Crunchy Pecan Chicken

I LOVE my Jackson, MS Junior League "Come on In" cookbook that I bought during college. I have made many recipes from it and have never been disappointed. I pulled it out this week for one of my favorite chicken recipes. The very first time I made this chicken I made it with the skin on as the recipe suggested, but I realized I prefer my chicken without the skin so that is how I make it now. :)

Crunchy Pecan Chicken

4 boneless chicken breasts (skin on or off, your choice)

1 cup buttermilk biscuit mix (I use the Bisquick brand and like it better than the generic)

1/2 cup pecan pieces

1 tsp. paprika

1/2 tsp. Creole seasoning

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup of butter, melted

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl. In another bowl pour your buttermilk. Dip each chicken breast in the buttermilk and then in the dry mixture to coat. Place in a greased baking dish. Cover chicken with melted butter and bake at 350 degrees for an hour.

I tried out a new mashed potato recipe to go with the chicken. Well, I actually combined two recipes but they were delicious tators! The sour cream and chicken broth made these SO creamy! We loved them and I will definitely make them again.

Red Garlic Mashed Potatoes

8 medium red potatoes, quartered with skin on

4-5 cloves of garlic, whole

4 Tbs. butter

1/4 cup sour cream

1 tsp. salt

1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese (I grated mine fresh because I had a block in the fridge)

1/4 cup of chicken broth

In a large pot boil the potatoes and garlic for 20 min. or until tender. Drain potatoes and garlic then return to pot. Add in the butter first so it will melt and then follow with remaining ingredients. Mix everything together with an electric mixer.

I topped off the meal with some fresh steamed broccoli and dinner rolls with honey butter. Is your tummy growling yet??? Hope you enjoy. :)

Small Town Life

Happy Monday! This past weekend Eli and I accompanied Marc to Lakin, KS so he could work in their ER for the weekend. Lakin is about 3 1/2 hours west of us and not too far from the Colorado border. It is a town of about 2,000 people. There is a Subway, two or three local restaurants, an ice cream shop, a few gas stations, and a small grocery. The hospital is actually new and very nice for such a small community. This was Marc's third time working in Lakin, but the first time we were able to go with him. The hospital fortunately had some housing available this time so we decided to try it out to see how easy/difficult it would be caring for Eli out of his environment. It was a little bit hard not having access to things from home but I think Marc REALLY enjoyed the company so we will definitely try it again.

The county hospital in Lakin has a nursing home and an assisted living center attached to it so we stayed in a studio apartment in the assisted living part. There are probably ten or so residents currently living there. Eli's tantrums and night time awakenings were probably a little too much for them. :) I am sure they were ready for us to leave so they could have their peace and quiet back! However, when Eli was being sweet he brought a few smiles to their faces. I can now feel that his molars on the bottom have cut through so I hope he starts sleeping through the night again soon. I think we are going to do some sleep training this week if things aren't much better (aka lettting him cry it out!) because I think he is getting used to us coming in and soothing him back to sleep every time he cries. It will probably mean two or three very sleepless night for all of us but usually that is all it takes to get him back into his routine. We'll see how that goes!

We don't have a portable high chair so Eli ate all of his meals on the floor in the apartment (on a plate of course). I am not sure what I was thinking the afternoon I served him ravioli for lunch! His bib kept it off of him but he got it all over the floor, furniture, and me. :) Not a good idea! He did pretty well with his cheerios and milk though.

Marc had very few patients all weekend. He saw two people on Friday night when we arrived, had clinic until noon on Saturday and saw about 10, and then saw a few on Sunday afternoon. Overall, it was a really easy weekend for him. Because Marc had so much free time we took Eli to the community pool on Saturday and to a school park on Sunday. We were planning on going back to the pool on Sunday (you can't beat $1 admission!) but Marc had a few sick patients come in that required a lot of his time. Once he was free, he took Eli to swim in the indoor PT pool at the hospital where he tried out swimmies for the first time and bobbed under water with Marc. He loved going under water! Here are some pictures from the pools and park.

We left at 6:30 on Sunday evening and were home shortly after 10pm. It was a great weekend! Since I didn't get my shopping done yesterday I ran to Walgreens over lunch today and to the grocery store tonight. I am going to put an update up later this week on The Grocery Game. You won't believe all the FREE things I have gotten on my shopping trips so I will take a picture to prove it. :) I think I am officially addicted to coupons!

A Random Post

I feel a little scattered since I haven't been able to blog much in the past few weeks so I thought I would just put a post together with all the recent pictures I wanted to share so I can start fresh this weekend with new posts.

Eli had his 15 month check-up last week and did really well. He weighed in at 23 lb. 10 oz. which is right at 40th% and measured 31 inches long which is right at 50th%. He was 60th% overall. He was supposed to get 3 shots but one of his shots (ActHib) accidentally got swapped out for a combination vaccine (Pentacel) so he ended up with two extra shots that he didn't need (medical errors even happen to people who are medical!). The really bad part was one of the extra shots in the combination vaccine was a DTaP and they gave him that shot in the same leg he got the DTaP he was supposed to receive. So, he received two of the same vaccine in the same leg. His poor little leg was so sore and a little swollen. He fortunately didn't have any other problems and was back to normal within a few days.

We are now dealing with his molars coming in on the bottom (he had two come in on the top a few weeks ago) and hoping he starts sleeping through the night again REAL soon. I am thankful that his sleep problems are going on right now and not when I have another baby up as well at night needing to feed. Eli has always been an excellent sleeper so it throws all of us off when he has periods like this. I think some of it might be separation anxiety (since he gets really upset when we leave any room in the house without him) so it is hard to find the balance when pain is an issue as well. One thing he responds really well to during the night is if we walk in his room and say, "Eli, put your head down." If he is standing at his crib railing crying he drops to the mattress in no time at all and you don't hear another peep out of him. It is SO amazing. This must be a phrase they use often at daycare during nap time because we hardly ever used this phrase before we found out his reaction to it. Now we use it all the time! I was even telling Marc a story about Eli tonight at dinner and used that phrase and Eli tried to put his head down on his high chair while eating his dinner. It was really funny! Hopefully, they are not beating our child into submission at daycare. Ha!

We decided when Eli turned 15 months last week that it was time for another haircut. I DO NOT know anything about cutting hair. I watch my hair stylist and how she cuts and have tried to do something similar when I cut Eli's hair but it doesn't always work out as I picture it to. He hates getting his hair cut and thrashes about while Marc tries to hold him down. I think his next haircut will probably need to be right before my sister's wedding so I think I will take him somewhere to get it done right. Maybe he will do better for someone else. :) Here are his before and after pictures from last week.

Hailey's bedding has all come in! I really love it. I was a little scared to do a lot of pink by itself and I love how this bedding has lots of yellow and lime green to balance out the pink. Here are some of the fabric swatches. The parts that look a little purple are actually pink. I am going to get the crib ordered tomorrow and then we will start clearing the room out and decorating in the next few weeks. My sister was so sweet to buy this bedding for Hailey just like she bought Eli his baby bedding. :)

My last random picture is well... really random. I found this on our tree last week. Do you know what this is?

Can you see it? It is the shell of a Cicada (I think some people say they are locusts but they aren't technically related). I used to see these all the time in southern Arkansas at my Memaw and Poppy's farm and in college at Ole Miss but I hadn't seen these yet in Kansas. I don't think Marc had ever seen one when I pointed it out to him. It may seem funny that I took a picture of this bug shell, but it brings back so many memories of my summertime in southern Arkansas as a kid when my cousin and I would have competitions about how many shells we could collect. Odd, I know. :) Just thought I would share this treasure in case you have never seen one.

Eli and I are planning on joining Marc this weekend while he moonlights in a small town a few hours away. They have an apartment for us to stay in for the weekend so it should be fun. Marc usually isn't very busy at this hospital so I think we will have plenty of time to spend with him. I am really looking forward to it. Besides, I certainly wouldn't want to celebrate our 5 year anniversary without Marc!

Up and Running... Almost

We purchased a new computer this weekend and I am trying to get everything situated on it. I am not sure what I was thinking when I thought a new laptop could be a cheap purchase. I guess there are some things in life you just have to look at as long term investments! I really like this computer and think it should serve us well over the next few years. We bought another Toshiba since we had very few problems with the last one. I know it will take me awhile to get all our programs loaded for our camera, video camera, and printer so I will probably be working on that as the week goes on. I don't have access to any recent pictures I have taken, but I do, however, have some cute pictures from his 15 month photo shoot from this weekend that I wanted to share. We only got four of the poses but they gave us the CD which allows us to share all of the poses. This is probably a tease for the grandparents but I will be mailing their copies out later this week. If you can't tell, Eli did in fact have haircut #2 by his loving mama. That deserves a whole post by itself! Don't look too closely, Marc says I cut the left side of his head like Forest Gump. Ha! Hope you enjoy the pics. :)