Recipe of the Week

This week I'm sharing my Fried Rice recipe. It's a great recipe to use up leftovers and is adaptable to what you have on hand. Here's the basics:

3 cups cooked rice, cold (I make the rice in the morning and put it in the fridge all day)
1 TB butter
1/2 onion, chopped
1-2 cups of other veggies, chopped (my favorites are zucchini and bell peppers, I've also done carrots)
1-2 cups cooked meat, diced (leftover pork chops are our fav)
2 eggs, beaten
2 TB or so Kikkoman soy sauce

1. Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the veggies and saute until tender.
2. Add the cold rice and the meat. Add the soy sauce and stir to combine.
3. Stir in the eggs, cook another 3-4 minutes, stirring constantly until cooked through.

Jen's notes:
1. The rice has to be cold, this is secret #1. I usually use basic long grain rice, but if I have Jasmine Rice, I'll use that.
2. I only use Kikkoman soy sauce. The flavor is the best. I don't measure the soy sauce, I just eyeball it by the color it's turning the rice.

The boys love to eat fried rice. I made this last night along with some steamed edamame (their new favorite vegetable!). It's a cheap, healthy meal.

Summer is here!

We've all had a nice, somewhat busy weekend. Saturday was the Enormous Yard Sale. Our Bible Study group had so much stuff to sell. We held it at Pam's (#2) house, she lives across from the zoo, so there's a lot of traffic. We did pretty well! All the proceeds went to our mission trips. Pam and Lora are going to Peru the week after Mom and I are in Guatemala. I was soooo tired Saturday evening, yard sales are a lot of work!

Sunday we had church and then went to a graduation party for one of Ryan's students. Brooks really likes Danny and had a fun time at the party. Hudson found a basketball in the garage so he was happy. Ryan grilled some Purdue brats and sweet corn for dinner. We ate that along with a nice juicy watermelon. I even made homemade hot dog buns! Brooks looooves corn on the cob, he eats it really well. I've been buying all of our meat from the Purdue Butcher Block. Since Purdue is a big Ag school, they have many farms. The students learn how to butcher meat and they then sell the meat twice a week on campus. We have been really happy with the meat, it's high quality and a great price. Most of the time they only have beef and pork, but occasionally they have chicken.

Today we took the boys to Columbian Park and the Zoo. It's a small zoo, but it's free and the boys love it. The monkeys weren't out yet, but we did get to see a River Otter being fed and the boys liked the goats in the petting "farm" area. Brooks was a little afraid of the Alpaca. Hudson was meowing at the goats. We played at the playground and then took a ride around the park on the train. Brooks has been asking to ride the train so he was really happy to finally ride it!

Hudson really thought the goat should get down. We had the yard sale at the house on the right.

Brooks liked splashing in the water and going around and around the globe.

Ryan is so happy that summer is here! I think they are going to have a great time together this summer.

Fun weekend

We enjoyed our weekend. Saturday morning we went garage sailing as a family. Not any big finds, but we had fun walking around and looking at everyone else's junk. Saturday evening we went to a picnic at Prophetstown State Park. They have the best playground around. The boys had so much fun playing with their friends.




And here's our attempts at a family picture!


Sunday we took a road trip to Rantoul for the last time to see Jess & Dan there. We had some yummy sushi. The boys really liked the Japanese food. Of course, they've like every ethnic food that they've tried. I'm happy we have such adventurous eaters!

Wordless Wednesday

Race #1

Ryan had his first mountain bike race of the season this past Saturday. It was in Warsaw Indiana at Winona Lake. We all went to cheer him on. The boys had fun playing at a park and of course watching the bikes. Ryan did really well, he finished in the top half of his class and only 8 minutes behind the winner. We are all proud of him!

Finishing strong!

Why?

Brooks has entered the wonderful age where he asks why for everything, I mean everything. I didn't realize it started this early, I think we will be hearing "why?" for a very long time.

Ryan and I attended our very first parent/teacher conference for Brooks today. It was just an end of the semester review of how Brooks did in preschool.

We had a nice visit from Great-Grandpa (my Grandpa, my Dad's Dad). Brooks was so excited all day that he was coming for a visit. He was sad to see him leave this morning. I'm not sure if Brooks quite understood the concept that Great-Grandpa was PawPaw's dad. He did think it was pretty cool that Great-Grandpa used to be a farmer.


Speaking of farm animals, we have one of those Speak and Say toys. We got it from a garage sale (where else?) a few years back. The other day the lever got stuck and wouldn't go down all the way to make those lovely animal noises. Tonight I decided to just try and push it down all the way to see if that would fix it. I fixed it all right, it now is quite confused about which animal noises belong to who...listen for yourself!