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Bailey made this tonight with my guidance (but all her labor!). Her first experience with chopping onions and potatoes. This is her Grandma’s traditional recipe - a family comfort food favorite.

German Potato Soup with Dumplings

Ingredients

7-8 large potatoes, peeled and diced
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 stick of butter (1/2 cup)
1 can evaporated milk

1 cup flour
1/2 cup water

Directions

1. Cover diced potatoes and onion in pot with 1/2-inch water. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are tender, approximately 15-20 minutes depending on size off the dice.

2. Mix flour and water to form a stiff dough. You can also put 2-3 eggs in a bowl and add flour until a stiff dough is formed. We like the dumplings either way.

3. With larger diced potatoes, blend or mash potatoes to thicken. You can skip this step with smaller dice potatoes.

4. Add can of evaporated milk (you can also use regular milk or heavy whipping cream in a pinch) and stick of butter to the pot. Bring back to a simmer.

5. Drop small pieces of dough into soup and simmer for 5 minutes. Serve.

Here’s what’s for dinner tonight (with bread and lima beans). Recipe adapted from this recipe at Southern Food on About.com - I really find a lot of good recipes there!

Looked like something yummy to do with the five pounds of bone-in country-style ribs I got on sale.

After typing this up, I realize this would be even simpler and even less mess if you skipped the dredging step. Just season the pork with a little salt and pepper before browning it. Mix all the other seasonings in with the tomatoes and pour over the browned pork to simmer.

I’ll try that next time and report back, because I suspect the trade-off in convenience is worth the tradeoff (if there is one!) in flavor.

This would also adapt well to the crockpot. If I make this in the crockpot, I wouldn’t add any additional water, and might even skip the diced tomatoes.

Spicy Skillet Country Ribs

Ingredients

2 pounds boneless country style ribs
1 tablespoon ground allspice
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Cayenne to taste
1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried leaf thyme, crumbled
3 to 4 tablespoons brown sugar, divided
1 to 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium sweet onion, sliced
1-12 oz. can diced tomatoes, plus 1 can water

Directions

1. In large bowl, combine allspice, ginger, pepper, salt, thyme and 2 tablespoons of the brown sugar. Mix to combine well.

2. Dredge pork in the spice mixture (or shake together in a Ziploc bag); place in hot oil in one layer. Cook, turning frequently, until browned on all sides.

3. In same large bowl, mix together the remaining brown sugar, tomatoes, water and sliced onion. I also added a few tablespoons of Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce to the mix.

4. Pour mixture over the pork and simmer briskly for about 5 minutes, or until liquids are reduced by about 1/4 to 1/2.

5. Cover and cook for 1.5 hours, until pork is tender.

Serves 4-6.

Click to see my photojournal of our camping trip to Horseshoe Lake

February 14-15, 2009: Mesquite campground at Horseshoe Lake, Verde River.

Highlights of this trip:

- The Brazaletes Pueblo ruin at the summit of St. Clair Mountain was extremely fascinating. One of the most extensive ruin sites I’ve seen (that hasn’t been developed for public interpretation, that is).

- First time camping since Scott made the dinette modification. Compared to the bench seat we had previously, the dinette is SO family friendly. The set up is much roomier and the layout is far more conversational. I liked that there was room for the hubby, a tween and the toddler to sit there while I prepared a meal and served it to them at the table. When we had the bench, there wasn’t a lot of room for other people to sit on it while I was cooking - knees in the way. And, of course, no table, so I was handing the food out. We always had to eat outside. While that is usually something we WANT to be doing, since we’re camping, after all, it was pretty cold on this trip  (got below freezing at night) so we were glad to have the dine-inside-where-it-was-warm-and-comfortable option.

- HM fell into the river once while climbing out onto a tree from the beach at our campsite. Completely drenched, from head to toe. Later, after she was dried off and in dry, warm clothes, the dog dragged her into the water’s edge from the muddy beach. Not as wet this time, but much muddier. I think HM learned her lesson and now understands why I always harp about using the gentle leader!

- It was cold weather for falling into the freezing cold river (like HM did… twice!) or sitting at icy concrete picnic table, but it was the PERFECT temperature and conditions for hiking and exploring, which we managed to do a lot of on this trip!

We got some fresh air and exercise today, as well as an eyeful of some gorgeous scenery!

Click the link below to see the complete photo story.

Hiking: Lost Dutchman State Park - a set on Flickr.

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Amazingly, this is the first photo we have of all six of our children in one shot!

While on the topic of teeth and how expensive they can be…

Human teeth need to evolve such that they are better suited to modern longevity. Having a baby and turning 40 within a year of each other have been hell on my teeth.

Recently I’ve had THREE pulp caps. That’s where there is so much decay that they have to drill very close to the pulp, so they put on this antibiotic layer to try and preserve the pulp while the dentin layer grows back up. It’s a conservative treatment designed to prevent a root canal. It’s also another layer of treatment your dentist gets paid for if the pulp cap fails and you still need a root canal. (Although in fairness, my dentist said that if the pulp cap fails he will apply the very high cost of the porcelain onlay towards the cost of the crown that would become necessary.)

Anyway, one of those teeth already required a crown (one of my metal fillings failed and cracked the tooth massively). Another one required an onlay. And the other one “just” a filling (not metal!!).

Besides all that, I also had to have the crown replaced on a tooth that had been root canaled not even 8 years ago - the dentist I had then apparently did a shoddy job; decay was getting under it because it wasn’t properly under my gums. (I’ll always remember the day I got that permanent crown placed, because it was 9/11 and I was driving to my appointment after both towers had fallen. It felt very surreal to go about such a mundane activity in the midst of such dramatic events.)

The dental work itself was basically painless. Just long, tedious and uncomfortable. The one good thing about a root canal is that the nerve is gone, so there is exactly zero pain to worry about once it’s done and the anesthesia wears off. One of the teeth I got pulp capped can hurt pretty badly from time to time if I chew too “aggressively?” or whatever on that tooth. It’s vulnerable for the next few months while we see if the the dentin grows back to the point that the tooth is considered salvaged. Otherwise, moving on to a root canal for that tooth, too. In the meantime, advil is my friend. Ugh.

My dental work was so expensive we had to divide it into two sessions. Two teeth in December maxed out my dental benefit. So we did the other two teeth a couple weeks ago when the benefit renewed for the calendar year. And we still owed nearly $2,000 out of pocket.

As if that’s not enough, having had one metal filling fail pretty catastrophically (a common scenario because of hot/cold expansion/contraction), I’m now motivated to get the other metal fillings I have replaced. I’ll probably have 1-2 done at a time at future cleanings and take care of the problem gradually. Ugh. Ugh, I say.

In hindsight, what I would do differently:

1. Get x-rays immediately before getting pregnant (a hard one to accomplish, since a girl only has so much control over that). But still, I could have made more effort. We moved right before I got pregnant and I procrastinating on finding yet another new dentist.
2. Get x-rays *immediately* after the baby is born. I kept procrastinating for almost 18 months. Had we caught the decay earlier, the intervention likely wouldn’t have been as dramatic and costly. As it was, I only went in when I started having some tooth pain. When you feel tooth pain, things are usually pretty far gone at that point.

Easy crowd-pleasing dessert - a perfect recipe for baking in dutch oven when camping, too! Of course, you can use any fruit pie filling.

Cherry Pineapple Dump Cake

Ingredients

1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup oatmeal
1-20 oz. can cherry pie filling
1-20 oz. can crushed pineapple in juice
1 package yellow cake mix
1-1/2 sticks butter, cut in pats

Directions

1. Mix together the brown sugar and oatmeal in a bowl. Reserve.
2. Spray a 9×13 cake pan with cooking spray. Dump in the cherry pie filling and spread evenly over the bottom. Dump in the pineapples and juice, spreading evenly, followed by the cake mix and the sugar/oatmeal mixture.
3. Evenly distribute the butter pats over the top of the sugar/oatmeal mixture.
4. Bake at 350F for one hour. Serves 10-12.

January and April 2007: M BEFORE orthodontia.

It’s a little hard to see in this pic to the untrained eye because she has so many teeth missing, but she has a HUGE open bite directly resulting from thumbsucking habit (sigh). It ultimately took an orthodontic appliance to break her of the habit. See how her incisors touch, but there is large gap between her top middle tooth and the bottom teeth?

January 2007

April 2007 - the appliance is in, so this is after a little improvement…

January 2009: M AFTER orthodontia.

She had a palate expander installed in early 2007, followed by a medieval looking anti-thumbsucking appliance, complete with spikes! to help further close her bite, followed by braces to help bring her crowded incisors down. She got her braces off two weeks ago (the first thing she ate was a big bowl of popcorn lol)

The kids LOVE this one - especially served as a beans and rice dish. Recipe adapted from this great recipe source.

Crockpot vegetarian black bean chili

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup chopped onion
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon red pepper or cayenne
1 tablespoon chili powder
2 to 3 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried leaf oregano
1 bay leaf
1 can (28 oz.) diced or crushed tomatoes in juice
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 1/2 cups water
1 can (6 oz.) tomato paste
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Prepared black beans - 2 cans, rinsed and drained, or 1 bag soaked, rinsed and drained
Optional: 2 can white bean, rinsed and drained

Directions:

1. Saute the onions, garlic and red pepper in oil for one minute. Stir in chili powder and cumin and cook two minutes longer.

2. Stir onion mixture into the crock pot with all the remaining ingredients (except the canned beans, if using). Stir well and cook on low all day. Stir in any canned beans an hour before serving.

We like it over steamed rice with grated cheddar, sour cream and fresh lemon wedges. Salt/pepper to taste.