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Calzones Recipe

Posted by html404 on November 24, 2013
in All Natural Products, Family Stuff, Food and Treats, Home, Organic, Recipes, Uncategorized

A couple of weeks ago I was adventurous and decided to make our calzones recipe, except I couldn’t find it. So I did a quick search to see what ingredients I’d need and then made them my way.

Making Bread Dough in a Bosch Mixer

I made our calzones out of homemade bread dough. In the past I have used the frozen bread dough at the store for quick preparation, but now we have a Bosch and mixing up bread dough is a piece of cake!

Warm water, yeast, sugar, oil and salt.

Then add unbleached white flour.

We know the bread dough is ready when it no longer sticks to the side of the Bosch bowl, as shown in the photo below.

Homemade Calzones Recipe

After I make the bread dough, I spread the balls of dough out. You can also roll them to make nicer cirle-ish shapes.

Then I added toppings of sauce, mozzarella cheese and ricotta cheese. I should have added some broccoli but I didn’t.

I usually top them with more sauce but my daughter took some of these photos for me. We divided up tasks so we could feed our hungry crew!

Calzones Recipe

Now for the actual recipe which is a little “rough” because so much cooking that I do doesn’t follow a recipe. Sorry!

Calzones Recipe

Print recipe

Ingredients

Bread dough (I make a large batch of homemade, enough for 3 loaves of bread to feed our family..)
2 - 28 oz cans Organic tomato sauce (We add our own oregano, basil and a little sweetner to our taste.)
1 packet Organic pepperoni
16oz Organic ricotta cheese
1 Large Farm fresh egg :)
16oz Mozzarella cheese

Directions

Step 1
Divide up the bread dough into equal parts. Then roll or pat the balls out into a small circle-ish shape to create your calzones. Put on greased cookie sheets and put to the side to mix up other ingredients.
Mix 1 egg with a 16 oz container of ricotta cheese. Set aside.
Step 2
Make sauce by adding oregano, basil and sweetener to tomato sauce. Start with a couple teaspoons of each and taste test to see if you like it. Keep adding oregano, basil and sweetener until it satisfies your palate. Set aside with rolled out bread dough.
Fold over dough from corner to corner and press to close. Optional: Paint tops of calzones with melted butter and put slits in the top of your calzones for decorative puposes.
Step 3
Go back to rolled out dough and spread tomato sauce out on the dough. Add pepperoni followed by the ricotta cheese mixture and top with a sprinkle of mozaralla cheese.
Step 4
Put in the oven for approximately 30 minutes or until bread dough is cooked through. They should be a golden brown and the inside should be heated. Top the calzones with a couple of spoonfuls of sauce. Serve with a side dish or salad. Voila! Your masterpiece is served!

Do you play with recipes or create your own? Do they turn out?

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Week #5 Saturday Top Five Laughs – Join the Blog Hop!

Posted by html404 on November 23, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Home, Humor, Uncategorized

I was a little lax this week with writing down funny things as they happened, but then Thursday and Friday I hit the “jackpot” so to speak and several funny things happened! So are you ready to laugh with the Goulds again? Once again we have joined The Mommyhood Chronicles for Week #5 – for us! – in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. I do ask my older children if it’s ok to share their funnies in my Saturday Top Five Laughs. They have even been known to say, “You know that’s going in mom’s blog post!” Hey, I’m making this my number 5 this week!

4. My daughter “B” came into my room on Thursday morning saying she had a bad dream. She called it a nightmare. She started by saying she dreamed she slept in until 9am. I interrupted her to say that most people would not consider that a nightmare, let alone a bad dream. But I knew where she was going because she’s our dairymaid and does the milking so sleeping in until 9am is definitely a bad thing, considering it’s 3 hours past milking time! Then “B” went on to say that wasn’t the worst thing, that I told her she couldn’t have chocolate forever!

3. Our kittens are getting big. Need another photo shoot. Anyhoo….They were up to their cute antics again. Freckles actually climbed the wall of our brick house! They tried during our SHEBA photo shoot but did not succeed. On Thursday, Freckles succeeded. I think her motivation was her mama, who was perched on the kitchen window sill, which is on that wall. The cats like to sit on the ledge and perch or watch whoever is working in the kitchen. Hoping for handouts!

2. We were having sandwiches for lunch the other day and my daughter, “Amelia” or “O”, informed my husband that she liked IF’s (grocery store in the town we use to live in) deli meat better than the stuff he bought at the “Pig” (Piggly Wiggly in our town). Then she said, “It smells like gas (but she used another term).” Sigh. Manners seems to have flown the coop with that child.

1. This one is just plain goofy. I’ve had a pain in my left arm pit most of the week. One day I blurted out, “Does anyone care that my arm pit hurts?” I was answered with a bunch of giggles. Then I said, “So no one cares if my arm pit hurts? Hmpfh.” They all proceeded to state they cared. Like I believed them. Hmpfh.

Guess that’s all I could come up with for laughs this week!

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Christmas Lights, Etc.

Posted by html404 on November 14, 2013
in Family Stuff, Food and Treats, Holidays, Home, Seasonal Stuff, Shopping

I know we haven’t even celebrated Thanksgiving yet, but Christmas is also on my mind lately. It’s also just around the corner and I am feeling a little unprepared. We like to decorate and get our Christmas tree up the weekend after Thanksgiving. What I am realizing is we are probably in need of more things than I can remember and I’m not sure what to do about. That’s why I’m creating a post about it!

Here are the things I know we need to buy:

1. Christmas lightsetc, etc. We bought our Christmas lights the first year we were married and they lasted a good long time. They were just from Sam’s Club. However, the last few years we have discovered more and more strands are no longer working.

2. Christmas tree. We used an artificial one for many years and once the children were getting older switched to a real tree. We tossed our artificial tree a year or two before we moved here. We have a couple of places to choose a live tree from and thankfully one is just down the road, which should be an easy enough buy if we find the right size.

3. Shopping for Christmas gifts. I don’t even have our extended family’s gifts yet, let alone something for all of our children. Especially since I gave the children the few board games I recently bought. Wrong move, if I wanted to be ahead in gift buying. (Rolling eyes at self!)

4. Christmas baking supplies and trimmings. I know by December we will be in need of more baking supplies to accomplish any Christmas baking we want to do, plus the trimmings for Christmas dinner. We’ll have our turkey and our potatoes, which we grew ourselves, but the rest we’ll have to make or buy. We usually have a traditional Christmas dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrots, butternut squash, rutabaga, cranberries, stuffing and homemade pie for dessert. Cranberry pie and apple pie are our family favorites.

5. Christmas cards or letters. If I even have time.

What about you? What is on your Christmas list of to-do’s and when do you decorate for Christmas?

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Fall Inspired Recipes with Squash

Posted by html404 on November 11, 2013
in All Natural Products, Family Stuff, Food and Treats, Health, Health and Nutrition, Holidays, Home, Organic, Recipes, Shopping, Uncategorized

Thanksgiving is only a little over a couple of weeks away and I have been looking for fall inspired recipes for squash. I found a couple new ones I want to try. To facilitate this post I shopped at Mariano’s for the ingredients for our traditional recipe.

I really enjoy shopping at Mariano’s. I love that they carry a good selection of organic food. The employees make it a pleasant experience. Each time I have gone, one has helped direct me to a faster checkout. It’s very helpful. Mariano’s also has a reward card shoppers can use to earn 1% cash back on every $50 purchased from November 7 thru February 8, 2014. How’s that for a bit of holiday shopping incentive?

For my very simple recipe I purchased four organic squash, but only used two. Organic parsley, organic butter and ground cinnamon.

Those of you who have never cooked a squash, you wash the squash and cut it into halves lengthwise. Then put it face down inside a 9×12 dish.

Once cut, scoop out the seeds and pulp from the ball of the squash.

The squash seeds may be saved, dried and used to plant in your garden next spring (especially if they are organic, non-hybrid seeds!). Or the seeds may be roasted and eaten as a super nutritious snack.

All four halves would not fit in my pan so I wrapped the last half in foil and baked it along side the pan.

After the squash is baked, it is scooped out of it’s skin and put into a bowl.

Then I mash it to make sure all the clumps are pretty much out before adding the butter, cinnamon and parsley. And that’s all there is to it. Very simple, inexpensive and yummy!

Fall Inspired Recipes with Squash

Simple Squash Recipe

Print recipe

Serves	8-10
Prep time	10 minutes
Cook time	1 hour
Total time	1 hour, 10 minutes
Dietary	Diabetic, Gluten Free, Vegan, Vegetarian
Meal type	Side Dish
Misc	Child Friendly, Serve Hot
Occasion	Barbecue, Casual Party, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving
Region	Canadian

This simple squash recipe is a tasty side dish for the holiday season.

Ingredients

2 Organic Butternut Squash
1 sprig Organic Parsely ((I used curly parsley, there is also flat leaf))
1/2-1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
2 tablespoons Organic Butter

Directions

Step 1
Wash squash of in warm water.
Step 2
Cut squash in half lengthwise.
Step 3
Place face down in a 9x12 baking dish. I had an extra so I wrapped it in foil because it would not fit in my pan.
Step 4
Bake at 350 degrees for 45 -60 minutes or until soft when poked with a fork.
Step 5
Spoon out squash into a bowl.
Step 6
Mash out lumps.
Step 7
Add butter and cinnamon. Cinnamon can be to taste with more or less.
Step 8
Sprinkle a little extra cinnamon on top and add a few leaves of parsley for garnish.
Step 9
Enjoy!

Shopping at Mariano’s

You can learn more about Mariano’s and get new ideas on a weekly basis on Mariano’s website. Consider liking #MyMariano’s on Facebook and following them on Twitter.

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Week #3 Saturday Top Five Laughs – Join the Blog Hop!

Posted by html404 on November 9, 2013
in Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Home, Humor, Kids Stuff, Sunday Smiles, Uncategorized

It’s time to laugh with the Goulds again! We have joined The Mommyhood Chronicles for Week #3 – for us – in the Saturday Top Five Laughs of the week.

5. The image below speaks for itself but by way of an explanation, I was working on my grocery list for a monthly order I place online at Azure Standard – I have forgotten to click submit for the past two months, that’s not the humorous part, that’s the sad part. The funny part is when I asked my daughter to double check to see if we needed anything else so I could check my list she handed me this:

It cracked me up! That’s what I get for asking a child to help with the grocery list, except she’s not so much a child anymore.

4. “The SHIELD helicarrier fell on my back!” (Inside family joke from Spiderman). “The wheel of excuses!”

3. Our 13 year old daughter was laying on the floor throwing a basketball up in the air and it fell on her face. She cracked up laughing.

Yikes, I am struggling this week, even with my children’s help.

2. When we went to dig up asparagus crowns at a local organic farm, the joke was on me. For some reason I was expecting them to be small. Wrong. They are huge! Good thing we didn’t take trowels or else we would have been there all day. Not really because they did have shovels available.

1. My husband made us laugh this week by speaking in a funny accent.

Whew! That was hard. Gotta work harder at keeping track of funny things as they happen or it’s chore to come up with something.

Anything funny happen at your house this week?

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Kittens, Kittens and More Kittens! – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on November 6, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Fun Stuff, Home, Photography, Uncategorized, Wordless Wednesday

Ok all you cat and kitty lovers….I couldn’t resist posting an all kitty post after the photo shoot we did for the SHEBA post yesterday. I just kept snapping and snapping hoping to get some good, non-blurry photos of them! They are at such an adorable age. I don’t get to observe them like the children do but I love it when the children come tell me stories of all the antics and things they are up to. Like tonight, my son came to tell me that Badger is sleeping inside one of my husband’s old ratty running shoes! Why wasn’t the old ratty shoe tossed when he got his new ones? Guess they were meant to be here for the kittens! Too bad the garage is so dark or else I would have taken a photo of the kitty in the shoe!

Freckles washing herself.

Sweet little kittens.

Severus is our Tom cat and you can see the resemblance between him and Badger, eh? Oh and Sevy is our only male cat now since all his kittens appear to be females!

Badger licking her lips.

Freckles sitting pretty.

Badger sitting pretty too.

Selene sitting pretty.

Amazing that I got a shot of each one of them sitting so nicely. Full bellies helped! So remember that as a photography tip! These are their six week old photos.

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Keeping Your Cat Healthy – SHEBA

Posted by html404 on November 5, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Health, Home, Pet Food, Uncategorized

Do you have a cat? We have six. We started with two and now have six! Needless to say we go through a lot of cat food! A huge part in keeping your cat healthy is the diet you feed them. We feed our cats a mostly raw diet of fresh Guernsey milk from Miss Moo, chicken, chicken livers and giblets. They will be getting treated with turkey trimmings on Thanksgiving! With winter weather around the corner we want them to have enough to eat so they can maintain proper body temperature to stay warm; that’s why we usually supplement their diet with cat food.

I don’t think we’ve ever fed our cats canned cat food before, until now. We usually buy dry cat food. This time we bought them SHEBA cat food. They LOVED it and gobbled up their SHEBA entrees. You can see from the photos how much they enjoyed their SHEBA meal!

Selene wouldn’t eat until we served her own portion by herself! Look at her ears…protective of her food…though she did allow her mama to join her. See the video here on Instagram.

Freckles is saying yummy SHEBA!

Princess says yummy with her tongue and Badger thought the meal was so good she had to sit on the plate with her SHEBA entree!

Severus cleaned his plate and is patiently waiting for more.

Pumpkin barely breathes as she devours her portion of SHEBA cat food!

Walmart has a roll-back price on SHEBA right now – just $0.50! Plus SHEBA has a Buy 6, Get 1 FREE coupon on their website: http://www.sheba.com/home

Our cats are barn cats, but not in the traditional sense because they are very people-fied and are our pets, though they do serve a purpose in keeping the rodent population down on the 16 acres of land where we live. Our landlords do not want us keeping any pets in the home we are renting.

After their bellies were full, the kittens were in a very playful mood!

When our female cat, Princess, had kittens over six weeks ago we moved her and her babies to the garage for safety mainly but we also knew they would be extra warm in the garage because our dryer vent releases into the garage. We wanted Princess to feel safe and not be threatened by anything in the barn or by the other cats. This was how we kept Princess and her kittens healthy for the past six weeks. We just started letting her take the kittens outside. She gave a hint by having them all sit at the garage door with begging little faces!

Another part of keeping our cat healthy is worming them. We worm them on a regular basis to keep them free of parasites.

Regular vet visits and vaccinations all play a part in keeping your cat healthy too. Check with your vet on their recommendations. Each vet will be different.

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Fall Clean Up

Posted by html404 on November 4, 2013
in Cleaning, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Home, Seasonal Stuff

Now that our vegetable CSA is over and summer has come to an end. It’s time for fall clean up. I don’t know about your fall clean up list, but ours seems to keep growing and I fear we will not get everything done on it.

Here’s what on it so far and there’s only a little over a month left of fall:

1. Plant 15 lbs of garlic.

2. Clean up garden beds.

3. Till.

4. General pick up of garbage, etc.

5. Go to a local organic berry farm to dig up asparagus crowns they are giving away so we can add to our own little patch.

6. We have a 1/4 acre that we have to weed because we allowed it to become a patch of tall overgrown ugliness. Our intention was to plant root crops there but we never got to it. Now it’s a project and a half no one wants to touch.

7. Clean out chicken coops.

8. Store unused coops for winter.

9. Possibly make one more small hoop house to grow veggies in over the winter.

10. Barn clean up. This will be ongoing as it was originally a mess when we started renting it in February.

11. Move Miss Moo to new pasture. This is an ongoing task.

Plus, whatever other projects we decide we need to accomplish….and this is just outside projects. Don’t even get me started on what needs to be done INside. Sigh.

So tell me, do you have a lot of fall clean up to do?

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Miss Moo is…..

Posted by html404 on October 31, 2013
in Animals, Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Home, Pet Food, Uncategorized

Miss Moo is….not expecting a calf. Sniff. Sniff.

On Monday our vet came out to check to see if Miss Moo bred, but unfortunately the August AI (artificial insemination) did not take. We were disappointed but we are trying again. This time the vet gave Miss Moo a shot to bring on her heat cycle, which should occur any day now. Once we see signs of her heat we will call the vet and he will come out and AI her again and give her another shot, if I am understanding correctly. All of this is new to us so forgive me if I get a few things mixed up! Trying to keep things straight but somehow think it may take another time or two of going through AI before it sticks in this brain of mine.

Now….here’s to hoping for a 2014 fall calf.

The vet was impressed with how much weight Miss Moo had put on since late August – yay for the new pasture and the extra grain portions! We really couldn’t take the credit…but we are very, very happy that he noticed the difference. He said she was in “working condition” and could probably still use another 150-200 lbs, so we will keep her grain portion the same and feed her our hay, which is better quality than the stuff we previously got. She was hardly gaining anything on the old hay but our hay is “gold” ;). Seriously, Miss Moo doesn’t even want to eat the old stuff anymore, that’s saying a lot for a cow because cows usually are not so picky. And she really does prefer our hay.

Unfortunately, our second cutting just got cut last week and was baled on Monday. The weather conditions were not the best so our hay did not dry as it should have, but it’s ok for cows. Our horse does not eat hay due to his teeth. Older horses like him (29+ years) often have poor teeth, if any at all. That’s why we feed him mush. More about older horses in a future post though!

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Have You Tried Tai Pei Asian Food?

Posted by html404 on October 25, 2013
in Coupons, Family Stuff, Food and Treats, Health, Home, Products for Dad, Products for Mom, Uncategorized

This blog post is part of a paid SocialMoms and Tai Pei® blogging program. The opinions and ideas expressed here are my own.

We are usually a family who eats healthy meals we make from scratch. However, as a family of ten we can find ourselves busy taking care of animals, working on fixer upper projects around the farm, making CSA or egg deliveries or taking care of errands to keep our household up and running. It is during these times when our food choices may not be so healthy as we look for a quick and easy way to put a meal on the table. We tend to choose for convenience and fast preparation. Like Little Caesar’s pizza or more recently Tai Pei, since we were chosen to write this sponsored post after trying a few of Tai Pei’s products.

Children eating and enjoying Tai Pei’s Beef and Broccoli entree.

Jr. eating Mango Chicken. He ate everything but left the mango and sauce.

Tai Pei is a line of restaurant-inspired, Asian-style frozen meals. It is packaged in takeout-style and ready to eat in just five minutes (per box) and then let sit with lid closed for 3 minutes. This is to insure the meal is cooked all the way through. A total of 8 minutes and you have a meal on the table. That’s fast!

There are several different varieties of Tai Pei® products available: Entrées: Beef & Broccoli, Bourbon Chicken, Cashew Chicken, Chicken Fried Rice, Chicken Chow Mein, Combination Fried Rice, General Tso’s Chicken, Orange Chicken, Pepper Beef, Shrimp Fried Rice, Sweet & Sour Chicken, Sweet Teriyaki Chicken.

Tai Pei also has many multi-serve appetizers to choose from as well: Chicken Egg Rolls, Chicken Potstickers, Pork Egg Rolls, Pork Potstickers, Vegetable Egg Rolls, Battered Green Beans, Edamame, Mini Chicken Spring Rolls, Savory Chicken for Lettuce Wraps, Spicy Mini Chicken Egg Rolls and Mini Vegetable Spring Rolls.

If you are watching your weight, don’t worry each entrée contains around 300 calories, 8 grams of fat or less, and contains real ingredients including lean meats, crispy vegetables, brown rice and whole grain noodles. These are all good things but a couple of these entrees (Mango Chicken is one of them) also contains ingredients our family usually tries to stay away from (dyes, high fructose corn syrup to name a couple). Just be aware of that if you have allergies or food sensitivities. Read the labels first.

They have a new line called Tai Pei Asian Garden™ that includes: Hunan Beef & Broccoli, Chicken Fried Rice, Spicy General Tso’s Chicken, Ginger Chicken, Glazed Chicken Potstickers, Mango Chicken, Sesame Chicken and Orange Chicken.

Tai Pei is the only Asian brand of single-serve frozen entrées that are low in calories, fat and sodium, High in fiber and protein. All of that conveniently packaged in that single-serve takeout-style box. This unique style box should make portion control easy for you and your family to enjoy a meal on the go without the hassle of leaving home! “Good Fortune in Every Box™!”

Our children gobbled the following Tai Pei entrees up: Mango Chicken (new Tai Pei Asian Garden), Chicken Fried Rice(new Tai Pei Asian Garden), Beef and Broccoli and Orange Chicken. Orange Chicken and Beef and Broccoli were the favorites. The meat was tender. The sauce was flavorful.

If you are a busy mom or dad on the go, you may want to grab a Tai Pei coupon while supplies last so you can have something quick and easy for those busy nights you do not have time to make a home cooked meal for your family. “Good Fortune in Every Box™!”

For more information or to stay up to date on Tai Pei coupons etc. visit:

Tai Pei Website: http://www.taipeifood.com/

Tai Pei Asian Garden: http://www.taipeifood.com/AsianGarden/

Tai Pei on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaiPeiAsianFood

Tai Pei on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TaiPeiAsianFood

Tai Pei on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/taipeiasianfood/