Babies, Chicken and Snowmen!

The three things on my mind this week!

I am so blessed to know so many women (6 or 8 last count) who are expecting new little miracles within the next few months. My go-to meal for new families is baked chicken and mac n cheese but, truthfully, I'm sick of it. I know it's a kid-friendly meal but there are so many other good things to make (can you tell the morning sickness is almost totally gone and the nesting has begun?!)

Therefore, it's been chicken around here this week (with the exception of Wild Mushroom Pastitsio , which was a HUGE hit with the little people around here!)

Let's see, back to chicken...it all starts with my very favorite cookbook...

Which has the best chicken soup recipe...ever.

Eight pounds of chicken with sixteen cups of water, onion, celery, spices, carrots...simmering all day. Yum. Good to freeze as a base, add noodles, bread and salad. Excellent winter meal!

Next we have Crockpot Lemon Chicken. Simple to make, easy to freeze the shredded chicken for Alfredo, chicken salad or some other tasty treat later on.

A few days ago I made this Italian chicken with potatoes in the crockpot. Mixed reviews. Probably not a keeper.

Thankfully I always have a sous chef on hand. This guy would only help with dessert today, though!

Next, snowmen...As many of you know, Silvana has been in the habit of using her snack days at school to introduce a lesson about that day's special Saint. Her next snack day is January 20th. That is the feast of both St. Fabian and St. Sebastian. St. Fabian is one of those "mystery Saints", little known and not a patron of anything, so we looked to St. Sebastian. It turns out that he is the patron of soldiers, archers, and athletes.

Hmmmm. Already covered the soldiers with St. Martin of Tours and I couldn't really find anything else that was "healthy" (a rant for another time) and screamed arrows or sports.

Much to my daughter's dismay I was planning to send in a standard snack with a coloring sheet on St. Sebastian and call it a day. Then, I happened to be scanning the web and found this adorable Trinity Snowman poem and snack.

The poem and coloring sheet are here http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/downloader.php?file=userfiles/0/73586738728.pdf&id=2648

The "snack" can range from snowmen made of mini-doughnuts to biscuits. They are supposed to look something like this

I had some sweet dough in the freezer so I tried and came out with something that resembled that Calvin and Hobbes "snowman house of horror" cartoon ;p

Luckily I have 4 whole days to get this right!  Pray for me ;)

Looking ahead. Silvana's "half birthday" (celebrated for the Summer kids) happens to fall on Ash Wednesday. This is going to take some serious thinking...stay tuned.