Back at it!

It has been several months since my {this is Courtney} last post. So long that I am scared to even go back and look when that was—so I am not going to!

These past few months have been absolutely crazy and amazing! God is so good. 

Here is a quick re-cap through photos. 

Nick and I took a long road trip to Montana, which was amazing, beautiful, relaxing and so much fun. 

I will do a separate post specifically about our trip to Montana and visiting with Roo and Chet.  

This picture above is Glacier National Park. 

We have had several family members visit us. 

Grandma, Em, Dad and Chris visited us in the fall!

Mom and Dad Parsons also visited us in the fall. 

This is probably my favorite picture from the week they were here. 

We spent Thanksgiving at a deer camp in Texas with Chris, Mom, Ron and a bunch of the Runnels crew. Nick got quite a bit of hunting time in. 

I traveled to California in early December for my sister's baby shower! And it was so much fun. 

While in California I finally got to meet my dearest friend Courtney's little girl, Reese K. 

She is precious.

Mom and Ron braved the cold and the ice storm to join us in Tulsa for my birthday. She even brought me a Nothing Bundt Cake and it was amazing! You should try it sometime. 

Christmas was super! We did not go anywhere and we absolutely loved it. On Christmas day we made a BIG delicious meal for the two of us and feasted on it for several days after. 

We celebrated New Years Eve with dinner and drinks with friends. We were home and in bed by midnight! haha. 

Starting the new year off right!

Somewhere in between the posts above we had lots of snow! This is our house a few days after the snow, we got a pretty good amount. 

My adorable nephew made his entrance into the world on January 23, 2014. 

Truman Jeffrey Todd 

{I'm sure Corynne with post more later}

Lastly, the reason I have not been posting much the past few months is because I have been studying for a big exam. I am a member of the Society for Marketing Professional Services and I took the CPSM (Certified Professional Services Marketer) Exam this last week followed by the Southern Regional Conference. It has been a rough couple of months preparing for the exam, but I am relieved it is over. 

Hopefully I will have some good news in the next few weeks!

Hope you enjoyed my recap of the past few months!

-Court

back at it ~ the lake and peach cobbler

Woo hoo! It's boat time again and I am soo happy! I love spending our weekends on the lake. 

Memorial Day for our first day out this year and it was wonderful. A little too windy to go out on the main part of the lake, but we hunkered down in a beautiful cove and relaxed with some friends.

The bad thing was that I thought SPF 15 sunscreen would be enough to keep me protected from the sun's rays on our first trip of the year. Not so much! I even re-applied sunscreen, but I am a bit pink. Ok a lot pink!

We ended the day with a yummy bbq meal and peach cobbler. 

Easy Peach Cobbler

2 - 16 oz ramekins

1 can - Peach Pie Filling (18 oz can)

Biscuit topping--
1 cup flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbl shortening
1/2 cup milk

Wrap a cookie sheet in foil. Split the peach pie filling between the two ramekins. Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients together and cut in the shortening with a fork. Keep cutting intul the shortening is in small bits. Add the milk and stir just until the mixture is moist. Use two spoons, drop biscuit  dough balls over the peaches until the top is covered. (This will make extra dough, I made 1 biscuit on its one.) Place ramekins on foiled covered cookie seer and bake at 350 for 22-25 minutes. If you have extra to make a biscuit, it will cook in a lot less time than the cobblers. 

Serve with ice cream. I had blackberry ice cream with this…super YUM!

These were yummy and HUGE. I only ate half of mine.  And I forgot to take a picture before we started digging in. I left ours a little doughy, because that is the way my hubs likes it and I like to keep him happy!

I am still searching for the perfect shortbread cookie type crust for cobblers, but in the mean time, this was great!

Chicken Tamale Casserole - LEGIT!!

Okay, I made myself laugh by calling this recipe legit, but it was sooooo good! A lot of times new recipes do not turn out as good as I hoped, but Nick went back for a full serving of seconds, so I would say that this new recipe is a winner! The picture does not do the meal justice...

I love Mexican food. Its probably my favorite, so I like having recipes like this that have a Mexican flair. Yum. I found the original recipe on cooking light and you can find it here. I made adjustments to the recipe which are reflected in my description below.

Yields 8 Servings

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (4 ounces) preshredded 4-cheese Mexican blend cheese, divided
• 1/3 cup fat-free milk
• 1/4 cup egg whites
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 1 (14 3/4-ounce) can cream-style corn
• 1 (8.5-ounce) box corn muffin mix (such as Jiffy)
• 1 (4-ounce) can chopped green chiles, drained
• Cooking spray
• 1 (10-ounce) can red enchilada sauce (such as Old El Paso)
• 2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast (If you don't have it cooked yet, I wrote easy directions below.)
• 1/2 cup fat-free sour cream 

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. If you do not have cooked chicken, you can easily make cooked shredded chicken in about 20 minutes. Put four or so chicken breasts in a pot of water with seasoning (I used cumin, paprika, chili powder, cumin, garlic, salt and pepper) bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer for 15 minutes.  Shred with 2 forks.
3. Combine 1/4 cup cheese and next 7 ingredients (through chiles) in a large bowl, stirring just until moist. Pour mixture into a 13 x 9–inch baking dish coated with cooking spray.
4. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until set. Pierce entire surface liberally with a fork; pour enchilada sauce over top. Top with chicken and add more seasonings of choice if desired, then sprinkle with remaining 3/4 cup cheese. Bake at 400° for 15 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove from oven; let stand 5 minutes. Cut into 8 pieces; top each serving with 1 tablespoon sour cream.

And then enjoy this scrumptious meal. Serves 8.

Here is the nutritional information for 1/8th of the pan which is filling!

• Calories: 354
• Calories from fat: 36%
• Fat: 14.1g
• Saturated fat: 7.1g
• Monounsaturated fat: 3.3g
• Polyunsaturated fat: 1.2g
• Protein: 18.9g
• Carbohydrate: 36.3g
• Fiber: 2.5g 
• 9 Weight Watchers Points 

 Let me know if you try this!

~Court

Event Planning -- Baby Shower Fun!

The baby boy is already 2 months old, so I am really late with this post. I've been meaning to post this for a while… Oh well!

A couple in our life group was pregnant so all us girls decided to plan her a shower.

We all chipped in on the planning, so that was a great help. We decided to do a casual brunch shower and there were about 20 people that attended. 

The inspiration for the colors was an orange and white chevron rug in the baby's room. Plus mommy and daddy both went to OSU, so the orange fit perfectly.

I designed the invitations and put them together which helped save on cost and they turned out fantastic! We made signs for the different food and drink stations and we even had a cute menu.

We found this great shop online, ShopSweet Lulu where we found orange and white rectangle plates, striped straws, striped napkins and orange and white tissue balls to hang. They have the cutest stuff at the shop—check it out! We also used mason jars as cups, which was super cute.

For food, we had mini quiche, mini fruit and yogurt parfaits, fruit, cinnamon rolls and blueberry scones. Then for drinks we had mimosas, coffee and water. We only played one game—bingo! Bingo was played while opening gifts. Everyone filled the squares with gifts they thought mommy would receive and if she opened that gift, then you could cross off the square. It really was a fun game.

Overall the baby shower was a success. The food was great, decorations were great and we all had fun. What is even better, is that baby boy is healthy! His mom is also super mom, because she birthed a 10 pound boy! Oh man!

I love the awesome ladies in my life group and I had so much fun planning the shower with all of them! I think we make a pretty good team. 

Hope you enjoy the photos. 

~Court

Wild Game Meals - come on be adventurous!

First off, I wanted to start with a beautiful sunset picture that I took tonight! It was gorgeous outside.

As some of you may know, Nick is a hunter so we have some wild game in our freezer and it is always interesting to try new meals with the meat. I did not grow up eating deer meat or wild birds so it took me a while to get used to. I have 2 recipes that involve wild game and both are good. The great thing is that other meat can be substituted if you do not want to be adventurous or you don't have chukar or deer in your freezer.

Here is a little about the meats that I used:

Chukar- this is a bird in the pheasant family and tastes just like chicken.

Deer backstrap - also known as tenderloin. This is a very tender piece of meat and super yummy.

So--here are the recipes.

Deer Backstrap (AKA ternderloin)

 

Ingredients:
Deer Tenderloin (desired amount)
Teriyaki Sauce (enough to cover meat)*
Juice from one Lemon*
Garlic*
Soy Sauce – ¼ cup*
Season Salt*
Course Ground Pepper*
Bourbon – ¼ cup (optional)*
Desired Seasoning for tenderloin, we used Daddy Hinkles
1/3 Less Fat Cream Cheese
Green Pepper in Large Slices
Bacon cut into small strips
Tooth Picks

Mix all ingredients for the marinade (ingredients marked with asterisk*) and submerge the terderloin into it for at least 30 minutes. Once the meat is done marinating, set everything out to assemble the meal. First put cream cheese on the seasoned meat, then add the pepper, wrap in a small piece of bacon and secure with a tooth pick. Grilled for about 10 minutes on the BBQ. It should be slightly pink inside so that it is still tender. Yum yum yum.

 

White chukar chili -

just a warning, this is not a very healthy recipe

*chicken can be substituted

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced
1/2 cup flour
1 cup butter
4 cups half and half
1 1/2 cups of chicken broth
4 cans white beans (navy, great northern, or garbanzo), drained and rinsed
2-3 (4 oz) cans chopped green chilies
2 pounds of chukar or 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts cooked and sliced into small pieces
2 cups grated Monterrey Jack cheese
1-2 tsp. Tabasco sauce
1-2 tsp. of chili powder (depending how spicy you want it)
1 tsp. cumin
1 cup sour cream (optional)

Instructions:

I cooked the chucker a day ahead in the crock pot on its own since it still had bones. I just put it in the crock pot with chicken broth for about 3 1/2 hours on low until it would shred. We shredded the chukar and removed all the bones.

Now to start the chili...Cook onion and garlic in a couple tablespoons of butter until soft, not brown. Set aside. Make a roux by melting the butter and whisking the 1/2 cup of flour in. Boil for 3 minutes stirring constantly. Add the onion and garlic to the roux.

Add the half and half and chicken broth. Simmer 3 minutes or until thick.

Pour mixture into a crockpot then add the white beans, chilies, chicken, cheese, Tabasco sauce, chili powder, and cumin.

Simmer 20 minutes. Right before serving add salt and pepper to taste and sour cream (optional). Garnish with cilantro.

This recipe is based on the one I found on The Girl Who Ate Everything, I just substituted chukar.

Let me know if you try one of the recipes!

-Court