Party Like A Meme

So Meri & Shub's potluck dinner party was great last night!  Meri, of course, had all her Pfalzgraff out and ten place settings filling up her table.  We brought some folding chairs so we'd have a seat too.  Our nephew and his girlfriend joined us as well as a couple from church.  Then Grandma, Robb and Leon.

The "kids" played hide and seek all over the house while the meal finished up.

Meri had cooked up the Penne Noodle lasagna, from yesterday's post.  Since she hadn't anticipated how long it would take to bake from frozen, dinner was a little delayed, but it tasted great.  She also had a salad made up.

The friends from church brought cheesy potatoes with bacon on it. YUM.

Josh brought some brownie bits and rice krispy treats made with fruity pebbles from Caseys.

Robb brought a pepperoni pizza from Caseys, where he met up with Josh.  This way Leon could definitely have something he'd like.  And it's Josh's favorite pizza.

PLUS pizza prices were half priced at ALL the pizza joints around our area in honor of National Pizza Day!

I brought some ice cream for dessert, some boiled cod to ensure my MIL had something she'd like and then I cooked up the Cube steaks with gravy in the Instant Pot.  It took almost 30 minutes to come to pressure as it was frozen solid.  

I pulled out the steaks at that point and mixed in the water and cornstarch to thicken the gravy, but it was taking FOR EV AH!  We didn't want to be late to Meri's, so I kept adding poultry gravy mix until it finally thickened up sufficiently.

At the same time, I made some instant mashed potatoes and pushed it all to one side of a heated up crockpot.  

The steaks got cut up into bite sized pieces and then mixed back in the thickened gravy. I left that until the VERY last minute and then poured it into the open side of the crockpot to keep warm.

After dinner, several people had to clear out due to work and sleep requirements, but after Robb took his mom and Leon back to the house, he came back and joined in a game of What do you Meme?

Hilarious! Especially because Meri had an adult version and I think Josh just picked the REALLY bad ones to hear how Robb or myself would read them out loud.

Yeah... I'm not reading this one and NO it doesn't win! LOL

We finally got home about an hour after our usual bedtime and I was asleep within 5 minutes of touching my pillow and after getting the weather update for the next week.

I went over there this morning and helped her clean up her kitchen a bit more.  

And because I have NO pics of the dinner, here are some of Leon.  He got his hair cut recently.  Here is what it looks like with the expensive product in it that he talked me into buying and the portions that got cut off.  He COULD have donated it to locks of love, it was so long!  Well, I exaggerate a little...

And here is him demonstrating how to use the product...  I had to hide it from him.

I'm just glad he never saw THIS comic!

Fun times... here's the recipe.  I hope you had a fun weekend!

CUBE STEAKS WITH GRAVY
serves 4  I put this one together.  The original recipe called for 6 cube steaks but we only had 8 so we did 4 per bag.

INGREDIENTS
4 cube steaks
2 cups water
1 cup pureed yellow or white onion
1/2 cup soy sauce
2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp minced garlic
2 tbsp beef bouillon - I used chicken because I didn't have beef.
1 tsp salt
dash pepper

1. Add all ingredients to a gallon sized freezer bag or container for instant pot.

MAKE IT NOW: Add to either the instant pot or crockpot and cook as directed below.

MAKE IT A FREEZER MEAL: Seal bag or container, removing as much air as possible and freeze.

COOK IN INSTANT POT
From frozen, add contents into an instant pot.  Add 1/4 cup water. Cook for 23 minutes at high pressure, then do quick release. Place on saute. Remove steaks. Whisk in a small bowl  1/4 cup cornstarch with 1/2 cup water until smooth. Pour mixture into the liquids left in the Instant Pot. Whisk continually until gravy starts to thicken. Add cubed steaks back into the pot, heat until warmed through then serve.

From thawed or freshly made, transfer into an instant pot. Cook for 20 minutes at high pressure, then do quick release. Place on saute. Remove steaks. Whisk in a small bowl  1/4 cup cornstarch with 1/2 cup water until smooth. Pour mixture into the liquids left in the Instant Pot. Whisk continually until gravy starts to thicken. Add cubed steaks back into the pot, heat until warmed through then serve.

COOK IN CROCK POT
From thawed or freshly made, transfer into slow cooker. Cook on low for 6 hours. Remove steaks. Transfer remaining liquid to medium saucepan. Whisk in a small bowl 1/4 cup cornstarch with 1/2 cup water until smooth. Bring saucepan liquids to simmer over medium-high heat. Slowly add while whisking the cornstarch mixture into the sauce.  Whisk continually until gravy starts to thicken. Add cubed steaks into the pot, and heat until warmed through, then serve.

SERVE WITH: So delicious served over buttery mashed potatoes and a side of green vegetables.

SEW Last Sunday

On Sunday, Robb and I cooked all afternoon for our annual Norwegian Christmas dinner with my bestie and her husband.  They arrived and just as we were sitting down to eat, Ryan and Jen drove in. It turns out that Jen is part Norwegian too and loved EVERYTHING including the melted butter over the works.  Who knew?!  I thought she was 100% Irish. 

I didn't get a single pic of the wonderful food!

My lefse was a hit!  At least that's what everyone said.  Robb said that I need to make more for this weekend's feasts.  And I still have some batter left over so I guess I could.  But only AFTER my big sewing projects are on done.  So I'm thinking Saturday.

I'm SO glad it's Wednesday already!  But I'm also thinking, Yikes!  It's Wednesday already!!  With any luck, I can finish two of my sewing projects over my afternoon breaks.  Then I'll just be down to two big ones for the rest of the week.

AND I think we'll be buying another car by this weekend.  Not sure yet.  Things are crazy.

Ok, enough gabbing.  I need to get back to work.  Have an awesome Wednesday!

I'm melting! I'm melting!

You cursed brat! Look what you've done! I'm melting! melting! Oh, what a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?

Sorry - my best friend is a HUGE Wizard of Oz fan, so we tend to quote from it often...

and your little dog too!

Saturday afternoon, Maddy and Meri got extremely wet while making a couple snowmen in our front yard. I was inside getting ready for our dinner party and it kept them from begging off of housework... Their lack of interest to help was plain to see, as plain as the nose on my face!

Here are their masterpieces!They came in and got curly egg noodles, colored them with black magic marker for the "doo". Cute, huh?Unfortunately Maddy's had already fallen apart and the top slid off before her boyfriend showed up to see it.

Oh, so she is! Well, bust my buttons! Why didn't you say that in the first place?

That was the evening of "Meet The Parents"...

Bah! We've known them for 17 years! Maddy had attended Kindermusic with the boyfriend at his mom's house when she was in preschool. And their older son was one of my son's best friends for many years. But we'd never had them over for dinner.

We grilled out steaks and chicken. Robb had to shovel a path to the grill on the deck. Baked some ginormous potatoes. Gayle brought some homegrown sweetcorn that tasted like summer. HONEST!! It was THAT good! She also brought fruit pizza! *drools*After dinner, we played a crazy game of Mad Gab. Meri rocks at that game! I think it's her keen sense of hearing and that's why she can understand when Robb and I try to whisper a conversation. She's used to making sense of things she shouldn't understand.

Then we broke out the Apples To Apples and my mother-in-law won. I think because she deliberately tried the most appropriate words every single time. dang. I should have tried that. When in doubt, I pick something that's an inside joke or the exact opposite... And Meri understands what most of the words mean now, so I can't bank on her picking Spiderman just because she loves him...

Anyway, we had a great time. I haven't laughed that much in one evening in a long time. Oh and this was when I told the potty training stories about Maddy. Of course we heard some funny things about the boyfriend too so it made it ok... It reminds me of Robb and my first years of married life. There was a girl that we worked with that on the weekends we got together with her and her fiance and had board game nights.

I need to make more time for things like that.

My! People come and go so quickly here!

The Curse of St. Patrick's Day....

Sounds scary doesn't it??! I have nothing against St. Patrick. I like him! He spread Christianity in a dark period of history and helped it flourish... I've stood on ground where he has stood! But this is apparently just a curse of that day. Let me tell you about my day yesterday....

Oh by the way! My Sits day got bumped to Wednesday! Stop back!

All afternoon, Robb and I cooked various foods for our annual St. Patrick's Day meal with some very close family friends. Click here for last years meal... Here are some of the highlights of the dinner among other dishes.

smoked salmon

Dingle pies

Leeks in cream sauce

colcannon

brown bread

It was getting to be about 4pm and I thought I better wake up Meri. We were going to leave at 5pm. She had not been feeling well at church that morning and wanted to take a nap that lasted all afternoon. As soon as she woke up, she went into the bathroom and started vomiting... dang.

We decided Robb would stay home with her, even tho I was only the sous chef and not the head chef... So we took out a few servings of things to leave at home and loaded up all the rest of the food into my car. Then the teenagers and I went out to our friends house in the country.

Dinner was great! Robb got tons of accolades from Mike and Ada and even a phone call telling him how good everything was. While I sat and visited with them, my kids went in and promptly fell asleep on their couch... We thought they were just stuffed... should have been a sign... We let them sleep for about 30 minutes or so, then made them come help pack up the stuff and put things away.

So on the way home... "someone" said, "I think I'm going to barf... in about 10 minutes." I thought PERFECT! Just enough time to get home! Less than a mile later, that someone said louder, "Pull over!!" We were on a county road and I pulled over as far as I could so no one would fall out of the passenger side into the ditch if they opened their door. It's a steep ditch there. As I came to a screeching halt, I unlocked the back doors, but it wasn't quick enough. sigh... That "someone" got sick in the car, on a coat and on the floor to the sounds of OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR! and finally out onto the shoulder of the road... A friend drove by just then and asked if they could help out. After crying UNCLEAN UNCLEAN and not being able to scare them away, I explained what had happened. Luckily we weren't too far from home at that point and luckily I had a beach towel in the car for handy things like this...

Three people spent the night in our living room, camped out with their precious "Barf Buddy Buckets" and favorite pillows. It was a night to remember...