Chicken Quesadillas and Mexi-casserole

This is one of Nate's favorite meals. It's VERY easy and delicious.
Chicken Quesadillas
Ingredients:
- Package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts.
- Jar of chunky salsa (I like lime & garlic, the cheapy Walmart variety, $2)
-10ct package of tortillas
-bag of shredded cheese. It doesn't have to be quesadilla cheese. Cheddar and colby jack are also really good.
- Sour Cream
-a side vegetable

* Put the chicken in a crockpot and pour salsa on top. Cook 5-7 hours. Shred the chicken and mix it up with the salsa in the crock pot.
* Butter one side of the tortillas.
* On a griddle, foreman grill, or large skillet, place one tortilla butter side down. Sprinkle with cheese. Add a layer of chicken and another sprinkling of cheese. Top with another tortilla butter side up.
* If your using a grill, it's a lot easier because you cook both sides at once. In the skillet, you'll have to carefully flip it over. Cook until golden brown.
* Let it set on a cutting board for a minute as you get another quesadilla started. Then cut into quarters and stack on a plate as you go.
* Save the leftover salsa chicken in the fridge for mexi-casserole.
Serve with sour cream and a side vegetable, and there you go! But that's only the first round for us. We're a family of three, but with Suzy, we only eat like one of 2.25. All in all, we get four meals (2 dinners, 2 lunches) out of the salsa chicken. We have the leftover quesadillas for lunch the next day. Then I make the mexi-casserole for dinner the next day.
Mexi-casserole
Ingredients:
- Leftover Salsa Chicken
- 1-2lbs pasta, like macaroni, or a pan of rice
- shredded cheese
- corn
- optional: can of black beans or sauteed bellpeppers.
* Cook and drain the pasta (or rice). Add the leftover chicken and corn, and anything else you want to throw in there.
* Spread the mixture into a 9x13 bake pan. Top with cheese.
* Bake at 350 until cheese is melted and it's warmed through.

This is really good with sour cream too. I have cayenne on the table to add to mine. Suzy won't eat it that spicy, otherwise I'd just add it in before I baked it. We eat the leftovers for lunch.
So, if I get enough things on sale, the ingredients for these 2 recipes costs about $14.50. Which, for four meals, works out to be $1.20 per person per meal for our family. For 2 meals for a family of four, it would still only be $1.80 per person.

C.S. Lewis as an Atheist.

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up on my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too - for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust,not simply that it did not please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole of the universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Psalm Reading

Psalm 149:4
For the LORD takes pleasure in His people;
He will beautify the afflicted with salvation.

Do we realize that as Christians, though we are afflicted, or persecuted, or put through trials, our salvation makes us beautiful in the eyes of God?

Psalm Reading

Psalm 149:4
For the LORD takes pleasure in His people;
He will beautify the afflicted with salvation.

Do you ever think that we are all afflicted with daily decaying bodies, and that by saving us, God has beautified us - beautified our souls, our only eternal part? Why do we spend so much time, money, and anxiety on what is only our shell?

It's Love - and Vocabulary

This morning, inspired by last night's Sisters meeting (in which Kirstie talked about gluttony, the danger of being a spiritual sprinter instead of a marathoner, and the benefit of spending 20 minutes on your appearance every day) I got up waaaay earlier than usual, had some tranquil time with the Lord, a real shower, dressed properly, and did my hair and make-up.
I went to Nate and asked him if he thought my hair looked fetching.
He said, "You know what I love about you? You're the only woman I know who uses fetching in a sentence."
Isn't that sweet? Nate loves me nerdy. :oP

I'll Never Tell Her...

Last week, as I was folding laundry and Suzy was napping, I heard a little noise from Suzy's room. It sounded exactly like a small person trying to make as little noise as possible as she opened the cabinet on the play kitchen. Which of course it was.
I knew what was going on. Suzy had gotten out of bed and was playing. She knew she wasn't supposed to, so she was trying very hard to be quiet.
Suzy, however, didn't know that her little naughty self was making my afternoon. If Suzy actually goes to sleep, then after an hour, maybe an hour and a half, she wakes up. In her sweet, confused not-quite-awake state, she leaves her room and seeks me out immediately. However, if she ditches her nap and gets up and plays quietly, she's afraid to come out because she knows I'll put her back to bed. Since she has no watch and can't tell time anyway, she can't estimate a plausible amount of time to fake a nap. So she stays in her room, looking at books, doing puzzles, playing dolls, for up to TWO HOURS! I get to finish my work uninterrupted. When I do go get Suzy, we have time to play together. After dinner, she's usually so tired she wants to go to bed a little early.
Yes! It's a total win for me! I haven't quite wrestled with all the moral implications of delighting in my daughter's sneakiness though. Maybe the right thing to do the next time she ditches nap would be to go in after an hour and put her back in bed. That way I may get two and a half hours! Woo-hoo!

Sixpence to the Good

"If you devoted every moment of your life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already. So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, "Daddy, give me a sixpence to buy you a birthday present." Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child's present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is sixpence to the good on the transaction."
-C.S. Lewis

So It Begins...

I've named my blog "L'avion Rose." When I was seventeen, I went with my grandmother to France, to visit family. While there, my grandmother gave me a black t-shirt with "La Vie En Rose" written on it, with a picture of a pink airplane. Grandma explained that it was a pun. The French phrase "L'avion rose", or pink airplane, sounds like the expression "La vie en rose", which means "life in pink." It's like the English rose-colored glasses.

I loved that, and I think it's a great title for my blog - which will just be little snippets of my life. In pink.