Today, I let the kids assemble this yummy treat:

Mix together a small box of instant pudding and 1 1/2 cups of milk.

Add whipped cream and a cup of mini marshmallows.

Put a scoop on one graham cracker square and top with the other. Put mini chocolate chips around the sides.

Wrap in plastic wrap and place in the freezer. Let thaw for 5 minutes before eating.

I haven't posted in a while because my parents were actually here last weekend! We pulled off a surprise birthday party for my sister who just turned 40 last week. She had no idea about the party at all!

Anyway, this week, I have been trying out some new recipes. I found out about this website (if you go to this site, you can download some of the sample books!) from this blog (this blog has some great recipes and tips). Now I have to admit, I have never thought about cooking large amounts of food and freezing it before. But our schedule gets a little busy sometimes and I hate the thought of not eating a good meal at home. So Monday, I prepared Make Ahead Chimichangas. I was able to make enough for dinner that night, plus enough for 4 more meals for the freezer. Tuesday night, I make BBQ Chicken. I bought enough chicken on sale to prepare dinner for that night, plus 2 more dinners for the freezer. Then this afternoon, I prepared Breakfast Burritos. Kev has been eating a modified South Beach diet, so I prepared his with whole grain tortillas and low fat cheese. I was able to put about 24 burritos in the freezer!! I still need to do the French Toast Sticks.

In the refrigerator, I had these ingredients:

Frozen meatballs, leftover spaghetti and some grated mozarella cheese turned into this:

I put it in the oven on 350 degrees for about 35 minutes and we ended up with this for dinner:

Tonight, I pulled out our Resurrection Roll 'recipe' for dessert. We still had some Strawberry Marshmallows that we bought on sale after Valentine's Day.

Here are a couple of photos from the process:

Getting ready to place 'Jesus' in the 'embalming oil' and 'spices'.

Placing 'Jesus' into the 'tomb'.

He is risen!! Have a blessed Easter!!

...that when you fill the muffin tins fuller than the stated 2/3 full that you get something that looks like this:

This is a Paula Deen Blueberry Gem recipe (basically a Blueberry Muffin recipe, I would share the recipe with you but I can't find it on the internet! It is in her Celebrates cookbook.)

Well, the recipe says it makes 18 muffins. I have 2-12 cup muffin pans. I really didn't feel like getting the 2nd pan dirty for only 6 more muffins, so I thought I would just fill the first muffin pan with the extra batter. I thought they would puff up nice and be nice big muffins!

Boy, I was so wrong! They look like mushrooms!! It was really hard to get them out of the pan because they spread out over the top so much! Oh well, they are really yummy though and I can't wait to eat them in the morning for breakfast. Next time, I will have to make 18 muffins like the recipe instead of taking a shortcut! :o)

Back in December, I was asked to post a recipe for this jam. Since it has been rainy and dreary here this week and I really don't have much to post about, I thought I would post the link for this yummy jam!! You can find the recipe here.

I decided to try to find a recipe for this jam after visiting Cover's Apple Ranch a couple of years ago. They had a jam called 'Christmas Jam' that I just loved to have on biscuits, english muffins and bagels. Looking at the ingredients, I decided to search for a recipe and found the one above. Since cranberries are only available for a couple of months, I make sure I buy some extra bags and store them in my freezer.

I hope you decide to give this recipe a try!

As promised here are some links for some of my favorite pumpkin recipes!

Pumpkin Apple Streusel Muffins,  Classic Pumpkin Pie,  Pumpkin Fudge,  Pumpkin Pie Bread,  Pumpkin Crunch Cake,  Macadamia Nut White Chip Pumpkin Cookies,  Iced Pumpkin Cookies,  Pumpkin Streusel Coffeecake,  Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake

These are all recipes that I have tried and are in my keeper recipe binder. I may not make all of them every year, but it is always nice to have a few really good recipes on hand!

Now onto pillowcases! The 4-H group is preparing pillowcases for kids in children's hospitals as a service project. So the other day, I had both kids use the sewing machine to help make them. This was Matthew's first time using the sewing machine. He did a really good job! Now I need to teach him how to sew on a button and his sewing skills are complete as far as I am concerned.

Here are pictures of both kids at the sewing machine and their complete pillowcases:

On Friday, we had some really ripe bananas that needed to be used ASAP! So, since we were going to be up early on Saturday, Kelsey and I decided to make some muffins for our breakfast on the road. I have not found a banana muffin recipe that I really like YET, so we tried this one. Here are some pictures of Kelsey helping out and a final picture of one of the muffins:

We had our muffins in the car on our way to a rabbit show about 2 hours away! Kelsey's rabbit, Lucy, won a 2nd place and a 3rd place. Here is a picture of Kelsey reading to Lucy:

On Friday, I also cooked one of our pumpkins. Today I was able to put the cooked pumpkin through the food processor and ended up with 7 cups of pumpkin. I was able to put 6 cups of pumpkin in the freezer and decided to use one cup in my favorite pumpkin bread recipe to make more muffins for our long day tomorrow!

In the new issue of Family Fun, there is a fun new way to create recipe pages. You can also share the pages with friends by e-mail or even on a blog! :o)

Click to play | Make your own Smilebox

Last week I posted about some freezer recipes that I had prepared. Tonight we had the Chicken Parmesan. I took the pan out of the freezer last night and let it thaw in the refreigerator. Tonight at about 5pm, I set the oven and a few minutes later, popped the meal into the oven. About 45 minutes later, I started to boil some water for some mini penne to go with the meal. We still had some homemade french bread from yesterday. I wished I had gone to the store to get some salad fixings, but it didn't happen today, oh well! So about 6pm, we all sat down for dinner. The final verdict was 4 very big thumbs up!! The chicken was very, very good and the sauce, oh, it was very good also!! (Thanks Cena for that great recipe!) The best news is I have three more Chicken Parmesan meals in the freezer!! Yum!

Before church on Sunday, I put a boneless pork butt in the crock pot so we could have pulled BBQ pork sandwiches for dinner that night. I was telling my mom about a recipe I found for ribs, but I used it for the pork and I really liked it!  Basically, it is this recipe. I use water instead of cola and for the pork butt, I don't grill it. Once we were ready to eat, I took the pork out of the crock pot and shredded up the meat. Then I put all the meat in a pan with some really good BBQ sauce from Trader Joe's and put it on the stove top to heat up the sauce a little bit. The pork was so tasty because it hadn't been sitting in BBQ sauce all day!

The other recipe I made this week was some oatmeal cookies from the Quaker Oats box. I like that recipe with chocolate chips! Yum! Instead of baking the whole batch all at once, I like to flash freeze some of the dough. Basically scoop some of the dough into balls and set them on wax paper on a cookie sheet. Put them in the freezer until they are hard. Then just put them in freezer bags and save them for a day when you want a fresh baked snack in the afternoon. Saves on eating 6 dozen cookies or so within a few days!