Red Meat Marinade

I came across an interesting red meat marinade. I used it on boneless ribs. But you could use it on any red meat I would bet. I wanted to cook this quickly, so instead of plopping the ribs in the crockpot, dousing with the marinade, and cooking on low for 6-8 hours, I tried it in the oven. The ribs had a lot of gristle in them so they could have been better, but they didn't dry out. They tasted good for what they were!

Marinade:
1 can tomato soup
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp chili powder (or more if you like it more spicy)
(you can half this recipe if you're only cooking a small amount of meat)

To cook ribs or steak in the oven:
-Pull out baking pan, about the size of the meat you want to make
-fill about 1/4 inch with water (to help keep the meat moist while baking)
-take out some foil and put thawed meat on it
-carefully pour marinade over the meat so it won't leak out of the foil (you can opt to set aside some extra marinade to pour over ribs when they're done)
-place foil in pan with water
-make a sort of "tent" with the foil, do not crush foil on top of meat and do not seal the tent foil. Just lightly pinch seams together so the steam will stay inside the tent but has an avenue of escape so the foil won't burst while baking-bake at 325 for one hour
-open foil tent and cook at 375 for another 20 minutes

I cut the ribs up in bite sized pieces and served over steamed rice. It was pretty decent. I thought the marinade was the best part!

In other news, absolutely nothing has been going on this week :) And I'm enjoying the down time. Scheduling of concerts has been picking up so that is always good. We have a trip planned this weekend so I'll try to get some pictures. I try to think of our concert trips as mini-vacations. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't :) This time of year is always hard on me because the last national holiday was January 1st...and then the next one is Memorial Day on May 31st--and there are no scheduled holidays in between at work. It just makes for a very tiresome stretch. I have to carefully budget each of my vacation days to make them last all year since we travel so much for concerts but I may be able to take one just to get me through May. And, this week 2 people at my work were let go because of budget cuts so everyone is on edge and concerned. I'm very sad to see them leave, they're my age and fun to be around. We are down to a pretty small office staff of about 12 now.

Gotta get some work done now...

Procrastinating

I'm procrastinating starting to book today, and that is why I'm posting another blog. Once I post it, I'll get to work. Really I will.

1. Meal Plan until Payday. We've had a lot of company lately - which has been awesome!! - but also has stretched my grocery budget. That, but mostly the fact that I bought a bunch of groceries I didn't plan what to do with, and now they're eaten, but no real meals are made (you know how it goes).
Tuesday - Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup (again)
Wednesday - marinated boneless ribs (found them in my freezer)
Thursday - pork chops. THESE pork chops!!!
Friday - Payday!! But I'll probably still just make breakfast for dinner or something.
Sat-Sun - Concerts in Arkansas!!
Monday - going grocery shopping!

2. My favorite things lately:
-Phil Wickham (Christian Singer, www.philwickham.com)
-Hot Chocolate (Land O Lakes brand, any flavor!)
-COFFEE (8 o'Clock brand, Columbian flavor)
-my kitties
-sitting outside with my kitties
-looking at all the pretty flowers at the street stands
-imagining how to decorate our house
-grilling chicken on our charcoal grill! (Blake does it, I just eat it)-Watching "21 Jump Street" old episodes-Book club! I look forward to it so much every time. We're reading this book next:
-my pastor and his wife

-Blake!

Follow up about Crockpot Cake

So the decimated remains of my crockpot cake are not the end of my story last night. Oh no. Since the cake cooked about 2 hours faster than I anticipated, I had to figure out how to keep it semi-warm and moist until our friends came over for dinner. I put it in a plastic cake display thing, shaped like a dome. Similar to this but plastic and not airtight:So I put the cake crumbs into that and figured, well, the oven should be an airtight option, so I put the cake dome inside the oven and assured myself I'd remember to take it out before I started preheating the oven for the sweet potato fries I was going to make....



15 minutes later at 425 degrees, I remember because of the melting plastic smell pervading my house. And now here is what my cake dome looks like:

The top and bottom pieces-

The bottom piece-

The top dome part-

Oddly enough, the cake wasn't ruined at all and went nicely with the ice cream our guests brought. :) But now I need another cake dome thing. Lesson learned.

Cake in the Crockpot

Okay, twice now I've tried cake in the crockpot due to exuberant reviews from Crockpot Lady. Now, I'm not knocking the taste, but presentation is slightly lacking:

I will say, however, the recipe (Peanut Butter Cup Cake) was yummy and technically did totally work in the crockpot. I just can never get the cake out without demolishing it. So from now on I'm just going to do cakes in the oven like normal people.

*Follow up* Post dinner reviews: Our guests raved that this cake was the most MOIST cake they'd ever eaten :) I do attribute that to making it in the crockpot.

Blake's Birthday

So I'm a bad wife. It was Blake's 30th birthday yesterday and aren't those usually a big deal? Because of the break-in on his car our funds were pretty limited to celebrate, but he did get some awesome gifts: I got him a new XM radio since his was stolen, he got a plush bicycle seat and some cash, and then he also got THIS:


We needed a mower so bad. Blake got out and immediately mowed our jungle. He loves it.

But the reason I say I'm a bad wife is that his birthday dinner was reduced to this:

Blake lit matches to go with leftover "mystery dessert" I made several days ago.

...and then blew them out while I sang Happy Birthday.

I'll do better next year.

Past Weekend Concerts

This past weekend we had concerts in Durant and Lawton, OK. We had a really good weekend, the concerts were very powerful and the people all said they really enjoyed the concerts and were encouraged. We traveled down to Durant on Saturday afternoon for sound checks. You'll see in the slideshow the homemade elevator - I got a kick out of it. They couldn't afford to install a factory made one, so they used some sort of power lift jack....I guess it works!! So I got some pics of Blake loading his equipment in the elevator :)

Then we went to dinner with another pastor friend who lives in the area, and then we headed to our hotel. What a fabulous hotel! It was just a Hampton Inn, but it felt like a luxury hotel. We were so comfortable. We watched Animal Planet and TLC all night til we fell asleep.

So Sunday we headed over to the church and during the concert, the pastor wanted us to have time for prayer for a lady that has cancer. Blake commented later that this little Nazarene church was actually "Nazacostal" because they used oil in their prayer time. I thought it was very special and the whole church gathered around the lady to prayer for healing. I was touched that they took the time to do that and I'm sure it was super encouraging to the lady.

After Durant, we headed on to Lawton and we did another concert there. I didn't get my camera out for some reason, so I don't have pictures of it, but it also went well. :) Blake got a standing ovation at the end (and we got one also for our duet!). We were very blessed by the church's enthusiasm and response to Blake's program. I pray that God uses what Blake sang about and spoke about to permeate their lives with encouragement. I love what we do :)

Engaged!

My little brother Mark is ENGAGED!!! He proposed this past Saturday :)

Easter Sunday

We had such a great weekend. Friday we watched several episodes of "Undercover Boss" and we really like that show now! Then Saturday we went to get donuts for breakfast, then cleaned the house super good since friends were coming over Sunday. We also played with our kitties in the yard again. Doogan is getting more confident and needs closer supervision at times. We try to make sure to pet him as he wanders outside so he doesn't associate us approaching him with "time to go inside" every time. It seems to be working, he doesn't run from us so that is good. When it's time to go in I can approach him pretty easily. Then, Blake had to go up to church to run sound for their Easter service rehearsal. I hadn't intended to go along, but when he was leaving I was like, "wait!" I brushed my teeth and joined him, no makeup and my hair in a bun. Oh well. I got some pictures of our Easter service at church:

This was during rehearsal. The ladies in the back were covering the windows with a see-through purple paper.

It had this lovely effect!

This is Gary, he is also Blake's boss whenever he works at the sound company :)

Pretty service

This is our Pastor, Tim

Then we went home and grilled chicken on our wonderful grill. We're getting the hang of it and the food was delicious. I got a big album of those pictures. My mom gave me her nice camera after she upgraded to another one, so I had a lot of fun documenting the afternoon, and the Easter egg hunt that our friend's little girl had. She's so photogenic and her blond hair was fun to take pictures of!!

Easter Plans

It's Easter weekend!! We have some major plans to loaf tonight and tomorrow and then have friends over for Easter lunch. hooray! We're going to grill out chicken and corn on the cob and do some crockpot sweet potatoes. :) Can't wait!

I'm loving this beautiful weather, it's a real mood booster. I got to play outside for a while last night. I brushed Sticker and then decided it was a good day to let Doogan explore the front yard. I was a little apprehensive he would dart out into the street and never come back, so I got a leash and hooked it to his collar, then wound it loosely around his middle so the collar wouldn't break if I had to grab on to the leash. He did so good and was very well-behaved afterward. It made up for the terror he was on Wednesday night. I got some pictures!




And we babysat our little niece this past Monday. She also was super well-behaved :)