Olive Garden Recipes

Posted on by Becky

I stumbled across the Olive Garden website and found that they have a bunch of their recipes posted!

I am not a huge Olive Garden fan–I mean, I probably could be, since Italian food is my top favorite–if it weren’t for Macaroni Grill! But since Olive Garden’s prices are really not much cheaper than Macaroni Grill (and since the entire Macaroni Grill experience is far superior), I just don’t go to Olive Garden very often.

PenneRomanaBut if you’re talking about my home-made Italian food vs. Olive Garden’s? I’ll go with Olive Garden! I’m trying to cook economically, and we’re trying not to eat out. But I want to try once a week to make something a little tastier, a little fancier–even a little more expensive!

Last night we tried the Penne Romana recipe. (I used Olive Garden’s picture here, because I didn’t think of taking one until there were just leftovers. We were too hungry and too excited about eating it to think about taking pictures.)

It was fabulous!

The sauce tasted every bit as good as an Olive Garden experience–and definitely better than any Italian dish I’ve made at home previously!

This would be great paired with some Italian Bread and a Caesar salad–although we enjoyed it immensely as a one-dish meal.

I should mention that the prep time of 15 minutes must assume that you already have 4 cups of pasta prepared, 2 cups of beans blanched and your onions already pre-chopped. Or maybe they just didn’t factor in caring for two toddlers while you’re cooking, because I was in–and out of–the kitchen over an hour before it was ready.

It is a meatless recipe, and my husband really really prefers meat in his meals, so I added 1-1/2 lbs of chicken cut in 1-1/2 inch pieces (dredged in 3/4 cu. flour, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper, and sauted in 3 tbsp olive oil seven minutes). It would have been great with or without the chicken.

Adding the chicken really increased the quantity as well. The recipes says it is four servings, but we will probably get 2-3 more meals out of this, and we were stuffed after we ate!

We loved it! We’ll make it again!

In fact, if you come over, it just might be one of the meals we serve company!

I will be trying more Olive Garden recipes in the next few weeks, and I’ll let you know how they turn out!

‘Dirls’ These Days

Posted on by Becky

Three days with migraines means I spent three days doing as close to nothing as possible, in as much darkness as possible–so naturally I spent the remaining days playing catch up. It’s been a rough week.

Thankfully, my husband has been a huge help! Especially this weekend. Both Friday and Saturday he took both kids to play at the park. Saturday he ordered pizza for dinner so I wouldn’t have to cook, and Sunday after church we had Arby’s. Not the healthiest weekend, but hey, I’m actually well enough tonight to type up a quick post! 🙂

On Saturday morning I woke up again with a migraine, and after a couple of hours getting the kids ready for the day and getting their breakfast, the pain on the left side of my head was killing me. I had no choice but to go back to bed. I put Micah down for his morning nap, and Daniel said he and Mara would make coffee and then watch something together.

Mara loves to “make coffee” with Daddy. Her job is to push the button on the coffee grinder. This has been her job for over a year now. But the best part in Mara’s mind is not so much making coffee, as “watching something” online while they wait for the coffee to brew.

Apparently they’ve watched all the “Superman” cartoons that are online now, and they’ve moved on: to The X-Men.

Having never seen The X-Men, and thinking that sounds somehow beyond “toddler girl” level, I said to Daniel, “I don’t know if a 2-year-old girl should be watching the X-Men.”

And Mara replied, “It’s just a tar-toon, Mommy.” Then emphatically, she added, “‘Dirls should watch X-Men after they make coffee with their daddies.”

I smirked, because she was so convincing. (Who is this ‘dirl’?!?!)

Mara smiled sweetly and followed Daddy to the stairs. As she started down the steps, I heard her call over her shoulder, “I’ll be fine, Mom.”

“Mom”? Since when did I become “Mom”? She’s only two!

I really thought “Mommy” should last at least until kindergarten!!!

Remembering Micah’s Story: My Brother’s Wedding

Posted on by Becky

My brother Jon got married in South Carolina on Saturday, June 7, 2008, and sadly we weren’t able to be there. Ever since we found out I was pregnant with Micah, we knew it was possible that we might not be able to go–7 weeks before the baby was due. And I told Jon that the day I told him I was pregnant (Christmas Day 2007), but it never occurred to me back then that the baby might actually be born before Jon’s wedding!

Despite living all over the country, my family is very close. Yet we rarely ever can afford the time off or the costs of traveling, in order for all of us to get together. Jon’s wedding was to be the first time, since right after Christmas 2004, that we had all been together! (I say “right after Christmas,” because that year we were supposed to be together for Christmas–it would have been my family’s only Christmas “together” in the past seven years–but Daniel & I were flying Christmas Day, in order to “spend Christmas” with both our families, which we will never do again. We never made it to South Dakota. Our flight was delayed, and we spent Christmas night at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. We missed church on Sunday too, because the earliest flight we could take the next day didn’t get us there till the afternoon.)

So, 3-1/2 years later, we were looking forward to some family time. And I was thrilled that my little Mara’s first wedding would be my brother’s wedding . . .

Daniel came up with a great plan: We would take our time traveling down. We would leave on Wednesday morning. Drive to Virginia. Find a place to stay and have a relaxing afternoon/evening there, somewhere in the mountains. Get up whenever we woke up Thursday morning, have a bigger breakfast somewhere, and drive the rest of the way. Spend Thursday night with Matt & Heather (friends we were planning to stay with), and then have Friday and Saturday free to spend with family and wedding events.

But when I started having contractions at the end of April, Daniel became incredibly nervous about traveling, and he kept making the comment, “If we go to the wedding, the baby will be born in the mountains in Virginia!”

I kept telling him he was over-reacting, everything would be fine! Little did I know . . . according to our original travel plans, Daniel was right!

After my c-section, while I was in recovery (June 4, 2008), Daniel said, “If we had gone to the wedding, guess where Micah would have been born?” I was like ‘i know, i know—in the mountains in Virginia!!!’ . . . oh the drama . . . 🙂

Daniel got sick the day after Micah was born and couldn’t come back to the hospital during the rest of my stay. Between Daniel being sick, my own recovery, trying to learn about Micah and spend any time in the NICU that I could, I was too busy to even think about Jon’s wedding.

Initially I was told that I would be dismissed from the hospital on Sunday. I was fine with that. I was in no hurry to go home. I couldn’t even care for Mara when I got back, and I would only be able to see Micah (at the most) once a day after I went home.

But Saturday morning, after an almost sleepless night, I got a surprise when one of the nurses came in and told me that if I didn’t leave this morning, we would be personally billed for an extra day, because my insurance wouldn’t cover the next night. The next few hours were a flurry of activity: contacting one of the residents to get my stitches out, trying to meet with the lactation consultant, Micah’s neonatologist & nurses, trying to get a ride home since Daniel was working all day and had planned to pick me up on Sunday, signing stuff, packing up my things . . .

In the midst of this, my sister called and asked if I wanted her to put her cell phone on speaker phone during our brother’s wedding, so I could at least hear everything that was going on, even though I couldn’t be there. And that was when I lost it.

I wasn’t supposed to be in the hospital, recovering from a c-section with a baby in the NICU born almost 2 months early . . . I was supposed to be in South Carolina at my brother’s wedding! I was supposed to be spending time with my family for the first time in 3-1/2 years!

I knew I should just be grateful that Micah was going to be okay and that he wasn’t born in the “mountains of Virginia.” But combined with my crazy hormones, general tiredness, the pressure of having to work out the details of leaving a day early, and the sadness of leaving my little guy in the hospital, the disappointment of missing my brother’s wedding too was overwhelming.

I recovered. You do what you have to do. I clearly had no choice about whether or not to make it to the wedding, which in one sense made it easier. The decision was made for me, by God, so I need to be okay with that.

——

So when I found out I’m expecting again, and my sister is in a serious relationship?!?!?! . . . YIKES!!!!!

I said to my brother, “If I have to miss Mary’s wedding too?!?!—-BOOOOOO!!!”

So my brother said we can call this baby “Little Boo,” because I “booed” when I found out I was pregnant and might miss Mary’s wedding.

And Jon added even more encouragement: “Maybe you’ll miss a wedding every time you have a baby!”

(Wow, thanks, bro!)

“But after this, there aren’t any more!” I said. “I’ll have already missed them all.” (I just have one brother and one sister.)

“You could always miss Darla’s wedding too!” my brother reminded me, referencing Daniel’s sister.

Wow.

I think we’ll just take one day at a time . . . . . . and pray a lot!