The Zucchini Bandit Strikes Again

Tomatoes and squash never fail to reach maturity. You can spray them with acid, beat them with sticks and burn them; they love it. –S.J. Perelman, Acres and Pains, 1951

The Zucchini Bandit has struck again. Apparently this isn't just a local custom; it is a common practice in other parts of the US as well. While I was looking for a few new zucchini recipes, I ran across an article by a man in Pennsylvania who has created a holiday specifically for sneaking zucchini onto your neighbor's porch. He's also suggested some other creative ways to get rid of extra summer produce.

This time The Bandit left us a really large zucchini and a really large yellow squash. Too bad there were no tomatoes, but beggars can't be choosers. Maybe next time. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it or, well, half of it – Minestrone. I searched for another recipe that would use up what was left of the vegetables and struck gold.

Zucchini, Chicken & Rice Casserole

Casserole
3 cups {1½ lbs.} chicken, cooked and diced
3 tablespoons olive oil
½ cup onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced or pressed
2 cups {about 1 medium} zucchini, diced
1 cup {about 1 small} yellow squash, diced
2 cups {about 6 oz.} mushrooms, chopped
1 cup uncooked rice
2½ teaspoons chicken bouillon crystals {or 2½ cubes} dissolved in 2½ cups hot water
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese {omit for dairy-free; you won't miss it anyway}
½ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon rosemary
¾ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon pepper
Topping
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup onion, chopped
2 cups {about 5 medium} tomatoes, chopped
¼ teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon pepper

• Heat oven to 375˚. Place chicken in a baking dish, sprinkle with a little salt and pper, cover and bake for 35 minutes. When chicken has finished baking, wrap in foil and refrigerate until completely cooled. Meanwhile, prepare the other ingredients for assembly. When the chicken has cooled, dice into bite-sized pieces.
• Heat oven to 350˚. Lightly grease a 9" x 13" baking dish.
• In a 12" skillet heat 3 tablespoons oil; sauté ½ cup onions and garlic for 2 minutes. Add the zucchini, yellow squash and mushrooms and sauté for 3 minutes more.
• Add the chicken, rice, broth, parmesan, thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper to the vegetables in the skillet. Place in the prepared baking dish.
• In the same skillet, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and sauté ¼ cup onions for 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes, chili powder, salt and pepper and stir to combine. Spoon over the rice and chicken in the baking dish.
• Cover with foil and bake for 1 hour; remove foil and bake for 15 minutes more, making sure rice is completely cooked through.

Notes:
• Even the picky-eater Little Bugs liked this dinner . Mr. Bug and I both l♥ved it.
• A full 9" x 13" casserole is too much for our family to use all at once, so I divided the recipe before baking and froze half of it for another time. That is why it is in a smaller dish than the recipe calls for.
• I tweaked the recipe a bit and that is reflected in the instructions above. You can see the original recipe here. I reduced the amount of onions by A LOT {you'll thank me later}. I added quantifiable amounts of salt and pepper {'season to taste' drives me nuts} and divided out the ingredients that were used twice. I did 2 cups of zucchini and 1 cup of yellow squash {instead of 3 cups zucchini} because I had a squash to use and because I like the extra color.
• The original recipe calls for brown or white rice. It is really tasty with either kind. If you use brown rice, though, be sure to allow for about 30-45 minutes extra cooking time.
• I'll post the Minestrone recipe soon.
• Other zucchini recipes that I love:
Meatloaf
Italian Chicken Pasta Toss
Two-Bean Chicken Chili

Missão Brasil Fortaleza: MTC Memories

Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days. -Doug Larson

I haven't posted about my mission in a few weeks. I'll bet you all thought you were safe from my long-winded reminiscences about that. But I have a lot of pictures I haven't shown you yet and I love a captive audience. As a matter of fact, I just got two really old rolls of film developed a couple of weeks ago and I know there's another one somewhere .

Every missionary spends at least two weeks at the MTC {Missionary Torture Training Center}. You brush up on the things you'll be teaching and learn what's most effective {working with current members} and what's not {knocking on doors}. If you need to learn a language, then you spend about eight weeks at the MTC, adding a crash course in whatever foreign language you'll need. You have morning, afternoon and evening classes with meals and breaks in between and a few workout/gym hours and laundry and letter writing days mixed in between. After a few weeks of staring at the same 10 or 12 people, it can get pretty boring.

{l to r: Sister {Tina} Jordan, Sister {Cassy} Moulton, Elder {Justin} Wilde, Elder {Ben} Blackson, Elder {Ryan} Hammerschmidt, Elder {Jarom} Eberhard}

It was hard to be cooped up indoors most of the day trying to put into practice the language you were supposed to be learning while surrounded by people who were as clueless about conjugations and tenses and pronunciation as you. I think the Elders had a harder time containing their restlessness than the Sisters did. These guys shaved their legs one night just because there was nothing better to do.

{l to r: Elder {Justin} Andrews and Elder {Jarom} Eberhard}

And here they are during a break pitching pennies against the wall to see who could land theirs the closest.

{l to r: Elder {Ben} Blackson, Elder {Clint} Barton, Elder {Justin} Andrews, Elder {Mason} Jacobs, Elder {Jarom} Eberhard and our teacher, Brother {Lúis} Belo}

Judging by the number of pictures I have at the MTC of a whole lot of nothing going on, I was pretty restless too. Don't get me wrong. There were some pretty awesome moments and some really great learning experiences there. But I was really anxious to get to Brasil where I knew there were some pretty fluent speakers of Português who could help me with my language questions, and to get busy with what I was there to do.

One of the best parts of the MTC was the friendship I formed with my companion. She was amazing; patient, kind, thoughtful, strong, determined. Towards the end of our time at the MTC, I was feeling a little down. She received a new dress in the mail. Her mom had made it for her and it was so beautiful. I admired it and she gave it to me straight from the mail to wear that afternoon, before she even had a chance to wear it. That really gave me a lift and I'll never forget how that truly unselfish act made me feel.

{l to r: dorm mate Sister {Cassy} Moulton {my companion is taking the picture}, Sister Me}

Here is my companion, Sister {Natalie} Davey, with the dress she shared with me packed at the top of her suitcase and ready to go to Brasil.

And this is our little group, or district, close to the end of our eight weeks at the MTC.

{l to r: Backish - Elder {Justin} Wilde, Elder {Ben} Blackson, Elder {Jarom} Eberhard, Elder {Mason} Jacobs
Middleish - Elder {Ryan} Hammerschmidt, Elder {Justin} Andrews, our teacher Brother {Kyle} Kraudy, Elder {Clint} Barton
Frontish - Sister {Natalie} Davey, Sister Me, Sister {Tina} Jordan, Sister {Cassy} Moulton}

This is me on the day that I flew out of the Salt Lake Airport headed for Brasil. The quality is horrible, but I suppose it is better than nothing, considering it was sitting around waiting to be developed for 16 years. I'd been at the MTC for a while and my family and some friends came to see me off. It is fun to look back at this picture because some of these people are no longer with us. My mom's mom and both of my dad's parents {who have since passed on} are there. My grandma {second from the right in the blue striped shirt} handed me a $20 bill inside a shoe polishing mitt from a motel and told me to pin in my bra. And besides family, my friends, Michelle and Robert {far left} came to see me off as well. They even brought gifts. Do you see that little guy in the center front? The one with the white arrow pointing at him? That is my youngest brother. He was 2½. He'll be 19 in a couple of weeks and today my parents took him to the MTC so he could start his mission.

{l to r: backish - Michelle, Dad, Dad's Dad, Mom's Mom, Linda, Mom, Mom's Dad, Sister Me, Cindy, Kathryn, Barbara, Dad's Mom, Cheryl
frontish - Robert, Andrew, Jill, Robin, Julie, Mark}

Here's to you Andrew! I hope the MTC is as wonderful for you as it was for me.

{l to r: LadyBug, Andrew, Grasshopper
Lunch just before going to the MTC.}

Snowball Night: Week 10

Sewing fills my days, not to mention the living room, bedroom, and closets. -Unknown

After all the late nights and crazy deadline sewing I did last week, it was nice to do some relaxing, just for fun stitching today. Snowball night has been really fun for me. Karen over at Sew Many Ways is hosting this quilt-along and suggested that you choose one day a week to put together a few snowball blocks {however many your schedule allows} with the idea that you'll have a nice snowball quilt when the snow starts to fall {if you live in the Northern Hemisphere}. I kind of broke my no new projects policy and joined {but then again, I'm always breaking my no new projects policy, so what is new?}. Karen gave lots of examples of pretty snowball quilts and I pulled fabrics from my stash to make my own version of this. I've finished my first snowball quilt {yes, two identical quilts } and have started work on the second.

I sewed one corner on to each of the 48 blocks and also sewed and pressed the left-over corner pieces to make into baby snowballs for the back.

It went really quick to just do it a bit at a time like this. Last time, I sewed all the corners, trimmed and then did all the pressing and the pressing seemed to go on for years. I think I'm going to do one more corner on each of the blocks for the next three weeks and then I'll have them all finished.

If you're interested in joining the quilt-along, there really is no deadline to this. As you can see, I'm technically just starting on my snowball quilt and I'm taking it slower than the first so I'll be at it for a while. Karen has listed all the participants on her blog and you can sign up there and then browse the other participants' blogs for inspiration. They have all done really beautiful work.

I Thee Wed

Success is 10% inspiration, 90% last-minute changes. -Unknown

{Jeremy & Robin, July 31, 2010}

I spent all of last week making little lavender vests and dresses for my youngest sister's wedding. I was on-schedule to have the vests all finished and ready to go a few days before the wedding. Then I had the brilliant idea that I needed to make skirts so that my sister and I could have something new to wear. I then realized that our sister-in-law, who is pregnant, also was not getting a new dress and so I went to JoAnn's {armed with my trusty 50% off coupons), pulled the skirt patterns and then started to thumb through the pattern books looking for something maternity. There was no such thing. I came across a cute, simple dress pattern that I thought would work for all of us and

eliminate the need for me to shop for a blouse to match the skirt. I put the skirt patterns back {I'm still going to have to make one of those skirts at some point because they are so dang cute} and got fabrics for the three dresses. This was Tuesday, the wedding was Saturday and I still had a full day's work on the vests.

{l to r: Julie, Miss Butterfly}

Thursday morning, I worked on altering the patterns, fitting them to each of the three of us. I had real life duties in the afternoon, so when I finally got back to the dresses that night to start cutting them out, I discovered that I was about a half a yard short of {spring green} fabric for the dress for my sister. I live in between two JoAnn's stores and had bought everything they had left on the bolt of that color at the closer of the two. So, at 20 minutes to closing, I set out for the other JoAnn's {with more 50% off coupons} hoping that there wasn't any backed up traffic because of the road construction between here and there. I got there with four minutes to spare only to discover that they were also out of the fabric. I grabbed a fabric that was close enough in color and made plans accordingly. While the second piece of green washed, I cut my dress out, without an inch of fabric to spare. I knew I was in trouble because I had the same amount of fabric for my sister-in-law, only her fabric was in two pieces {I bought some to go with the left-over fabric I had from the boys' vests} and her dress needed to be longer. So I cut out the green dress and went to bed completely exhausted and thoroughly frustrated that my dress plans were not going smoothly.

{l to r: Elizabeth, Mr. Bug, Grasshopper, LadyBug}

Friday morning, I started again, determined to make my plan work. I cut out everything I could for the {lavender} dress for my sister-in-law.  Then I packed up all my supplies, stopped in for a third time at JoAnn's {unfortunately I'd used up all my 50% off coupons } and headed to Wedding Preparations Central {a.k.a., my mom's house} where all the girls were helping get food ready for the big day. As soon as I got there I sat down and began sewing. Originally I was supposed to help with the food, but since I was making dresses I'd been excused. I was also going to attend the rehearsal dinner, but the dresses weren't coming together as quickly as I'd hoped. So, I kept on sewing. I was also going to go home that night so that Mr. Bug wouldn't have to drive up separately. But instead I kept on sewing and we arranged for my dad to pick up Mr. Bug the next day and bring him for the wedding.

{l to r: Julie, matron of honor Jill, Lorelei}

I'd picked a very simple pattern – it said right on the envelope 1-Hour Dress. And I took the pockets out, so that should have cut construction time down to 15 minutes. But It wasn't going that quickly {probably because I added a zipper, a bodice lining and about 500 darts to make the dress more shapely}. I'd made a really good start on the dresses for my sister and sister-in-law and sewed until I could hardly keep from falling asleep. About 2:00 am, I realized that I was only going to be able to finish those two dresses. I knew that it would take me the better part of the day on Saturday to finish them and even if I stayed up all night, there was only a slim chance I'd get my dress done. I decided that I needed sleep more than I needed a new dress.

{l to r: Father of the Bride, Mother of the Bride}

Meanwhile, the photographer hadn't confirmed, the decorator had delivered the wrong tent and rented out the chairs my sister picked to someone else, and the florist discovered {after all the suppliers were closed for the weekend} that she'd received carnations instead of calla lilies for my sister's bouquets. After months and months of planning, my sister had to take a little time-out and my mom and the florist decided to go with some purple {instead of white} calla lilies they were able to find in the grocery store. In the end, it all worked out, but it was a stressful few minutes.

My sister was up and out the door at 7:30 am on Saturday to have her hair set into finger curls. Then she went to the salon where she works and did hair for our mom, the matron of honor {our sister} and two of the flower girls, LadyBug and Miss Butterfly. Pixie's mom did her hair. They looked amazing!

{l to r: LadyBug, Miss Butterfly, Pixie}

Have I mentioned the weather yet? When we arrived for the party, it was 98˚ out. The clouds came in and a sprinkling of rain beat a tattoo on the tent during the ceremony loud enough that it was hard to hear them say their I do's. Then the sun came out and shone right in our faces for pictures. During the reception the wind picked up and the smaller tents threatened to blow away so we had to put them all down. After that it rained in earnest, but fortunately for us that really cooled things down. LadyBug was having a really hard time with the heat and was totally done with wearing her frilly dress as soon as the ceremony was over. She had a meltdown about having so many pictures taken in the hot sun. She looks grumpy in most of them.

{LadyBug, Robin}

I had a really hard time narrowing down the 138 photos {that turned out} that I took of the event so bear with me while I show a few more. Here is my sister's family:

{Steven, Jill, Mouse, Lizard}

And here is a fun one of the kids hanging out in the shade waiting for pictures:

{backish: Mark, Miss Butterfly, Pixie, Grasshopper

frontish: LadyBug, Mantis, Lizard, Cap'n Underpants}

This rainbow came out for the last part of the reception.

{l to r: Julie, Jeremy}

The Bride's Family:

{l to r: Dad, Mom, Andrew, Julie, the Bride Robin, the Groom Jeremy, Elizabeth, Jill, Mark}

And because I pretty much want to stalk her with the camera all. the. time. here's a little slide show of Pixie.

Sunday Sermons: God's Love Is Perfect

Though we are incomplete, God loves us completely. Though we are imperfect, He loves us perfectly. Though we may feel lost and without compass, God's love encompasses us completely. -Dieter F. Uchtdorf