Alphabet Soup

And I'll doing the gift-giving if I want to!  :) I don't have much to say today.  It's been a day...it's been a month!  I'm usually pretty fond of January, but this year?  Not so much.  I'm hoping that February proves to be the start of a better rest of the year.  What am I giving away?  A $35 gift certificate to Amazon.com.  I thought about giving away a cookbook, or some fun kitchen gadgets.  But how do I know which ones you want or need?  Well, maybe you don't want anything kitchen related at all!  Although I can't imagine... And how did I come up with the $35 amount?  Would you believe me if I said it's just a random number I came up with?  No??  Okay, fine.  It's my 35th birthday today.  There.  Happy?  :) How do you enter?  Just leave a comment on this post.  Talk about anything you want to.  Maybe what you'd buy if you won.  Just as long as it's not a mean comment, I'm good with it.  I'll choose a winner with a r

I shed tears for you guys over this recipe.  Literally.  That was one strong onion!  :)  Normally I can tolerate chopping onions, but seriously, the one I used here had tears rolling down my face.  This is a slightly lightened-up version of a tortilla casserole that my mom makes.  She's made it for a few years, and when a friend asked for the recipe, she said "it's not really a recipe, more of a list of ingredients".  I've seen her list of ingredients...there are instructions under it.  Um, doesn't that make it a recipe?  Anyway... I tried passing this off as Mexican lasagna to the Munchkin.  He wasn't really buying it, although he did try a few bites.  I really liked this, and so did D.  The leftovers heated up quite well the next day for lunch.  I hope you give it a try!  To make it lighter, I subbed in reduced fat cheese and used ground turkey instead of ground beef.  That's it!  The original recipe wasn't all that bad to begin with.  I me

It's January 12th, and this is my first post of the year.  Crazy, huh?  Well, things have definitely been chaotic around here.  It all started on New Year's Eve when we were without power for over 4 hours.  Then, that night the baby started running a fever.  New Year's Day our internet was out most of the day.  On Sunday, the chaos rested.  Then, the afternoon of January 3rd, a Monday of course, the flood came.  And it came in the form of a washing machine that overflowed for 30 minutes.  Now, you wouldn't think it could do that much damage in that short amount of time, right?  Wrong.  Luckily I was still home and caught it.  But I caught it on my way out the door to start picking up kids!  My first calls were to their schools to say "hey, water everywhere, I'm going to be late!"  Then I had a bit of a breakdown.  Imagine me, with my shoes off and pant legs rolled up, wading through water in my own kitchen and laundry room, standing in the middle of the