Our Favorite Dinner

I thought I would share our favorite dinner with you - hubby has been asking for it a lot lately.  It's kind of a throw-together, makes up quick, and is delicious!

I keep some things in my freezer - chopped green peppers and onions, and chicken breasts that I cook in the crock-pot and shred for future meals.  There's always something on hand...which is lovely when you're tired, lol.  This recipe uses them both.  I apologize for the pics, it was dark and I was using my phone.

Cheesy Chicken Quesadillas

Ingredients:

Chopped green peppers and onions, about a cup.

Frozen shredded chicken breasts

Flour tortillas

Shredded Mexican cheese [maybe a cup for each quesadilla]

Chopped or crushed pineapple

Olive or coconut oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  In a medium frying pan, add about a tablespoon of oil, and add your green peppers and onions when it's hot.

Let the onions cook a bit, then add the pineapple, about as much pineapple as peppers and onions.  This time I used crushed, but I really prefer the chunks.

After this has grilled a bit, add your shredded chicken.

Let the chicken brown while you prepare your tortillas.

Spread half the tortilla with shredded cheese.

When the chicken mixture has browned a bit, add that on top of the cheese, then top with a little more cheese, to keep everything in place.

Fold over the top, bake for 12 minutes or so, and slice and enjoy!

Hubby likes to add barbecue sauce to his, but I didn't care for it.  Just about anything can go in these.  A really fast easy meal, when you have chicken on hand...and I ALWAYS have chicken on hand.  I bring home a huge package of chicken breasts, cook them in the crock-pot with some chicken broth for four hours, then shred and freeze.  Tonight will be the second time this week we've had these!

Now I'm hungry - hubby will be home soon so I'd better get busy!  Let me know if you try it!

Love,

Allie

Busy Season

It's a very busy time right now in Allie-land, the animals are frantically storing up for the coming winter, bucks are fighting and doing what they do, [these two actually got their horns locked together for awhile], all of creation is busy with a purpose...and then...there's me.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm really busy, just not accomplishing anything.  How can that be???  I remember reading, when my boys were small and I was homeschooling, that we need to stop sacrificing the important at the altar of the urgent....I need to take those words to heart again.  

When I first started homeschooling, I could not begin my day until the house was sparkling.  Back then, it seemed important, lol.  But no homeschooling was getting done.  Having two active and creative little boys was keeping things messy.  So, I stopped with needing perfection, and got right to school in the morning - and made cleaning a team effort.  Our house was not sparkling anymore, but the boys were learning!  I made the important stuff the priority.

But now that they're grown, I'm doing it again.  With three grown men on three different shifts, I could spend all my time just cleaning the kitchen.  That gets filed under "urgent", as I love a clean kitchen.  But honestly?  How "important" is it?  Is it ok to clean it just once a day?

YES.

What other important things have I been neglecting?  My sewing.  Christmas is coming, and I'd like to have a few extra dollars in my pocket, so designing patterns is important.  But it hasn't been "urgent".  I haven't got very far with my balcony window design...

There are several blocks to go.  I did get my Sweet Country bound and on the wall.

But you know what?  I was in a hurry, and I'm not happy with it.  The love block is crooked, I have pleats in my quilting, and the binding is too narrow.  It became "urgent" when I decided to enter it into a quilt show, and I was sloppy and it didn't get entered.

Time to take a breath, and figure this out, time to make deliberate choices instead of rushing around urgently, putting out fires and reacting instead of thinking.

I have a limited amount of energy, that's a fact.  Between arthritis, fibro, and some connective tissue disease, I need to make thoughtful choices.  Monday is Mom day, that's the day I take her grocery shopping and running around, nothing else gets done - then I need Tuesday to recuperate.  Stitching rejuvenates me, designing gives me energy, so Tuesday is sewing day.  Wednesday I'll clean the whole house, then the rest of the week I can recuperate and sew.  Deliberate choices, designed to make the most of what I can accomplish.

I'm designing my days as I design my patterns, with much thought and prayer.  I'm not sure how I got back into this mess of unplanned days, but it's wearing me out and it's time to stop.  I've learned that I need big chunks of time to get things done, I'm not one of those who can just take 15 minutes to sew - I wish I was!!!  But I don't handle transitions easily, so taking a whole day to do nothing but clean makes sense to me.  Having whole days to just sew makes sense.  

I'd love to hear how you schedule your days - can you easily grab a few minutes here and there to stitch?  Or do you need big chunks of time as well?  Let me know in the comments!

Love,
Allie