Earlier this week, we made Nacho Grande Casserole, which is a delicious meatless mexican dish. It's pretty easy to make, and economical, too! I had cooked up extra beans when I made Tomatoes and Black Beans over Pasta, so I used some of them.

I also added our breakfast burrito recipe! And if you haven't yet voted in our poll about whether or not we should do more video blog posts, be sure to do so! If you're interested in a video on a certain topic/subject, feel free to leave the suggestion in a comment and we'll see what we can do. :)

Read more, about our weekend (so far)...

I have a lot of goals for today, so I though I'd blog about them to motivate me... that way I can come back later today and write about what actually got done :) So, here's my list:

1. Bake something. (Either energy bars or some granola, as we're out of all of it!)

2. Clean the house. (Not sure exactly how far I'll go on this one, but the bathroom really needs cleaned and the floors need cleaned!)

3. Laundry. (It looks like the rain that was supposed to come this afternoon might be coming this morning [it's 8 am]. But I at least need to wash diapers!)

4. Potty training, picking up clutter, make meals (plan dinner for tonight!), and take a picture of Yehoshua's new haircut. :D

Now you know where I'll be all day! :)

We had some homemade pizza for dinner tonight. I used my "new" recipe, which we decided to call Tammy's Easy Pizza. :)

I'm drinking some Celestial Seasonings Golden Honey Derjeeling tea... it's so good! I made a whole pot with just one teabag, so it's pretty weak, but I still love it! What a great way to wind down from a busy day. :)

(Read more about our day, including potty training adventures and haircut trauma)

I spent the morning doing my tomatoes. Yehoshua helped me by washing them all! I cored and cut out any bad spots, and then poured boiling water over and peeled them. Then I diced them into large chunks and open-kettled them. Joshua took a little video of me as I was canning.

This is a Windows Media Video (WMV) and is almost 2 minutes long (~5MB). Click here or on the photo to watch!

Full intructions, notes, and tips can be in our recipe for Open Kettle Food Processing.

...Can you tell I'm putting off doing the tomatoes? :)

I added our recipe for Steak and Egg Omelettes, which was another meal we made with leftover steak from Joshua's Grandma's visit. Those are Joshua's favorite omelettes. (I prefer meatless ones.) The more tender the steak, the better the omelette! :)

I also added the recipe for homemade croutons, which I made earlier today. I hadn't made those for years, and had actually forgotten how well I like a salad with them. :)

And, I decided it was time for a new poll, so I decided to make a poll about kitchen duty preferences. :)

We also have a new "Recipe of the Week": Homemade Granola. If you haven't yet checked out the recipe (or better, made some!), now's the time! And if you were one of the three people who received a package of granola as a result of our contest, I'd love it if you went and left a review for others to see! (Don't worry... I won't be offended if you didn't like it!) :)

Now, I really must be getting things wrapped up for the night... or I certainly won't feel like doing tomatoes tomorrow any more than I feel like doing them tonight!! :D

On Friday, Joshua and I made apple crisp. I got the apples ready, and he did the topping part. Cooking sure is quick with two people working together... and with both children in bed, too. ;)

The apple crisp turned out wonderfully. It had been a long time since I had made any, since Joshua prefers apple pie over apple crisp. In fact, the only reason we made apple crisp rather than apple pie was because we were short on time. :)

I could hardly wait to try the apple crisp, but, wait I did, because we had guests the next afternoon. A family who lives about 40 (?) minutes from here had emailed us earlier this week, and we invited them for dinner. (Read more about our meeting!)

I'm so excited about having garden-fresh tomatoes again! The store-bought ones just aren't the same. I can eat a whole plate of home-grown ones, sprinkled with salt and pepper. :)

On Wednesday, my mom sent home a couple of the first ones that have ripened this year, and Yehoshua and I enjoyed a lunch of Tomatoes and Black Beans over Pasta yesterday. Yehoshua especially enjoyed the pasta part. ;) He loves bread and pasta. :D (Sounds like me!)

Joshua is allergic to raw tomatoes (or maybe "highly intolerant" is a more accurate description) so he really missed out!! Although, he probably wouldn't think he missed much... since he got the leftover homemade pizza from last night. ;) 

I even cooked up my own beans for this recipe, something I'm learning to do (and love!). My mom rarely cooked with beans, and even more rarely (never?) with dried beans, so it was one of those "unknowns" to me for a while. :) It's interesting how the way we were raised has such a far-reaching impact on what we do as adults!

Anyway, I love beans (since I never got to eat many as a child ;D) and Joshua doesn't mind them (although he ate lots when he was growing up!) so I've been trying to incorporate them more into our meals. I love experimenting with different foods and cooking styles. When we were at the bulk foods store last week, I got several kinds of dried beans: black beans, navy beans, and pinto beans. I already had garbanzo beans and kidney beans. Soon I'll be able to make 8-bean soup! :D

(Read more, about my Friday...)

I think I am finally caught up on updating the Leftovers Page... at least for now! Next time you have some leftovers that need used... check it out! :) Anyone else have any good ideas for using leftovers?

We used some of our leftover steaks to make some easy beef pepper steak over rice. This is my mom's pepper steak recipe, and I think it's really good! We even had a couple of tomatoes from the garden to put in it! The pepper steak gravy with this recipe is dark and tasty. This time of year, we start getting lots of bell peppers from the garden, and pepper steak is a great use for them!

My New Teapot

As if sending me a doctor's office grandma wasn't enough, YHWH decided to surprise me yesterday with the tea pot pictured here. Wow!

In my post about going to Amish Country, I told about going to a store where "I even found a really nice stainless steel teapot, just the size I want, which I will someday go back and purchase. :D"

Good thing I wisely decided we just couldn't afford it, and didn't purchase it, because just 4 days later, my mom found this tea pot at a thrift store and bought it for me! Read more, about why this tea pot is so special!