Thai Peanut Noodles

   Thai is what is on the menu! Noah loves Thai food and so I have been wanting to make him some since we were married and had not gotten around to it. For supper tonight we had Thai peanut noodles and it was so good. I already had a ready made sauce so that made my meal that much easier as well. I found a recipe and changed it up a little to make it mine.

  Thai Peanut Noodles

Chicken

Garlic

Carrot

Green pepper

Cucumber

Peanuts

Thai Kitchen Peanut Satay Sauce

Olive oil

Salt

Sugar

Soy sauce

Rice noodles

My mise en place

 Place a pot of water on the stove and bring to a boil. Mean while in a fry pan add your oil and heat. Add your garlic and let cook for a couple of minutes and then add you chopped chicken, green pepper and carrot, sprinkle with salt and let cook until carrots are tender. When the pot of water comes to a rolling boil turn off burner and remove from heat. Place the rice noodles in the water and cook for 8-10 minutes or until the noodles are soft, then drain. In a small bowl combine the peanut sauce, salt, sugar and soy sauce and whisk until well combined. Mix the sauce with the chicken mixture in pan and add the rice noodles. Mix all together and it is ready to serve. Garnish with cucumber sticks and chopped peanuts! 

Finish product!

   Noah love it so my Thai night was a success and it was very easy. Now I just need to pull my Thai cookbook out and see what recipes I can find in there to try out.

Key lime Cheesecake

   I said after the wedding it was going to be a long time before I made any cheesecakes again but Noah just loves them and I enjoy doing some baking once in a while so I have made a couple in the last 9 months. I asked Noah what one of his favorite cheesecakes would be and he told me key lime. So I decided I would make him one the other Saturday afternoon and we took it to church for the lovefest. It turned out very good, and was a lot of fun to make. I candied some of the lime rinds to garnish the top of the cheesecake. It turned out great, I had fun and Noah love it! 

Key lime Cheesecake!!

A look at the PAST!!!!

Wow I can't even begin to believe all that has happened this last year! I will give a brief summary of this past year.

              2010
   January: Only four months left till my wedding so I was very busy with wedding plans and shopping. I stilled did not have a dress yet either as of the beginning of this month and my time was running out! I was desperately looking for a MODEST wedding dress and within the budget too. So these two together were taking a little time but with much prayer and a lot of help from my mom on January 14th I finally found The Dress!! It was a big answer to prayer and just wonderful to have the finally done and out of the way. Just another one of God's wonderful blessing to me and another sign to me that if we give it to God and honor Him He will answer our requests. The rest of the month was used to finish getting wedding lists together and working 4-5 days a week.
   February: Work and more wedding plans!!! My wonderful friend Emily came and visited the last weekend of the month as a last girls single weekend. We had a blast. We went shopping in Eau Claire and eat at the Olive Garden and had to come home in a snow storm. We watched movies eat snacks and just talked and laughed listened to the Celtic Women and had a great, great time of fellowship!! Thank you Lord for Christian friends.
   March: Lots of wedding shopping. My dress came and it is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined!! It was more than every dream come true. The Lord is so good.
   April: Two months till wedding! Sent out invitations, with lots of help from Mom and Deanna. Working on wedding favors and wedding desserts. Things are coming along but I still have a ton to do! Also I was given the best wedding shower ever. I was totally blessed beyond words and was given the best shower gifts ever.
   May: Only one month till my wedding!!! Wedding ring for Noah (check), dress and wedding attire (check), suits to the cleaner (check), 705 wedding desserts made (check). Everything all ready to and most definitely something I could not have done by myself. Thanks so much to all my friends and family for all your help! Aunt Melissa threw me a personal shower and my church family threw me a surprise birthday party. I was thrown a going away part at work and had to say goodbye to some of the most wonderful Christan ladies that I ever worked with.  It was one of the busiest months of my life and much joy and tears. my family and husband to be are just wonderful!! May 28, 2011 I got married to the man that I am so excited to spend the rest of my life with!!

   June: Spent the first couple days in Hawaii with my husband on our honeymoon. Come back to a house that was completely cleaned from top to bottom with lots of my stuff moved in. More food and house hold supplies to last us months as well as many other gifts. We had youth meetings at our church and the guest speaker was Roy Daniel from South Africa. They were great messages that he brought and Harmony and I were in charge of the food. We had so much fun planning, shopping making food and serving. I so can't wait till we do it again next year. We will be in our new church next year as well so that will be even more wonderful.

   July: We had the girls camp called Camp of Hope and I was the cook. I loved planning the menu and making the food. I was able to spend a lot of time with Angie and she was a huge blessing to me. Our special speaker at the camp was Jenny Daniel and she spoke right to my heart. She is a dear woman of the Lord and very pleasant to be around. I am very blessed to know her and very much look forward to next year. I spent the whole week up at the camp and had a wonderful time of fellowship and fun and laughs with them all.

   August: In August I got a job at Golden Harvest again and started working on to go deli ideas for them for when there new coolers come in. Brianna's graduation party from high school with a visit from Nicole and Jason and the surprise of Zack coming with them. Aaron and Naomi Kowels came and stayed a weekend with us. I had a wonderful time of fellowship with Naomi and getting to know her better and better. We also found out that we were expecting our first little bundle of joy!!! Also at the end of the month Harmony came and stayed with us and Jeremy and Deana came for a night as well. I took a day off work and we went to the zoo in Minocqua! Had so much fun seeing the faces of the little boys with all the animals. One little unshy baby goat even jumped in the stroller on top of Joshua!!

   September: Colorado Trip!!!! What a blast. Brianna came with us  and we were gone for 5 days and the memories we made were wonderful. The guys had a mountain climbing trip scheduled and us girls spent the day shopping. Oh the laughs and joys we had on the trip. At the shopping center us girls all found out from the street selling perfume boy that we were all three "misters"! We also got to spend a wonderful Sunday afternoon and evening up in the mountains with the Silverberg family and catch up. It was a long trip home but well worth it! We also were trying very had to finish up our new church building so we can have our Keith Daniel meetings there. He is a Missionary speaker from South Africa.

   October: Our new church building is finished!!! The night before the Friday night meetings we all work hard and are able to finish up all the last minute things. The meeting went very good. Announced that we were expecting baby Brainard in April! We went for a weekend to Aunt Kay and Uncle Tom's and spent the day shopping in Eau Claire with my cousin KayLee.

   November: Thanksgiving!! My all time favorite holiday!!! I am so very Thankful for my husband. We went to Mom and Dad's and spent it with the Velie side. Noah's Dadand Mom came up as well and we had a Brainard Thanksgiving on Saturday and had a great day of spending time together as family complete with a HAM dinner! We served at a wedding with my family and Noah and I learned how to polka!!! It was quite funny to watch I am sure. Loved watching mom and dad though.

   December: December, our year is coming to an end am I am very excited to be spending my first Christmas with Noah. I got Christmas cards in the mail and I baked a few goodies. I am now 5 months pregnant and starting to show. We have snow and I have my lights up. It is just a wonderful time of year. Winter is a blast. I love the picture of how snow is what our wonderful Lord and Savior washes us as clean as. So blessed with the wonderful things the Lord does for us in salvation. Noah and I celebrated Christmas at our house together and had a little special evening just the two of us. We than packed up the next day and went Dad and Mom's. I love being with family and it was special to be joined by Grandpa and Grandma Velie. We had lasagna and lots of goodies! I eat till I was over stuffed that is for sure. We played game and where joined by Uncle Karl, Aunt Melissa, and Matthew is the evening. We went ice skating and had a joyous time. One week later Mom, Dad and the family came to our house for two days and celebrated in the New Year with us.
  I have so many blessing to be thankful for. The Lord is always faithful and sees us through so many things. I love my husband and look forward to the coming of our baby in April. I pray in this next year the Lord will continue to teach me many things and that I will continuously draw closer to Him.

True Homecooking!!!

   One of my instructors at school always put me in a team with two other girls and called us team homecooking because we always seemed to lean more towards the comfort foods in our lab classes as apposed to some of the more fancier cooking the other class mates would do.Well a lot of the cooking is still what I do. I hits close to home, has lots of memories and is good for working wives!!!
   So tonight's meal was Venison Beef Stew with fresh baked Biscuits!!! Noah loved it, I loved it and it was easy. I had to be out of the house by 7:10 this morning to be to a chiropractor appointment and wanted to have it in the crockpot ready to go. I got up at six make breakfast, assembled the stew and got ready to work and made it to my appointment just in time!!! One minute to spare. Then tonight I just thickened it with a little potato starch and made my biscuits. They were supper easy and the best recipe I found yet!! Yea for my Basic cookbook. Thanks Deanna!

 
   Now my husband is gone to get a computer cd form his brothers house and I am sitting here sipping hot tea and blogging. Something I really want to do more of. I also have to have 1 Corinthians 13:1-4 memorized for Wednesday night prayer meeting. I am just loving winter and still hoping and praying that we will get some more snow. 

I sure do like them Christmas Cookies Babe!!!

 Our first Christmas was coming up and I wanted to have sugar cookies to go with it. So I found a simple recipe with a good frosting and set out to make them on evening in November to test out my recipe before Christmas got here. So I asked my husband if he would like to join me...he said yes but he wanted to make his own kind so I said go ahead. He chose a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie recipe. So we headed off for the kitchen together to see what we could come up with. Well we also had to bring the laptop with and listen to one of Noah's favorite song "Christmas Cookies" by George Strait. Well needless to say we came up with two very good cookies. Noah was very proud of himself and I had a blast having him in the kitchen with me. The next night I rolled out the dough and Noah and frosted and sprinkled them! My new sugar cookie recipe is a keeper, I took Christmas cookies to mom and Dad's for Thanksgiving and our evenings in the kitchen well, they are memories forever!!

Our Song!!!

Noah's cookie station

My hard working man!!!

Noah and his finished product!!

Noah's and my finished cookie doughs!

The Perfect Date!!

   This last Monday night after I got home from work I set about to make a fire in the pit in the backyard and cook my brats over the fire. Got a fire going easy enough which is a huge blessing for me! Then I set my pot of water on the stove to boil so I could make an italian pasta salad. So with going back and forth between the house and the backyard everything was coming along quite nicely. Then I looked up to see my beloved coming across the yard to me. He was home early!! He said he would cook the brats and when I asked him if he wanted to eat outside he said yes!! So I ran in the house and finished getting the food made and together and he kept an eye on the fire. Once everything was outside and set up with wood gathered to keep a fire going while we eat we sat there together enjoying one another's company. We finished out our evening with having our devotions and singing around the fire. It was a beautiful evening with the perfect fall weather were no jackets were required and no Mosquitos!!! I love you sweetheart and thanks so much for the wonderful evening!

Food for the Weather!

   When the weather is in the 80+ who want to turn the oven on to cook and heat their kitchen up more? When the temperature is like that I usually go for something cold and light! Tacos on Sunday, ham wraps and fruit salad on Monday and tonight was Shrimp Cobb Salad. This salad was so good I could eat it every week. The dressing was just wonderful. This salad was so simple and quick I will definitely be making it again!
                                                         Shrimp Cobb Salad

• 4 slices bacon
• 1 pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• 1/2 teaspoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• Olive Oil
• 1/4 teaspoon salt, divided
• 2 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon whole-grain Dijon mustard
• 10 oz. romaine Lettuce
• Cherry tomatoes, quartered
• Shredded carrots
•  Frozen whole-kernel corn, thawed
•  Avocado

Preparation

• 1. Cook bacon in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan; cut in half crosswise. Wipe pan clean with paper towels. Increase heat to medium-high. Sprinkle shrimp with paprika and pepper. Coat pan with olive oil. Add shrimp to pan; cook 2 minutes on each side or until done. Sprinkle with 1/8 teaspoon salt; toss to coat.
• 2. While the shrimp cooks, combine remaining 1/8 teaspoon salt, juice, oil, and mustard in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk. Add lettuce; toss to coat.
  
• 3 Toss the lettuce and shredded carrots with the dressing. Serve on dinner plates and top with corn, tomatoes, avocados, tomatoes, bacon and shrimp.

Ingredients are ready to be assembled.

Time to eat!!!