For Those Who Love Book Clubs, but Just Don't Have That Much Free Time

 I'm back. And you're still here. Oh good. That was a somewhat longer break than planned, two deaths in a month turned into three deaths in six weeks. I have also made significant progress on potty-training Thing 2. Actually being a mom trumps blogging about motherhood.

  I enjoy reading many types of books. History, children's books, science-fiction, classics, parenting, cooking, biographies, food storage, young adult and mysteries. I also enjoy discussing books with other people and getting their opinions on books. Unfortunately, since I have been working full-time I just don't have time for book clubs. Finishing a book on a schedule usually doesn't happen. Fortunately there is Goodreads. With Goodreads, I can share, rate, organize and keep track of what books I am reading. (I love lists and I love organizing, which are probably a big part of why I love this site.)  I can also see what my friends are reading and what they thought of books that we both have read. I can write reviews for books that I have read and post them, as well as read reviews for almost any book under the sun. After reading a book I can send a recommendation to any of my friend who I think would also enjoy it. Before I discovered Goodreads, I had dozens of scraps of paper about with books written on them that I wanted to read, now I just put them on my to-read list. (Or sometimes my friends will just send me an on-line recommendation.) It cuts down on the clutter. In addition to these, Goodreads makes it easy to form your own online book club. If you love to read and you haven't checked this site out yet, you should. You can see what books I am reading by clicking on the Goodreads app in the left sidebar.

Another fun site for you bibliophiles out there is Book Drum. It's almost like a collection of elaborate creative book reports. People take books they love and create profiles to accompany them. A profile is full of comments, pictures, videos and music that are relevant to the book. The only drawback of this site that I can easily get lost in and get distracted from those other productive things that I should be doing.

Blogging Break

We're getting ready for the second funeral in less than a month. So I'm taking a break from blogging, probably for a week or so. I'm sure that you understand.

Food Storage Friday: Chicken Alfredo

There are two ways of doing this. And I have tried both. I store Classico Alfredo sauce in a jar, canned mushrooms, add cooked chicken and serve over cooked pasta. Most often I put slightly more effort into it. Not as much effort as say a traditional chicken alfredo recipe, because that just takes too long to make on a regular basis.

Chicken Alfredo
Food Storage Ingredients:
1 teaspoon of dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon of dried rosemary (optional)
16 oz dried pasta (I usually use bow-tie or penne)
1 cup evaporated milk
1 4 oz can mushrooms
1 Tablespoon dried minced onions
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
2 Tablespoons chopped sundried tomatoes (optional)


Fresh Ingredients:
1-2 cups cooked and seasoned chicken
1 Tablespoon of butter
1 teaspoon lemon juice
4 oz neufchatel (low-fat cream cheese)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan

1. Cook pasta according to package directions. 2. Simmer evaporated milk and neufchatel. After cheese softens whisk into milk until smooth. 3. Whisk in Parmesan. 4. Stir in remaining ingredients. Serve over pasta.

We made roasted eggplant and baked zucchini with caramelized tomatoes and mozzarella to go on the side. The roasted eggplant was AMAZING. The next time we get eggplant in our Bountiful Basket I'll have to write a post about it with pictures. Wow, I wish I had one right now. It's so good.

Notes: So for this batch of Alfredo sauce I sauteed 3/4 cup of fresh mushrooms in a dash of olive oil with some garlic. It was delicious, but most often I just use the canned variety. I also added in some fresh rosemary and a tiny bit of parsley because I had it from our Italian pack. I have used canned chicken in this recipe before. It's still pretty good, but not as good as fresh grilled and it doesn't reheat as well. I found a version of this recipe in a book that I once read on a very slow night shift years ago. I can't remember the name of it, something about tips for raising a family without losing your sanity. I've tried finding the book, but since I can't remember the author or actual title. I did photocopy a couple recipes that I combined into this one. Both of the them called for a cube of butter, 8 oz cream cheese, heavy cream and a great deal more salt. So although this is not my healthiest of recipes, it's delicious and significantly more healthy than what I started with.

Preparedness Wednesday: January in Review

 So originally my plan was to every Wednesday blog about what I am doing to get my house in order and build my food storage. Then I decided that it's just not interesting enough to merit four blog posts per month. Maybe one blog post per month. So here's what I did in January:

Doing:

• Worked an extra shift to have money to put towards debt
• Took inventory
• Read Prophetic Statements on Food Storage for Latter-Day Saints
• Read Emergency Food Storage and Survival Book
(We were out of town multiple times, reading was as much doing as could be happening.)
• Changed all of the burned out bulbs through the house. (ok, actually my husband did those.)

Food Storage/Emergency Preparedness Additions:

• Emergency First Aid Supplies
• Wheat and more wheat-Costco
• Vegetable Oil- Costco
• Enough salt to reach a year supply for my family- $4 at Walmart
• Hormel Chili- 29 cents each with coupons-Smith's
• Hunt's Diced Tomatoes- 16 cents each after coupon-Smith's

$85 CSN Gift Certificate Winner

The winner of the January giveaway is Barbara Montag. Congratulations!