Balsamic Roasted Onions

3 pounds of onions are .69 at Aldi this week. Here's a great recipe to use them in! Expect to see these at church soon! (I-44 grocery has some great bottles of organic balsamic vinegar really cheap!)

3 large sweet onions (about 1 3/4 pounds)

Cooking Spray

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon pepper

Estimated Total Time: 1 hour, 20 minutes

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Peel onions, leaving roots intact; cut each onion into 6 wedges. Place onion wedges in an 11 x 7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Combine vinegar and remaining ingredients in a small bowl; pour vinegar mixture over onion wedges, tossing gently to coat. Cover and bake at 450 degrees for 25 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 30 minutes or until tender.

6 servings (serving size: 1 cup) - only 72 calories per serving

This recipe came from Cooking Light in 2003 and is no longer on their site. Whenever I make this recipe it gets great reviews even by people who don't really like onions. The onions do take awhile to bake so there is some planning ahead involved.

My Deal of the Week

If my Rolla friends want to take advantage - you have to do this on Wednesday (9/23).

Kroger is having a buy 10 items get $5 off from Kraft and Nestle.

Country Mart happens to have some coupons - some flyers at the front of the store - that are not Country Mart coupons only. They are for many things but specifically Kraft Cheese and Kraft Deluxe Mac & Cheese.

Cheese (8oz shredded or block) is on sale for 1.99 - buy 10 items, cost goes to 1.49...use coupon from Country Mart (1.00 off 2), final price .99! (We did a comparison and this is cheaper than Aldi cheese - only if you do both deals though.)

Mac & Cheese is on sale for 1.49 - buy 10 items, cost goes to .99...use coupon from Country Mart (1.00 off 2), final price .49. Many of those boxes have a coupon on them for buy two boxes of Mac & Cheese and get a free BBQ sauce. So for .98 you get two boxes of Mac & Cheese and a jar of BBQ sauce! (Yesterday we got four boxes and two bottles of sauce.)

I've done the buy 10 thing twice this week and everything that I bought I had an additional coupon for so it was a pretty sweet deal! I did make an extra trip to Country Mart to pick up these extra coupons!

We did a project!

Many of you know me personally know that I am not a project person when it comes to school. My boys aren't necessarily either which is why I'm not. If it takes a ton of motivation for me to get them to do a project, then I'm not sure what the point of doing it is!

Our first history book for this year was called Peoples of the World. The last couple of pages were lists of people groups, where they live, their language and their religion. We were supposed to spend a couple of days looking at some of them on the page. I decided that we would take it a bit further. So we got out all of the coins from around the world that we have collected over the years.

They picked a few and found the information about the country from the book as well as the capital from the map. (Our encyclopedia from 1960 failed us on some of those.) We adhered the coins and the country information and color coded the countries on a world map. The poster board that we used was given to us and there was much excitement to be able to us it for a worth while project.

A bonafied school project completed! We also are using this towards our Collecting Belt Loop in scouts. Extra credit for mom was a field trip to the rare coin shop in town to look at coins!

Now back to just reading books for awhile!

Yummy Dinner

My friend is working on eating 6-8 cups of vegetables a day, among other diet changes. Though I've not been willing to jump all the way into her current diet when we aren't eating together, I have been challenged and inspired to include more vegetables in our diet, especially those that are not the high carb ones like carrots, peas and corn.

Tonight's dinner menu:

• Hamburgers (and one veggie burger)
• Whole Wheat Buns
• Potatoes *
• Brussel Sprouts *
• Green Beans *
• Slice Tomato * and Onion
• Bread & Butter Pickles *

Five vegetables and one vegetable starch isn't too bad. Not everyone ate all 5, but everyone at least 4, I think.

* These vegetables came from the garden - so the meal was quite economical as well. I made the buns earlier in the week!

Interview with the little guy

We did this for his brother two years ago...so we thought we would see about the second one too!

What is your favorite color? Blue

What is your favorite car? Mustang

What is your favorite bedtime activity? Reading Hardy Boys

Who is your favorite bedtime buddy? Ducky

What do you want to be when you grow up? I haven't decided.

What is your favorite food? I haven't decided. (So, what are some things that you like?) Diary and vegetables.

What is your favorite clothing? My dragon motorcycle shirt.

What is your favorite drink? Lemonade

What is your favorite book? The Bible

What is your favorite sport? Baseball

What does your dad do? He works at the USGS.

What does your mom do? She's a stay home mom.

What is your favorite restaurant? El Maguey (Mexican)

What is your favorite game? Monopoly

What is your favorite thing to do with your brother? Play games (and kiss him).

What is your favorite cereal? Kid's Crunch (Aldi brand of Cap'n Crunch)

What is your favorite song? I don't have one.

What is your favorite activity to do with your mom? Hug her!

What is your favorite activity to do with your dad? Play games (ohhh..that's a hard one)

What do you like to do when you wake up in the morning? Get dressed, clean up my room and have breakfast.

Where is your favorite place to sleep? On my bed.

What is a food that you won't eat? Onions

What is your favorite animal? Duck

What is your favorite sports team? Miners

What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? Pizza and burritos (flour tortilla with cheese and sour cream)

What do you like best about your brother? That he reads too much.

What is your favorite place that you have ever visited? Six Flags

What is your favorite Bible verse? John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that who so ever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."

Who is your favorite professional athlete? Tiger Woods

What is your favorite sport to watch? Baseball

What is your favorite TV channel? Playhouse Disney (we don't have TV right now)

What is your favorite movie? Star Wars the Clone Wars

What is your favorite fruit? Plums

What is your favorite computer game to play? Nick Jr.

How tall are you? 3 foot 8

How much do you weigh? 45 lbs

How far can you run? a mile

What's your favorite subject in school? Math

How crazy are you? Really crazy!!!

Mr. PopTart Boy

My mission as a mother is complete...well not really, but I declare a personal victory.

The little one eyes the Pop Tarts at the store frequently (that and Lunchables)...so for his birthday he got some Pop Tarts. (The only reason that I bought them was because they were half price one day when I went to the store.)

Now, you are probably thinking, what does this have to do with a personal victory.

He was so very excited to open them as you can see from the picture. He actually received two boxes of them.

He's now attempted to eat them on quite a few occasions. I don't believe that he's even eaten a full one in all of the attempts...he doesn't even want to bring them out of the cabinet any longer!

The New School Room

We are about a month into our third year of home schooling. We decided that we needed a school area for many different reasons. Last Monday, we moved stuff around. Today is week number two using it. It seems to be going pretty well! All of us were excited that there weren't any school books to be cleaned up before dinner last week. We don't have to travel as far to get our things out and put them away now. We even have maps on the wall to refer to instead of being stashed under the guest bed! If you come and visit you'll get to see more of our projects displayed downstairs!

We definitely wouldn't have done this without the windows that we installed two years ago!

the current project

So I had this great idea to make banners to put my kiddos various "awards", pins, patches, etc. that they earn. Then I had this great idea that they would actually make them...they bought into the idea they are really loving it.

Step one was creating their own design: (This was going out on a limb for me to not be in control of the design, but I only suggested a few modifications to their original design...like making some detail larger and using straight lines!)

Next was to cut out our patterns using Mommy's fabric only scissors for the very first time:

Then cut the interfacing which cost more than the fabric, but who's counting. They were OK with going to the fabric and knitting shop though that I have been wanting to go to...I was dragging THEM out of the place.

The interfacing has been cut out...Next, we actually get to the sewing. I'm sure that you'll be kept a breast of our progress!

(I'm still working on all of the Cub Scout credit that we can fit into this and there's a county fair entry for non-clothing sewing project next summer we can enter. Of course, this can count towards school hours for home ec. We're going to milk everything out of this that we can.) The biggest plus is that they are loving it and begging me to get to the next step. Neither one of them have sewed with the pedal on the sewing machine so we have a learning curve there to get to!

September 2nd

Just the happenings of the day!

Another beautiful day around here...seems more like October 2nd, instead of September 2nd. Happy Birthday to my Dad today!

School this morning, we were up too late last night to get up to exercise this morning. We are on week 2 of Sonlight Core 1. Week 5 of Language Arts and Week 1 of Science...we are definitely getting in the groove. The little guy has decided that we should read a Psalm between each subject today...we've heard through Psalm 7 today...the big guy read us Charlotte's Web to and from piano lessons! I love cooperation - does that count as school time at our "home" location?

First day of piano lessons for my little guy! He's doing great and his teacher is so very very sweet. A nice treat is that I got to see a friend for awhile before lessons, her daughter is before us!

Stopped at I-44 Grocery on the way home from piano lessons. Found some vegan, gluten free, no sugar added instant soup mixes that I thought would be great for my friend who is going on a trip this weekend. Her diet is inspiring me though I haven't completely conformed...we did serve, cauliflower, carrots, celery, tomatoes and purple pepper for lunch! At I-44 they didn't have the bakers chocolate that I was looking for...but they had some other chocolate that I will try for my next chocolate pie. Got a great deal on organic balsamic vinegar too and some organic spaghetti sauce.

When we got home, I picked enough green beans from my few plants in the garden for dinner tonight. Picked quite a few grape tomatoes and a few volunteer roma's from the garden. I definitely need to plant more roma's next year. Romas have tons less water content in them and are more appropriate for canning. Oh, I forgot to spray the cheddar cauliflower with NEEM oil because it's getting eaten a little - it's finally making a head from being planted in early June.

Afternoon is trying to get Math and Language Arts done. I thought the big guy would do LA while piano lessons were happening, but he wanted to listen in. I'm really glad that I bought the MCP Phonics program for him to add to the Sonlight LA. He's S-L-O-W in getting it done, but the exercises are good for him to do. (I'm such a horrible speller...I'm learning lots about hard and soft c's and g's and when to use them and how to appropriately pronounce words.) We have done so much better when we do LA in the morning...note to self about next week!

I've promised some cartoons this afternoon when school work is done. I'm going to play with the admin of the CHESS website and see what some of our options are there. (I'm going to pray for CHESS, our home school group which is taking a lot of mental time right now.)

AWANA starts tonight and my boys are very very excited about it! I hope the little guy doesn't bug his teacher to say half of the book! He's so ready for more of a challenge and he's a great memorizer. I may need to get a bigger vest for the big guy...once we get past t-shirt season, I doubt that it will fit!

For dinner we are having a frozen meal for two from Tyson - had a $1 off coupon AND a rebate form so it will be free (the boys will split that)...and actually making about .50 off of the deal - and a veggie bean chili mix from Fantastic that I picked up for a buck today. We'll see how it tastes. I haven't decided how many of the suggestions that I'm going to add to the basic recipe...I think that I'll use some of my tomato juice that I have been canning/freezing instead of water to give it some more flavor and maybe some corn.

I have lots of tomato juice...when I've been making salsa, I have been getting about 5 pints of juice for the 5 pints of salsa that I make and it's still pretty thin. That's why I will plant roma's next year!

I just had some Shaklee Energizing Tea to energize me for the afternoon and we are off!