Comfort Food

We had ham on Thanksgiving.

We ate it for days, and then it was gone.

I love ham.

So much so that I bought another one ..... just for me :-D

Now, what does one do with 11 lbs of ham?

{Besides eat it straight from the refrigerator}....

I am thinking of some new ways to throw ham into our meals, so stay tuned for what I concoct.

Today for lunch we had homemade Mac-N-Cheese {with ham}.

I started with a basic roux:

Melt 2 tbsp butter in a sauce pan.

Add 3 cups of milk.

Heat the milk, but make sure it doesn't boil!!

Add 2/3 cup of flour.

Whisk together.

Salt, pepper and garlic to taste.

I added a little salsa macha {stay tuned for that recipe someday soon...}

Stir in one cup of grated cheddar

One cup of grated Jack

1/2 cup of Queso Fresco, or Castillo.... or Feta if you can't find those.

Stir well, and then add 1/4 cup of parmesan

Meanwhile, boil pasta~ whatever you like.... doesn't have to be macaroni.

I made 500g of dry Penne' pasta. {That's like 4 cups}.

Mix cooked pasta into the pot where you made the cheese sauce and stir it all together.

Now chop up 2 cups of ham into little cubes, or bits, or whatever.

Mix it in with your pasta and cheese.

Throw the whole bit in a 13x9 casserole dish, and sprinkle some Parmesan over the top.

Bake at 350 for 10 minutes.

Serve piping hot.

We ate it with banana catsup.

Don't knock it 'til you try it....

Decking the "Halls"

New Stockings!! Reperposed from an old pillow sham that I picked up at Las Segundas last year.
The apliques are some scraps from some Christmas diaper covers I did a few years back.
{No- I didn't iron them..... ignore the wrinkles...}
Now I just have to decide what I want MY stocking to look like :)
I'm not one for matchy-matchy.

Salt dough ornaments:
2 cup flour
1 cup salt
1 cup cold water

This recipe can be air dried, or baked @ 200 for an hour or so {until hard}
Behold A Child Is Born.
I took tho photos and flipped them around, printed out "BEHOLD!" "A CHILD" "IS BORN"
at like 400 size font in various styles and had the kids watercolor over them.
Let them dry and put them in my frames.
I also found a photo from the Nativity movie. I put it into Photoshop and edited it to Chalk Drawing.
Our Nativity Scene has always been these tiny ceramic people that I painted a million years ago.
{so tiny that you can't even see them in the photo ;-)}
So I am going to be proweling around Downtown to see if I can find a hand widdled one.
I'll show you what I come up with when and if I do find something this year.
We always make paper snowflakes around here.
Even when it isn't Christmas.
It's just one of those things..... what is more fun for a 9 and 5 year old than cutting tiny bits of paper up?
This time we used scrapbook stock and made them giant.
Taiah made most of them :-)
I have had a shelf full of my empty Olive Oil, Honey, and Banana Catsup bottles sitting around for awhile. I was wandering around the feild last week and started noticing the smells of sage, and olive branches. I started clipping them and ended up with this ^^ :)
You use what you've got, right?

My house isn't very "Christmassy" yet. Nor will it be, by most standards.
It is still getting into the 80s here and sunny everyday. It doesn't feel like garland and wreaths to me. So I am improvising. The kids are counting down the days until Christmas, so we are crafting our way into a decorated house.
This is what we have so far.
I am thinking the next step will be dragging some sort of tree inside.