Monday, 31 December 2012

Happy New Years

Happy New Years!


 
Good Evening, I hope everyone has a safe and happy new year.  I am preparing for my night out with Anthony, and hope you all have great plans as well. We are going out for dinner and a movie tonight. I wish we had tv so we could watch the ball drop at midnight - I will have to find a live stream of it. Have a good night, and I will see you all in the new year :)
 
D

Sunday, 30 December 2012

Moms Famous Turkey Soup

Good Evening!
 
All day I have been simmering some soup in my new crock pot that I received for Christmas. There is nothing better than soup when you are feeling sick. I decided to make my moms famous turkey soup. She usually makes it around the holidays but my brother claimed the batch so I need to make some for myself. My mom gave me half her turkey carcass so I could start.
 
Ingredients:
-Turkey carcass
-Carrots
-Celery
-Onions
-Salt & pepper
- Knorr home style stock poultry flavor
-Seasonings of choice
-Filler of choice (pasta, rice, beans, etc.)
 
 First step is to chop all your veggies. There isn't a set amount of how much to use, you can just go by your own tastes. I have a smaller crock pot so I need to use small amounts. I went with 1/2 onion, 1 celery stock, and about 6 baby carrots. Next time I will be using less onions and I found there were too many. Feel free to add more or less to your liking.
 This is a picture of my purple crock pot. Thanks Mom&Dad. For filler I decided on some baby alphabets. I wanted something small and the store didn't have any Fellini so this was the next smallest item on the shelf. I have one container of poultry flavoured stock, and set aside salt & pepper plus some vegetable seasoning for flavor. You may use whatever you wish. TIP: do not add too many spices to the whole pot, you can add them to each individual bowl to each persons preference
 The half carcass my mom gave me was still too large for I needed to break it in half again (yay for second batches). Put the carcass in the pot and add enough water to cover it. Add your veggies and all seasonings plus stock. Cook on high all day - I cooked mine for about 7 hours.
 MMM Its cooking and it smells amazing - plus its making my apartment smell great as well! It looks like its headed in the right direction.
 Once you think it has cooked long enough - veggies are soft, meat is falling off the bone - it is time de-bone everything. This is probably the hardest part of the whole thing but its actually not terrible. I needed to be extra careful because Anthony is super picky about bones! Once you are confident all bones are gone you can add your filler. I wasn't sure what amount to use again, so I just went with 3/4 cup. It was pretty dead on. Anthony recommended I add more noodles next time because he likes a noodley soup.  Again it is done to your own taste.
After about 30 minutes of cooking with the filler it is done! It turned out great! YUMMY It looks just as I remembered it , and I think my mom and dad would be proud to eat it. I wish I could send a bowl in the mail for the ultimate approval. Anthony approves - he is my toughest critic.
 
D

Mini Closet Makeover

Hello
 
I am going to apologise in advance for any spelling or grammar errors, or if I don't make any sense. I woke up this morning with the start of something terrible. My throat is sore, my nose is stuffed and my sinus' are killing me, including my head. After this, I am taking some medication and taking a nap.
 
The other day when me and Anthony were trying to clean up and organise all our Christmas gifts we realised that we just don't have enough room!  We both went through our dressers and the closet to get rid of some items that we haven't worn in a long time. We successfully created a decent sized pile. I love doing that, it clears out my closet of clutter, leaves me room for more, and donates some clothing. I took a long look at my walk in closet and decided it was a complete mess. So we went out for some boxing day sale opportunities. I picked up a shoe organiser, and we both got new dressers.
This is my shoe/boot collection all jumbled at the bottom of the closet.
 The top shelf of the closet rack is over stuffed and not organised at all. Also, you can see that there is a lot of items hanging there its overstuffed as well.
 This is the new shoe rack I got to help keep things off the floor and more organised!
And a final picture showing the cleared and organised shelf top. Also decreased the number of items hanging in the closet greatly by buying a second small dresser!  Now to see how long this lasts.

D