Taco Stew

So one day I had an idea for a stew that was different. When I was pregnant, it was the cold months so I ate a lot of beef stew and grew very tired of it. So about two weeks ago I decided to invent a stew. I'm sure there are already Taco Stew out there for the crockpot but I thought I was being cool and inventive.

So I just blindly went to the grocery store and bought items I thought would be good in my Taco Stew. I like my food spicy, so you may want to turn down the Jalapeno flavor a bit.

1 - 14oz can of chicken broth
1 - (15oz) can of Hominy, drained (I chose yellow just on a whim)
1 - (15oz) can of Pinto beans, drained
1 - packet of Taco seasoning (I had chosen Ortega Garlic and Jalapeno flavored)
1 - (10oz) can of Ro-Tel hot (habanero)
2 - small tomatoes, diced
1-1.25 lbs of ground turkey meat
1 - Avocado
Shredded cheese (optional)
White corn tortilla chips

Add the tomatoes, ro-tel, hominy, beans, chicken broth and taco seasoning in a crock pot. Mix to dissolve the seasoning and then add in the ground turkey. Break up the ground turkey and set it on low for 6-8 hours.

Serve with tortilla chips on the bottom to soften them up, topped with shredded cheese and diced avocado. Enjoy!

Bitter Melon

Growing up, my mom use to make bitter melon. My siblings and I would never eat it, it was so bitter and overpowered whatever dish it was put into. But as I grew older, I somehow liked it's distinct bitterness, especially when it is fried with eggs.

Very quick and easy to make. I don't like onions but my recipe calls for it, I only use it to cook and get the flavor from it but I don't like to eat it. Anyways, below is the recipe I used.

5 large eggs
4 tablespoons of fish sauce
2 small bitter melons, cleaned and sliced thin
2 crushed garlic cloves
1 tsp of pepper
1 tsp of salt
1/4 cup of sliced white onions
1 tablespoon of oil

Add eggs, fish sauce and pepper in a bowl and beat the eggs to mix all of it together. Add half of the sliced onions to the egg mixture and set aside. In a skillet/wok, heat up the oil. Add the garlic and the rest of the onions and cook it up until it has a nice fragrant smell, then add the bitter melon. Stir fry the bitter melon, sprinkling it with salt while cooking until the bitter melon is slightly soft. Add the egg mixture to it and start folding the eggs and bitter melon together until eggs are done. You don't want to overly stir because the eggs will break to small pieces and just "vanish."

Enjoy, should take less than 10 minutes to cook.

Mara's Birthday part 2

We went to the Dallas zoo the next day since my in-laws were in town. I have never been and people kept telling me it was ok, but Ft. Worth zoo is better. Setting my expectations low, I was surprised. They had a great display for the elephants and lions.

It started out nice, but started to get hot, our pretty Fall weather was already gone in a week. :( Silly Texas weather.

Mara seemed to enjoy herself. All the animals were out and we were able to get good views on them.

Daddy was propping her up to see the Baboons in their habitat.

There are various bronze statues around the zoo, we saw this before the Giants of Africa exhibit and thought it would be cute to get a picture of her riding one.

The elephants were in a huge area and Mara loved to watch them eat and pull hay down from above. She kept pointing at them,I couldn't get a good picture of her pointing but close enough. :)

There is a small restaurant in the African Safari part of the zoo called Serengeti grill. It was so cool, you could eat and enjoy the view of the lions in AC! The lions were lazy and all gathered near the glass to nap. It was one of the coolest exhibits I saw.

We also did the monorail which was neat, seems like you can really see the animals up close. Overall it was a good experience and we couldn't finish it all because Mara got tired so we had to go home and let her sleep it off. We probably will come back again to try and finish the other half of the zoo.

Mara's Birthday Part 1.5

So the Thursday before Mara's birthday, I wanted to surprise her when I took her home from daycare by stringing up decorations. It was worth it too, her eyes grew big when we walked in the door together.

I bought a balloon pump, balloons and spool of colorful string. Blew up all the balloons and stringed them together to make a garland.

Her daddy then surprised her Friday with white roses and I had bought some flowers too the same day to decorate the center of the table not knowing of the sweet surprise.

Planning and Implementing Mara's First Birthday. Part 1

It is the Monday after a busy weekend. I feel like I got tread on by 100 horses and I am so exhausted. So let's start from the beginning...

I had probably started planning Mara's birthday party a month in advance to make sure it would be enjoyable. I spent weeks figuring out if I wanted a theme and selected fairies. Decent theme I thought, wasn't overly pink and I could dress her up in tutus and wings. So my first project was finding a cute costume. Luckily I found a cute Halloween costume as a Gerber Daisy. I just added wings and a bow in her hair and walaa! Cuteness!

Next was the food. My baby shower was sandwiches and I'm really tired of sandwiches, so I decided to plan out the food. Took me about 4 drafts in Word to finally have it finalized...boy did I overplan on the food. We have probably enough to last us more than a week if we decide to freeze some. You can see the spread behind me and also here:

Not pictured is the huge crockpot of beer cheese I melted for Fondue.

Then I got a few ideas from various parenting websites for Rice Krispie treats shaped like balloons...

So the list of food was quesadillas, stuffed jalapenos, Russian and French bread cubes for fondu, cocktail dogs, beer cheese fondu pot, tortilla chips, mini corndogs, rice krispie treas, zucchini muffins, sausage cheese muffins, vegetable platter(carrots, celery, locally grown variety cherry tomatoes) for fondue, fruit platter(strawberries, blueberries, Jazz apple slices and grapes), and birthday cake. The birthday cake was special, I sampled probably 4 different birthday cakes from various Asian bakeries to make sure I found the right one.

Mara seemed pretty happy with my choice on cake, and I'm glad that is over with. Now I have too much cake in the fridge. (Chinese style birthday cake is vanilla sponge cake with fruit in the middle and on top , iced with whip cream.)

She seemed to enjoy herself and the small kids that were also there seemed to have fun. So overall, I'm glad it went out stress free and full of fun. The ball pit I had bought for her birthday was a huge hit with all the small kids, everyone kept asking me where I got it so they could get it for their kid.