"Pie-oneer Woman"

I love the Pioneer Woman.  I have used many of her recipes and used hers to create some of my own.  I love to cook, so I follow quite a few cooking blogs, but hers is my favorite.

Today she is going to be on the Food Network at 8pm- doing Throwdown with Bobby Flay!  My DVR is set!

Anyway, right now she is doing a series on holiday pies.  I am a pie person and prefer it to cake almost any day.  (Except my birthday when I get a white cake with pink cream filling and cream cheese frosting from Costco!)  I had been talking with my mom about inventing a new pumpkin pie.  I like pumpkin pie, but it's not my favorite.  My husband on the other hand is in LOVE with pumpkin pie and could finish a whole one himself- and has.  More specifically, he loves his mom's pumpkin pie.  I've tried to make it from her family recipe, he says it's good, but not like his Mama's. I hope I have a pie that Will is going to say that about someday!

Back to my pie idea.  I think what I don't like about a pumpkin pie boils down to 2 things:  the crust and the absence of something crunchy on top.  I'm more of a graham cracker crust kind of gal.  So my idea was to do a ginger snap crust with some kind of candied nut topping.  Apparently I'm not that original in my thinking because when I Googled it there were many examples.  Oh well.  I still plan on making this and will let you know how it goes!

One of the pies the PW made lately was this Pumpkin Creme Pie.  It looks amazing and I will be making that one soon too.  Also, there is talk among her followers of a mysterious chocolate bourbon pecan pie.  I will be waiting to see what that looks like!

Let the pie making begin!

A Much Awaited Death

If you know me at all you know how cheap I am. Not just pinching pennies cheap either. I'm the kind of person who sacrifices quality for a low price. I'll get the large bag of frozen chicken breasts at Wal-Mart over the All Natural Name Brand ones. I'd love to get the free range organic chicken, but I'm not working full time right now. So it's bag chicken for the Lentz's. Go ahead and judge me.


Anyway, for the longest time I've been holding off my husband from buying a new tv. We have been the last family on earth to get a flat screen. (So dramatic) We had one of those tv's that is as deep as it is wide and mockingly referred to it as a "round screen". Everytime I suggested to Steven he ask the guys over to watch a game at our house he'd say no way- that no one wants to watch a game on a crappy round screen.


A few months ago the color went out on the tv. My husband was so excited. I know I heard him chanting, "C'mon baby, c'mon baby". Thankfully the color came back and we kept the tv.


Well last week it happened. The tv. died. Like completely died. Black screen and all. We waited it out for about a day and then declared the time of death. I knew the day was coming, but I honestly thought we'd have a little more time together.


That's when Steven starting talking tv lingo- HD, 1080p, LD, LED, plasma,... I stopped him right there- explaining that Black Friday sales were just around the corner... you get the picture. And in the meantime we moved our 19 inch bedroom tv into the living room and the little 13" into the bedroom. It was awesome. You know my husband was so happy. He has bad vision to begin with, you know he loved trying to watch a 13" tv from the bed at night.


Long (unnecessary) story short- he couldn't wait any longer and came home last night with a tv.
It's only a 37", which I am happy about for many reasons- it's modest, under $500, and still fits in our tv cabinet.

World, please welcome the Lentz's to the year 2010.

Dinnertime

I'm a working mom again! It's just three hours a day and perfect for us. I'm tutoring at the school I used to work at. I go in from 11:50 to 2:50 everyday. The church has been so great to work with Steven. He works from 7-11, comes home while I go to work, and then goes back from about 3:15 to 6:15. It really is ideal.

Anyway, even though I'm just working three hours a day, it does change how I manage the day quite a bit. I need to be more planned and efficient with my time. One of the things I'm going to try to be better about is meal planning. Again. I did it for a little while this summer and then fell away from it. Well, I'm going to try it again.

Tonight we are having salmon, broccoli, and pesto pasta.
The other meals I've planned are:
Chicken Piccata
Taco Soup
Grilled Cheese & Soup
Pigs in a Blanket (for the busy nights!)
Chicken Cacciatore (Pioneer Woman's of course!)
Roast Chicken
Eggplant Parmesan (thank you Amy McAdams for reminding me!)

Sidenote- Will just fell on the floor. He actually pretended to trip and fall and then looked at me. Then he started fake crying. Heaven help me.

Anyway, for budget sake I need to really stick to these meals and make sure we aren't running for fast food b/c I haven't planned well. I'll let you know how it goes.

And here's a picture just because it feels like a waste to post without a picture.

Will decided to skate across the floor on two DVD covers. Fun!

Getting better..

... but still not where I'd like to be.  Since Sunday - THANK YOU TIME CHANGE-  Will has been getting up at 4:00 am.  Yes, 4.  Before time change  it was like 6:30 ish, so for sure I was dreading that becoming 5:30.  Needless to say, we've been less than thrilled about our angel's new hours.

Praise the Lord- seriously, we prayed about that last night during the bedtime prayer- Will slept until 5:15 today!  I'll take it.  

Who knows, tomorrow he may sleep really late.  Like 5:30.

I'm sleepy.

 

Trick or Treating in the Park

One of our fun Halloween activities this year was trick or treating in the park with our Mommies group. Will looked adorable in his puppy costume and had so much fun getting plenty of candy. Once he had a few pieces, all he wanted to do was sit next to his bucket and look through it at all the goodies inside. He'll give me a piece of candy and say, "Ome" which means "open".

We had a really good time! It was the first of 5 trick or treating events this year! We definitely got some good use out of this little costume!

More Halloween pics to come!

Mainstay Farm

So this is post number one in my series of catch up posts.  It's been a busy month!

Here are our pics from our visit to Mainstay Farm in Cleburne.  It was such a great place, we'll definitely have to return next year.  (Sadly, there was "an incident" downloading the pictures and most of them were lost.  I did shed tears of frustration over this)

The farm had a huge hay barn to play on, a gigantic air jumping thing, 3 mazes, pumpkin patch, hay ride, petting zoo, 3 story tree house, play ground, super slide, pedal cars, ... and more!  It was so much fun!

Looking down from the top of  a slide

My little farmer in the hay barn

This place is really awesome!  Having kids makes even minor holidays such fun again!