Macaroni and Cheese

We really do try to be healthy people. But sometimes - and you know it as well as I do - you just need some comfort food. The lovely Katie Farrell has some really scrumptious comfort-food-turned-healthy recipes over on her website, Dashing Dish, and she even has a couple options for macaroni and cheese. I've made one and really like it, but Ryan still likes a more original version than the healthy kind I make for me. So we compromise...sometimes I make Katie's version, and sometimes I make a more traditional recipe, changing out some of the more original ingredients to make it as healthy as I can.

I won't lie. I LOVE mac and cheese. Especially the cheese. And in my adulthood, I've tried several recipes, trying to find the perfect blend of creamy and dry. We don't like it on the soupy side, but we also don't like it TOO dry. This recipe, which I originally found on Pinterest and tweaked to fit us, has been our favorite.

We've loved it in the summer as a side with a burger and hot dogs grilling fest...we've loved it in the winter with BBQ pork in the crock pot or sloppy joes after work. It's warm, it's filling, it's cheesy, and it's our favorite.

Since the forecast for the week is filled with gray skies and rain, I thought maybe you could use a comfort food fix. Hope you enjoy it!!

Macaroni and Cheese

* 2 1/2 cups dry macaroni
* 1 Tablespoon flour
* 1 1/2 teaspoon seasoned salt
* 2 Tablespoons butter
* 2-3 cups shredded cheese of your choice
* 1 cup milk

Bring 5-6 cups of water to a boil in a pan and cook macaroni until tender. Drain and return pasta to pan. Add flour, seasoned salt, butter and cheese and stir until well mixed. Pour in greased baking dish, pour milk over mixture, and bake covered at 350 for 35 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 10 minutes. Serve warm and enjoy!

A Few Tips

* I use whole wheat macaroni. It tastes the same to me, but it makes me feel a little better about eating pasta. Ryan was worried the first time that the macaroni was overdone, because it was so dark, but the wheat pasta just is darker. So it might look different from what you're used to, but it'll taste the same!

* I also use whole wheat flour. It just thickens up the recipe a little bit. The original called for twice as much as I use, but I didn't like that much in it, so I lightened it up.

* You can use any old kind of seasoned salt you like. We like to use it in place of just salt and pepper in almost every recipe.

* I try to use lowfat cheese, and I use less or more, depending on HOW healthy I'm trying to be that day. I've used just about every kind of cheese. Mozzarella, cheddar, colby-jack, Mexican blend...all of it. We usually buy a couple bags of cheese to use in recipes and on our food throughout the week, so when I get to a recipe like this, I just use what I have on hand. It works for us.

* We buy either fat free or 1% milk, depending on what the store has that week. Either will work fine in this recipe. You can also use a creamier milk. Can't go wrong with that in a dish like this!! :)

* This does warm over well, but it gets a bit dry after a few days, just FYI.

Happy Easter!!

My goodness. What a BEAUTIFUL day we enjoyed yesterday! I'm always so grateful when Easter is beautiful, because it's just a bonus in celebrating the resurrection of Jesus...and I always love it when families who get together can enjoy a pretty day outside!

Ryan and I went to church yesterday morning and enjoyed a little pre-church coffee date, followed by a beautiful and affirming service. I appreciated our sermon so much. Perfectly timed for us.

After church, we came home and exchanged our Easter baskets:

 Mine didn't really fit in a  basket. REALLY cool new mirror for our bedroom after we get done repainting it! :)

And someone felt left out, so we gave her some eggs to play with:

We braved the cold and wind for our official Easter photo:

We headed out to our first celebration of the day, which was with my family. This year our celebration included my parents, Ryan and me, my sister Julie, and my Aunt B. We took a picture halfway through lunch so we could send it to my sister, Lori, out in Kansas. The bad part about being the selfie-master is that your head is always the biggest. LOL!!

Mom made the entire lunch herself, and it was delicious, even if Ryan and I were not as hungry as we should have been, thanks to a really big breakfast. LOL!!

We need a Flat Lori for family pictures!!

 I think we clean up pretty well...when we try!

 After lunch, we headed to one of Ryan's family celebrations. It was in full swing when we arrived, but we DID make it in time for the egg hunts. The kids went first:

I can't stand the cuteness of little ones with ponytail sprouts!!!

WAIT. I thought this was the kids' turn???

 

He's a kid at heart, and I love that!!

She thought the lawn ornament was a really big egg! What's the prize for finding THAT one???

Doesn't this just kill you?? So cute.

After the kids' hunt...there was a grown-ups hunt. It was fun!

I found one egg!! {I spent the rest of my time aerating Ryan's uncle's lawn with my heels!}

After we left this party, we went to see Ryan's mom for a while, and then we came home to collapse on Mo!!

 A wonderful day, and I'm thankful for all our families who love us well.

The Shafferland Shuffle

HAPPY EASTER!!!! Praising God today for what this day symbolizes - and hope you are, too!!

* Last Sunday, we got out of church really early, so we took some time to hang out in the living-room-esque section of the church to rest and drink more coffee. We also got to enjoy a lunch out with our friends, Nate and Jenna, and their WAY-too-cute-for-words little boy, Tucker. That so much fun! On the way home, Ryan decided he was craving ice cream, and who was I to argue, so Culver's it was!! That night, we tried our diffuser for the first time. We used the Stress Away oil, and apparently one member of our home is more stressed than we knew. She never left the diffuser the entire time.

* Monday morning, I was so happy to see the beginnings of daylight in the sky when I left home!! YAY!!!! It's been so long!! After work, Ryan and I played with some paint samples we've been hoarding, and by slapping the colors on the wall, we committed ourselves to officially repainting our bedroom. We decided we weren't crazy about those particular colors, so we went to the store to find different shades that we DID like. And when we came home, I made some Easter fudge, complete with smashing up some candy eggs, which was a fun frustration-buster!

* Tuesday was SO PRETTY!!! I am so happy for these nice spring-y days we've been enjoying. We hit the gym after work and then rewarded ourselves with a stop by Starbucks...and then on to Lowe's to get our paint for our bedroom painting palooza. We are both excited for this project, but my GOODNESS is Ryan ever really excited for the transformation! HE even started scraping and mudding just so we can get busy priming!

 * Wednesday was April Fool's Day, so we were the fools who got RIGHT TO WORK on the bedroom makeover! :) We had to pull as much stuff out of the room as we could, and then begin the priming palooza!! Ryan had to do some scraping and mudding, and I just worked on the priming. Yes. We added painting, starting in the middle of the week {before an insanely busy holiday weekend} to our to-do list. Like I said. Fools!! :)

* Thursday was our 28th monthiversary and we celebrated by....PAINTING!!!! That happened, of course, after my visit to the doctor, where I got a clean bill of health AND pictures of my gallbladder surgery. :) We got the room completely primed that night, and while it looks like a first grader's paint job, it is DONE!!! ON to phase two! :) It wouldn't be SOME year in Shafferland if it didn't include a project on a monthiversary.

* I only had to work half a day on Good Friday, but Ryan worked the whole day. He texted me right after he got to work and said the hospital had been slammed with the flu: staff AND patients. I told him to avoid it at all costs, so he did his own version of prevention. LOL!!! That evening, we went to have dinner at our friends' Mike and Angie's house. I made lemon cookies to take, and they made the most DELICIOUS smorgasbord of foods for us! I loved everything I ate, but something didn't love me back. My first run-in with post-surgery grumpy tummy. Sadness! But still a great and fun night with our friends!

* Ryan had to work yesterday, and I represented our household at the birthday party of one of our blognonymous nephews. Fun party and DELICIOUS cake! :) After we both got home, we worked on phase two of painting...the trim! Not the most fun part...repainting white trim white seems rather boring. But it's still an important step! Braeya helped by skimming too close to the walls and getting paint in her fur. Good grief. And then - it was grocery shopping time!! Ryan's favorite part was running through the parking lot with two carts. He turns everything into an adventure!

The Saturday Six

** SORRY!!! To those of you I scared. I'm perfectly fine! Ryan and I were out late last night and I wasn't feeling so well when I came home. Something I ate obviously didn't like me nearly as much as I liked it. So the blog is late to post today and I'm so sorry. All is well!!! **

One.
Spring cleaning isn't a lot of fun in general, but one thing I always look forward to is updating my picture frames. New pictures from the last year - new memories to hang in front of me every day. I love it!! My organizing goal for this week is to update the pictures and freshen up the look of the place!!

Two.

Source

CHALKBOARD EGGS??? WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS????

Three. 

Source

 A few months ago, I interviewed Mandy from Biblical Homemaking about how to be a great thrift shopper. She LOVES thrifting, and the thing that always amazes me is how much great stuff she finds. {I'm one of those who gets too overwhelmed and quits on the clothes in a thrift store.} But in case YOU like to thrift too, she just wrote this really interesting post about how to tell the difference between retail clothes and outlet clothes when shopping in a thrift store. I didn't even KNOW there was a difference!

Four.

I spend some time on the morning show every day, and one of the guys, Jim Barron, is also an illusionist. He was invited to be on a local news show this week as part of their April Fool's Day fun. How cool! It's about a seven minute video, and if you love being baffled by tricks, check it out!

Five.

Source

I had such fun reading this post by Emily Freeman about what she learned in March. The uncanny resemblance between Edith Bunker and Edith Crawley was my favorite.


Six.

I blew through another book last week! I started it pretty late one evening, read about three chapters, and had to go to bed, and when I picked it up the next night, I kept going until I was done. Couldn't stop!

The book is called The First Principle, and it's written by Marissa Shrock...and I actually know her in real life! We went to high school together {though she was a couple years behind me}. This is her first novel, and I am so proud of her for doing a fantastic job with it. She's a middle school language arts teacher, so she works with teens every day, and they are the subject of her novel. It's targeted to young adult audiences, but I completely enjoyed it even as an adult. I found it engaging and probably far more personally challenging than she even intended it to be as she wrote!

I've not read the Hunger Games or any other dystopian fiction, but when I told Lynne about this book, she said the feel of the book sounded similar...so if you have read those kinds of books and liked them, this should be a great choice for you.

Marissa's book is set in an undisclosed future year, when the United States no longer exists as we know it, though pieces of the country we live in presently are referenced throughout. There's been a massive economic meltdown and civil war that has led to a reorganizing of the land as United Regions, instead. Christians are persecuted and many have withdrawn into an organization called the Emancipation Warriors. The government has rewritten the Bible to modify it, and original print Bibles are destroyed if found. Half my brain wanted to view this setup as mostly crazy, and the other half of my brain felt a bit sick...because I have a feeling her ideas might not actually be all that far fetched one day.

The novel is written in first person from the viewpoint of 16 year old Vivica Wilkins. She's the daughter of the governor of one region, and she learns early in the book that she's pregnant, which is forbidden for teenagers, per the rules of the Population Management portion of the government. {There are restrictions on adults carrying babies to term as well...depending on their financial stability.} Vivica's quest to carry her baby to term puts her in all sorts of peril, and the story keeps a fast pace as she attempts to stay one step ahead of the government officials trying to find her in hiding.

One thing that is different in Marissa's book from many other similar types, is her strong lacing of faith throughout. She doesn't hide the plan of salvation or the truth of the Gospel in the lives of her characters. I appreciated that so much - especially as an option for readers who love dystopian fiction but miss the absence of faith in it.

While the story is great and fast-paced, the thing that smacked me in the heart was the TRUTH that we're already seeing the beginnings of the sorts of government control and lack of privacy that run rampant in the year of the book. It was such a reminder of the freedoms we enjoy now and the realization that one day, to claim the name of Christ could bring with it great physical danger. It was a faith-shaker {in a good way} for me.

Whether you have teens or whether you're an adult, I think this is a great read. I appreciate the faith message laced within it, the well-crafted story, and Marissa? I'm proud of you! Great job on your debut novel!

Monthiversary 28

Two months ago on our monthiversary, we had the day off together because we had to go to the doctor about my pesky gallbladder. LAST month, on our monthiversary, I was one week post op and home on gallternity leave learning how to make coconut cream pie. MAN, both of those seem like a lifetime ago!

Yesterday was monthiversary 28, and I went to work so I could be part of BLT, and then I drove through car-wash-like rain from Fort Wayne to Kokomo to go back to the doctor for my follow up visit. It was the first day that worked for both the doctor and me.

Ryan couldn't go with me to this one; he had a full work schedule. So I went alone and waited for my turn...

I got a really good report! She said I'm doing well, and as long as I don't perceive any issues from my end, I don't have to go back!! YIPPEEE!!!! She also gave me copies of the pictures they took OF my gallbladder and liver and pancreas and such - from inside me. Ryan had seen those pictures on the day of surgery and had been SORELY disappointed that he didn't get to have them. So when she handed me my very own set of full color prints, I knew I would have a monthiversary gift for him that would outshine anything I could have purchased.

After I left the doctor's office, I went to get Ryan a drink and then I went to visit him at his work...something I never get to do. He was as excited as I imagined he would be to see all the pictures. He grabbed them and showed them to all his co-workers. That healthcare bunch sure does find the strangest things interesting. ;)

I was pretty wiped out from our week, so I came home and took a nap, and Ryan kindly made our dinner. {Breakfast for dinner at the Shaffers!!} I did pitch in a little at the end. :)

We shoved that food down our throat as fast as we could, because you know...exciting times awaited us!!

If you missed BLT yesterday, you missed me talking about Ryan's choices to pull stunts like the one you see above. Lynne said he had cat-like reflexes, which is what HE always says, too. I reminded her of the time he accidentally walked backwards off his best friend's roof while he was helping reroof it. She said, "Ryan may have landed on his feet, but he has four guardian angels in the hospital!!" LOL!!

Oh...in case you were curious...I helped, too.

We also had to take our monthiversary pictures, so we set the camera up on the timer, to get ourselves with our painting paraphernalia.

The first try went a little wrong, when Ryan was unable to maneuver the obstacle course of furniture and plastic slipcovers WHILE carrying a loaded paint roller, before the timer began. CRACKED ME UP.

So we tried again. THIS time I held the roller while he set the timer and ran. Worked MUCH better.

Even got a shot with our girlie.

And lest you think we are THE worst painters in the world, that's just a primer coat. I promise the real color will look better. :)

Happy monthiversary, Ryan!! I love projects with you AND life with you!! I love YOU!

Small World, Big Impact: Trudy

1. Today is our 28th monthiversary. Still crazy in love with this guy named Ryan who has put up with crazy ole me for 28 months now.

2. We started priming our room last night. It's HUGE. Funny how it doesn't feel so big until you go to paint it, right?

3. My computer isn't feeling well, so I'm posting this from Ryan's...so for anyone who actually might read the "posted by" thing at the end, don't be confused. It's really me. Bekah. :)

4. On to today's regularly scheduled programming. I'm sharing another person whose life has so touched mine and helped shape me into who I am today.

I knew Trudy considered me a special friend when she asked me to be in the delivery room when she gave birth to her first child. There's a whole separate level of trust involved when you invite someone into one of the most sacred moments of life. But even then, I didn't have a clue how much she really loved me. It wasn't until almost a year later that she showed me in a way no one else ever had...how much I meant to her.

I was going through a rough patch with someone else in my life, and I was frustrated beyond belief. It was a ridiculous situation that had blown out of proportion in control in ways it never should have. I was a brand new adult...in that awkward time when I was expected to know how to handle things because I was an adult and dreadfully unaware of how to handle things because I was such a new adult.

The only thing I did know was...something had to change. I couldn't continue living the way I was in that moment. The stress would kill me if something else didn't.

So one night, I decided to call Trudy. It was late, and I knew the discussion wouldn't be a short one, but I needed her advice. As she always does {for everyone}, she dropped everything she was doing and talked to me for quite a while. She listened, she offered her opinion, and she offered advice. She said she would pray for me, and she told me she hated to see the situation dragged out like it was - and all the people whose hearts were hurting over it.


One of the hardest thing about the entire mess that entangled me was the mutual friends I shared with the other person involved. They were numerous, and I had reached a point where I felt so wounded by the words and actions of the other person that I just didn't feel I could continue to share close friendship with anyone we shared. I didn't think I could trust anyone who knew the truth of what was happening between us and still supported someone who hurt me so deeply. I told Trudy that right out loud, and she immediately started crying.

"It's not fair, Bekah," she said. "I love you, and I don't want to make a choice that could cause me to lose your friendship." She said other things after that...things I don't even remember. What I remember is that she cried.

I didn't remember any of my friends ever crying over me before. {Of course, to be fair, I think it was the first ultimatum I'd ever issued to a friend.} But through her tears on that phone call, I learned something I'd never known before: I had friends who valued me enough that they would cry at the thought of our friendship dissolving. Before that call, I didn't know my presence mattered that much to anyone!

Trudy, thank you for teaching me a measure of my worth. Thank you for being open with me during a difficult season. Thank you for teaching me that it may not matter what my words are...they might be forgotten...but if I am honest with my heart, that won't be forgotten. Our basic need is the same across the board. We want to be loved. You showed love through your tears, and you've challenged me to do the same.

***

I still love Trudy and her family so much! I proceeded to attend three more births for her, and I've loved watching her kiddos grow up! The craziness of my schedule since I started working at the station has kept me from spending as much time with her as I would like, but I'm thankful she still calls me friend and has room for me in her life! And I'm grateful for her example to me. I know I don't always do friendship right...I stumble more than I realize sometimes. But oh goodness. How I do love my friends and hope they know they are as dear to me as Trudy's conversation taught me I was to her!

In Which A Project is Born

I have the most long-suffering husband in the entire world.

And not just because he's married to me.

He married me knowing the master bedroom in my house was purple. And then he put up with a purple bedroom for twenty-nine LONNNNNNNNG months.

Since it was just a cosmetic change, we spent all our time fixing up the parts of the house that actually NEEDED real updates. And then we were tired of renovating and just stopped.

But...the time has come.

The time to pull out the paint samples and see what purple would look like if it were more....tan and blue. The colors of the beach....

Verdict? Blue and tan are good. But not THAT blue and tan. So....back to the Lowe's we went for more paint chips.

We found some paint we liked, and I knew the project would come soon.

Apparently REALLY soon. When I came out of the bathroom yesterday morning, at 6:30 a.m., Ryan was already working.

Scraping had commenced, and no, he didn't have the day off. He was just eager to get a little done BEFORE work. I don't even know what that means.

So last night, after dinner, we went to Lowe's with our paint chips and made our purchases!! A cart full of paint and supplies!

And then...are you ready for this?

He wanted to make a paint pyramid.

And then...he came up with all of the following on his own:

Don't let all those faces fool you. THIS BOY IS GETTING RID OF A PURPLE ROOM!!!!!!!

But you know what's funniest of all? As {obviously} excited as he is to be rid of the tri-shade purple master bedroom, he's really THIS excited to have a new project!!

I love this guy. Project junkie that he is and all!

If you can stand it, I'll post updates when we're done! {Which may be sometime between my shower and leaving for work tomorrow morning!}