The Queen’s Chronicles – Lazy Weekend
Happy Monday! We had a fairly lazy weekend around here to close out January and I’m not complaining. As I worked on our calendar for the next several months I know free weekends are going to be few and far between so we soaked it up with reading, watching tv and eating some yummy food.
Friday night we went out to dinner as a family to say good-bye to Dillon for the second time this semester as he headed back to school on Saturday. Baseball practive officially kicked off on Saturday and we are hoping they will have a smooth season without too much disruption from covid. He is still 100% virtual for classes which makes me really sad but hopefully things will take a turn as numbers continue to decrease.
Saturday morning we headed out to feed the cows. I’m not sure I’ve shared much but Keith’s dad has not been well for the last year and he has had an especially weak spell the last few months landing him in and out of the hospital. Keith is helping by taking care of the cows. It’s alot easier to feed when you have someone to drive so Keith was all about training Carly Jo up!
She on the other hand was a little concerned about hitting a cow! If you have never called cows before it always cracks me up that all you have to do is blow on the horn and here they come running! She got a little overly excited and mistook the brake for the gas and hit it hard and then proceeded to hit the gas and threw her daddy right off the back of the truck. There was an expletitive (from him not her) but then she finally settled in and stopped worrying about hitting a cow.
All that “work” had us ready for some lunch and we decided to try a little place I’ve often wanted to stop that isn’t really close to our house but was on the way home from Hearne. Top of the Hill Burgers were perfectly greasy with a toasted bun that was definitely mouth watering. I rarely eat the bun on a burger anymore but this was worth the splurge!
I was freezing when we got home and ended up having to turn on the fireplace and the heater while we settled in to watch The Undoing on HBO. Keith doesn’t care to watch series and as he put it….it could have been watched in one shot as a movie. (insert eye roll). I LOVED it!
Believe it or not by the afternoon I had to turn on the A/C because it had gotten so hot and humid! I popped a chuck roast in the instant pot using this Fed & Fit Barbacoa recipe and we had tacos for dinner.
Cooking a meal on Sundays has become one of my favorite things about the week. Something about feeding my family just makes me so happy. I really have to work hard to get out of my head when it comes to hosting as I want things to be “perfect” and can sometimes go overboard and/or stress myself out. This week was an exception and I didn’t worry at all about presentation.
The air fryer (still on sale Amazon and Target $40 off) continues to be my new best friend aned I even popped in some frozen taquitoes to use for appetizers and it only took about 6 minutes for them to cook up nice and crispy. My oldest two feel like it’s a blast from the past when they get to have food from their childhood! Carly has been asking for this black bean and corn salsa so I finally made it for her using this recipe.
Proof presentation was the least of my thinking, I left the enchiladas brown just a little too long. They may not be too pretty but they sure were good! I made the beef and cheese enchiladas using this enchilada gravy recipe which covered the corn tortillas rolled and stuffed with ground beef and cheese. To make the chicken enchiladas I first made a batch of shredded salsa chicken in the instant pot and then stuffed that into corn tortillas and topped with this red sauce. Both were so good!
Because I knew I would need a low carb option for Monday and Tuesday this week, I also made chicken tortilla soup. I used this recipe in the instant pot but definitely needed more seasoning. My taster is still a little off every since having Covid so it’s thrown a kink into my cooking.
One of Riley’s favorite things is churros. We went to Disneyland once and I swear he ate 10 of them at least! I wanted to have something similar for dessert but knew I wouldn’t have time to make them from scratch. The air fryer to the rescue again when I found this churro bites recipe. I think if I had it to do again I would cut the pastry dough into larger pieces and while they were a hit, they tasted more like sopappillas than churros in my opinion.
For February I am going to try and wear pieces that have been just taking up real estate and not rerally working for me. I have always loved the create-28 take and am excited to try to create 28 unrepeated looks this month. We will see if I can make it work! I’m just glad I wore this look in January because it is worth repeating.
Wishing you all a great start to a fresh new start on a Monday!
Linking up for Hello Monday with Heather, Johanna, Lindsay & Tanya