to get the second edition too!  I also can’t wait to cook a lot more of the recipes!!!!!  All I wanted was to be able to spend more time with my family during the summer and not all in the kitchen!  Mission accomplished!

The Breakfast Burritos!

A good part of the haul….

The Colorado Chicken Chili (with black beans instead of Northern Beans because I forgot to buy them and had the black beans!)  Reminds me of Tortilla Soup now!

So far we’ve tried a couple things and have LOVED everything!  I can’t wait until Fall/Winter to do a lot more soups and chilis!!!!!

I now have a 2 year old!

How in the world did that happen?  Tomorrow she will actually be 2 years old and 1 month.  So clearly I’m a little behind on this blog!  I can’t believe Charli is truly 2 now.  And 2 in every way!  I think she had a blast on her birthday! 

We don’t know why, but she woke up acting very strange on her actual birthday.  By the end of the day she seemed alright! 

By the end of the night she was in better spirits and loving her birthday gifts of sunglasses, a big girl pillow for her crib and I believe coloring books! 

Charli’s party was airplane themed!  CharliAir… where everyone flies first class!! We had an absolute blast!  We only had a few kiddos come so it made it really easy to just let them run free in the backyard with the sandbox and baby pool!  Man was there a lot of sand in that pool HAHA.  LOVED it.  Made me realize I love my house being full of kids!  Beware, hubby!

 

Having a two year old is a whole new experience.  It is as if she changed overnight!  Now she is even more independent and opinionated.  I LOVE IT.  We butt heads but really, that’s to be expected!  She has blossomed like crazy lately.  She has SOOOOO many words and phrases and gestures and quite the little personality.  We dog sat for a friend and she just benefited like you wouldn’t believe by having their awesome dog here!  If only we were allowed to have a dog or cat at our house (the only rule for us!!)  Her speech therapist even said she would seriously benefit from having a dog.  Hmmm, how to work on that one…

We tried potty training a couple times.  It didn’t quite go as planned.  I won’t push it with her though because she is such a hardheaded stubborn ornery child.  She will do it on her own when she is ready.  She is just that kind of kid.  I got told today that it’s amazing I can see that because most parents don’t get that and get so frustrated and make the whole experience that much harder.  That made me feel really good.  That means I have a pretty good understanding of Charli… as if you can ever say that of a parent HAHA. 

Everyday her little personality just shows more and more and more.  I wake up and can’t wait to see what is new with her now!  Just today she started calling me Mommy instead of Momma… it ages her.  It is so cute though.  My little baby girl is growing up way too fast!

Homemade Bread and Quinoa Mac and Cheese!

So I tried to make homemade bread shortly after we moved into this new house.  It halfway came out…. it tasted good but was pretty dense.  It was for broccoli cheese soup, so it being dense worked.  After that, I’ve been a little afraid to try making it again.  So came the time to try a different soup and I really wanted to try homemade bread again.  I totally copped out though and gave Aaron the recipe and asked him to make it while I was out running errands.  He did awesome!!!  I got home and he’d made not ONE but TWO awesome round loaves of french bread!!!!  And they tasted AWESOME!  So he is in charge of making the bread until I get brave enough to myself!  Here is the recipe he used…  It is just heavenly.  I ate an entire loaf in one day pretty much by myself!  I would warm it up in the microwave and put a little peanut butter or nutella on it and it soaked it up like a sponge!  So yummmmy.  We are considering switching over to not buying store bread and bake our own!  Let’s see how it keeps going!

We also decided to try making some quinoa.  Charli is in LOVE with rice so I figured since quinoa is a lot like rice consistency wise it would be a go.  I found this recipe for Quinoa Mac & Cheese and decided it would be a perfect way to try it out.  It was a big hit!  It was practically gone before I even sat down to eat mine!  It was VERY messy though!  Definitely a eatoutonthedeck kind of food :) 

I am loving finding all these new recipes on Pinterest and trying them out!  Soon I’ll be working on some crafts I found on Pinterest too since it’s almost Charli’s 2nd birthday!