My new toy

I got a new toy this week-well, last week but I was too sick to play with it.  It's an Instant Pot.  I've heard amazing things about them, but I'm just too cheap to get one.  And I don't need one, I have a rice cooker, and a pressure cooker, and a slow cooker.  I'm fine.  But  it was on sale and like I said, I've heard amazing things about them.  So I bought one.  I've used it 3 times so far and let me tell you.  I love it.  I've cooked beans twice.  Both times without soaking them, and going from dry to fully cook-if even a little mushy- in 1 hour.  I'm sold.  Tonight I made beans then I turned around and cooked a pork roast for chili verde in about an hour too.  It was so melt in your mouth good.  I'm posting the link to the recipe.  TRY IT!!!  You can do it in the crock pot too, it will just take you all. day.

Chili Verde

Trying to do better

When we started this blog I thought for sure that I'd have plenty of time to post.  I needed a creative outlet, and this was perfect.  But I apparently forgot that I have 6 crazy busy body children, a smoking hot husband that I just want to hang out with, I was taking classes and had a church calling.  Life is busy.  Since then, I still have 6 crazy kids-its summer though and they can fend for themselves for the most part, I still have a smoking hot hubs who now has a new calling that takes him a way from home more (meaning I may have more time to myself to blog), I'm done with my classes-Now I have an AS in generals and a new calling that may or may not take more of my time.  All in all I hope to have more motivation and time to blog.


Lets talk books.  I just read an amazing book for my book group.  It was my turn to pick, and I hate picking.  We've had a few duds and I don't want to be the one to pick a book that nobody likes.  Or even worse, a book that is inappropriate to read.  We've had a few of those too.  Lesbian love scenes aren't great for a mostly Mormon women book group-FYI. So I asked a cousin for a recommendation.  It was amazing.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

It takes place in Afghanistan before the soviet invasion.  A girl is born to a servant woman and her dad is the master of the house.  He casts them out of the city so that he won't be shamed for sleeping with the maid. Her mom is very bitter, but the dad comes and visits every week.  When she insists that he takes her into town for a movie, he never comes.  So she goes to him and he refuses to see her. Upon arriving back to her home, she discovers that her mother has hung herself.  Her father takes her in for a week before marrying her off.  She's fifteen, being married to a 60+ year old man.  He turns out to be abusive and mean when she fails to give him a child.  20 years pass and he marries his second wife.  The first wife isn't thrilled but they grow an amazing friendship when the 2nd bears a baby girl, not a boy and the husband is horrible to her also.  She does bear a son though eventually and the husband is still awful and beats both women.


While reading this book, I was a little worried that it was too graphic for our group.  Or that the sex scenes were too much.  But after alls said and done, this book needed those scenes to make the book what it is.  To really portray the lifestyle of those who live in the middle east.  So while it is a tragic and graphic book it wasn't unneeded. I loved this book because it has a few different plots and I sit on the edge of my seat waiting to see how they connect.  This book did not disappoint.  I also love that i could relate to the timing of this book.  It mentioned the 9/11 attacks and other things that I've heard about in the news so I felt connected.  Great book.  You should definitely read it.

If Snickers Cheesecake is Wrong, I Don't Want To Be Right!

My husband is a hobby recipe trier. Make his own pickles? Sure why not! Try making homemade tamales at Christmas, yes definitely, once anyway won't hurt! Most recently he decided to make a Snickers cheesecake. It was absolutely wonderful. The crust had a slight issue but it was only because too much water was added from the start.

The link to the full recipe is here

This is the masterpiece! We left out the Snickers on

top and put ALL the Snickers inside the cheesecake.

Since we had to share with our kids we didn't want

them picking any off the top and being gross.

This is a family selfie we took the day we ate the cheesecake.

I didn't notice that my son snuck in a nerf laser gun until after the picture was taken.

This is also the first day of Frank's haircut vs. the long hair in the video

below from the night before when he was making the

cheesecake.

The above video is of long haired husband stirring his snickers cheesecake masterpiece! It was a real winner in my book!

Dad's Favorite

When I was growing up, my mom made birthdays a huge deal. This is important because she HATES holidays.  But we knew that on our birthday it was going to be all about us.  One of her "things" was giving us whatever cake we wanted.  I remember once that I asked for a cheese cake.  I'm not entirely sure she had made a cheese cake before then, but I got my cheesecake and it was magical.  But this post is not about me.  Its about my Dad.  His favorite cake, and I can remember having it a lot on his birthdays, is Pineapple upside down cake.  Every year, it was either that or german Chocolate cake.

Well, I had been craving Pineapple upside down cake.  It didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, but it was still so super yummy.  The recipe I found was made the cast iron skillet.  So I tweaked the recipe because it was for a small cast iron.  So I doubled it.  This caused a problem because it was too much batter.  It didn't cook all the way through the middle.  The very center was raw, but the rest was amazing. Maybe one and a half-ing it would work better--Also, I don't like maraschino cherries, so I omitted those real quick!!
The original recipe came fromJust a Pinch

**I LOVE my cast iron skillet.  My parents gave it to us one year for Christmas and we use it for everything.**

Here goes

1 cup butter- melted
2 cups brown sugar
1 can sliced pineapple
6 eggs beaten
2 cups sugar
2 cups flour-sifted
2 tsp powder
1/2 tsp salt
10 Tbsp pineapple juice

In your cast iron skillet, melt butter and add brown sugar and blend well.  Arrange pineapple slices on top of brown sugar and butter.  In a large bowl mix remaining ingredients and poor over the pineapple mixture in the skillet.  Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour.  Like I said you may need more, depending on how much batter you have.  You don't want it jiggly in the center and you want it to be a nice golden color.
Let the cake cool for about 10-15 minutes in the skillet.  Turn the cake upside down onto a serving plate.  My cake was big so I put a flat cookie sheet over the skillet then flipped them together.  We served with whipped cream and it was perfect.  Ice cream would be amazing too!!

Dinner time at the Bushman's

Ugh, dinner time.  Does anybody else hate dinner time?  Does anyone else's kids run circles around the table? Does any one else's kids refuse to eat until dinner is put away?  It never fails.  At my house, nobody wants to help with dinner until it's prepared and on the table.  Then my two little ones NEVER want to eat until I have cleared the dishes and put them in the dishwasher.  This happened tonight and my two year old who would not take a nap decided to lay on the floor and throw a fit.  It.  was.  AWESOME!!!

Please ignore the cross-dressing children.  This is how they like to play dress up, by wearing each others clothes.

The Day The Kid Stopped Breathing In My Primary Class

I enjoy writing and I enjoy my sister in law. She moved away and its one of those things where you don't realize what you had in a friendship until its gone.

But it is fun to have this blog together even though its only us who reads it for now. One day surely we will be famous public speakers together who tag team marvelously on stage and make billions of dollars from our witty repartee.

Since we can write about anything we want in this blog together my first post on this blog will be about what happened today in my primary class. If Jami and I would have had Sunday dinner together tonight I would have told her and her family this story.

It's a big exciting story so hold on to your butts.

Today at church the primary kids had all just gotten a basic disc shaped piece of hard candy from the music leader as they left sharing time to go to class. Of course we thought nothing of it until one of the little boys sitting next to me (I was on discipline duty this week sitting in the half circle with the kids trying to keep them quiet and respectful for my team teacher to teach) started to choke on it.

I wasn't sure at first if he was choking, but when his eyes started to bug out and he began to look more panicked and more scared I was definitely (well 70%) sure he was choking. I pulled the trashcan over to us and was in mental super slow mode as I'm watching the poor boy struggle and not know what to do. Of course the Heimlich maneuver scenes from movies and television are all playing in my head in pieces as I pat the boy on the back and encourage him to "get it out" (seems like dumb advice now, because of course that is what he was trying to do already but that's what I said).

Even though it was just seconds passing that he was choking on my watch it seemed like hours and it seemed like my best recourse would be to run screaming for "HEEEELLLLLP" through the halls of the church. I turned to my team teacher and said, "JoAn I think he's choking, do you think he's choking??!?" She thank heavens knew better how to get it out and did some fancy moves and SPITUU-EE he got the lodged candy into the garbage can.

Since JoAn had just finished saving our students life I figured it was only fair if I helped him cleanup his face by donating some of my baby wipes to the cause. A trip to the bathroom later and the kid was good as new!

A good learning experience for me. Telling the story to several CPR certified members of my family I now know how to more helpfully deal with the same situation should it ever occur again.

I'm grateful for a cool headed team teacher. I'm grateful that I didn't end up running through the halls of church screaming HEEEELLLP!!!!! I'm grateful for angels who sit in CTR 5 primary classes and help teachers dislodge candy so no one has any serious trouble in class.

I have included a very handsome picture of my sons in their church jackets from today because I have no video footage of the actual choking incident (thank heavens because I'm sure it would have been me running in circles in the background screaming "is he choking do you think he's choking?" while JoAn saved the town).

Congratulations you've reached the end of my story,
Kamarah

 

Secret Family Recipe

My husband is a very relaxed, go with the flow kind of guy.  Whatever I make, he'll eat.  He's very laid back which is what I need. Every once in a while he'll pick something he wants. This weekend, he picked Texas Sheet Cake. When he was growing up when they had birthday's him and his seven brothers would always ask Grandma Bushman to make Texas Sheet Cake.  She was the queen of Texas Sheet Cake.  Nobody to this day can make Grandmas Sheet Cake.  But I attempt it and something is always wrong.  But its still edible.  I think he secretly wants something to go wrong so that it is the one thing his Grandma still has for herself.  Any who, this time around, something went wrong with the frosting.  I don't think I cooked it long enough.  So make sure you cook it enough.


Texas Sheet Cake
2 Cups Sugar
2 Cups Four
1/2 tsp. Salt
1 Cup Water
2 Cubes Margarine
4 Tbls Cocoa
1/2 cup Sour Cream
2 Eggs
1 tsp Baking Soda

Preheat oven to 375. Boil water, margarine and cocoa.  Add sugar, flour and salt. Mix well.  Add sour cream, eggs and baking soda. Mix until well combined. Pour into a greased and floured (or sprayed) cookie sheet.  Bake for 20-25 minutes.* Until a toothpick comes out clean.--Immediately frost.

***Don't over bake or you'll have a dry cake.  Mine baked for just shy of 20 minutes.

While cake is baking, mix the frosting so it's ready when the cake comes out.

Frosting
2 Cubes Margarine
6 Tbls Evaporated milk
4 Tbls Cocoa
1 box powder sugar (about 4 cups)
1 Cup Chopped Pecans
1 tsp vanilla

Boil margarine, milk and cocoa for 1 minute.  Add sugar, nuts and vanilla.  Pour/spread on warm cake.
Like I said before, make sure you boil on a full rolling boil for one minute.

So yummy.  I love this cake and I love even more the significance it has to the hubs.  Maybe one day I'll perfect it like Grandma.

The Best Book!!

So, I'm in a book group. I know, cliché.  Who has time to read?!  When it comes to my book group the better question is: Who has time for anything else?  I get so lost in my books that the house is neglected, the children are barely hanging on and dinner is almost all but forgotten.  It's a real sore spot with my husband-me and my books.  My all time favorite book came from a book group.  Its a funny story actually. Each month a different member of the group picks the book.  One month, one of the ladies picked a book and by page three I was having to put it down.  It was, in three pages, filled with outrageous swear words and lesbian love scenes.  Needless to say, she ended up changing her pick for that month.  The next time it was her turn we were all a bit nervous.  The book she picked turned out to be AHH-MAZING.  The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton.  By far my favorite book.  I'm not great with reviews so I'm cutting and pasting from a different website.

Cassandra is lost, alone and grieving. Her much loved grandmother, Nell, has just died and Cassandra, her life already shaken by a tragic accident ten years ago, feels like she has lost everything dear to her. But an unexpected and mysterious bequest from Nell turns Cassandra’s life upside down and ends up challenging everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.

Inheriting a book of dark and intriguing fairytales written by Eliza Makepeace—the Victorian authoress who disappeared mysteriously in the early twentieth century—Cassandra takes her courage in both hands to follow in the footsteps of Nell on a quest to find out the truth about their history, their family and their past; little knowing that in the process, she will also discover a new life for herself.

(www.goodreads.com/book/show/3407877)

This is not a book that you can go back and read your favorite part.  There are too many plots and characters that are being followed all at once.  There are twists and turns and it is just so good!! Definitely read this book!!

New Blog Intro

This Blog is about being creative.   I love cooking, and baking and reading and my family.  I have six kids, but I am very much NOT.  I need a creative outlet.  I have ideas in my head and desires to create things, But I just don't know how to go about it.  My sister in law(who is my partner in crime for this blog) brought to my attention that the Kitchen is my canvas.  I spend a lot of my time in the kitchen making dinner or treats.  I love to pretend I'm a pioneer and make homemade things.  Like bagels, pita bread and tortillas.
This Blog is a mixture of all things.  From favorite reads, to favorite recipes, to anything else that we feel would be fun. My main hope for this blog is that you all aren't bored. I'm not eloquent  in my words, I like to think I'm funny in real life, but I don't project that well in words.