Just stuff

This weekend we did nothing.  Didn't have football games Saturday morning (too much rain, so wet fields), didn't have friends over (the kids) and didn't really go anywhere.  Well, I take that back.  On Sunday afternoon, Chris and I ventured downstairs to see how the mud was drying on the walls.  On Friday, they were not able to do much because it was like 85% humidity and the mud was not drying as hoped.  Well, by Sunday afternoon, it was drying and it had shrunken in lots of places!  Like long seams that ran the length of the room ~ lots!  We ran to Home Depot to get some shrink-free spackle (Chris also had a hole for the light by the bar too low).  We lounged around for the rest of the weekend ~ did you know they had a special on Nat Geo (that's what they call it ~ apparently people are too lazy to say "National Geographic") about shark men.  It's a crew of about 20 who hunt sharks, catch them and do research on the ones they catch.  It's really very cool and I had no idea there is so little known about the white sharks breeding habits, growth, etc. 

Anyway, here are the pictures of where the basement was at late yesterday (today the ceiling has the texture on it, but the walls got more mud and will probably be texturized tomorrow).

The living room with the bathroom door on the right and the spare bedroom door in the middle of the pic

 Looking into the movie room

 The movie room

 Chris standing outside my sewing room door and at the bottom of the steps (that's the door that's open and the only door downstairs)

 My sewing room

 Looking into the bathroom, the closet is on the right and the toilet will be on the other side of that

 Another shot of the living room, looking at the door to the patio out in back below the deck

 I'm sure you can see why we are so excited to get this done!  It will add a lot of living/running around room!

Tonight I was over at one of my favorite blogs ~ IC.  Infarrantly Creative is one of those blogs that I check daily.  I feel like I'm friends with Beckie even though I've only communicated with her through emails.  I take that back. . . I found this recipe from Facebook and Beckie had posted it because it's what she was making :~)  http://hoosierhomemade.com/chicken-n-noodles/  I started by making a half a recipe (this calls for a whole chicken and two bags of noodles) since I had some shredded chicken in the freezer already about 2 cups worth and using one bag of noodles.  The directions say to boil the chicken with onion and spices in when you are done, you'll have chicken broth that you use to cook your noodles (which you also keep).  Since my chicken was frozen, I threw my noodles in with bullion, water, chicken/fish seasoning, onions, the frozen chicken and noodles to cook.  It smelled heavenly, believe me!  It smelled so good that when everything was cooked, I couldn't throw away the "soup".  So, we modified the recipe and rolled with it.  I added the cream of chicken soup to the mix and it was yummy!  Okay, there are improvements to be made ~ do NOT measure the water for the noodles (in this case 2 qts) and add the correct amount of bullion for that amount of water AND add chicken seasoning.  I just kind of dumped in some of the chicken/fish seasoning and that combined with the bullion was salty and spicy.  We tried to figure out why it was spicy and it had to have been from the chicken/fish spices though it didn't list pepper in the ingredients but it did list "spices" which I love when they do that. . . everything that was swept up from the floor??  hehe

 To get the creative, recipe modifying juices flowing. . .  :~)

 Now, we have a zero waste wish at our house.  Our desire to not throw away food and waste food is the goal.  It doesn't always happen, but it does create some unique recipes that are not always bad (Taite used a leftover brat in Hamburger Helper hehe).  Well, we had some veggie dip left over from Bray's birthday party and I have a recipe from this book that uses a carton of dip for biscuits.
(2 cups buttermilk baking mix, 8 oz of French onion dip ~ I've used many different ones, and 1/4 cup of milk) Easy peasy!!  The only problem ~ I had no Bisquick AND the recipes I found online to make my own all started out with 10 cups of flour!  Um, nope, didn't have that much time, nor did I want to make that much.  

 So, I turned to my other fav cookbook for biscuits.  This recipe I've shared with you before ~ the Dilly Drop Biscuits (2 cups flour, 1 tbsp. baking powder, 1/2 - 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp dried dill weed, 1 tsp onion powder, 1/3 cup veg. oil and 1 cup milk).  I know you've heard the saying that "a recipe is only a starting point", so I took that thought and ran with it.

 Here are my ingredients:  milk, flour, salt, baking powder and dip.  I made the Dilly Drop Biscuits without the dill weed, onion powder, oil and only used 1/4 cup milk with the dip.  They turned out super!

 It looked a little dry and I thought about adding more milk, but they really didn't need it.  The only thing that I skimped on was the salt and they could've used a little more in here ~ Taite just put his biscuit in his soup and it all evened out :~)  Overall, tonight's supper was very good (going by all the compliments I got from the "boys") and just proves you don't have to have everything on hand that a recipe calls for!