Vegetarian Dairy Cinch-a-Lada Bake

I didn't take pictures of this meal but it turned out very well.  This is a nice, meatless meal that is made almost exclusively out of pantry stock. 

Ingredients:
- 2 cans black beans
- 1 can diced tomatoes (I used Ro-Tel mild)
- 1 can of enchilada sauce (I used hot because it's what I had on hand - it had some heat to it)
- 1 can of corn (the Mexicorn would be good here, but I did not have that)
- 5 flour tortillas, cut in to quarters
- Shredded cheddar jack (a good handful)
- Sour cream, black olives, lettuce & tomato for garnish

Preheat oven to 350F.  Stir beans, corn and tomatoes together and layer in a baking dish.  Top with tortilla triangles. Pour enchilada sauce on top. Cover generously with shredded cheese.  Bake for 20-25 minutes until dish is bubbly and cheese is melty.  Cut in to squares and serve with garnish. 

Very easy, cheap and filling.  It is a GREAT weeknight meal because there is almost no prep work.  We had ours with salad and it was pretty satisfying.  You can heat it up or take it down by using more spicy/less spicy tomatoes and sauce.  This is not a bad looking dish (I wish I'd have gotten pictures).  I'd consider taking this to a potluck.  You could probably easily add in some meat if you want.  We do "meatless Monday" at our house most of the time, so I opted not to add it in.  If you try and like, leave a comment, or let me know if you used a variation.
Cheers, People!


File under Frugal Living/Frugal Me

Frugal Living – Jill-Made Washing Powder

I made my own laundry detergent this past week.  Here are the ingredients I used:

• I box (3.7 lbs) Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda – NOT baking soda
• 1 box (4 lbs) borax
• 4 boxes (1 lb each) baking soda (I couldn’t find the large boxes in my area)
• 3 bars Fels Naptha laundry soap, grated

I grated the Fels Naptha by hand with a cheese grater.  Never again.  We put a lot of our 110V countertop appliances in storage when we moved to England and a food processor just isn’t something I’ve run across at a good price or missed having.  I may have to scour the thrift stores for one, though.  The Fels Naptha is soft and easy to grate, but still.  That’s a lot of grating.  It took about 45 minutes to chop/grate 3 bars by hand. 

 

I used a large utility bucket to mix and I just dumped everything in and stirred.  I used a pasta scooper with “teeth”. You have to use some elbow grease to get to the bottom of the bucket and get everything mixed up well.  Be warned, it is dusty, so make sure you’re in an open area or someplace you can just wipe clean.  I did mine in the kitchen and mopped afterwards.  I’ve heard the borax is a good floor cleaner… 

The recipe I used also called for an “optional” addition of some Oxy Clean crystals.  I did not use that this time.  I may add that in to my next batch for something more heavy duty.  The original recipe recommended we use 1 tablespoon per load.  This didn’t seem like enough to me, so I used two tablespoons for a large-sized load.  It smells REALLY good.  I use Gain I used to use Gain and one of the reasons I did use that is because I liked the way it smelled so much.  This actually smells better than Gain.  My whites seem to really brighten up using this.  While the detergent smells good in the container, it doesn’t really leave a scent on the clean clothes.  But they are getting clean. 

 

There are variations and you can use these ingredients to make a liquid, but so far, I am happy with the powder and it seems to be less labor intensive.  If you look on Youtube or Pintrest, you will find a lot of different recipes…some posted by some really funny ladies that are filmed talking (and talking and talking) about their adventures in laundry. 

So why do this?  Isn’t it easier just to buy laundry detergent at the store?  Technically, yes, but making my own was pretty easy, too.  Gauging the cost of the ingredients against the money it costs to buy regular laundry detergent at the store, I am saving about 75 percent by making my own…maybe more.  I am not that much of a geek and I didn’t break it down to cost per load.  I guesstimate that we spend about $125 per year on laundry detergent.  I am guesstimating that we’d spend about $24 per year to make our own powder, although that really is my own WAG.    

Everyone has to wash their clothes…at least everyone should!  About an hour’s worth of effort saves me $100.  Factoring in my time and the cost savings…yeah, it’s worth it to me. 

 

Sunday Snapshot

Are you all sitting down?  It's ACTUALLY SUNDAY!

 



Some of you reading the blog know exactly what this picture is.  For those who don't, it is a copy of our I800A approval for Kyle's adoption.  In a nutshell, this means the Department of Homeland Security has said it is okay for us to go forward with our adoption.  In order to grant this approval, they had to have our fingerprints (to make sure we didn't have a criminal record) and a copy of our social worker's report that verifies our intent to provide a permanent home for an adoptee that is not a citizen of the United States.  Our ability to support another family member gets looked at and so forth. 

Things have moved fairly quickly and smoothly with Kyle's adoption, so we are hoping and praying we stay on course.  The original of the document you see here will go to the Chinese consulate for authentication as well as be authenticated by the Secretary of State.  Since we are re-using our dossier from Zack's adoption, there are only a few documents that have to be re-done/authenticated.

What does this mean?  Very soon, our packet of documents will be back in China, where the China Center for Children's Welfare Activities (CCCWA) will log it in (basically, mark received).  Once this happens, our old packet of documents will be "pulled from the archive" and China gets another chance to review us as adoptive parents before issuing formal approval to adopt one of their precious children. 

It is a privlege for China to grant approval to provide one of their children a permanent home.  It is a long, hard, paper-chasing road.  We are about at the halfway point.  Prayers, good wishes, good thoughts and energy are accepted for our family during this wait. 

And...hello?  I got the Sunday Snapshot up on a Sunday!!!!  Whoop whoop!

Sunday Snapshot

Yes...it is not Sunday.  No...I will not apologize for posting a Sunday Snapshot on Monday and calling it the Sunday Snapshot.  I could call it the Monday Megapixel but that would probably mean I'd just procrastinate until Tuesday.  So, Sunday Snapshot it will be, people. 

Here is a picture of Zack enjoying a piece of lemon cake with lemon frosting - my favorite, Lee's least favorite.  I made a cake to do something small to honor Kyle's third birthday yesterday with the hope that he got to do something fun all the way over on the other side of the world in Shandong Province China. 

Yesterday was also "Mothering Sunday" in the UK, so I figured that I deserved to have the kind of cake I like.  Zack thought it was pretty delish!  P.S.  the pretty flowered bowl in the background belongs to my friend Marguerita.  She brought it to a party almost a year ago and I need to give it back.  It does really look good in my kitchen though. 

Frugal Living – Moroccan White Bean Turkey Chili

This is a Pampered Chef Deep Covered Baker Recipe.  I bought my large covered baker about 4 years ago and have since bought a smaller one also.  I love them.  The baker was a budget buster but I’ve tried a lot of recipes in this book and in the “Season’s Best” cookbooks that come out and they’ve all been great.  Many of the recipes are microwave recipes, although you’d never know to taste. 

I made a few modifications to the original recipe.  The recipe called for fresh onion and garlic but I used frozen pre-chopped onions (I mean, why wouldn’t you) and minced garlic out of a jar – the kind you get in the condiment aisle.  Since Ore Ida started selling frozen onions, I don’t even remember the last time I chopped a raw one.  I know the most budget friendly approach is to buy food its most basic and unprocessed state but sometimes convenience wins at our house.   Here is my modified recipe: 

Ingredients:
1 lb lean ground turkey
1 jalapeno pepper
1 medium green bell pepper
1/4 cup frozen Ore Ida chopped onion
3 tbsp Pampered Chef Moroccan Rub
1 tbsp minced garlic
½ tsp sea salt
1 can each great northern beans or navy beans (rinsed and drained)
1 can tomato sauce
1 can diced tomatoes with garlic and onion (undrained)

STEP 1. Coarsely chop jalapeno and bell pepper.  Combine onion, peppers, turkey, rub, garlic and salt in the Deep Covered Baker.  Microwave covered on high 5-7 minutes or until no longer pink, breaking in to crumbles halfway through. 

STEP 2.  Carefully remove baker from microwave using oven mitts.  Add the canned stuff & mix well.  Cover and microwave on high for 14-17 minutes.  Voila!

I made a batch of this tonight and left out the jalapeno since I was making food for a family I don’t know very well.  It still had a nice flavor but I like some heat to my food.  I’d consider trying two jalapenos in the future.  One is nice and zippy. 

My turkey was frozen tonight, so it took about 12 minutes for step 1 in our microwave.  I stirred every four minutes. 

I don’t have the Pampered Chef Moroccan Rub, so I made up my own using chili powder, cumin, ginger, cinnamon and sugar.  I am not a measurer and did the “pinch of this/pinch of that” method.  You can play around with the flavors you like. 

I have made this a couple of times before tonight and have used different beans…I’ve used a mixture of pinto beans and navy beans before and I think you could use garbanzo beans with a good result.  With so much of this recipe being in cans, this is a good thing to throw together with what you have on hand. 

This is a hearty, inexpensive meal and it’s got enough of an exotic flavor to be a little bit trendy.  The serving suggestion in my recipe book said to stir in some raisins and dried apricots.  The total cost of the ingredients to make this recipe was under $7.00 – I’d guestimate this as yielding eight meal sized servings.   I’m not counting the spices, the onion and the garlic because those are pantry staples for us.  Most of the time I have the canned ingredients on hand, too, so really, on any given shopping day, I’d just have to buy some turkey and a couple of fresh peppers!

I made two batches of this tonight while doing other things around the house…one batch for a family in my work community that had a new baby and one for us.  I made our batch spicy and it is in the freezer now.  This will yield least two full meals for my family.  I started cooking at about 6:15 and I was done with both batches and walked out of a clean kitchen at about 8:45.  During this time I cooked our dinner (we had something else besides this chili tonight), made a batch of lemon bars, ate dinner with my family, gave Zack a bath and put him in bed…there were a couple of times the dish sat in the microwave waiting on me to stir/go to the next step, but it was all good - very, very easy.   

Leave a comment if you try this and like it - or if you try this and hate it!

 

And the children will outnumber us...

The cat is officially out of the bag.  Laura and Zack are getting a brother.  Kyle Chengjin Robbins will join our family sometime this summer. 

Kyle turned three on 10 Mar, so that makes him just slightly older than Zack.  In adoption circles, this is known as virtual or artificial twinning and adopting out of birth order.  Our placing agency and social worker did not have concerns about this, but there are different schools of thought on both of these things.  Normally the children most recently added to the family get to be the baby…not quite so with Kyle.  We don’t expect there to be any huge issues.  We are calling Kyle Zack’s “little big brother” since Zack is quite a bit bigger, at least at this point.    

The virtual twinning should be interesting.  We certainly don’t intend to tell them they are twins or present them to the world as twins, but we know people will probably make that assumption from time to time.  They will also be in the same school grade. 

FAQs
1.      Are Kyle and Zack brothers?  No, I mean real brothers. 

They are not biologically related and are from different provinces.  They are however, both from Northern China.  When Kyle joins our family, he will be Zack and Laura’s brother.  Their real brother.  No discussions. 

2.      Is it cheaper/easier to adopt a second child from China?

The adoption costs the second time around are a little bit less.  We have remained with both the same placing and home study agency, so that has helped with fees.  China allows some of the same paperwork to be used for a subsequent adoption if certain conditions are met.  So the short answer is yes, but we are still in the middle of the process.  Ask us at the end and we may tell you something different.  International adoption is still very expensive, tedious and time consuming and there is just no way to get around that. 

3.     Does Kyle have a special need?

Kyle is a healthy child.  Like Zack, he is being adopted through China’s Waiting Child Program.   Kyle had some intestinal surgeries when he was a tiny baby but he is perfectly fine now.  We don’t plan to discuss his medical history in any more detail than this.  We’ve been pretty open about the details of our adoptions but it’s time to dial back on some of the personal and medical info.  At some point in the not-too-distant future, our boys will have opinions about how much of their stories we share.  There are parts of this story that belong to our family that we will share but there are parts that belong to my children who are not old enough to make decisions on what they want to share…enough said. 

4.      Another one?!?  Wow!  You must be some kind of saint! 

Actually someone called me a nun the other day.  Yes...obviously she was not someone well acquainted with me.  At all.  Really…we’re not do-gooders.  While we respect that there are people who are on the same path that we are to “save orphans” or “rescue children”…that is not us.  We’re fairly selfish in our reasons for adopting and see bringing Kyle in to our family as a win for everyone. 

We look forward to sharing pictures and more detailed information soon.  For now, just be assured that once again, China picked their best looking little boy for our family. 

Six Months...

It has been six months since we met our little guy in the Taiyuan Civil Affairs Office.  Looking back on the day and the days since, we believe Zack was pretty well prepared to be adopted – I guess as well prepared as a two year old can be.  That is not to say he wasn’t pretty suspicious of us at first or that he was digging the tall redheaded lady who scooped him up and tried to give him kisses when he was clearly indicating that he wanted no part of that. 

Zack’s transition (and ours) has been relatively seamless, if you can ignore the marked reduction in sleep the grownups are getting.  After a few hours with us, Zack seemed to come to the decision that we were OK…maybe not to be fully trusted…but safe to be around.  We seemed to have an endless supply of snacks and he that seemed to help him come to the conclusion that we meant him no harm. 

While traveling in China, one of the other mothers (an “adoption veteran”) told us that Zack would be speaking full English in six months.  I did not believe her.  Zack seemed to figure out VERY quickly that his new caretakers could not understand his language and became VERY adept at using nonverbal methods to communicate.  His receptive language was also very quick to progress.  The second or third day that we had Zack, I asked him to “go get Mommy’s shoes”.  And he did. 
I should have listened to the mom in my travel group about the six month thing, because at six months home, Zack’s English is probably on-par with most kids his age…he might be a little bit behind on using language because he’s had to learn the language (in addition to all of the other adjustments he’s had to make) but he is catching up by leaps and bounds.  He is a little bit hard to understand, but kids of this age often are.  Some examples of the things Zack is saying at six months home:

“Daddy go work.  Daddy Air Force”. 

“Mommy go away”

“No bath, no night-night” (these are VERY bad things in Zack’s book)

“Eat, eat eat!  Eat oatmeal!”

“Mommy lay down”.

“Daddy fix it”.

“Go go go…go school!”

“Not like it”

“Kitty go potty”

And so on.  He says please and thank you (usually without being prompted and he will throw out that “please” pretty fast if he wants something he thinks you are not going to give him).  He is starting to say “welcome” for you’re welcome.  He knows the names of all of his body parts and most of the things in our house.  He can count to five pretty well and can count to ten if coached.  He can pick out the letter “Z” when it is mixed with other letters.  He’s started to be able to correctly ID colors.  He can ID animals and make the noise that goes with them.  He understands concepts like hot/cold, up/down, sleepy, scary, mine (or mommy’s/daddy’s), go, fast, hurry, and his favorite “roundy round” (around and around).  He understands and appropriately uses “yes” and “no”. 
He’s making some progress with the potty, although he is not so good at notifying you when he has to go.  He understands that you get one skittle for “number 1” and two skittles for “#2”…but he is crafty and will try to get two skittles for peeing sometimes.  I guess just to see if we’re paying attention. 

In the past six months, Zack has gained about 5 pounds and grown about an inch.  He’s currently wearing 2T size clothing and size 6 shoe.  He’s a pretty outgoing little boy.  He does well at nursery school and his caregivers say he plays well with other kids and in general, listens well and follows directions. 

Poor Zack was not feeling at all well this Saturday.  This was as much of a smile as we could get!

                                        Look what was in my red envelope!  A fiver!

He likes playing with the same sort of toys that any kid his age likes – favorites are his train set and puzzles, although he likes toy cars, books, blocks and stuffed animals too.  He is starting to become very interested in crayons.  He likes to watch TV but we’ve not let him do a lot of that.  He does not do well if you try to take him away from a TV program in progress, although he will be just fine if you tell him to walk away from the TV when his show is ending…I guess I can relate to this.  We download/store most of his programs on a disk – he really likes Barney (yes, the purple dinosaur), Thomas the Tank Engine and Ni Hao Kai Lan.  He enjoys most of the Disney cartoons, too, and seems to really like Cars.  His favorite night time toys are his small stuffed panda (Coco) that has been his sidekick since he’s come home, and the Woody “doll” from Toy Story that my dad got him for Christmas.  Occasionally, a small stuffed monkey and/or a stuffed cat that sings “Soft Kitty” from Big Bang Theory will be asked to join the night-time party, but Woody and Coco are regulars. 

Zack likes anything to do with monsters, lions or tigers.  He likes to roar and growl and make monster noises.  Loud monster noises.  He likes to yell “roar tiger roar” and then growl and snarl.  He’s started to “pretend play” as a kitty cat.  He will crawl on all fours and meow and ask for “treats”. 

I haven’t mentioned Zack’s hand because it honestly hasn’t been an issue at all for us.  He’s uses his “little hand” as a support and uses it to help anchor objects he wants to carry to his torso.  He uses it to turn pages in a book, push buttons, and do two-handed pickups – such as balls and cups.  He can pull himself up on to his rocking horse and brace himself with both hands.  He loves the playground and I really don’t see him having any difficulty manipulating himself.  The only thing I’ve really seen him have trouble with his pulling his pants up, and he’s still a pretty little guy. 

Zack is seeing an occupational therapist right now, but that is really only because he qualifies for Early Intervention services until he is three.  We don’t feel we “need” the services for him, but we’re taking advantage of everything we can get.  He will undergo an evaluation in a couple of months to see if he potentially qualifies for continued services after age three, but the OT basically told us not to expect that.  The OT comes to our house twice a month and plays on the floor with him for an hour.  She has given us some suggestions on how to do things or possibly modify things for him as he gets a little older, but honestly, nothing has been an issue for Zack as of yet.  I walked around for a couple of hours one morning only using the heel of my right hand and although it does take some getting used to, I unloaded /reloaded the dishwasher and did a few other household chores.  It really is not that much of a hindrance and this is what Zack is used to. 

We’re still looking in to some surgical options that might give him some better grasping ability and there is always the possibility that he could wear a prosthesis for some things when he gets older, but really…the fact that this little guy was adopted under the “special needs” program is really pretty silly.  He has started noticing that his right hand is different from his left hand…he will look at his hands side by side and give us a look like “what’s up with this” but it really hasn’t been a big deal.  He’ll have to learn to deal with stares and comments as he gets older, but he will find his own way through that, with our help and support. 

All-in-all, Zack has adjusted well so far.  He’s a little bit of a daddy’s boy right now – he and Lee have their little boys club going.  He doesn’t quite grasp that when mommy tells him to do something that daddy is probably going to back her up.  When mommy says to go to bed/take a bath/sit down/get up…whatever he doesn’t want to do…Zack likes to get a second opinion.  All of his Chinese is pretty much gone.  Up until about a month ago, he referred to himself as “Wa Wa” but now he says Zack.  Mama and Baba are now Mommy and Daddy.  The only holdout from his Chinese language is “lei”.  He used to jabber “lei lah and lei lo”…it meant some form of come here/go there.  As much as we’ve worked with him on learning English, I find it is a little sad to see him lose his Chinese so quickly. 

 

 

                                Zack and Daddy (yep, he's really under there) having a morning snooze. 

The first six months has been exciting.  It seems like he has always been here with us.  It has totally changed our family dynamic.  I have more conversations with my husband about poop and snot than I ever thought possible.  Here’s to continuing the adventure…

It is hard to get him in the tub but once he's there, he has a blast!