Easy Sunday Dinner

I don't know about you, but my life is CRAZY right now. I'm constantly going 100 miles per hour, feeling overwhelmed and tired. Cooking and cleaning has not been happening much lately. But here's a dinner that's so easy to put together that with about 10-15 minutes prep time, you can have a decent meal. (Cooking time is kind of long, but then you can use that time to sit down and watch more Doctor Who! At least that's what I do...) The pot roast is delicious and tender, and the soup mixture you cook it in works perfectly as gravy. The roasted potatoes are super easy and the flavor is incredible. You'll want to give this a try!

 3 Ingredient Savory Pot Roast and 

Oven Roasted Potato Wedges 
Melissa Yoder

Pot Roast:

1.5-3.5 lb. beef pot roast

1 can cream of mushroom soup, plus one can of water

1.8 oz. envelope Lipton Onion Mushroom soup mix

Place pot roast in slow cooker. (I like to line mine with Reynold's Slow Cooker Liners to cut down on on the mess). In a separate bowl, mix cream of mushroom soup, one soup can full of water and Lipton soup mix. Whisk until smooth. Pour over pot roast. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, or 4 hours on high. Serves 4-6.

*One hour before serving, start on your potatoes.

Oven Roasted Potato Wedges

4-6 large red potatoes (about one potato per person), washed and sliced into wedges of equal size

1/4 cup vegetable oil

salt & pepper

herbs or seasonings of your choice

Preheat oven to 400° F. Line baking sheet with tin foil. In a bowl, drizzle potato wedges with vegetable oil and toss with your hands until each wedge is completely coated. Spread wedges out on the baking sheet in a single layer. Sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Roast for 50 minutes (check on them at 40 minutes, especially if you have smaller potatoes). During the last 2-3 minutes of cooking, pull out and sprinkle with herbs or seasonings of your choice. (I used a light dusting of garlic powder and Parmesan cheese.) Return to oven for a couple of minutes until the seasonings are toasted. Serves 4-6.

Baby Cove!

 Last week, I got a brand new nephew named Cove!! We got to go down to St. George to see him the day after he was born. The kids were so excited about their new cousin. They were both very gentle and sweet with him.

 I took advantage of some light coming from the window to get some closeups. Neither of my babies had very flattering photos from the hospital, I'll have to try better next time. He is so tiny and snuggly!

 I love those two round little boy heads. ♥

 Mark has been on call this week, so this was actually the third newborn he'd seen that day!

 Paul and Nikki are going to be awesome parents. :) Cove's had jaundice issues and has struggled eating, and I went through that with Madelyn and know how hard it is! They are doing a great job taking care of his needs, doing the bili lights and taking shifts with him. Makes me tired just thinking about it.

Welcome to the family, baby Cove!!

"He's completely insane and a bit magnificent"

This should really come as no big surprise.

We have a little Doctor Who addict on our hands. (Cue theme music) Dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun DUN DUN DUN dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun ooooWEEEEOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Ever since I joined Pinterest, I noticed that the Geek board was rife with Doctor Who references, especially about the "10th Doctor". I knew that Mark and his brother James had watched the show as kids. It's been around since 1963 and is the world's longest running sci-fi TV series. (By the BBC, of course. We all know they put out the best shows.)

 "The Doctor" is a 900-year old Time Lord from an alien planet and he has 12 regenerations. The show actually went off the air for ten years after the 8th Doctor, and then came back in 2005 with the 9th. He and his time machine, the TARDIS (which looks like a 1960's police box from London), go on adventures all over the galaxy and different human "companions" travel with him. I put the show (6 seasons of it, starting with the 9th Doctor) in my queue in Netflix a while ago out of curiosity, and last Sunday we started watching it. We are HOOKED! Luke comes running when he hears the theme song. :)

 The 9th Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). After the first season, to avoid death, he regenerates and turns into this guy:

David Tennant! Remember him as Barty Crouch Jr. in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire? Love him. He wanted to become an actor at age three or four because of his love of Doctor Who! He starts out with Rose in Season 2 but has several companions throughout.

The 11th Doctor (Matt Smith) is the current one, with shows on PBS (KUED 7) at 11:00 pm Saturday nights.

Anyway, it's just cracking me up at how much Madelyn loves it. She gets home from school, gets two feet inside the door and announces, "I want to watch Doctor Who!!" and when any of her little girlfriends come over, she wants them to watch it with her. She says, "It's this time machine alien show!"

She loves the aliens. The show is PG, but it's just bizarre and weird and zany enough to be right up her alley. Her friends don't quite get it, I'm afraid.

Last night, I was at Walmart last getting groceries and got a phone call from Mark. I answered, and it was Madelyn, who had just finished episode one of Season 2. "MOM! Have you seen episode two yet?! You get to see Bad Wolf! It has a great big face!" Me: "I thought Rose was Bad Wolf. Do you mean the Face of Boe?" etc..... I'm sure people were giving me weird stares.

Is anyone else out there a Whovian?? Who is your favorite Doctor? 

Easter pictures. Well, not really.

 We were actually driving back from California on Easter Sunday, so we didn't go to church. I put the kids' Easter outfits on (Madelyn's anyway...I always forget to get a special outfit for Luke...I'm sure he's crushed) the next Sunday to attempt some nice pictures. This is what I got:

 Luke the jumping bean

  

 "I can't reach!" (the ceiling fan...as it spins around...I'm assuming he wants his arms chopped off)

"Look at my toesies, mom."

I really should have done his hair...not to mention mine...My special outfit consisted of a new gray sweatshirt that I got at Old Navy the day before. Super classy Easter wear, huh.

And then there was Madelyn!

 

 Ohhhh this girl. She has been so MOODY lately!!! This was before church (notice the snow on the ground? Mmhmm.) You know that line in Mulan where Grandma says, "Who spit in her bean curd?!" Yeah, that's what I think of when she does this. Which is like, every day lately.

 

 I can usually get a smile out of her if I tell her a joke. Anything involving octopi, pickles, purple panty eaters or the like works like a charm.

 I tried my luck again after church with a new arsenal of knock-knock jokes.

 Hope you got some photogenic Easter outfit pics!!

Easy Crockpot Potato Soup

I pin a lot of recipes on Pinterest. (And I've actually made some of them! Ha!) Sometimes, well....most of the time the recipes I've tried have just been "meh". So imagine my surprise when I tried this super simple potato soup recipe and my husband and daughter both inhaled it, wanted more, wanted it for breakfast the next day, and told me they wanted me to make it again.

Wait, what?? That never happens. Weird.

So I thought I'd share it with you! I made a few changes to the original recipe, which I found here. I made it in my crockpot but it can be made stovetop in about an hour if you're short on time.

Easy Crockpot Potato Soup

1 26 oz. bag of frozen, shredded hash browns

5 cups (roughly 3 cans) of chicken broth

1 can cream of chicken soup

1/2 cup onion, diced

1 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. ground pepper

1 15 oz. can corn, drained

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1 8 oz. package cream cheese, softened (don't use fat-free or it won't melt!) and cut into chunks

Sour cream, shredded cheese, bacon bits  and/or green onions for garnish

In a crockpot, combine everything except the cheese, cream cheese and corn. Cook for 6-8 hours on low heat. About 1 hour before serving, stir in cream cheese and shredded cheese until melted. Scoop out a few cups at a time and blend in a blender until completely smooth, until all the soup is blended. Return to the crockpot and add corn* and heat through. Serve with more shredded cheese, sour cream, bacon bits, green onions, or whatever else you think would be good! Makes 6-8 servings.

*If desired, the corn can be blended with the soup instead of left in kernels. It thickens the soup and tastes delicious.

Epic Saturday: The beach!

I know, I know, I know. This is the trip that NEVER ENNNDSSS!

Epic Saturday continued (after the La Brea Tar Pits and Chinatown) with a jaunt to Santa Monica Beach. It's always been "our" beach because it's only about 11 miles from my G-ma's house. But by the time we got there it was 5:30 pm and the parking lot we used closed at 7:00 pm. Oh well. The beach is the beach!

And since we'd had such an epic day already, guess what happened immediately after this picture? My camera battery died! Oh the horror!! (I actually have frequent nightmares about camera malfunctions and mishaps. No I am not kidding.) This is a new camera and I still don't have a backup battery for it. So the rest of the beach pics are courtesy of my cell phone! Enjoy the super quality!

 First order of business was to schlep a quarter of a mile up the beach so Madelyn could use the bathroom (she'd been holding it in since Chinatown). Next time we'll make a point to park next to one...

  

 And then we schlepped back.

 The Pacific!!!

This was Luke's first time at the ocean. He stopped to throw some sand in it.

The beach is mechanically combed every day, so there's not many shells. When you do find some, they're usually mussels or clams. Here's a bunch of live mussels Madelyn and I found. Mmmm!... (Madelyn actually loves eating mussels, but I think she's the only one.)

We could not keep that boy from eating sand. He had gritty diapers for days afterward.

 

 

 He thought it was so awesome. It's like the biggest sandbox in the entire world.

 

 

  

It was cooling down (and the water is positively freezing, year round), so we just contented ourselves with playing in the sand. Mark thought about borrowing one of G-ma's boogie boards, but he didn't bring a wet suit. So maybe some other time.

 

 

Cheese!!

(not my picture--image found here)

Something really cool we saw was a harbor seal swimming in the surf. In all my years coming to this beach, I have never seen anything besides birds and those little sand crabs. It was awesome! Apparently, harbor seals are known for being curious and coming close to shore to people watch. At first, Mark thought it was a dog. I think it was after a little shoal of fish though because then we saw some birds congregate in the same spot. It kept popping up here and there for about 20 minutes. :)

Mark grew up by the beach in NC and is longing to live close to an ocean again. We're making plans (you know, for when we have a million or two sitting around) to buy a beach house someday.

After we left, we went to the Trader Joe's that's near my G-ma's house to pick up some snacks for the trip home the next day. Then we had to get the kids bathed and in bed. They were pretty tired and cranky.

And to wrap things up (because I know we're all anxious to move on...), the next day was Easter Sunday.

The Easter Bunny found us!

I took a picture of this handsome dude in one of the bedrooms--William Rainey. He was my great-grandad. My Aunt Nanette told me that it's his dental school graduation pic from Chicago in 1920. Cool, huh? Anyway, he looks exactly like my brother Kevin. I'd never noticed it before.

We hugged G-ma Murset goodbye as she left for church, and then we loaded up all our chocolate and plastic Easter eggs and left. Madelyn was very sad. We sure had fun on our trip! And there will always be lots to do when we go back.

Aaah. Home at last! Bring on the five loads of laundry!!

PS. I am still trying to clean up and catch up two weeks later. Don't you just love that about vacations??