Happy Birthday Mom!

Happy Birthday to my momma! Your strong spirit and determination when life has thrown you some tough curveballs amazes me constantly. You're beautiful and smart and I'm so glad I get to be your daughter.

Pig Pickin' Cake

I saw this delicious recipe on The Pioneer Woman Cooks back in January and I finally had the time and the ingredients to make it! If you want the recipe you can find it here - Pig Cake. The one thing I will say is that with the icing, it calls for all the pineapple juice to be reserved and then added, but my icing turned out a bit thin for my liking (as you might be able to tell by my picture), so I would recommend adding in half the juice and then adding more as needed. It's still delicious, but it might have made spreading a bit easier if it was thicker. Another side note is that Pioneer Woman bakes her cake in a 9 by 13 pan and I chose to layer mine using 2 round pans, so pick whatever way fits your fancy and go with it :)

Chicken Adobo with Rice

This is a great dish mom found in Food & Wine magazine that's a take on an original Filipino dish; we've made it several times and love the salty and tart flavors that the vinegar and soy sauce bring to the chicken. It's great served over steamed rice with broccoli, plus it's quick and easy to make!

Chicken Adobo with Rice

- 1 tbs. Vegetable Oil

- 1 1/2 lbs. boneless chicken breasts or thighs cut into 1 inch strips

- Ground black pepper

- 4 cloves of garlic or 2 Tsp. of minced bottled garlic

- 1/2 c. white vinegar

- 1/2 c. reduced sodium soy sauce

- 1 bay leaf

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken, seasoned with 1/2 tsp. of salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally until light golden brown (4-6 minutes). Add garlic and cook one minute. Add vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaf (broken into several pieces), and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer (medium-low heat), and simmer until liquid reduces by about 1/4-1/2 or to desired thickness (8-10 minutes). During simmering, push the chicken to the edges so that it doesn't get overcooked. Also, stir occasionally, always pushing chicken back to the edges and the bay leaf pieces to the center. Discard the bay leaf and serve over steamed rice.

Cuffed Hat Knitting Project

I completed another knitting project! I was surprised at how quickly this one went, only taking me about three days plus this morning making the pom-pom. This is a toddler size cuffed hat knitted using straight needles and then sewn up a seam (most hat patterns call for knitting using round needles so no sewing together is required). This was a step up from my other 2 projects, requiring some different stitching techniques plus the sewing and the pom-pom. I looked around the apartment for something to use as a model to display the hat and could only find a skein of yarn! I think this 'yarn baby' does a pretty good job :) Not sure what I will attempt next, maybe another dishcloth?

Psalms

My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

-Psalm 73:26

Happy Birthday Steven!

Happy Birthday # 19 to one amazing baby brother! It looks like I was very happy and excited to be holding you as a baby, and it looks like I am just as happy and excited standing next you to you all grown up. I love you and am so proud of how much you've grown in the past year!

Hobby Love

So you might be asking, 'Katie what have you been up to with all this spare time you've had since you finished the semester?' My response: ' Nothing. Knitting. Planting small plants. Cleaning. Reading (for pleasure NOT for school...). Cooking. Sleeping. Packing.' That about sums up my life over the past week or so, and it has been glorious.

My mom called me up Saturday morning and asked me to go to the outdoor antiques show in Liberty, NC, and I of course said yes; mom and I LOVE thrift stores, yard sales, antiques, essentially cool stuff for cheap. During our ventures there mom found a clock that is very similar to one my grandmother, who passed in 2002, gave to my mom. Mimi had painted the glass door of the clock by hand, but the clock fell off the wall one day, shattering all the woodwork but the glass managed to stay in one piece. So, mom is going to take the clock she found and my grandmother's glass piece and get them combined into one beautiful clock! She was very excited about her find and even more excited that she is going to be able to hang onto a piece of Mimi's handiwork. My find was a set of primary colored Pyrex bowls (mom bought them for me as an early b-day present, thanks mom!); over the past year or so I've become quite interested in collecting Pyrex, so it's a new hobby (as you can see below).

My Pyrex collection to date! The bowls on the left were the find from last week, while the bowl set in the middle plus the two casserole dishes were a find from the Raleigh flea market. The other two bowls were a thrift store find and a hand-me-down from momma.

Mom put these Zinnias in my Easter basket; I planted the seeds and within 2 days they had taken off!

Besides my antiquing and window sill gardening, I've been knitting mom a Mother's Day present over the past couple weeks, so I will wait till she has opened it on Sunday to reveal it in all its' glory in a Mother's Day blog post. Lots of love to all you moms and second moms out there, you rock!