Chicken-o-Matic

I do like the rotisserie chickens you can buy in the deli section of the grocery store - they are yummy and convenient. But my frugal conscience sits on one shoulder, nagging "You know you can get twice the bird for the same price if you just took care of business yourself." So I'm trying to be better about roasting (read: slow cooking) my own chicken at home. Does it get the delicious crispy skin? Nope. But that's okay, since that's a health hazard anyway. I prefer to save my fat consumption for Snickers, as readers should well know by now.

I was able to buy a cage-free ("roam, little buddy, roam!") 4.5 pound chicken on sale for about $6. I got tons of meat from it:

Plate o' shredded goodness, plate o' discarded yuckies and a crockpot that needs a good external cleaning one o' these days.

This is enough to carry us through a full batch of enchiladas, a chicken salad for moi, a couple chicken quesadillas and tidbits for Landon to nosh on at dinner time. Between the initial rinse of the bird, the intermediary Lysol scrub down and the final shredding activities, it was only about 25 minutes effort.

Crockpot Chicken:

- Rinse chicken under cold water and pat dry (I also get rid of any of the weird stuff in the bird...*shudder*).

- Throw a few foil balls in bottom of crockpot; rest chicken on top

- Season with salt, pepper, paprika, etc. Whatever you want, really. I'm not sure if it makes much of a difference, because the skin is going to fall off anyways. Which brings me to my next point...

- I cooked the 4.5 pound bird for about 7 hours on low and the darn thing fell apart when I tried to pull it out. Like, seriously fell apart into 20 pieces. This was fine since I was looking to just use it for shredded meat, anyways.

The wishbone fell right out!

You don't know about the wishbone? Pssh, you are missing out, my friend. My mom used to give my brother and I the wishbone out of the Sunday chicken roast for us to break using our pinkies. Whoever got the largest piece out of the break had their wish come true. Well, that was the legend, at least. Now that I recall, I don't think I did ever get to meet Richard Marx for my 12th birthday. Hmm...

This I Can Do: Baby Food

I have inflated my mothering confidence this week as I stuck to my plan of making baby food for Landon. Contrary to popular belief, you can't just nibble on some Snickers and then regurgitate it onto a high chair tray for him to pick at, avian-style. That would be too easy. However, it turns out that pureeing your own baby food isn't that hard, either. And it is a lot cheaper... like 80% off, bargain bin prices... but organic!!!

Turns out that one butternut squash makes a sh*#-ton of baby food.

First off - baby food itself isn't that expensive. Fifty to sixty cents a jar for organic stuff down in these parts. A couple bucks for a box of rice cereal. A buck for a jug of nursery water. But these things add up when you have a baby who is growing a mile a minute. At our 6 month appointment, we learned that Landon was a little low on the weight scale for his age (like, 15th percentile low) so I'm not sure if I've been generating low fat milk somehow - which surely is impossible given my love of fast food - or if Landon's energy bursts are just continuing to burn calories. In any event, he scarfs down a couple jars a day in addition to a couple full servings of rice or oat cereal. Books say "just start with a tablespoon" - Landon decided to start with a cup. He gained half a pound the week after his 6 month appointment. Onwards and upwards.

Baby food: this I can do!

Alternative Mother's Day

As per standard military lifestyle antics, we had to celebrate Mothers Day on an alternative date this year (Erik will be gone flying one of the jets to a New Orleans air show this weekend). So today was Mothers Day in the Halvorson household. I heart random holidays!

My morning was nice and leisurely as Erik handled the baby boy in the morning so I could relax for an extra half hour in bed. It. was. awesome. After an internal battle of whether or not to stay upon the fluffy heaven of the mattress, I decided to emerge out of the bedroom to join my family. And I'm glad I did because my favorite type of donuts were available for consumption (1 for Erik, 2 for me!).


After reading some funny Hallmark thoughts from Hubby and Baby, I had fun opening up the packages. The first gift was the Zumba dance workout game for the PS3. I ironically opened it while I was finishing my second donut.


My other gifts were an Iced Tea Maker and a reusable iced beverage cup and straw. I love using straws and I consume a crap ton of iced tea (UNsweetened!) in the warm weather... so the gifts were perfect. I'll walk around the house kinda' looking like Nancy Botwin.


I'm super excited to read the new Tina Fey book that my dad sent. It wasn't even planned, but it arrived with perfect timing on our alternative date of celebration.

The evening was wrapped up with a steak dinner prepared by Erik and a dessert of cake and Snickers ice cream. I saved the ice cream for wallowing while we miss him this weekend.

Whenever and however you celebrate, Happy Mothers Day to all the mommas out there!

It's Getting Hot Up in Herrrr

Growing up in the elementary schools of Midwest and Northeast suburbia, I've rendered my fair share of crayon art depicting the good ol' March slogan "In like a lion, out like a lamb." We used cotton balls for the lion's mane and for the lamb's wool - economizing at its best. Anyhoodles, down in Southeast Texas, I suppose the slogan would be "In hot as balls, out hotter than balls." [I won't be making a crayon drawing of that.]

Landon and I ran into the grocery store earlier in the week for a couple items and we are already hitting the walls of A/C shock. You know the kind: Where transitioning from 65 degree indoors to 95 degree outdoors throws your body into a goosebumpy sweaty confused state. After picking up our staples (milk, chicken, Snickers, eggs, etc), the car was a mini oven. It's too early for this:


Before you comment on the fact I haven't reset my trip meter in a while or that I should plan a trip to the gas station soon, I wanted to direct your attention to the temperature gauge reading 95 degrees.

The good news? Landon gets to lay around in his diapers (translates to less laundry - woohoo!) and when he does wear duds, he gets to try out some of his Japanese yukatas (kind of like a summertime kimono).