Concerned and I know it

I made one of my favorite recipes tonight!  This recipe is cheap, fast, and delicious.  I always make it when we have company, and everyone is ALWAYS impressed.  My mom used to make this when I was a child and I only made a few modifications.  I remember as a child we were always fighting over the pepperoni, so I doubled that. I also added extra oregano since my husband likes it like that.

The first thing you have to do is pick some music to listen to while you cook.  This is very important and sets the mood for the meal.  Seriously, you want your pepperoni to be happy and tasty.  I chose to listen to several songs, including Adele's Rumor Has It and Gotye's Somebody That I Used to Know.  Here, I was listening to LMFAO, and LM was fairly concerned.



OK, now that you have your mood music, it's time to get cooking.  The ingredients you need are 1 green bell pepper, one red bell pepper, 1 onion, vegetable oil, 2 packages of pepperoni, 3 cans of Italian diced (or stewed, depends on how big you like your tomato chunks) tomatoes, spaghetti noodles, oregano.

Get your water heating up for the noodles.  When it's hot enough, throw in the pasta.  I'm going to trust you know how to cook pasta.  I use about half a package, so you use however much you want.

Put 2-3 tbsp of oil in a big pan and put it on medium heat.  Cut up your bell peppers and onion.

Add these to the hot oil in the pan, and cook until the onion gets soft, stirring frequently.

While thats cooking and you're stirring frequently, cut your pepperonis in half.  You can cut them up smaller if you want, or not at all-whatever you want.

When they're cut up, add them to your pan.

Saute this until the pepperoni's warm.  All of the food in the pan should be warm saute'd.  When it is, add your 3 cans of tomato sauce.

Add your oregano and stir. Bring to boil, then it's time to eat! Drain the noodles, serve you up some and cover it with sauce.  Make some garlic to go with it. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

2-3 tbsp veg oil
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper
1 onion
2 packages of pepperoni
3 cans (15 oz) of Italian diced tomatoes
oregano (optional)
spaghetti noodles


Cut up bell peppers and onion and saute in pan over medium heat until onion is soft.

Slice pepperoni in half and add to peppers and onion. Saute for 5-8 minutes.

Add 3 cans of tomato sauce; bring to a boil.  Add oregano if desired.

Pour over cooked spaghetti noodles.

Alligator good!

I am going to try to post my first recipe on here!  It's not a recipe I've ever made before--one of my best recipes will be posted later this week.  But tonight, I made alligator.  Yup, alligator.  I'd had it before in Baton Rouge when I was there for a French teaching conference, and loved it.  So this weekend I went to a farmer's market and there was a Swamp People-type man selling fish, shellfish and alligator.  I done bought me some gator! I decided to make something up, thinking that blackened alligator tail with a homemade remnoulade sounded good.  And you know what? It was!

First, I googled 'bkackened alligator.'  I love blackened chicken, but didn't know how to do it.  I found a recipe at exoticmeatsandmore.com that worked well for me.  Here are the ingredients:

1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper

½ teaspoon dried thyme

½ teaspoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon dried chives

(I didn't have any chives, and a good substitute is onion roots, which I also didn't have.  So I put some onion powder in.)

Mix all these ingredients up then put on a plate.

I had 1lb of gator meat, which I cut up into big chunks for easier grilling.

I melted about 3 tbsp of butter in the bowl I mixed the spices in, cuz I'm lazy and didn't want to dirty another dish.  I brushed the chunks of meat with butter, then rubbed them in the spice mix.  After they were coated well, I plopped those suckers in a pan and grilled them on medium-high.  Every time I flipped them I basted with more butter.  





I grilled them til they were done!  Cut into them like you would chicken.  I'm not a chef so I don't do well with times and temps--I go by sight and how they taste.  Sorry.

For the remoulade, I used a recipe from foodnetwork.com.  It was OK--too mustardy.  I'm not including it on here, so you can find your own or buy some from the store.  If you make it I hope you like it!

Bonne chance mes amis!

It's Late and I Want to go to Sleep

It has been sooooo long since I last wrote in this blog!  Like, 4 years?  I read my old posts a few days ago, and was shocked to see what I had forgotten!  Apparently this is a great way to keeo memories.  Especially since I'm too lazy to keep a real journal.

So I decided to come back to this because I see other blogs with awesome food recipes on Pinterest, and I think, "Whoa! I can make good food and post it here then pin it!"  But then I realized I only have like 1 original recipe to post.  I got sad.  I decided to make it this week, take pics, and put it on here.  I got happy.  We'll see how it goes!

For all like 2 of you who read my old posts, I guess I'll sum up my life since then--Hubby and I had a little girl in 2009.  I'll call her PP, for Pretty Princess.  Then we had another baby, a boy, a few months ago.  We'll call him LM for Little Man.  Babyla turns 8 next month!  I can't believe it.  Life is good now, though pretty crazy with 3 kids.

OK, tis late, and I do really want to sleep.  Now that I've reintroduced myself, I'll try to keep up with regular blogs about us and, maybe, food.  Ciao!



J'ai vue que souvent, dans les premiers posts, j'ai ecris en francais.  C'etait une bonne idee!  Alors, je vais ecrire quelquechose chaque fois en francais.  Ce fois, je dis--bonne nuit! (svp, m'excuse pour les fautes de mon francais.  C'etait bien longtemps que j'ecris ou parle le francais).

Did you bonk your head?

So now that I get to be a stay-at-home mom again, I realize how much I really do love being at home with babyla. It seems like whenever something we love is taken away from us, that's when we realize just how precious that things was and maybe how much we took it for granted. Not that I didn't know I loved being at home with babyla--I did. The weeks leading up to student teaching were difficult as I dreaded leaving her. Now I'm home, and I cherish the time even more. Fortunately, when I was gone my mother was able to watch babyla, so she always had someone who loved her with her.

Ok, enough warm fuzzies. This morning, babyla and I went outside. I had to weed in the garden and she was going to help me/play/slow me down. Yesterday I had noticed in one of our hanging pots a nest inside. Today when we went out, I saw a bird in it! She was hunkered down in it, watching us. Shortly after, the daddy bird came and perched on the pot, wacthing us. I pointed out to babyla that it was the daddy bird, and the mommy bird was inside with eggs (hopefully!). A few minutes later, the daddy bird flew away, and babyla asked where it was going. I replied, "probably to go get food." Babyla asked rather excitedly, "Oh, is he going to get pizza?" Sigh. Maybe we need to have some nature discussions. Cuz when I said, "no, probably worms", she looked kinda grossed out.

Here's the kicker. Or rather, the bonker, as babyla likes to say. In the garden, I was weeding and babyla was with me. I stood up with some weeds in my hand, and just as I stood up, I felt something hot my head. I ducked then looked up, to see a bird landing on the play set by us. Yes, a bird. Ran into my head. Let me repeat that--A BIRD RAN INTO MY HEAD. You don't see that everyday.

All men should rock the 'stache

Why hello there! It has been many moons since I have last written. Since Decemeber, if I recall correctly. A lot has happened in all this time. KMost importantly, I got married! Yay! How's THAT for awesome, huh? Tomorrow, May 15th, will be our two month anniversary. Booyah! I also was a student teacher. LONGEST semester EVER. I have an issue with caps right now. It's kinda fun. Try it. I LOVE being MARRIED! I'm GOING to see Neil DIAMOND! Heh. Anywhoo, students teaching was interesting. And long. But I miss my students and am going to wonder how they are. Hopefully I'll get to see them again. HOPEFULLY I'll get to SEE them... OK, stop it. It's just shameful now.

I apologize I have no funny story. I don't want to make fun of my students, cuz I love them. I don't want to bash, however jauntily or sillilly (heh!), the University for the hell they put me through. Cuz I could get in trouble. So, the next time something humorous happens to me, I shall blog it! Suffice it to say Hubby and I are extremely happy and Babyla is fabulous. She turns four next month.

Thought for the day: WOuldn't it be awesome if all men grew thick, dark moustaches (pronounced moo-stah-chays? heh.) that we could twirl our fingers through and giggle at in the morning?

We can go ice skating and eat sugar plums!

I was was trying to stifle my giggles and keep a steady hand on the camera when mamala called from the kitchen, "She didn't!" My giggling increased, and I knew the camera was shaking. I called in reply, "She did!" Babyla was looking at me with a half grin, trying to figure out why I was laughing at her. Finally I gave up and ended the video taping. I hadn't taped her for a while, so I had decided to do so while she was putting presents under the tree. That turned out to be quite boring, however, so I had her sing a few songs. Then I got a brilliant idea--babyla can count to 30, so I decided to have her count! I said, "Let's see how high you can count. Count for me." Babyla counted 1,2,3,4,5. With each number, she held up the same amount of fingers (she does it funny--it's pointer finger, pinky, middle finger, then all four fingers, then all 5 with the thumb). When she finished, I waited for her to continue. When she didn't, I said "Count higher!" Babyla looked at me for a split second, reached her hand way up in the air and stretching to get as high as she could, and said, fingers ticking off, "1,2,3,4,5. Then she looked at me, waiting for my praise. Or to know why I was laughing.

On the lighter side...

So my other post today is somewhat serious. I thought I would throw in some humor. I finally have babyla potty trained in the house. Yay! Last week, she was teeteeing in the potty, which that day was in the kitchen. Fh was here, and babyla asks him, "Josh, want to teetee with me?" He politely declined her generous offer.