easy bacon cooking

If you are like my family you love bacon but hate cooking it. Well, recently my husband suggested using the oven...BRILLIANT!!! We now make bacon with less mess and it makes it crispy not chewy which is my favorite kind of bacon.

Put foil or a cooling rack on a cookie sheet. Lay bacon on foil or cooling rack and place cookie sheet in a cold oven. Set oven to 400 degrees. Set time for 17-20 minutes and pull perfectly cooked bacon out of the oven!

*Steph's kitchen trick: use foil to correct the grease and let sit out until cooled. Then roll up foil and throw away!

great toy

I rarely every plug products but this toy has been really fun. It's the Playskool Explore and Grow Busy Ball Popper, ours came from amazon. John got it as a gift from Aunt Jenny. For the first week we were going to return it because everytime it played music he started crying. But after a week he became more intrigued and now he loves it! It plays music (and he dances) and it spits out balls that he chases and puts back in to watch them be spit out again.

test everything

He found the oven mit and put it on...

It was the entire length of his arm but he walked around the entire house wearing it for about 15 minutes!

thanks for asking!

John has started asking for things! We taught him sign language for "more" so we didn't get yelled at during dinner. He has now adapted that and uses it to ask for anything which is sometimes confusing. However, last week he brought me his shoes and socks and signed "more". But he only wanted one sock on!

yummy fall meal!

I love trying new recipes but it is usually a risk that my husband doesn't appreciate. I have picked some awful new recipes in the past. This one was so simple, inexpensive and delicious day 1 and day 2 as leftovers! I got this lazy-sunday-casserole from kayotic.nl/blog/ and I hope you try it!

4-5 sausages (italian, pork, beef...I used pork & chicken sausages)
1/2 lb carrots (4 large)
1 lb potatoes
fennel bulb (we did not use this)
1 large onion
1/2 bell pepper (we used mini sweet peppers)
2 garlic cloves
1/2 c of chicken broth
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp of each rosemary, oregano, basil, and thyme
4 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut all veggies in large pieces similar in size (just like you would a stew) and place in roasting pan or deep 9x13. Mix together chicken broth, herbs, garlic and oil. Pour over veggies and mix around. Cover with foil and bake for 45 minutes or until potatoes are fork tender. Cook longer if needed.

While veggies bake brown your sausages...DON'T COOK COMPLETELY!!! You want them to cook in with the veggies so the flavors all mingle! Cut browned sausages in half and place in dish with veggies. Remove foil and bake for 30 more minutes. After 15 minutes turn sausage and periodically spoon juices over everything!

We ate this with crusty bread and it was absolutely wonderful!!!

big kids eat big things

John loves apples, he also loves feeding himself. He found an apple on a shelf in the fridge and immediately took a bite out of it! He then continued to eat the apple for about an hour but finished the entire thing!!!

That is a mostly eaten apple in his hand...while playing!