Homemade Spaghetti Sauce from the Midget Kitchen

Will wanted to Chicken Parmesan. I decided to make my own sauce to hopefully reduce the sugar in the tomato sauce. And here is what I started to combine. (remember that these are approximate)

-about 1/2 purple onion
-1 garlic clove finely chopped
-some olive oil
(at this point I sauteed those all together for less than a minute on high heat)
-1 can of diced tomatoes
-some Italian seasoning (McCormick)
-1/4 cup of regular can tomato sauce

It was SO good!! It had so much more flavor and instead of a large can of Hunts Four Cheese tomato sauce which has 23 grams of sugar per serving, this only had approximately 8 grams!! Yes please! And it really was good, you really should try it if you want to cut down your sugar.

We then boiled our white pasta, which has a lot of carbs (which turn into sugars) but if you have whole wheat pasta, that problem is down sized. We dipped our chicken breasts into egg and then bread crumbs and baked them. Put it all together with fresh grated Parmesan on top and we were so pleased with the results. Now this is cheap good semi-healthy cooking.

Promise the chicken is under there

(Plates provided by Tammie Rockett. Thanks, we use them all the time!)

Donalds Visits the Cowtown

We received a pleasant surprise this weekend. A text message from the one and only DONALD PAGE! He met us in Grapevine after church for lunch. It was great to see him and catch up on life. For those of you that don't know Donald Page, he is our world traveling photographer friend. He is much more than that though. Him and I are long time friends with connections through friends and we worked together at Kevin's office for two years. Today we chatted about his last trip to Australia and his upcoming trips to China and Macedonia. So combined with past talk, present talk and future talk, our lunch was fun filled, WE LOVE DONALD!!

Sorry about the bad picture, iPhone cameras are pretty decent but this lighting was horrible!

Pie from the Midget Kitchen

I decided to make a pie yesterday! It was a spur of the moment decision. Southwestern has a free food line that the campus provides for their starving students. What SWBTS does is purchase food that is close to expiring at a very low cost and then hands it out to their students for free! Well, us being starving students along with about 100-150 other starving students arrive at the on campus gym at 12:00 every Tuesday and receive many goodies such as wonderful whole wheat bread, canned goods, rice, English muffins, baby food (for those with children of course), frozen pizzas, cereal, etc. It is so much fun.


Well, one of the last times I went to the food line, I grabbed peach pie filling. Now, as a for warning, this is about as sugary of a dessert as you can get. And proudly, we have still only eaten about 1/4 of the pie. We are good at saying "no" :) I googled a pie crust recipe and with some butter, flour and water I made a pie crust. Dumped in the filling and then skillfully weaved the top crust and added some sugar to the surface as my Mawmaw Burris always taught and BAM!! I have a peach pie. It was pretty fun and easy, you should try it. Although, it is pretty bad for you, it is really worth it :) It is defiantly not Mawmaw's rubarb pie, nothing can match that pie. I mean a can could never make a pie like Lillian, but it was fun to think that I was putting into practice what she taught me! I love my grandmother!

Smoothies from the Midget Kitchen

Who doesn't like smoothies? I mean really, who doesn't? This is my new trick to feeding my appetite when I am between meals, like a little snack. I saw on the Biggest Loser a few weeks ago, frozen smoothie packets made by Yopait. Here is the link to the Biggest Loser site with real stuff if ya'll want it.

http://pfpchallenge.com/Partners.aspx?partner=YoplaitSmoothie

Well, these packs are two for $3 or $4 dollars. I thought, really? I could do this myself with some frozen fruit, skim milk and PureVia (all natural sweetner). You know, here is the link for information about PureVia too if you would like that too :) http://www.purevia.com/

So I set out to accomplish a goal of a cheap, low sugar (except natural sugar that is), low calorie smoothie snack. And thanks to the awesome Magic Bullet given to us by Aunt Jan as a wedding gift, I enjoy them anytime I want! Thanks Aunt Jan, we LOVE IT and use it all the time!!

Stuffed Pasta Shells from the Midget Kitchen

We have really gotten into cooking here at the house since you save SO much money by eating at home. Here is a unique creation I made the other night. If you want to make these (not that you read this to get recipes:) buy Jumbo Shell pasta and just start mixing stuff together. I used Fat Free cottage cheese, lean turkey meat, low sugar tomato sauce (can you tell I am on a diet:), finely chopped purple onion, garlic powder, goat cheese and Italian seasoning. Boil your pasta, stuff your pasta and top it with cheese (I use skim Mozzarella and low fat Parmesan) and bake it at 400 for 20 minutes. YUM YUM YUM!! I will send more photos and recipes later!

From the Midget Kitchen

I was given the movie Julie and Julia for valentines day from my wonderful giving mother-in-law! And I thought, "What would it be like if I blogged my own, cheap, creative recipes that come from my own kitchen? What if I blogged my 'what you have left in your fridge/pantry' recipes?" Then I saw one of my sisters friends blogs, who also lives in Paris and does just that! And in case you have missed how small our kitchen is, I have given you a picture to remind you why I have named my blog entries 'The Midget Kitchen' (the name created by Will Rockett) So here goes, I will be blogging different recipes (with pictures) for all to observe. Who knows how long it will last :)

I must decrease so He can Increase...

As many of you know we have been unemployed since we came to Fort Worth pursuing what God wanted in our life, Seminary. Innocently, I convinced myself that a job would be here waiting for me. Well, it wasn't and I thought what, "What have I done or not done that God would not provide a job?" I really started to consider that God's giving is just like mine, based on the things people do for me or mean to me. Really? I thought God worked the same way I work.

He quickly smacked me around and showed me his true nature, I become less so that he may become greater. It is not about him meeting our needs, though he does. It is not about him giving me the teaching job of my dreams that pays what I want, its about me understanding that I am should be consumed with the next world. This period of time without work has given me three amazing lessons/blessings.

1. He has proven how he literally pays the bills, puts food on the table and pays for Will's school. I don't know how it happens but we are not behind on bills and we have heat in our house (not very much through:) But he has provided far from just financially.
2. He has giving time. How many couples get to spend the majority of their days with each other for a whole 3 months after they get married? Not many, these have been a wonderful 3 months together and we wouldn't trade this time together for much. Money is money it can be made and it can be lost. But this first 3 months has been incredible.
3. He has taught that He is much bigger that any situation. Whether it be unemployment, learning to live with a new person :), or attempting to figure out how everyone in this HUGE Metroplex could hear the gospel, he is bigger.

We are thankful for these lessons but have yet to stop looking for full-time work. I have two substitute fairs this week and Will consistently checks job boards. Continue to pray for us as we do struggle through these irreplaceable lessons,