Giving Thanks

There are a lot of things to be grateful for. During a global pandemic, having the luxury of being healthy, employed, and together and as a family is something that is not lost on us. We are so fortunate and lucky in our situation, and that is not lost on us.

Sure, we may have to stay at home and work in the same space. Sure it's been 50 ish days since I've been out of my house for more than a walk around the block. Sure there are some times I get delusionally riddled with anxiety about the socio-political and economic state of our country. Sure, the quarantine fifteen is no joke. And sure, there have been maybe a few times one of us has slept on the couch. But how lucky we are, truly.

So, while browsing Meijer's website to figure out what to buy for our weekly grocery delivery, the thought of Thanksgiving popped in to my head. Well, really, it was "why is a whole turkey reserved just for one holiday?" and then "dang, it's not that expensive to grab a turkey" and then "dang, the last time we roasted a turkey it lead to a very interesting evening back in college...." but that is a completely different story I will never, ever continue discussing. And before you say anything, those Thanksgiving dinners I made for the lovely folks at S2Games and for those heading to Dreamhack were a replacement of the upcoming Thanksgiving meals they would be missing. In November. So that was different. That being said, I am now quite versed in making a bomb-diggity turkey.

So....

Why not have Thanksgiving in May?

Two the Moon! Happy Birthday BabyCPK

Our BabyCPK, who really isn't a baby anymore, turned TWO recently. Two, y'all. I cannot even. 

Unfortunately, Breaky had to miss this birthday, as he was doing back-to-back events, but we took lots of pictures, thanks to Dylan Jeffery! 

This year we did a "Two the Moon" theme and I think it was a hit! It was definitely one of my biggest "Pinterest Victories" I have had as a parent, if I may say so myself.

There were a ton of friends and family that attended, but for privacy's sake, because a lot of the kids were younger, I am not including pictures of guests. But you can enjoy the still fantastic pics from Dylan Jeffery: 

Valentine's Day 2020

Happy Belated Valentine's Day from the CPK Family! 

Dog CPK getting her Valentine's day treat. She's such a good girl! 

Heart-Shaped pizzas for dinner! they were a big hit

BabyCPK demonstrating that no Valentine's Day is complete without cupcakes! 

Food Friday Meets Meatless Mondays

In an attempt to be a little more healthy and help out the environment in a small way, I implemented a "Meatless Mondays" and, believe it or not, Breaky has agreed to go along with it!

Breaky and I have always been big carnivores. It wasn't a meal, especially to Breaky, if it didn't have some kind of meat or meaty-protein. Thanks to the wonder of Pinterest, I found a multitude of vegetarian dinner ideas that aren't your typical "vegetarian dinner ideas" and aren't just pasta and sauce.

I have found, through numerous diets and doctor's restrictions on what I can and cannot eat, that the Fall season is legitimately the best season to be creative with healthier foods. Sweet potatoes, acorn squash, spaghetti squash,  etc...

Thus far we have used a lot of cauliflower, sweet potatoes, bell peppers and zucchini.

DISCLAIMER! None of these are my recipes. They came from Pinterest, and let's be honest, I, as always, modified them in some way or another.




This recipe is Korean BBQ Style Cauliflower Lettuce Wraps.
I modified it a little bit and used a dash of regular bbq sauce and halfed the amount of soy sauce (mostly because we ran out and it was like, 5:30 at night.

We threw in some vegetable spring rolls we had left over from game night, and BOOM. Success.














This next recipe was additionally a success, once I roasted the peppers long enough. I tried this a month ago, and Breaky was "meh" about it, as the peppers were still too crunchy.


I didn't really follow a recipe with this one. Honestly kind of made it up myself.

Basically, roasted the bell peppers for like, 30-45 minutes. Chopped up a head of cauliflower, cut up a bunch of mushrooms, added a dash of breadcrumbs and topped with different kinds of cheeses for each pepper.

I didn't take a picture of this recipe, so here's the source's picture. It was a moderate success. Once you added the hot sauce/chili flakes. Since we have a 1.5 year old at home, we don't add the kick to recipes until after we serve ourselves.

We also used a lower-carb pasta from Explore Cuisine. Which was decent. For this recipe, we used the Black Bean Spaghetti , which gave it a black and orange look. Very Halloweeny-festive

For more pinned ideas for Meatless Mondays and for other crafty ideas, take a look at my Pinterest Boards. Feel free to send me ideas! 

Food Friday: Rice Pudding

Welcome back to Food Friday with the Good Geek Wife. 

Rice pudding is something I used to only make around Christmas time. In fact, it is a part of our Christmas family tradition two days before Christmas when Breaky, and now BabyCPK celebrate Christmas as a small little family before heading to celebrate with more family. 

Well, come to find out, it is a hit any time during the year. Including a big hit for the BabyCPK, who, let's be honest is more of a ToddlerCPK at this point.

So here is my recipe that I use for my rice pudding. 

• 2 cup cooked white rice (or however much rice is left after making WAAYY too much for dinner)
• 2 cups milk (or 1 cup half and half or 1 cup milk and 1/2 cup creamer)
• 1/2 cup sugar or stevia
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• as many raisins as best suits your fancy

In a saucepan, combine rice, vanilla and sugar. Cook uncovered over mediumish heat until thickened, stirring often. We usually serve cold, but some serve it warm. If it's during the winter, we will actually just stick the whole pot in the snow to cool it down. Because=Michigan.

Then you add raisins when you are ready to serve. If you are feeling super fancy or if it's Christmas time, adding a little cinnamon could be fun too. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the CPKFamily

We had a small, family Christmas on Saturday with just the 4 of us (Breaky, BabyCPK, DogCPK and me). We had our traditional steak and cheese sauce and exchanged gifts. We also watched Olaf's Frozen Adventure, since Die Hard, which was our go-to for our tradition, isn't exactly baby appropriate. We were going to watch it when the kid went to bed, but we got the itch to play video games, of course, which meant that Breaky and I played Borderlands 2 together for our Christmas.

Food Friday: Norwegian Almond Cookies

So, my family, as many of you may recall, is Norwegian. My Dad's Mother's side.

We have incorporated a lot of Norwegian traditions, especially around Christmas time. Jule Kakke, which I mentioned in a blog post two years ago, Ghejost, which is a carmalized goat cheese and spelled 8 different ways depending on where you look and who you ask, the Dala horses we have up and about everywhere in our house, and many other little Norwegian things we've kept up from generation to generation.

One thing that I kind of picked up and kind of remember someone doing at some point in my childhood was the almond cookie with the maraschino cherry in the middle. It wasn't kept up year after year, however, which makes me think that maybe my grandmother was the one that made them once or twice, and then she passed away when I was pretty young.

Regardless, I kind of put together my own cookie recipe. YES you read that right, I can bake something.

So, Norwegian Almond Cookies:

Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 egg
- 2 cups flour
- almond extract *
- vanilla extract *
- maraschino cherries

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
Step 1:
Mix together butter and sugar until creamy.
Step 2:
Add egg and beat
Step 3:
Add flour and extracts. I use 1/2 teaspoon of each extract, as Breaky finds the almond overpowering if I do a whole teaspoon, which many of these recipes call for. Up to you though.
Step 4:
Chill dough for 1-2 hours (which I hardly ever have time to do, let's be honest, not the most important step)
Step 5:
Make  balls from the dough the size of a walnut and flatten on a cookie sheet
Step 6:
Press a cherry (or a half a cherry if you prefer) in to the middle of the cookie ball
Step 7:
Bake at 350 degrees F for 12-15 minutes until edges are light brown


Enjoy!

When Life Gives You Limes

So, funny story.

Sometimes, when I'm at work an Breaky is at home, I will send him and BabyCPK out grocery shopping.

This last time, all I asked was for one lemon. I knew he had a few other things he was going to pick up for the baby and the house, but for dinner, all I needed was one lemon.


I get home and this conversation happened:

Me: "Hey babe, did you get my lemon"
Breaky: ** blank stare **
Me: "You forgot didn't you?"
Breaky: "It was a lemon you needed?"
Me: "Yes"
Breaky: "I thought it was a lime"
Me: "Nope, one lemon"
Breaky: * doesn't believe me so tries to pull up our convo on his phone *
Breaky: "Oops, well I bought limes"
Me: "Limes, as in plural?"
Breaky: "Yeah, I went to Costco. We now have like, 20 limes."
Me:  ** blank stare **
Me: "WHAT THE HECK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH 20 LIMES?"
Breaky: "Margaritas?"

So, long story short, I was able to substitute what I needed my lemon for with one of my many limes now.




If anyone has any recipes that includes limes in it, please pass them along.

Food Friday for Fall: Apple Picking and Apple Everything

This past weekend we went apple picking. There are many farms in the area, but the one we went to was Gull Meadow Farms, as we have for the past few years. Ironically, both Breaky and I had been, but just never together. Each year, one of us had something else going on when the picking party commenced.

I consider it the start of fall. Whether this was actually planned or not, we actually DID go the first day of fall. The weather cooperated like it was planned: sunny, but in the mid to low 60s (Fahrenheit). It was also BabyCPK's first time at a farm and apple picking. So many firsts in these past few months, it's really hard to keep track.

We got Honey Crisp, Fuji, Gala, and a few other kinds of apples before calling it good. Breaky and I combined got just about a half a bushel.


Tangent Alert:
I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I hear the words "bushel" and "peck" I immediately think of the song "Bushel and a Peck"







With that many apples, you can imagine I'm scrambling to find and/or create recipes with apples in them. That, and my mid-day snack has been an apple. * Insert joke about an apple a day *

A few nights ago I made a pretty decent bacon-wrapped pork chops with apples with a poor man's risotto.

Last night, I made an apple pie. My recipe for that can be found here. That, however, was for dessert.

For dinner,  I made a Chicken Apple Stir Fry.

I have to admit, I made this recipe from many different recipes on Pinterest, as is my way. Heck, that's how I created my ever-famous Jambalaya recipe.

Here's the "recipe"
(I use "Recipe" loosly, as I kind of guestimate amounts and change things halfway through making it. Aka I wing it)


- 3 carrots
- 2 small zuchinni
- 4 Snack Peppers
- 1/2 packet of mushroom
- Chicken-Cubed-1 cup
- 2 apples-chopped up
- Apple Cider or Apple juice 1/2 cup
- 1/2 cup Soy Sauce
- (just a sprinkling) Red Pepper flakes
- Garlic powder to taste
- Minced onion- I dunno, like, 1 tablespoon?
- Cinnamon-Very very light sprinkling.

Drizzle olive oil on skillet or wok. Cook chicken. Remove chicken. Cook carrots, peppers, zuchinni, minced onion and mushrooms until carrots are soft-ish.


In separate bowl, add apple cider/juice, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, garlic powder and cinnamon and mix.

Add chicken and apples to skillet/wok. Stir together. Add liquid mixture.

Serve over rice. You can use white rice, brown rice, cauliflower rice, I'm not going to discriminate. All would be really good. You do you.

Turned out pretty good, if I may say so myself. Apple pie for dessert was of course pretty good. Enough about me. Happy Friday everyone! Enjoy your weekend.

Out of the Blue

If you follow Breaky, you may know that he has been casting pretty much 2 weeks straight. I know it may not seem like a lot, but when you consider how much energy it takes to cast, and how unpredictable games can be, it really can be draining.

He had been working so hard, and you could just tell afterward he was just exhausted, especially on days in which there were three matches with three games each, starting at 8:00 am.

With a little inspiration from Pinterest, I wanted to let him know I was thinking about him and how proud I am for how hard he was working.

So "Out of the BLUE" (hehe) I got him a little gift basket with all things blue.