Freezer Meals: Round 1

Last night, I went to a Supper Swap at a friend's house. Can you say awesome idea?

Here's how it works:

1. Each person brings 6 pre-made, pre-frozen meals that serve 4-6 people. 
2. Swap!
3. Each person goes home with new dinner options that are already prepared and ready to go...and you get the recipe, too! 

Easy, right? I had such a great time preparing my meals, that I wondered why I hadn't done this again* sooner. And, I called this "Round 1" because I'm certain I want to do this again! (and again and again and...)

*Over a year ago, mom, Kay and I made a BUNCH of freezer meals (and then we stored them at mom and dad's...awesome parents). At the end of our extravaganza, we each had 4 Taco Soups, 4 8x8 pans of Shepherd's Pie, 4 8x8 pans of chicken casserole, and 4 1-gallon bags of chicken bow tie pasta. It was pretty awesome to have that many meals all ready to go. 

For last night's Supper Swap, I made Taco Soup. It's easy, it's affordable, and it's delicious. (I'm sorry, I didn't keep track of the cost...and I already had 6lbs of hamburger on hand [thanks, again, to awesome parents]...but it was pretty darn cheap to make.  It only took me 2hrs (from start to washing the last dish) to make 6 freezer meals. 

2lbs of hamburger and an onion!

All the cans, opened and ready to go. (I told you this was simple!)

The BEST way to fill those gallon-sized bags: put them in a drink pitcher!! Pre-label the bags...they're  really hard to write on after they're filled (I remembered that from before!).

Tada! Freezing in the ... freezer...where else!?

I know you want to make some for your family. I've posted the recipe below. Enjoy!

Here are the meals I came home with:

• Spaghetti Casserole (making this for dinner tonight!)
• Chicken Tortilla Soup
• Buttermilk-roasted Chicken with a side of broccoli and corn muffins 

Stocked two shelves in our little upright freezer!!

So excited to make these. Thanks for hosting, Emily! This was an awesome idea; can't wait to do it again!

Taco Soup

2 lbs ground beef

1 package Taco Seasoning

1 package dry Ranch dressing mix

1 small can diced chilies

Pepper to taste

Small onion, chopped

1 can hominy (do not drain) (this is found by the canned corn)

1 can kidney beans (do not drain)

1 can pinto beans (do not drain)

16 oz can diced tomatoes

16 oz can rotel tomatoes (I can never find 16 oz cans, so I usually buy 2 10-oz cans)

1 ½ cups water (or tomato juice)

Brown ground beef, add everything together and simmer.

KC Restaurant Week!

I'm going to try a different format ("theme" posts) and see if I like that better than my weekly recaps. Could just be a mood I'm in...we'll see.

We ate an embarrassing amount of delicious food this week. I'm [trying to...] justify it by telling myself it was Kansas City's Restaurant Week and that we normally wouldn't eat out three times in one week. And, normally, we wouldn't. So maybe that's okay? Either way. It was delicious. And for a good cause - 10% of sales went to support Harvesters - The Community Food Network, to fight hunger in the Kansas City Area. (Yes, it does seem slightly wrong to me that to "fight hunger" we're going out and eating at delicious restaurants....)

Lidia's
This is a fantastic little Italian restaurant about 2 blocks from where I work. On Friday afternoon, I went with the 4 other ladies I work with to lunch. For Restaurant Week, there is a set lunch menu for $15/person. You can choose one appetizer (soup of the day, caesar salad, or arancine lobster [risotto balls with lobster cream and lobster) - the girls got the salad and I got the arancine lobster, which were yum. For our main dish, we each did Lidia's Pasta Trio Tasting Menu - all you can eat pasta that they serve tableside. On Friday, the 3 kinds were meat-filled ravioli, rigatoni with marinara and fresh basil, and angel hair pasta with shrimp, broccoli and pesto. Delicious. Dessert was lemon cheesecake with a slice of blood orange. Lunch also came with a bread basket with 3 spreads: pesto hummus, black olive hummus, and roasted red pepper hummus.

Jordan and I went today for brunch. This time, the bread basket was sweet breads and came with 3 types of butter: orange, strawberry and cinnamon-sugar. We each ordered the caesar salad and Jordan enjoyed the Tasting Trio (today's was cheese-filled ravioli in a parmesan-peppercorn sauce, fettuccine with shrimp, broccoli and pesto, and rigatoni with a meat sauce) and I ordered the Scampi alla Felidia (Creamy Lemon-Garlic Shrimp with Roasted Spaghetti Squash and Pinenuts), which was soooo delicious. We took our cheesecake to go.

Cool decor/wine racks at Lidia's.

Huge, amazing blown-glass chandeliers. 

Hubby enjoying his Tasting Trio.

Scampi alla Felidia. Yum.

Bristol Seafood Grill
We splurged here. Three-course Restaurant Week dinner in Power & Light District downtown. We parked a few blocks away (I think it's ridiculous to pay for parking when you can just park a little further away and walk. God gave me legs for a reason.) and walked to the restaurant. We didn't have reservations, so they told us the wait was an hour and a half BUT if we watched for the tall tables to be empty, they are first-come, first-serve...so Jordan watched them like a hawk (or maybe that was me) and when one opened he jumped up and snagged it for us. We only waited about 10 minutes. Go hubby.

For our first course, Jordan enjoyed a delicious Spinach and Watercress Salad (roasted beets, poached pears, candied walnuts, gorgonzola, walnut vinaigrette) and I had the lobster bisque. I have a hard time saying no to lobster bisque, despite the fact that it was probably a billion calories all on its own. It was certainly delicious. For our main dish, we both got the Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes. And they were really jumbo - 2 cakes and probably 1/4-1/3 cup each. They were served with creole remoulade, mango tartar sauce, whipped yukon gold potatoes and grilled asparagus. So rich. For dessert, I had the Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee and Jordan had the Chocolate Lava Cake with hazelnut ice cream. As dad would say, we were "fat and sassy" by the end of the meal. Good thing we had a few blocks to walk back to the car.

We're already looking forward to next year's restaurant week...but I'm sure we'll be trying lots of new restaurants before that comes around again. If you've been following my blog for any amount of time, you've probably noticed that we love trying new types of food and new restaurants!

Feeling Blessed

I was going to start out by saying, "I only did a few noteworthy things this week..." but then I thought about it and it seems I actually did quite a bit. Anywho. Here's the rundown:

Ladies' Work Lunch

Two of the 4 girls I work with had birthdays at the end of December/beginning of January, so we went out to Chez Elle (again!) this past week. I, once again, had the fabulous lobster bisque. As we were going there, Brooke (who is also sold on the soup) said, "This is seriously the best lobster bisque ever." And, sure enough, the sign outside said, "Best lobster bisque in KC!" In addition to a cup of bisque, I had an Acropolis crepe: Chicken, tomatoes, kalamata olives, baby spinach and feta served with cucumber sauce. Yum. Great place for a fun lunch. 

Gospel Community Group

This was our first time back since before Christmas and it was really great to see everyone again. This time we met as a big group and discussed the sermon from last week. We're going over 1st Corinthians and are on the communion passage. During our discussion, we talked about what we remember of communion growing up and the different communion experiences we'd had. It was really interesting to hear different perspectives and then come back to what the bible tells us communion is. 

Lazarus Ministries

A month or so ago, I spent a Sunday afternoon with some of the other med student wives setting up the Lazarus Ministries women's shelter before they opened up for the winter. This past week, we went back and served a taco dinner to the ~20 women that stay there. We also sat and ate with them and it was pretty amazing to hear just a little bit of their stories and to hear the faith that they had. One of the women said she'd been waiting 3 years for a spot. (Once they are accepted at Lazarus Ministries, they have a place there for the night for the entire winter.) I can't imagine living like that. And they were so thankful for the dinner we brought them. We're going back again at the beginning of March...I can't wait. It was really great to do something that really matters. 

Pampered Chef

I had a (very!) little PC show on Saturday AM. It was nice to be out of the apartment for a bit, and I think Jordan was glad I wasn't distracting his studying!

Cooking

As always, I did a bit of cooking over the weekend. I made a pot of turkey noodle soup (from frozen leftover turkey when we were home over Thanksgiving - thanks, mom!) and tonight I made fajitas with a leftover piece of steak that Jordan brought home from his dinner with uncle Pat and aunt Kathy. I also made Jordan a pan of brownies with peanut butter frosting (his fave) to...give him more brainpower for studying ;) 

Well. That's my week. I hope yours was great as well. If you have any spare prayers, direct them towards my hubby for his midterm on Tuesday. He's over 25% of the way through with the class portion of medical school! YOU CAN DO IT, BABE!! That's my mantra around here. 

Have a fabulous week!

The Daily Grind

Well, life is definitely back to "normal" in the Larson household. Classes have started up again for Jordan, so it's been late nights and lots of studying for him. His CP2 (cardiopulmonary) midterm is next week Monday. He's also been spending time in the lab, working on Parkinson's research. (That's about all I know about that, so if you want more info, that's a question you'd have to ask the hubs!)

Like most all of you, work started back up on the 2nd for me and I'm still making the hour drive each way to work at the client's office on Wednesday. I've even managed to prioritize some time for the gym; my "excuse" since moving here: it was a heck of a lot easier when my commute was only 10-15mins, I got off work at 5pm, and employee benefits included a membership to a gym with complimentary fitness classes (love/miss the Avera Fitness Center!). At any rate, I was pretty sore last week, so I guess that meant I did something right.

We did manage to do a few fun things:

I ate Chick-fil-A  for the first time. I can't remember which sandwich I ate, but I know it was chicken. (har har) People always say it's outstanding; I thought it was alright, but maybe that's b/c I don't eat much fast food (aka, next to never), so I didn't have anything to compare it to. Either way, here's a pic commemorating my experience:

"Eat Mor Chikin"

Game Night. No, not board game night, like you might expect. Our friends Zach and Kody (okay, just Zach, his wife just indulges him) love football, so we went over to their apartment one evening for a bit of football-watching.

Date Night. You guessed it. Another Groupon night. We also went to Crossroads Art District First Fridays, which is FREE. You all know how much I like free. We got to wander through 5-10 different artist galleries and see their work. Some of them were amazing - like the guy that had super-intricate pencil drawings of landscapes like Chicago and KC and New York...and included the hours he spent on them, 20+, 30+, 40+...pretty cool.

These are not the pencil sketches...these were like...engravings.
Jordan loved them.

Trivia Night. We joined Steve and Allison for The Flying Saucer's Trivia Night again. We didn't win like the last time, but we did enjoy chips and cheesy salsa and some beers. I even found one I like! I think it was the St. Louis Framboise...but I can't remember for sure. Whatever it was, it was sweet and deliciously non-beer-like. My one claim to fame at this trivia night (I'm not very good at trivia...you probably don't want me on your team) was that I knew what book this opening line was from: "When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen." (Answer posted at the bottom of this blog post.)

Heroes. I'm ashamed to admit it, b/c this normally happens to Jordan and not to me...I'm hooked on a TV show. Any Heroes watchers out there? I know, I'm about 6 years behind. I'm almost done with the first season, which means I'm watching far too much of it. Little did I know, but I'm a sci-fi lover. Must have been all that Star Wars growing up. 

Pampered Chef. I went to a free PC training that the PC Home Office was putting on for Kansas City consultants. My business hasn't exactly been "rocking" since I moved out here, which is pretty much my fault (since I'm the only one that can get myself business, haha). I've had a difficult time finding contacts, and the people I do know don't want to do shows. I keep trying, though. My biggest take-away was this quote, "If you get overwhelmed and do nothing, you'll fail." - Alison Levine (the 1st woman to climb Mt. Everest). 

Domesticated. I've had a productive "homemaker" weekend of multiple loads of laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, washing the kitchen floor, cooking spaghetti and getting a roast w/ veggies in the crockpot for meals this week, doing lots of dishes, and making a "big" grocery run (including my fave: lots and lots of veggies...carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, zucchini, yellow squash, buttercup squash, garlic, green pepper, red pepper...I may have gotten carried away). 

That about does it for us. We've got another busy week coming up, especially with Jordan's midterm happening on the 21st. We miss you all and hope your life is filled with blessings and that you're blessing others!

***Trivia Answer: The Secret Garden. Thanks, mom, for all the Feature Films for Families we watched growing up!

The 12 Days of Christmas

I (sort of accidentally) decided to completely check out from "real life" and have a real vacation over Christmas break...which is why the blog silence! Here are our 12 Days of Christmas, in no particular order (and we didn't really have 12 days in SD...that just worked out better with the song...).

On the 1st day of Christmas my true love gave to me...1 (DeKrey) family evening for me!
Christmas with the DeKreys (mom's side) was as good as ever: oyster stew, lefsa, homemade fudge, salmon spread, a family Christmas program and a thoughtful $5 gift exchange (complete with aunt Kathy gift spy "kits" to the 5 guy names her family had...cousin Adam got 2 dates!...you know, the kind you can eat!).

Grandma's surprise at getting an iPad for Christmas (from all the "kids" - not grandkids! - so they could keep in touch with everyone from far away)!

Wyoming, Texas and SD...all on one couch!

All the grandkids (minus Matt and Seth, in Texas, and coming soon little Wyoming DeKrey) and two spouses!

Token Christmas Couple Pic!
(Now who can tell me how to flip this the right way?! I have it saved in the correct orientation on my comp, but when I upload it, it does this!)

On the 2nd day of Christmas my true love gave to me...2 family meals!
It was really supposed to be one Christmas on Christmas even without Brian and Stacey (who were with Stacey's family) and one with them on the 27th, but snow kept them away for the evening, so we just got spoiled with 2 meals with mom, dad, Kay, and Lucas! Chili one night, lasagna another...homemade ice cream...garlic bread...cookie trays...so spoiled.

Always good to give confusing Christmas gifts.

And really exciting ones.

And unexpected ones.

On the 3rd day of Christmas my true love gave to me...3 shoppers shopping!
Once a year, dad goes shopping and knocks out mom's Christmas gift, birthday gift (Dec. 25) and anniversary gift (Jan. 7). Kay and I always go along as his "assistants"...I think we've gotten more helpful as the years go on. This year, we shopped efficiently (only an hour!) and then had brunch at Josiah's. Yum. SF people, definitely go here! I believe my sister called it...snooty...I called it my kind of place. Take that as you will.

On the 4th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...4 days a-traveling!
Yes. We're crazy. 1 day (6hrs) driving to Sioux Falls. 1 day driving (6hrs) to the Black Hills. 1 day (6hrs) driving to Sioux Falls. 1 day (6hrs) driving to KC. Things we noticed on our car trips: heated seats are nice. BK is cheap. Sing really loud with the radio. Listen to crazy talk shows. Take a nap. Hold hands. Drive with cruise control (and without it). Heated toilet seats (we'll be going to that gas station again!). Ice cream. Energy drinks. Read to each other.

On the 5th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...5 big surprises!
My love language isn't gifts, but my husband's expression of love is giving me gifts. Quite the conundrum. He sees Christmas as his one time to really spoil me, much to my chagrin.

Background to the nativity he gave me!

I'm generally frightened opening gifts.

...or having a great (aka crazy) time.

I do love me some Pez. (Really. I love Pez.)

Also, Chai Tea. Really like that, too.

Even a love note from hubby with 10 "free" osteopathic treatments from him :)

On the 6th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...6 battery jumpings!
The Prism revolts every time we try to go back to KC. This time it was the alternator. Luckily, I'm very spoiled, my dad is really awesome and had us back on the road in 30mins with a new alternator.

#perksofhavingamechanicforadad (can I do that here? lol. probably not.)

On the 7th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...7 friends a-yapping!
I had a (too brief!) coffee date with 3 of my very dear friends from church...it was so good catching up with them and I miss these girls mucho! I also met up with 3 friends that I met through working at VistaComm. It felt like ages since we'd been together and we chatted it up for over 2hrs. Then Betsy (another Betsy, I'm not referring to myself in 3rd person) graciously let me tag along with on her errands since the hubs and I were sharing a car (and it was obviously not with me).  Last, but certainly not least, I met up with my best friend Chandra to hear of her life and experiences as a soon-to-be mom! So so so excited for her.

On the 8th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...8 skiers skiing!
This was the trip to the Black Hills! The weather was perfect. Couldn't have asked for better. I escaped unscathed with no wipe outs. We enjoyed beers (Jordan and dad) and peppermint schnapps hot chocolate (mom, Kay and me) to warm up from the slopes. In the evening we ventured out for dinner in downtown Deadwood and soaked a bit in the hotel hot tub. A good trip.

Me & hubs!

Boyfriend & seester!

Friend, brother & dad!

Dad & mom!

On the 9th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...9 days of no medical school!
Hubby graced me with 9 days of his presence...uninterrupted from medical school! He passed his first semester and is looking forward to the next. I'm so proud of him (and was SUPER thankful for stress-free, no-commitments days of togetherness)!

On the 10th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...10 bites o'prime rib! 
Jordan's mom makes a mean prime rib for Christmas dinner, and this year was no exception. Spoiled doesn't cut it. We also played a game of Phase 10 and checked out the new garage his mom and stepdad are adding to the house.

On the 11th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...11 minutes hot-tubbing!
We spent one evening with Jordan's friend, Graham, who was also home for the holidays...from St. Louis! We're hoping to get out there to visit him one of these days, after all, it's only 4hrs from KC - which is a heck of a lot closer than driving to SF to see each other (okay, only 2hrs closer, but still). Graham's mom and her husband have an outdoor hottub...and there's nothing like hottubbing outdoors in the SD winter!

On the 12th day of Christmas my true love gave to me...12 Heibergers gifting!
Christmas at grandma and grandpa's is a favorite of the Heiberger cousins...nothing says Christmas like walking into grandma's house! Wine, meat & cheese trays, cracker baskets, homemade pies galore, cookie plates, grandma's corn (aka 1 whole stick of butter...yummmm....), turkey, mashed potatoes, ham, salad...need I go on?

Puzzle time! 100 chickens and a worm!

Heibergers!

These expressions pretty much explain all of hubby's and my interactions.

It was a restful holiday and we are so blessed to have the fabulous family that we do. We are so thankful for each of them! And so thankful for friends from home! We miss you all A LOT and if you'd ever like a short vacation, we have an open room, an open bed and would love to show you some good ol' KC bbq ;)