chicken stroganoff

A couple of weeks ago a friend organized a recipe swap... each person brought prepared main dish with the recipe. Then we got to sample all of the recipes. It was a lot of fun, and I got some new ideas for dinner. This was one of my favorites, and my family liked it too!

Chicken Stroganoff:

4 bacon strips
1 lb. chicken, cut up
1 med. onion
2 cloves garlic
1 pkg fresh mushrooms (the original recipe calls for 2 cans of mushrooms drained, but I detest canned mushrooms.)
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp paprika
pepper to taste
1 cup sour cream
2 T flour

In a skillet cook bacon until crisp. Remove to paper towels and drain some of the drippings, reserving 2 T, set bacon aside. When cool enough to touch, break up into small pieces. Cook the chicken, onion, garlic, and mushrooms until chicken is no longer pink. Add the broth, salt paprika, pepper and bacon back in. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Combine flour and sour cream until smooth; add to the skillet. Bring to boil, cook and stir for 1 minute or until thickened. Serve over egg noodles or rice, whichever is your family's preference.

I guess if you're not a mushroom fan, you could leave those out, but it just can't be as good as the original without those! Let me know if you make it, and what you think. Enjoy!

hats off...

to babies!!! Every baby deserves a one-of-a-kind hand knit hat at least once in their life. A number of years ago my younger sister Michelle, (who is an amazing knitter), taught me how to knit baby hats. It was a late night of slowly figuring it all out, but so memorable. Anyway, thanks to Michelle's sharing of her talent, I've been making some hats to prepare for a plethora of births that are coming up from various ladies in our ward. So far only one of them will be a girl, the rest are all boys... here are the finished products.

Here's the one for the baby girl, obviously. Originally I wanted the whole thing to be the varigated pink yarn, but when I was almost finished with it, I realized that I probably wouldn't have enough to finish. Since I didn't want to scrap the whole thing, I decided to finish the top with the white yarn. Then to help it along, I added the flowers around the whole pink part of the hat. Turned out kind-a fun. The flowers were really fun to make actually, oh, they're crocheted. As I was crocheting the flowers I thought that they might be fun to add to the tops of presents or something. We'll see if this ever actually happens, but it's fun to imagine.

This one is for a new family that just moved in. She's due really soon, and this will be their 3rd boy. I don't know them as well, so I decided just to keep it simple and basic. Can't go too wrong with a standard tan/blue/white motif.

I thought this one turned out really well. This family are HUGE razorback fans. Both parents have graduated from the U of A, so I knew their baby's hat had to be red and white. I think they'll love it.

Last but not least... this is actually the first of the 4 hats posted that I made. It's also the only one that has already been gifted, and it is my very favorite! I want to make the same pattern in a little bigger size for Silas. I wish this were a better picture so that you could truly appreciate it's beauty. The basic color is an army green, then it has a bunch of colored stripes in it - yellow, orange, navy blue, tan, white. Anyway, I really love it... and although I don't know this family really very well either, I just knew that this would be the perfect hat for their baby. Some people are just like that.

I'm working on a few other fun knit or crochet items. I've really been into this stuff lately... it's tons o' fun. If you don't know how to knit or crochet, come on over, I'd love to share the small amount of knowledge that I have. Or, contact my sister Michelle, she'd love to share too!

long time...

It's been too long since I've posted. Life goes by so quickly, and I often think of things I want to post, and then another day goes by and it hasn't happened. I need to do better. So the next few posts will be of stuff that's helping the days go by...

Some fun cards to thank Isaac and Sadie's friends for coming to our Book Swap birthday party for the pair. We really had a great time, and everyone went home with "new" books to start reading!

The insdie of the card... a small space, just right for writing a thank you!