Tomato Pie

Ok, so I'm not really a tomato person. I'm a bit picky about them. I don't want them on my sandwich or my burger...they make the bread soggy...eww. I don't care for them all on their own either. Gritty tomatoes are not appealing to me. But good, ripe, juicy summer tomatoes...I could eat my weight in those.

Anyway, a few summers ago I was introduced to this pie and HAD to figure it out. So I've tweaked with it for a while, and I think I'm about happy with it now. Thanks to some wonderful tomatoes from a friend's garden, we dished it up tonight and it was delicious! Let me know what you think!


*warning - measurements are approximate...I just eyeball it*

3-4 ripe tomatoes
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup shredded cheese (mozzarella or Italian blend)
salt and pepper
1 tsp garlic, minced
1/2 onion, finely diced
1 tsp basil
3 oz real bacon bits
prepared pie crust (in the cookie dough section)

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Slice tomatoes 1/4" to 1/2" thick and let sit between layers of paper towels for 30 minutes to drain juice. Spread pie crust out on greased pie pan. Spread 1/4 cup of shredded cheese over the bottom of the pie crust (this will help keep the tomato juice from getting your pie crust too soggy). Layer the tomatoes in the pie crust, spreading salt and pepper on each layer, mounding the tomatoes toward the middle. In a separate bowl combine mayo, sour cream, salt and pepper, garlic, onion, basil and bacon bits. Spread this mixture over the tomatoes, working it into the holes between tomato slices. Sprinkle the top generously with cheese and bake for 20 minutes. You may choose to then broil on low for a minute or two to brown the cheese. Let the pie sit for a few minutes before slicing.

Peanut butter bars

More than a peanut butter cookie ever dreamed of being...quite possibly the world's most perfect dessert...

I may have mentioned before that this pregnancy has launched me into Martha Stewart mode, so when I noticed a friend's adventures in making homemade soft pretzels the other day, I had to check it out. She sent me the link to the website where she found the recipe and I've loved poking around.

A few days ago, I stumbled on her recipe for peanut butter honey bars and my mouth started watering. Since I've been instructed to consume 60 grams of protein a day in an effort to ward off preeclampsia, (Do you know how hard it is to eat 60 grams a day?!?) so I thought this might be a step in the right direction. My first batch was nearly as she instructed. They were wonderful, but I thought they could be better, so I did some tweeking on the second batch and Oh My Heavens...I'm gonna have to say mine are better than hers. These are incredible!!! Enjoy!

Peanut Butter bars
adapted from Heavenlyhomemakers

1/4 cup flour
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1/2 cup honey
1 egg
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup chocolate chips (optional, but very delicious)

Mix all ingredients well and pour into greased 8x8 pan. (Tip: Spray your measuring cup before measuring out the peanut butter and honey for easier clean up...I'm all about easier clean up.) Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. Allow to cool completely before slicing. Pour a glass of milk and force yourself to be nice and share with others!

Christmas memories

I love to have a visual of the people and places I read about. Ok, Toby calls me nosy, but either way I realize that I haven't shared many family pictures with you...so late Merry Christmas! I hope you enjoy a glimpse into our Christmas holiday. Thanks for following me this past year and I'm looking forward to many great things in 2011!

Making Christmas cookies at Granny's house.


Chef Haley working on cookie masterpieces.


Christmas cookies.
The kids put forth a fair effort, but wimped out pretty quickly. Aunt Susan and I finished off the rest.


Our visit with Santa wasn't as successful as I'd hoped. Haley was fine to watch him from a distance, but wasn't too excited to sit with him. (Go figure...not sure I'd want to sit on some stranger's lap either.) After getting a candy cane early and sitting with Mommy, we finally got a calm picture with Santa. Had I known I would be in the shot, I wouldn't have worn hot pink...lesson learned.
MiMi made Haley's Christmas dress with the help of Granny and Aunt Susan. One of my goals for 2011 is to learn to sew with confidence.


Haley had a Toy Story Christmas. Here she is with Buzz, Woody, Jessie, and Bullseye tucked under her Buzz and Woody blanket, all piled inside her blow up Toy Story tent. It's so fun to watch her imagination as she makes new "friends".


Haley playing in the backyard. One of my new favorite pictures of her.


Mommy and Haley at the Bellingrath Gardens Christmas in Lights.


Me and my love, Toby, enjoying the lights.


Toby and Carey


Finally, a decent family picture...aka Haley is smiling in the direction of the camera, the rest of us are irrelevant.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Monumental cooking

Many months ago the mentor moms at my MOPS group introduced me to "once a month cooking." The idea is to get 3 or 4 friends together, purchase ingredients in bulk, and work together to prepare and freeze 30 meals for each of you. You could do it on your own, but it's much more fun together. This weekend I have gathered with some girlfriends from college and we have decided to give this project a go. We didn't quite make it to 30 meals, but we did tackle eleven. After one day of mega shopping and nearly three days of cooking, the four of us each have at least eleven meals to take home. Our delectable treats include beef taco bake, chicken casserole, vegetable soup, lasagna, sundried tomato chicken pasta, homemade spaghetti sauce, sausage balls, pizza dough, meatloaf, squash casserole, and spaghetti pie. After doing the math, this project cost each of us $68, and breaks down to about $6 per meal. For our small families, each "meal" will feed us for dinner and even offer up a leftover meal or two.

I feel like the ultimate hunter gatherer for my family! My freezer will be full and I will be prepared to whip out a full meal with virtually no preparation...well, at least eleven times.

a freezer full of yummy meals

I have to say that I think our first go round at massive cooking went pretty well, but we have learned a few tricks that will make things a little smoother next time...we need a deeper dish for the lasagna, stacking the lasagna pans before they're frozen will likely lead to leakage, print extra and more extra labels, and the host freezer needs to be cleaned out and space maximized before the big weekend. Other than that, it was a great success and we will be doing it again.

In addition to endless hours of cooking, I have enjoyed painting my toenails, cheering on the Auburn Tigers, watching chick flicks and sleeping late, thanks to my mom enjoying Haley for the weekend. All in all, it's been a great few days away from reality and responsibilities and catching up with old friends...now I'm ready to head home refreshed and ready for the holidays!

Pancake breakfast

A rainy day was upon us, so Haley and I planned to spend it at home catching up on laundry, cleaning and paying bills. Ok, so Haley has mostly played with her little kitchen and watched Woody and Buzz, while I have worked today. The point is, I wasn't in the mood for the same old breakfast.

My mom makes the greatest pancakes on the planet and she always makes them for me when I'm in town. See...she cooks from the heart too, so I know I come by it naturally. She laughs at me when I praise her pancakes and insists it's just baking mix, milk and eggs..."It's so easy. You could do this." Well, for whatever reason, I am incapable of duplicating her pancakes, so I've quit trying. They're either too runny, too thick, they burn easily or don't cook evenly. When we're at home we do waffles and I let the world's greatest pancakes be a special treat. Anyway, this morning I decided to go at it from another angle and searched for a quick pancake recipe and whipped up a batch. Oh my, they were so yummy! I think it was the vanilla in the batter, but the list of ingredients way complicates them compared to mom's, but they were so good!
The recipe had a great tip that I will be utilizing in the near future...mix up the dry ingredients in advance and put it in a zip top bag so it's ready to go when you are. Kind of like buying those pre-made pancake mixes at the grocery store, only without the high price tag or preservatives. Since I wasn't sure of the yield, I went ahead and made the full recipe which gave me 13 beautiful pancakes. Obviously, Haley and I didn't put away 13 pancakes at breakfast, so I froze the leftovers and will pull them out a few at a time over the next few days. Again, kick the breakfast freezer isle to the curb.

Click here for the recipe. I added an extra 1/4 cup of flour because the batter was a little runny for my taste. Just to warn you, they're not as great as mom's, but they're a close enough second. Enjoy! (And just for the record, I think my picture looks way more yummy than theirs...I'm just sayin'.)

Home Sweet Home

We followed Jesus' lead and moved to Mobile, Alabama 2 1/2 months ago, knowing there would be tons of adjustments ahead. One of the biggest was our home. We had a house waiting for us (cool story, click here and here to read about it), so we were grateful to skip over the house hunting headache. The problem was that our new house is about half the size of our house in Tennessee. Like most red-blooded Americans we started our marriage with the biggest house we could afford and subsequently upgraded with the next one. And what good is that big, pretty house without lots of nice things to fill it? I am almost ashamed to say that I was dreading leaving my beautiful, 2-story, 5 year old house for one that was half the size, six times the age and severely lacking many of the conveniences...snobby, I know.

In the last few weeks, God has helped me to understand that "home is where the heart is". Before this experience, I would have told you this wise Cracker Barrel saying was true, but now that I've lived through it, I can honestly say that it's not the size of the house or it's fancy furnishing that make it home...it's the love that is shared within the walls. Soon after our move here, God told us to "possess the land" and so "possess" we have done. In fact, this small, old house strangely feels more like home than any other place we've lived. I guess it's the extra effort we have put into making this house really become ours. Our previous two houses were beige...beige carpet, beige walls, beige furniture...blah. Truth be told, I hated it. But we were too concerned with resale value to actually make our house like we wanted it. This house has been different...we've painted the kitchen, Haley's room and the hall bathroom (and they're all different colors, mind you) and we've screened in the back porch so we can enjoy the outdoors all year. But even with all of these cosmetic changes, it's been the life we've lived in the last few weeks that has transformed this house into our home.

One day last week I grew a wild hair and made homemade cinnamon rolls and orange rolls. And when I say, "homemade" I'm talking flour, yeast, the whole nine yards! I love to bake, but this was my first time baking on this level, unsupervised and all by myself. I wish I could show you a picture, but my orange rolls were less than impressive looking, but oh how they were delicious! A little tweaking to account for this ridiculous Mobile humidity and I think they'll be perfect. A big thank you to the Pioneer Woman for the recipe! (recipes: cinnamon rolls / orange rolls) From this point forward when we make these rolls for guests or the holidays, they will always be tied to this sweet house.

Today, a new friend came over to make laundry detergent with me. Now, I realize that saying this out loud makes me sound like a 1950s housewife, but this is one of my favorite money saving tips! With about $4 and 30 minutes of effort, you can have a year's worth of laundry detergent stashed away. I first made this recipe last year on Halloween weekend, having been inspired by a super creative Tennessee friend, and am just now making another batch today. This is crazy easy and I hope you'll get a chance to check it out. My friend today even said she has one of those new fancy HE washing machines and her research has said this detergent will work fine with it! Please let me know if you discover differently. Thanks to the Duggars for this recipe, by far my favorite TV family. (recipe: laundry detergent)

As great as these things have been, they are still topped by the surprise my Jesus had waiting for me in the front yard last week. I pulled up in the driveway to see flowers blooming in my...ahem...flower bed. Our poor flower bed has been all but neglected over the last three years. While we were in Tennessee, a great friend kept up with the lawn and last fall gave the flower bed a face lift, but it hasn't received much attention since then. Among all of the weeds was a group of beautiful, purply-pink flowers...I wish I knew enough about flowers to tell you what kind, but my Jesus knew how much I would love them and I have really enjoyed having this little bloom in my front yard!
For those of you keeping up with Toby's schooling (aka, the reason we returned to Mobile), he got an A in his first class and his second class starts this week. This new class is "Christian Worldview" and is an undergraduate class required by all university students. My understanding is that it teaches the students to approach their professions through a "God-filter." I think I'm just about as excited as Toby. His books for this class are Think like Jesus by George Barna, How Christianity Changed the World by Alvin Schmidt, Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis and God at Work by Gene Veith. Our prayer for the coming weeks is for Toby's reading. He's not the biggest fan of reading, so tackling four books in six weeks will be a challenge! Hopefully he will only be required to hit the highlights in each one...we'll see. Thank you for your continued support and prayers in this journey. It's been an awesome ride so far...