Memoria Arts~ Life in the Making

A favorite meal...

This is one of our favorite family dinners, inspired by our favorite family restaurant, The Farmer's Daughter. While it does cook for a total of an hour, it fixes quickly- maybe 5 or 10 minutes, at the most. Just be sure to have the oven preheated before you start dipping the chicken, as you'll want to melt the butter in the pan you're going to use. The kids love the dipping- sometimes I let them do it, depending on how messy I can tolerate the kitchen getting that night. You can use about two pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breast in place of the whole chicken, if you'd like. I alternate between the two, depending on what has been on sale or what's in the freezer.  The gravy is great over mashed potatoes. My raised-in-the-South husband says to remind you that it's not a complete meal without biscuits or cornbread. *smiles*

Buttermilk Chicken

(Preheat oven to 425 degrees F)

1 Frying Chicken (@3 lbs)
1 1/2 cup buttermilk
3/4  cup flour
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter
1 can cream of chicken soup

Put butter in 13x9x2 pan and melt in hot oven.Dip chicken in 1/2 cup buttermilk and roll in flour seasoned with salt and pepper (to taste). Put chicken in pan skin side down and bake for 30 minutes. Turn and bake 15 minutes. Mix remaining buttermilk and soup. Pour around chicken, and bake 15 minutes. (one hour total bake time)

Kitchen Poetry, #4

Breakfast and mornings in general start way too early for this night owl momma. Once breakfast is fixed, I often retreat to the couch and groan at the sunlight while my coffee perks. But slowly, ever so slowly, I find wakefulmess, and this is usually what I see. The sunlight streams in through the french door, and for one small second, my kids appear almost angelic. It's the little moments like these that get me through the rough and tumble of my days. (And I can only hope that the littles will follow their oldest brother's footsteps soon...it would be nice to wake up with the sun instead of before the sun.)

Kitchen Poetry, #3

Pumpkin Spice Cookies

1 box spice cake mix
1 14 oz. can of pumpkin
1 cup mix-in (chocolate chips, raisins, whatever suits your fancy)

Mix together. (DON'T make the spice cake mix according to the box directions. Just the mix, the pumpkin, and the chocolate chips.)
Bake in the oven at 375 for 10-14 minutes, or until cookies keep their shape when pressed.
(These are more cake-y than cookie, but they are so very good!)

Kitchen Poetry, #2

The beginnings of Vegetable Lasagna, for a friend. So yummy. I often make this in a double batch and freeze one.

Delight...

Fresh local strawberries, shortcake, and a touch of buttermilk. The bowls didn't stay full for long!

It was that good.

I tried to get a picture of it, I swear.  Sweet and yummy, melt in your mouth and warm your tummy kinda bread. (Made from a mix, shhhhh)

I should really do this more often...

Normal is a setting on the dryer...

Who said that anyways? I love that quote.

We're having a relatively normal week here...busy...James is working some pretty rough hours. Retail+ Black Friday= not pretty. He's starting to recover from a hard weekend of crazy customers cussing at him for not having Wiis (He works at Circuit City, to put it in perspective).

I actually got the laundry done in one day yesterday, as in wash, dried, and folded. This was so unusual (at least in this household) that I checked my pulse to make sure I was still alive. I must have been dreaming.

I also made these fabulous cookies and have been trying to resist eating more than one ever since:

Pumpkin Spice Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 Spice Cake Mix
1 15 oz. can of Pumpkin
1 cup of chocolate chips

Mix the cake mix, pumpkin, and chocolate chips together. (DO NOT make the cake with the eggs, etc.) Just mix the three together until they get suitably cookie dough looking. Pop them in the oven at 350 degrees for about 18 minutes.

They are nearly sinful when warm. Just warning you! And you can't beat something that only takes about 3 minutes to mix, and makes the house smell wonderful. They also make great potty training bribes. Just saying.

Hope you are having a wonderful week!

Let me enable your sweet tooth...

    If you've had the kind of month like we have had around here, anything to brighten it up is much appreciated. Needless to say, Shimelle's posts of late have made me want to dig out all the baking supplies. Just looking at the pictures is a treat in and of itself. She's got an awesome blog to boot, and her classes are wonderful. I took her "I confess..." class not too long ago and learned so much. I hope to take some more of hers soon. She has an approach to scrapping that is unique and fun. And of course, Alicia's blog is always good for some eye candy too...but I tend to not visit until well after meals are done for the day so I don't get tempted!
    We are finally all sort of back to normal. It is strange for us all to have gotten so many different bugs this last month and spend most of June sick- but we are all breathing a sigh of relief that it is passing!
    The cycle of life is so interesting. In the middle of June I posted this post , and it's fun to see where things have gone from there. We finally got some rain, and while the reservoirs are still low, most of the grain crops around here and back to normal. It was a complete bust in the fruit department though...the peaches, blueberries, and strawberries barely produced. But it rained!
    James started a new chapter in his life, and it has had some page-turners, to be sure! He works really hard, and on top of which, has continued to attend school. He switched from the state university to Strayer, which was a big change, and a good one. All of his classes are entirely online, and it has made it much easier for him to balance.  They started about three weeks ago. I've watched his stress level go way down in the school department- he knows his classes are waiting for him and the deadlines are so much more reasonable for a man who has so much on his plate ( full time job, three toddlers, a side business in computer solutions...) it's great to see a burden lifted from his shoulders.
    Being creative??? Not so much. I feel like I am in a creative "absorption" time. There is a lot of inspiration that is getting stored in my brain...new avenues I am thinking about...lots of wonderful tutorials on all sorts of crafting levels in the blogosphere (some of my favorites are here, here, and here.) If you had asked me what I would be doing now two or three years ago,  I would not have said, I am going to be a "crafter", a "life artist", a "scrapbooker", an occasional photographer. I was going to be a writer, plain and simple. So this evolution in me has been fascinating. I dream one day of opening an Etsy shop. It sometimes makes me smile at odd times, this little dream of mine. I often wonder where it will lead next. So for right now, I am patient. Waiting for my body to get back to semi-normal, waiting until I have the strength to do the things I love. Until then, I'll dream in color and fabric and paint.