Treatloaf

I did not get a photo today, however I'm going to make up for it by posting one of our Hanson favorite (not to mention easiest) recipes:  Treatloaf.  

My mother hid Ben's cookbook for 6 months because she wanted to keep this recipe.  My brother Kent requests it within 30 minutes of seeing Ben when we go to Utah. He also asks him to make two.  Ben sends his brother taunting photos of Treatloaf when we have it for dinner.  My sister Bethany insists that there is magic in it.  There might be. I think it might just be cheese.

Treatload (aka Meatloaf)

1-1½ lbs hamburger (we do half hamburger, half ground pork)

1 cup cheese

1/3 cup milk

2 tsp onion powder

1 tsp parsley

1 tsp thyme

2 cups corn flakes

1 egg

salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix all ingredients by hand and shape into loaf at bottom of 9x13 pan.  Indent in the middle.  Cover with 1 can cream of mushroom soup.  Cook for 1-1½ hours

Day 246 - Big boy

Sam got into a WONDERFUL preschool program provided by the school district for kids with speech delay.  We could not be more thrilled.  He goes Monday through Friday from 7:45 am to 11:45 am.  

Fun for Sam.  

Sad for Mom.  

Good for Mom's chores.  

Great for Mom and Sam's afternoon naps.  

Wednesday was his first day of school.  He loved it.  

When I dropped him off in the morning, one of the little boys in his class exclaimed "Yea!  Sam's here!"  

When I picked him up he was super happy and they said he had a wonderful day.  We love all of his teachers and feel so blessed that it is possible for him to participate in the program.  

After school, we went and met Ben for lunch at Phil's Ice House.  He was excited to see Dad, play on the playground and drink lots of root-beer.  Every time I look at him, I can hardly believe how big he is getting

We are looking forward to many great things as our little guy continues to grow and develop.  

  

Day 245 - Steak Pasta

Ben's least favorite thing about me being pregnant is the way it wrecks our dinner schedule.  We plan a month at a time but it seems like at least once a week I beg him for something off the plan.  

This week it was Steak Gorgonzola from Olive Garden.  There are two problems with this.  First, Ben refuses to go to Olive Garden.  Second, I'm not really supposed to eat Gorgonzola.  Something about mold and soft cheese or something.  Anyway,  I fixated for three days and finally decided to make my own Non-Gorgonzola Steak Gorgonzola.  Here's the recipe I used.   (Loosely based on this recipe.)

Steak Gorgonzola (minus the Gorgonzola) for Crazy Pregnant Ladies



The Glaze
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup water
2 Tablespoons brown sugar

Simmer until thickened, cool to room temperature.

The steak
1 lbs flat iron steak thinly sliced
1 bottle Newman's Own Balsamic Vinaigrette
1 TBSP rosemary

Dump it all in a Ziploc and marinade for an hour.  About 5 minutes before the pasta is done, throw it on the grill and cook for 1-2 minutes per side

The Pasta
1 lbs fettuccine

Bring a pot of well salted water to a boil.  Cook as directed.  So easy.

The Sauce
2 TBSP butter (Tracey addition)
1/2 large sweet onion, finely chopped (Tracey addition)
3 cloves of minced garlic (Tracey addition)
1 1/2 cup white milk
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup  parmesan cheese, grated
1/2 cup  romano cheese, grated ( I didn't have Romano so I just used all Parmesan.  It worked just fine)
5 egg yolks, fresh jumbo eggs
Salt and black pepper  (LOTS of black pepper.


Melt butter in large saucepan.  Add onions and cook until slightly caramalized.  Add garlic and cook until light golden brown.  Stir in milk, cream and cheese.  Cook until cheese is melted.  In a separate bowl, lighly beat the egg yolks.  Slowly add sauce mixture to bring eggs up to temperature, stirring the entire time.  Once the eggs have been tempered, add it to the rest of the sauce and cook over low for 5 minutes.  


Assemble your pasta, sauce, steak and cheese.  Garnish with glaze and chopped sundried tomatoes.

Day 244 - Spelling

I'm not sure what this says about our parenting abilities.  Either we are really great parents because Sam is spelling at the age of three.

Or we are really bad parents because we obviously let him watch WAY too much Pixar.

Day 243 - Goodbye feet

In case you haven't noticed, I've really been slacking on the posting.  I have a good reason though. 

It seems that I have misplaced my brain.  

And my balance.  

Not to mention my appetite.  

Wait, that's not true.  I still have my appetite.  

I've just lost the ability to keep the food I eat in my stomach. 

I have also lost my ability to stay awake all day long without taking a nap.

And the ability to stay awake past 10 pm.  This causes some blogging issues.  

Finally, in the last few days I seem to have misplaced my feet. 

While I'm not counting on it, I'm hoping to find all of the above around the end of March. 

Maybe if I'm lucky, the little culprit pushing out my abdomen will also make an appearance around the same time.  

Day 242 - Chex Mix

This is what I was eating at 11:00 on Wednesday night.  It's the gooiest, most delicious chex mix you have ever had.  

And once I find the post-it that I wrote the recipe on, I will share it with you.  

Day 241 - Mickey

When Sam was 6 months old, Ben took me to Disneyland for my birthday without Sam.  We had a LOVELY time.  While we were there we bought Sam the cutest Mickey you have ever seen.  It's a knit Mickey and we love it.  They had all of the main characters but we failed to pick up the rest.  Never again have we seen this line which is really too bad because Sam has taken to rotating sleeping between Mickey and Buzz every night.

Day 240 - Crepes

After 3 days of craving crepes, I gave in on Tuesday and made them.  This really boring photo was my delicious ham and cheese crepe.

What I really should have shown was the Nutella crepe topped with strawberry ice cream that I made later that night.  DELICIOUS.

Delay of Game

Hi all,

Just a quick check in. I've had a handful of messages expressing concern that I haven't updated the blog.  We are just fine.  I've been taking photos.  There's just a little bit of craziness going on at our house right now.  More on that soon.  Like tomorrow. . . or Monday.  Soon we'll be back to our regularly scheduled program.  I  promise.

Talk to you soon!
Tracey

Day 239 - Ice Cream

Sam is a really picky eater so when we find things that he likes, we try to work them into the rotation as much as possible.  Fortunately one of the things he love most is Costco cheese pizza. It's cheap.  It's easy.  I like it enough to split a slice with him. The funny part is that he only likes to eat pizza

  at Costco.  

Recently he added another item to the list of Sam approved items.  Costco ice cream.  Again, something that he only likes 

at Costco.  

Now, if I can just get him to eat hot dogs and chicken bakes, we will able to feed him the entire Costco menu.  

Day 238 - Pudding

Imagine my immense pleasure when I opened the fridge last night and found this . . . 

Chocolate pudding from Rudy's BBQ that I bought on Friday night.  So happy.  So delicious.  

Day 237 - Chuck

Ben's family came this weekend for the BYU vs. Texas game.  We are so excited to have them here.  

The group includes his nearly identical twin brothers Nathan and Berkeley. Nathan's wife Kristy and Berk's oldest son Romney.  Ben has always called Romney by his nickname, Chuck.  Therefore I have always called him Chuck. However, I'm pretty sure Ben and I are the only people who call him Chuck. As you can imagine, this twin uncles and nickname situation has caused some major confusion for Sam.

To make matters even more hilarious, Sam LOVES Berkeley.  Loves him.  He wants Berk to play with him, hold him and carry him everywhere. They have a major Fruit Ninja connection going on.  It is really very sweet.  

You would think that Sam calling Berk by the wrong name would be natural with him having a twin an all.  Except Sam doesn't call him Nathan.
He calls him Romney.
He refuses to call him Berkeley.    

But what does Sam call Romney?  Chuck, of course.  

Don't you love the conflicting BYU and Texas gear?  Such cute Hanson boys.

Day 236 - Bat Bridge

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a picture of some of the Austin bats.  My sister-in-law Kristy immediately replied that she DID NOT want to see the bats while in town this weekend.  

Guess what we did last night?

  

Day 235 - Area Rug and Excuses

I hate our carpet.  DESPISE it.  For months I have been trying to come up with a solution to keep it clean.  We don't wear shoes in the house but unfortunately we have a little person living in our home who likes to toss sippy cups around.  Grr.  I've been eyeing area rugs for awhile but they are just so expensive and the thought of putting a rug on carpet seems so strange to me.  I don't know why.  

Luckily, Sam's birthday brought the perfect solution.  If my house didn't look like a Toys R Us before, it certainly does now.  But hey, it keeps the carpet clean.

In other news, my friend Shannon called today to check on us.  Apparently the combination of the craziness of our lives right now, the fires all over Texas combined with the fact that I didn't post yesterday was enough to cause a little bit of concern.  This is why I love her.  

We are doing just fine.  There aren't any fires in our immediate vicinity.  However, I did pack a bag today just in case something happens and we need to evacuate.  We are hoping that will not be the case but it is better to be prepared.  Unfortunately there are many Texans who were caught by surprise and do not have the things that they need.  My heart aches for the 1,386 families that have lost there homes in Bastrop just outside of Austin.  We continue to pray for rain and hope that this dreadful drought will soon come to an end.  

Day 234 - Boundaries

As our friends were getting ready to go home today, Sam disappeared into the guest bedroom for a minute.  Since Sam is busy and I'm suspicious, I went in to check out the situation.  I was surprised to find this little scene.  

Sam LOVED the baby and could not get enough of him.  Every time someone would sit down with him, Sam needed to be on their lap as well checking out the situation.  Sam would help pat the baby's back and give him his binky.  He didn't even seem to mind when Ben or I would hold the baby.  He especially liked to lay on the baby mat with him.  

There may be hope for this kid yet. For the most part he did really well.  He only tried to step on him once.  He was even gentle.  For Sam. In the last 2 days he heard, "Sam!  Be gentle!"  about a million times.    Hopefully when we have another he will have learned some boundaries so we don't have to hide the baby .  Not that we know anyone who has to do that.  Right Mags?

Day 233 - Baby

 I'm a little behind this weekend due to us having guests.

Sam is enamored with the smallest guest.

I'm not sure he is as excited about Sam.

Unfortunately for our guests it is due to their home be evacuated because of the crazy Texas wildfires.  About 4000 homes just down the road from us were evacuated on Sunday night and they won't be able to go home until Tuesday at noon.  At the earliest.   A good chunk of our church congregation lives in the community and many of our friends were displaced.  

I think it time to start doing some rain dances.  

Day 232 - Guests

Again, we have guests at our house.  One of them is furry.  Sam is thrilled.  

Day 230 - Sloooooow Cooker and Day 231 - Chile Verde

You might remember my finger burning chile incident from last week.  Well, since I still had Hatch peppers left. I needed to find something to do with them.  So Ben bought me a giant 12 lbs pork shoulder at Costco.  I cut off a fourth of it and decided to make green chile pork something.  Well, it turned into this.  

Which the next day turned into this: 

Oh, how I love chile verde.  Especially when I kind of make it by accident.  My subconscious must be telling me something. 

Day 229 - Sweet

The only thing sweeter than a new baby is a sleeping new baby.

Or a sleeping new baby being held by a sweet daddy.