I perfected it.

my brother's chocolate waffle recipe. He shared it with me 20 years ago and I think I have perfected it.

It was just the last little bit of waffle batter. And really, it's not chocolate (the picture doesn't show exactly how brown it was), but I burnt it. And yes, that's what my brother's recipe is. I was visiting his home 20 years ago and he had burnt one. He offered it to me as a chocolate waffle and I said it was burnt. Then his wife agreed that it was chocolate so I took a bite, because there were two witnesses. So much for that - it was really burnt! It was funny and my kids and I still laugh about it now. Especially when I do the same thing!

Never ask Kevin to make dinner.

I told Kevin he was responsible for making dinner.


He ended up picking up Emily and putting her in the oven, as if to cook her. Marissa wanted to try it so that's when I got the camera. I guess I shouldn't let Kevin decide what is for dinner in the future. Silly Daddy! (We did stress to the girls that they should never play in the oven.)

Never do this...

I have a habit of putting my Cream of Wheat into a different container - I had to filter the bugs out when we were on the island - so I guess that's why I felt compelled to put it into jars. Well, I chose a newly emptied and washed salsa jar. Not a good idea because, as I'm sure you've guessed, it tasted slightly like salsa. I thought there would be trouble when I opened it and could smell salsa. I was right. I tasted it after it was cooked and it was really gross. We add lots of different things to our Cream of Wheat - cinnamon, syrup, cocoa, brown sugar, strawberry milk, etc. I will never want to add salsa and the rest of the stuff in the jar is getting tossed out. We all managed to eat it so I guess it wasn't that bad. Then again, after eating bugs in our oatmeal, could salsa flavored Cream of Wheat really be that bad?

All home grown

Yes, it's another cooking post. It seems I've been doing a lot of that - oh wait, that's what I do a lot of most of the time. Anyway, Sunday Kevin decided to make fried potatoes and egg omelets for dinner. The potatoes came from our garden. The eggs all came from our chickens. The onions, tomatoes, and peppers that he put in his eggs all came from our garden. It was really fun to sit down and tell the kids, "You helped these things to grow." The meal was extra yummy!

The nicest thing about a garden is that you learn something every year. It's never the same from year to year so I'm sure next year will be better and yet we'll still learn something new. Not just with the planting, weeding, watering, harvesting and storing but with our family, and life in general. I am so thankful that I have a husband that works so hard because I know I wouldn't do nearly as much without him taking the lead.

Cooking with Jacquelle

Not that I'll ever have my own TV show (nor do I ever want one) but I thought I'd share a couple meals I made recently.

My kids are so tired of sandwiches I can't find words to describe it. I came up with this new idea and it worked great. I made four different kinds of sandwiches - ham and cheese; peanut butter and grape jelly; pb and strawberry jam; pb and honey. Then I cut them all into quarters. I put one quarter of each sandwich on the kids plates... so they each received 4 different quarters. Ben and Marissa traded one quarter but the other kids were more than happy to eat all their quarters. It was so fun! (Kemiah and I ate leftover soup because I needed that to get eaten and it's her favorite food.)

For dinner tonight I made pancakes. I started out with just cherry pie filling as the topping for our pancakes. Then I added almond extract to the batter, as well as shredded coconut. Ben asked if I could make chocolate chip smiley faces on the pancakes. So we had almond-coconut-chocolate-cherry pancakes. They were delicious! I mean really, how could you go wrong with so many yummy flavors all together?!

Like I said, I won't have a show but we are enjoying life as we eat!

Can I can?

We were very excited about the garden and all the produce it was growing. We bought a pressure canner and jars and lids and we thought we were ready. Kevin started picking corn and he just kept right on picking. The kids kept bringing in bags full of ears and then took more empty bags out to the garden. I finally went out and said no more!

Our new neighbor's daughter-in-law was visiting and came over to see what her girls were doing (they were playing with my kids) and she volunteered to help out. Everyone helped take the husks off the corn. I blanched them, she cut the corn off the cobs, and Kevin packed it into the jars. We pressure cooked them and it was pretty easy with all that help.

We ate some with dinner and it tasted yucky. Unfortunately, we picked the corn too late. Fortunately, the chickens don't care and they actually love it so I guess we canned some winter food for the chickens. At least it won't be wasted. We are moving on to tomatoes and salsa. Good luck to us!

This is often where Kemiah ends up when I'm in the kitchen. She likes to be with me, or at least near me.

Really shouldn't have

Of all the things I' could blog about, I'm not really sure why I am doing this one. Maybe because I don't have a lot of time so this is the easiest one. Unfortunately for you, it's not really exciting, nor is it something you want to know about but I'm sharing anyway.

One of the recipes that really saves us at the end of our stay on the island was Peachy Oatmeal. I haven't made it since we left the island because, truthfully, every time I thought about making it I got sick to my stomach. A couple of the kids kept asking for it so I finally made it this morning. I made our regular batch and thought to myself, "Maybe you're making it up and you'll be able to eat it." I was fine until I sat down with the kids and starting serving them up. It was not good for me and I didn't even have a bite. So the picture shows how much we had left over.


I think we are really done with this for a long time. I'm not even sure why I get to feeling so sick because it really was good tasting. Weird.

Made a little too much.

I really wanted to eat cracked wheat cereal down on the island but had no whole wheat to crack. When we got home, we couldn't find the attachment for the Kitchen Aid. Fortunately, my parents came out this past week (post forth coming) and they brought me their old little wheat grinder. Hurray! I finally cracked some wheat this morning and was a bit over zealous. I added water and put the pot on the stove top. Then I had to add more water... and more water... until the cereal was to the top of the pot. I poured it into the largest plastic mixing bowl I have and added butter, honey, sugar and milk, and a dash of salt. There was so much cereal! I had two bowls and would have eaten more if I wasn't afraid of what it would do to my intestines. It was so yummy! Well, I thought so. I don't think anyone else really liked it that much. They ate what I gave them but didn't ask for more. Kemiah didn't even finish what was in her bowl - and I ate half of it for her. So, here's a picture of what I have leftover. I put it into a smaller bowl and will probably be eating it myself for the rest of the week. Good thing I like it.

I know what's for dinner!

We have lived in our new house for 17 days and I have actually made something different for dinner every night - with only one repeated meal, because it was that good. Most of the meals are not what we were eating on the island, but I have made some of our favorites. Here's just a sampling of the things I have made (because I know you're dying to know what we are eating at the dinner table)...

• Taco Salad - this is the one we have had twice. I have a great dressing recipe that I got from a friend on the island. So yummy when it's all mixed together! All the kids love it, although they would rather eat it without the lettuce.
• Potato Chowder - we ate this quite often on the island, but for some reason, it tastes better here - maybe because it's cold outside so the hot soup actually feels good as well as tasting good.
• Hamburger Noodle Bake - has noodles, cream cheese and sour cream, along with other stuff so you can't go wrong. This one had no leftovers, it was that good.
• Chicken soup with dumplings. I added carrots, potatoes, celery, onion, broth, cream of chicken soup and heavy whipping cream! Then I found a recipe online for the dumplings and it turned out great! I think we'll have this one again tomorrow night.
• German Pancakes - even had company with this one. Always a crowd pleaser (except for little Savannah who seems to be a picky eater {that's what her parents said}).
• Chicken and wild rice soup - heavy whipping cream is involved so you know it's good. I wanted to keep eating and eating but had to stop before I gave myself a tummy ache.

And those are the highlights. I had a hard time making rolls when we got to Massachusetts (I tried twice) so I was a little worried about getting it to work in Michigan. I need good rolls for some soups and other things so I had to try again. I figured the problem was the colder temperature and the dough not being able to rise. That wasn't really something I had to worry about on the island. I am happy to report that our natural gas oven has it's pilot light lit all the time so the oven is a nice warm place for the dough to rise. The rolls I made turned out okay but now I have to work on the baking portion because they got a little dark on the bottom. Adjust, adjust, adjust.