Some recipes... some thoughts... some events

Front room:

My wonderful Father-in-law painting away the brown and bringing in a fresh yellow

The finished product- Notice the pilates reformer is the main attraction! Love that machine and love teaching on it!

As I've said before- I love the fall! It makes me want to cook and knit. So that's what I've been doing (along with the other things I do everyday: homeschool, driving kids everywhere, teaching yoga, doing young womens and managing a family)  I found the cutest pattern for a button scarf and it's super cute.  I think that might be Christmas presents for my young women, and probably for a few other lucky ladies.

Here is the beginning of the scarf.  It uses large needles and chunky yarn so it's a super quick knit- also uses the seed stitch which I love.

Here is the finished product- so cute! It only took me about an hour or so to knit up so it will be nice and easy to make for gifts.

In the way of cooking... The other day I made my favorite baked chicken.  It requires that you brine the chicken (soak it in salt water) and then bake it at a pretty high temp.  It is so juicy and full of flavor- the kids like it better than the rotisserie chicken that I sometimes get from Costco.


Heres the prepared bird going into the hot oven...

And the finished product- look at that lovely skin and juicy meat!


And for the recipe:

Roast Chicken

1 cup salt dissolved in a big bowl with 2 quarts cold water

1 whole chicken

1 tablespoon oil (I usually use grapeseed or coconut)

Ground black pepper

Put chicken cleaned of giblets in bowl of salt water and let sit in fridge for 1 hour.

Adjust oven rack to lower third of the oven and heat to 450 degrees.

Remove chicken from brine and pat dry, butterfly (cut off backbone with kitchen shears) and flatten the breastbone, tucking the wings behind the back.  

Rub the skin with oil and pepper

Place the chicken on a wire rack on a sheet pan and throw it in the oven

Roast the chicken until beginning to brown about 30 minutes. Rotate the pan and continue to roast about 30 more minutes or until a thermometer reads 160 in the thickest part of the breast.

Pull out of the oven and let rest for 10 minutes- then eat it up!

I also made my favorite granola ever:

Here's some of the lovely ingredients-

The finished product

My favorite thing about this granola is that it has no sugar or corn syrup.

Jamie's Granola:

1/2 cup oil (I use olive or grapeseed)

1 cup honey

2 cups chopped nuts (I usually use some almonds and walnuts)

2 cups grain (oatmeal, 6 grain- whatever you have/want)

2 cups raisins

2 cups coconut

4 Tbs. flaxseed

2 cups chopped, dried fruit (apricots, mangoes- whatever)

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl

Pour on a sheet cake pan lined with wax paper

Cook for 10-20 minutes, stirring around occasionally

Remove from oven and let cool.  Stir or break it up and put in air tight container

Mission Buddies:

One of Petter's mission friends was visiting from Beijing, so we had a get-together with a bunch of his mission friends and his mission President and wife.

It was a great time.  We had smoked salmon, steak, bacon wrapped asparagus, lemon bundt cake and roasted potatoes.  It was a lovely meal with some great peeps.

Petter and Lats prepped the asparagus and exercised their culinary skills.

Here's the whole group as their wives take pictures.

I had to speak in church today on the topic of discipleship.  I ended up only having a few minutes to speak (I was the last speaker) so I kept it short.  I feel grateful that I was able to research the subject, even though I didn't share all of it, and was reminded to Follow Him more diligently and act as he would act more in my life.  We went swimming on Saturday so Simeon could practice and remember all he learned in swim lessons and overall it was a pretty great week.