Cooking with Liz

I love making pepperoni rolls for us to snack on but they are just too spicy for the kids to enjoy. Last week I made a few that had just cheese in them. YUCK! So today I decided to make some with ham and cheddar cheese in them. They were a total success with Abigail! I thought I would share with all of you.

Normally I buy my frozen rolls at walmart but since Save A Lot opened close to us (15 min away), I found these there


Spray a muffin tin with cooking spray and then let your rolls thaw in it. This varies between half an hour and over an hour. If I am in a hurry, I go ahead and preheat the oven to 400* and put the rolls on top of the oven so they thaw quicker.


While waiting for the rolls to thaw, I went ahead and chopped up my ham and mixed it with cheddar cheese.


Once I can push down on a roll without it sticking to my finger, I know they are basically ready.


Flatten them out with your fingers and put your mixture in the middle. You could use any ingredients that your family likes.


Fold the side up



Pinching them together



Put them back in the muffin tin, crease down, and cook on 400* for about 10 minutes!


Simple as that!

Just stuff

I can't believe March is half way over already! Tomorrow I will be saying I can't believe summer is ending. Ok, not really, but it will be here and gone before we know it!
March is turning out to be as busy for us as Feb, and I have a feeling April is going to be more of the same. In the next two weeks I have school egg hunts, church egg hunt (which I have no real involvement in), school dinner with Ryan, Easter parties, and then spring break!!! Not to mention soccer practice and games and my regular bible club prep. We also have an adult church retreat next Friday and Saturday!
Brad has been doing a lot of things around the house and up at the church in all his spare time, which is few and far between. We tore down the parsonage, where I lived for about 6 years when we moved here. It was just going to cost more to fix up than tearing it down. Of course, my husband would be the one to volunteer to take on that project. I know he is capable of doing it but finding the time between work and weekend soccer is the impossible part. He can't finish things on a timely manner no matter how hard he tries. He just has too much going on. Anyway, him and a guy he works with did end up getting the house demolished last weekend and now all that's left of that mess is burning the piles of wood. He is on call for work this weekend so he can't really go start a huge fire in case he needs to leave for work. So this weekend he has been focusing on the huge stump that is right outside our front door. He cut the tree down last summer but has not been able to get the stump out of the ground. He finally had someone come look at it (why are men so against that?!). That guy said this kind of tree has a secondary root system that can either go straight down or out for many feet. Of course, that is the kind of tree that is in our front yard. So the guy said he could bring over some big equipment and rip the stump out but he won't be liable if the root system goes out instead of down and it rips the front of our house off. Yes, that's what he said. Obviously we weren't going to take our chances so Brad rented a stump grinder and has been grinding it away all day. It really is disappearing in the form of saw dust all over the yard!
His next project is to widen the driveway and then fence in the front part of the yard. We really, really want to get those two things done before we leave for Gatlinburg the first week of April. Brad's grandma is kind enough to come over and take care of our animals whenever go somewhere but she is in her early 70's and it isn't easy. Our dogs are a handful for her. So we want to have the fence up so all she has to do is open the back door and let them out. I'm just praying we can get it done! On top of that, one of my dogs in on 3 separate medications right now which I'm going to have to explain to her. She is going to hate me after this.
Now that the weather is warming up some, I'm already back to dealing with tons of neighbor kids coming over all the time. It would be ok if they (my kids included) would play normal games instead of digging holes and tearing stuff up. Not to mention leaving toys everywhere. One mom has already given me permission to throw her boys' things away if they get left in our yard. So I need some ideas for this summer. I can't handle anywhere from 4-8 kids here all day everyday. The only way to make them go away is to make my kids come in, which I don't think is fair. I don't want to have to make my kids come in after an hour just to get all the other kids to leave. Do I just ask all the neighbor kids to leave? They don't stay away, even when I do. Is it rude to tell the parents to keep them out of our yard after so long? I know you guys are going to say I should be able to request that the kids leave after so long but it isn't that easy when you are in the situation!

Spring cleaning

First of all, I love the new way photos are uploaded!! Now I just need to know how to turn my pictures the right side up.

I got the bright idea last week to clean and organize the pantry. I'm not sure what possessed me to do that but this picture might give you a clue. It was a disaster! Five people can collect a lot. This closet is where we hang our coats (at least 2 per person), lunch boxes, aldi bags, canned foods, appliances that don't have a spot in the kitchen, a small feezer, the hot water tank and so much more.



This is after. I was able to finish the first part of this organization the same day but I wanted to try something I saw on pinterest using one of those cheap plastic over the door shoe holders to get all the little snacks and things off the shelves.


It took me a week to find one but once I did, I hung over the inside of the folding door and I like the way it organizes our powder mixes and snacks.



Today, seeing the sun for the first time in along time inspired me to do a lot of other cleaning. One of them being scrubbing our nasty kitchen floor! It didn't take long after installing tile for me to realize that I hate tile!! It always looks so dirty. I do believe this is the first time it has been really scrubbed and I hope the following pictures do justice to how gross they were before and how white they are now!!





I also gave the dogs a bath, scrubbed down the walls in the laundry room (where they sleep), mopped the floors in the play room (where the dogs enter and exit after using the bathroom)and did a couple loads of laundry. I say that is a productive day!

I already know Brad will be working very late. He has something to fix on an elevator that can't be turned off until after hours (8pm) so it is going to be a long night for him. So after the kids get in bed, I am going to spend a couple hours working on my bible club lesson for Wed. I'll doing the computer part (making my power point presentation and my bible cards that I pass out with every lesson). Basically, they are a baseball sized card with a picture and title on the front and a description of the lesson on the back. They have several baseball card sheets in a notebook and by the time we get thru the bible, they are going to have lots of these cards but I hope they can be helpful to them one day.