Amazing Ham and Potato Soup

I have the most amazing ham and potato soup for you all. I found this recipe looking for a way to use up leftover ham and I am in love! It is so creamy, the first time we ate this soup I grabbed the cheese expecting to need it, but I never added it, because this soup is amazing on it's own.

Ingredients

•  3 1/2 cups peeled and diced potatoes
•  1/3 cup diced celery
•  1/3 cup finely chopped onion
•  3/4 cup diced cooked ham
•  3 1/4 cups water
•  2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules
•  1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
•  1 teaspoon ground white or black pepper, or to taste
•  5 tablespoons butter
•  5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
•  2 cups milk

Combine the potatoes, celery, onion, ham and water in a stockpot. Use the directions from my previous post to chop the onion. Bring it to a boil. Reduce to medium heat and boil 10-15 minutes until potatoes are tender (break easily with a fork). Stir in chicken bouillon and salt.

In a separate saucepan melt butter over medium-low heat. Stir in flour. This makes what is called a roux. Then add the milk slowly, stir until smooth.  Continue to stir for 4 or 5 minutes until it thickens. You will know when it is ready when the sauce coats the back of a spoon.

Stir milk mixture into the soup. Add the pepper last, I definitely recommend adding a quarter teaspoon at a time and then tasting it until you reach the perfect amount of pepper for you. I did a full teaspoon the first time and thought it was a bit much, you know your family best so just do what works for you.

Dinner is served!

How to Chop an Onion

Chopping onions can be a bit tricky but done right it is really quite easy. In college I worked as a student chef in the cafeteria. Which basically meant that I would chop vegetables for my entire shift every day. Since onions are in everything, I had the opportunity to chop a ton of onions! Here is the way I was taught to chop onions.

1. Put a towel under your cutting board, this will keep you cutting board from moving around
2. Chop the top off the onion, not the root, keep the root attached it will help hold the onion together 
   
   
   
   
   
3. Remove the skin from the onion-make a slit in the skin to help remove the skin
   
   
   
   
   
4. Cut the onion in half
5. Place the onion flat side down on the cutting board.
6. Cut in horizontal direction toward the root, stop before you get to the root
   
   
   
   
   
7. Make several cuts down the onion toward the root, stop before you get to the root
   
   
   
   
   
8. Turn the onion and cut the onion again, as shown below.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
9. Ta da! The onion is chopped, if you need smaller pieces put the slices closer together

The Kiddos Playing

For those thinking to themselves, "boy I would really like to see some more pictures of the cute Accinelli kiddos," this post is for you! Jason has been seeming so grown up recently, so it has been a lot easier to to find activities that interest both kids. Here is my little honey painting.

Jason joined in the painting too. He really enjoyed himself. We had to call it quits when he decided to switch from painting to eating the paper. :) 

Here the kiddos are playing dress up

This car moves when you push buttons, so Cailey would push the button and then turn it over so they could play with the tires. It worked great for Jason's tummy time.

Do you all get a ridiculous amount of ads? We certainly do, my kids love to play with them. Cailey likes to look through them and tell me what food to buy and Jason likes to play with the paper. Anyway our living room always turn into a big mess. Sorry the paper is a blur it was only decent picture I could get of them.

Dyeing Eggs

There is a super funny comedian named Demetri Martin. He has a quote on glitter that goes, "I like to do crafts. I work with glitter quite a bit. Don't worry, I make tough stuff like daggers and skulls. The thing about glitter is, if you get it on you, be prepared to have it on you forever 'cause glitter is the herpes of craft supplies." 
That is so true! We dyed Easter eggs tonight and used glitter, yikes what a mess! It was all over the table, counter, couch, and both kids. I haven't check yet but I'll bet somehow there will be glitter on their beds in the morning. 
Despite the mess dyeing eggs was a lot fun. Here is the results. I think they look great. What do you think?

Notice the onion skin dyed egg in the back? I posted the directions to do that in a previous post. Actually to make that one darker I blew the egg out first so I could boil it for longer. To remove the egg just follow the directions on this website. With the egg out of the shell I boiled it for 45 minutes, I love how it turned out, such a pretty design!
Here are some pictures of us dyeing the eggs. Even though we had nine different colors Cailey just wanted to stick to blue and green. Funny girl.

Here we are decorating the eggs in glitter. 

Cailey is watching me put dots on my egg with a candle.

Ben ran out of ideas so he decided to eat his last egg. :)

Here is the results of dyeing eggs on Easter with my Brother and sister-in-law. The dye we used was dye I had bought on clearance from the previous year. Apparently egg dye expires because this dye rubbed off the eggs! When we started Cailey dyed 5 eggs a solid color then ran off to play with the dog. So we touched up her solid eggs a bit while she was gone. Since the dye rubs off, we rubbed off some of the dye and dyed it second color. it turned out really cool. It was the favorite way to decorate this set of eggs. Which one is your favorite? I think there are a lot of beautiful eggs in this batch.

Playing in the Snow

It snowed this weekend. So we had another chance to get out and play in the snow. Since we are new to Utah playing in the snow is still a novelty. Sorry no pictures of Jason playing in the snow this time, since he isn't walking yet he stayed inside with Ben while I took Cailey out to play in the snow.

Here's a picture of Cailey trying to catch the snow in her mouth. It started coming down while we were at the store

Making her first snow angel.

And you guessed it...she had to try the snow, no worries it was not yellow :)

Having hot chocolate to warm up. Unfortunately the snow melted the next day, Cailey was so bummed that we didn't get to play in the snow again.

Jason hanging out with Ben while Cailey played in the snow.

Cute picture of the kids together.

Birthday Freebies

The long awaited day is finally here. That's right it is my birthday. Happy Jenny's birthday one and all :)  one the best things about birthdays is the birthday freebies! Many places offer birthday freebies so you only want to hit up the awesome places since the coupons for your birthday freebies are only valid for so long. All of these places require you to join their email club and then they email you the coupon(except for firehouse subs). Rather than get tons of emails in your inbox I recommend that you create a new email just for freebies.

1. Firehouse Subs- free medium sub, this is by far my favorite, you don't have to sign up in advance just go to your local firehouse subs and show them your ID and you get a free medium sub. *the catch this only works on the day of your birthday not the day before or after, sorry folks.
2. Red Robin-free burger and fries, this was my favorite, but they have made getting the birthday freebie a lot more work so they moved down on my list. In order to get this freebie you need to get a card from the store then sign up online and enter in the card into your online account.
3. Tucanos-free meal, this makes the list because it is a lot of amazing food! You sign up online and the card is mailed to you. It is valid for the entire month of your birthday.
4. Moe's-free entree plus the free chips and salsa! Awesome! What can I say more?
5. Sonic-medium drink, tator tots, or cream slush, another great freebie, the reason I like this one is my daughter has a birthday the same week so I get my cream slush and she gets her free kids meal, awesome! I particularly like the birthday freebies that are drive-thru related that way I can get my freebie without having to unload the kids from the car.
6. IHOP-free Rooty Tooty fresh 'N Fruity breakfast.  Eggs, bacon, sausage, and pancakes. They give you one when you sign up too. So be sure to sign up a few weeks before your birthday.
7. Zaxby's-free meal deal for adults, also free kids meal for the kids on their birthday. The sign up for the kids is on the bag, they snail mail the coupons to you.
8. Fuddruckers-free burger and fries. 
9. Steak n' shake-free burger and fries.
10. Waffle House-free waffle. This made the list because they send emails for free food pretty regularly.

There are plenty of other places out there that have birthday freebies. If you are interested in looking into more check out this blog.  Most are for free dessert or bogo entrees.  I just wanted to narrow the search down for you. Most places email the coupon to you the week before your birthday and then the coupon is good until a week after your birthday. So there is only a small window for birthday freebies. But feel free to signup for all of them, just make sure to have a separate email for for freebies. 

You may have noticed cold stone creamery is not on the list. At one time they had by far the best freebie with the free like it size creation.  A few years ago they switched to a bogo birthday freebie, and then this year they did away with birthday freebies entirely. Come on coldstone you're breaking my heart. :(

Prayers for Chalyce

I think everyone has songs that remind them of certain events in their lives. I have a song that will always remind me of Chalyce's passing. Chalyce, my cousin, passed away last Saturday. She had been suffering from cancer. It started out has melanoma and spread throughout the body. When I visited with my grandparents last month they said that she only had 14 weeks to live. My grandparents said that Jayna, her younger sister, wrote the first presidency of our church (the LDS church) and told them Chalyce's story. So in their weekly meeting she was mentioned and one of the seventy (leader in our church) was asked to come visit her and her family. So he traveled up to Idaho to visit with her and give her a blessing of comfort. I think that is really cool that he took the time to come visit with her and help make her last few weeks more comfortable.

She was really young (35) and had two young kids, her daughter is Cailey's age, in fact i think it was her daughter's birthday yesterday. It was hard to believe that it was her time already. I can't imagine how hard of a time her family is having. It is good to know that she is no longer in pain.

The song that will remind me of this time. Is the song, " I will wait," by Mumford and sons. The song reminds me Chalyce's passing for two reasons, one because it was playing on the radio after I heard she only had 14 weeks  left to live. The second reason is that I think the guy singing sounds like her younger brother Derek so I imagine that he is singing to her.

Here is the link to view the video. It is a wonderful song, it makes me tear up a bit now.  Sometimes it is difficult to understand why people die so young or why bad things happen in general, but I do know that this not all and that she is no longer in pain and that she can be with her family again.