Remember When

At the end of this summer how my pantry was crammed with peaches, applesauce and spaghetti sauce that I had canned??  Well, it is ALL gone!!  I guess next year I need to double everything!

Sausage and Peppers and Potatoes….oh my!

I will admit to anyone listening that I am not into the whole “organic” or “gluten free” scene at all!  I do like our foods to be homemade as much as possible but not crazy like.  But, God has placed a special friend in my life who suffers from Celiac Disease and can not digest foods that have gluten or a lot of diary.  So, when we have her over for dinner, bring her a meal, or bring foods for a staff meeting that she is a part of, I try to make sure that there are gluten free options.

With all of that as a background, let me share this INCREDIBLE recipe with you!  It has quickly become Curtis and mine’s favorite!  I don’t even know what to call it, but it is GOOD!  AND it is gluten and dairy free!  You could even prepare it to be a vegan dish as well!

Here is the cast of characters!  2 Bell Peppers, 4 good sized potatoes, an onion, olive oil, salt, pepper, a jar of banana peppers, and at least 1 lb of Kielbasa Sausage

Slice your peppers Julian style in strips and place them on a rimmed baking sheet that is covered with foil

 

 

Slice up your sausage next and throw them with the peppers

Next, thinly slice your onion to make them like little rainbows and add them in as well

Look how pretty they are together

Go ahead and give your potatoes a good scrub with a veggie brush but don’t peel them.  Cut them into 1/2 inch pieces and throw them on that tray like so

At this point drizzle some Olive oil on top to your liking but don’t drench them!  Add salt and pepper in there as well.  Give everything a good toss so that it is mixed well.

And finally sprinkle some Banana Peppers on the top!!

Bake it in your oven at 400 for about 35 minutes.  Take it out……take a deep whiff…….go ahead and drool if you need to……I won’t tell.  Enjoy your food, be sure to share!

 

 

Seriously beautiful dish.  I am drooling right now!  Customize it the way you want.  Add more peppers as you wish, skip the sausage to make it vegan and vegetarian.  The flavor combo is so good!  Enjoy!

Ben Wentling, age 7

Ben turned 7 this past week. I tell ya, this kid is the sweetest little boy in the world! He is so gentle and kind, a hard worker, always has a great response if I ask him to do anything! I don’t want him to change! The more and more of his character that is shown, the more and more excited I get for his wife and kids!
We recently discovered that he also is his toughest critic. He had advanced to the school wide spelling bee this past month but ended up coming in fourth place for his grade. While he was still on stage waiting for the other kids to finish he didn’t cry, but when he stepped down to where I was sitting the tears started to roll. I took him out and told him just how proud we were that he had made it this far (after all, he did get 4th place out of 24 students), and that he had nothing to be ashamed of. He cried the way home, my heart was aching! Curtis reminded me that we cannot caudal him, we told him that we were proud and the rest he would have to deal with. When we arrived home, he took his ribbon and threw it in the trash!!! “Ben, why did you throw your ribbon away?” I asked. His reply really showed his heart, “I wasn’t the best, I don’t want it.” What?! Crazy kid! I told him to pull it back out because I wanted it! What a challenge, but what a joy as well.
I love this little man to death!

The Hurricane….

aka the beast…….aka the hulk…….aka Isaac the terrible…..aka Isaac.
Isaac goes by many different names in our family and in our church.  All of his names indicate strength and power….sometimes uncontrollable power.  Many times I have prayed that God would grab a hold of his heart and that Isaac would joyfully submit his strength and power to the One that created him with strength and power.

This powerful force in our house is now two years old.  I will admit that I am pretty excited about Isaac turning two.  We are potentially one year away from being a diaper free household!!  Can any of you relate?  No diapers!!  Now, as soon as he is free of diapers, I would require all of my kids to stop growing and cherish them!

Anyways, all that to say…..here are Isaac’s birthday pictures.  He looks HUGE!!

Isaac’s fake smile

He looks like he is five here!

Although he is extremely difficult to deal with and he gets easily frustrated with not being able to do many things with his one hand, I still wouldn’t change a thing about him!

Hannah, age 8

Way back in August, Hannah, my Hannah turned 8 years old.  EIGHT!!  In two short years she will be DOUBLE DIGITS!!  Craziness I know!  August and September are pretty busy in the Wentling household and I didn’t get around to do her birthday photo shoot.  That is until yesterday, yes, you read that right, yesterday, as in October 18.  Part of the delay besides being busy is that last year’s pictures were gorgeous!

How could I top this shot?

Never the less, I had to get them done.  There was no escaping it.  So, we set off to my mom’s house with multiple outfits to use.  By the way, my parents house is incredible for picture taking.  Lots of trees and an old wooden fence makes for the best backgrounds!

Just like I had feared, not the same magic as last year.

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Now, don’t get me wrong, Hannah is beautiful, but sometimes I can’t get my camera to see what I am seeing in real life.  Still, we did get some good shots in.

Check out that attitude

!I love my Hannah Grace, she is so full of questions, always wanting to know why.  She loves her family and friends dearly, thrives on quality time with Curtis and I, and has a new love for her ipod!

check out those freckles!

Apple Picking 2012

In my quest for canning I found a little apple orchard up in Ferndale, Washington where you could pick your own Jonagold apples at $.50 a pound!  In the effort of wanting the kids to understand and enjoy the process that we work for our food, I thought that picking the apples ourselves was a better option then going to a local fruit stand.

Look at these beauties!

Apple Creek Orchard was the perfect place to go.  It was extremely family friendly, had farm animals wandering around, they told us where the best untouched apples were and sent us off.  Their apple were beautiful!  All of their trees were dwarf trees and so even Isaac could reach and pick off the apples from the tree, of course having only one hand, we had to help him.

The kids really had such fun.  This is definitely going on our “traditions” list to do every year.

Apples to apples

We quickly picked about $60 worth of apples which equaled out to be around 160lbs, and headed back home.  That is a lot of apples!  And BONUS we took our Christmas card shot!

Yes, I am thinking of Christmas already…..making a list, checking it twice…..

Ch-Ch-Changes

Out with the old and in with the new!  New blog and a  new domain site but still the same old me.  Soon I will have a blog dump filled with pictures and stories basically from the past year.  So, do not be dismayed when you see that I have posted about 3 million blog posts, it has been building up for awhile, bear with me

Since Then

…Since my last post…..three days after we found out that Isaac had Hand and Mouth, Phoebe woke up from a nap with her eye swollen, took her to the walk-in clinic to find out that she had pink eye! Crazy!! Crazy!!! Crazy!!! And I am not even done yet! Not even a week later, Isaac fell off a table and broke his nub! What in the world! Can we have ONE week of no injuries or illnesses?! AHHHHHHH! I am really losing it!

On the Mend….Just Kidding!

Seriously, I just posted about how we were starting to get healthy! Probably as I was typing that post out God was chuckling to Himself saying, “Bekah, Bekah, Bekah, when will you learn.” Last Thursday we took Isaac into the doctor for a checkup on an ear infection that he had only to discover that he had a DOUBLE ear infection. That isn’t too bad, not contagious in any way. He was put on stronger antibiotics, and within a couple of days he was feeling better. Well, then on the night of day five he was acting really grouchy again and ended up throwing up from crying so hard…..fun times. Day six brought on a fever that was hard to bring down along with grouchiness. By day six on the antibiotics fever had left but he was still being a super grouch, and started drooling like CRAZY. Called the doctor back, and she got us in on the same day. We were both thinking the same thing, that his ear infections had come back. Well, the only problem was that his ears looked great. What? Please don’t tell me that he is just teething. She looked into his throat and stepped back quickly. “Oh! Does he have any bumps anywhere? Diaper rash or anything?” I replied that he had a little diaper rash that had just started but wasn’t bad. What was going through the doctor’s mind? Was it Mono? Was it Strep Throat? Why was she asking about rashes? Chicken Pox? “He has Hand, Foot and Mouth Disease.” WHAT? What in the world is that? She explained further that he has sores in his mouth (hence the drooling) and the “diaper rash” were the same kind of sores. HFMD is a virus it is very contagious(great!) and very painful. NICE! So, I am pretty confident that my 3 year old will catch this as well. One of these days……..we will get better!!

Feeding my Addictions

By the way, for those of you keeping count. This past week I went to Costco to get this:

and wound up with that cookbook plus

I told you……I have an addiction