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very thankful

The past week has been one big blur…  So much is going on around here, so many things to do and decide.
It seemed as though I came home from New York and three days later it was Thanksgiving.  Our Thanksgiving was wonderful, full of lots of food and music, surrounded by Poppa and our children.  Can we as mothers really ask for anything more?  I did not pull of any new Thanksgiving outfits this year but we were all together, safe and warm and enjoyed each others company for the day.  Lots of movies on the couch and casseroles, pots and pans covering every inch of counter space.
I wanted to share two little parts of our Thanksgiving celebration with all of you. 
The first is our sage sausage and berry stuffing which I promised to share with a friend.
1 pound ground pork sausage
1/2 cup total of chopped onion, celery and green bell pepper
1/2 cup dried berries (raisins, cherries, blueberries, whatever you like)
1 large Granny Smith apple
1 tbsp flour
2 tsp dried sage
1 can chicken broth
6 ounces cornbread stuffing
Preheat the oven to 450 F.  Crumble sausage into pan and sautee, add onion, celery and bell pepper and then the berries.  Cook until the sausage is well browned. (This tastes pretty good without the sausage too for my non-meat eating friends ; )  While the sausage mixture is cooking, peel and chop apple into small pieces.
Stir the flour into the sausage and cook for a few minutes.  Stir in the apple, broth and stuffing mix until all blended.  Grease your baking dish and transfer the stuffing to the baking dish.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
The second I want to share is our Thankful Jar.
The thankful jar is a little tradition that we keep from year to year.  Everyone is to write at least 5 things they were thankful for in the past year.  They each write them on a slip of paper and put them in the jar.  This year Erica decided to cut them with a fancy scissor which made it hard to keep them from jumbling up together.  At dinner we remove the previous years slips and that brings forth so many memories and little things that we may have forgotten about, then we read this years and put them in the jar.  I keep the slips of paper from all the previous years together in a box to read someday when everyone is all grown up.  You could also do this for New Years and I think it would be great.
The day after the Thanksgiving festivities were over, Poppa and I had to leave for a meeting in Miami 
(more on the tomorrow) and it was so hard leaving my kids behind but I did get to spend the night at my parents house and that was wonderful though much too short.  We got back yesterday and crashed in a bed.  I am hoping to have a much more productive week this week.  I hope to share my advent preparation sometime this week and the rest of the photos from my New York trip.
What have you all been up to?

If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or follow me by email at the top right hand of the screen to have future posts sent to you. Tricia (Crunchy Catholic Momma)

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Habichuelas Con Dulce, a Holy Week tradition

What does that say?  If you don’t speak spanish, I will translate.  Habichuelas con dulce means sweet beans.  I know it sounds weird but it is so good that as a kid I would sneak more than my mom would let me have an end up visiting the bathroom more than usual.

Where my mother comes from (Dominican Republic), habichuelas con dulce are made only during holy week.  You have to wait all year to have this delicious dessert so you really don’t want to miss it when its time to go to your grandmothers, godmother or aunts house to get some.  My mom does not make this but many of my aunts, grandmother and my godmother did and still do so I learned to make it because I did not want this tradition to disappear.  My kids LOVE it as much as I do so I think for now the tradition is safe.

Here is the recipe:  Note*  this is how I make it,  everyone has their own way and most people add a white sweet potato but my kids don’t like it so I don’t add it.  Also, put the beans through the blender with some of the water from boiling it before starting.  I also put it through a strainer to keep the bean skins out.

  • 1 lb of boiled red kidney beans
  • 1 can of sweetened coconut milk
  • 2 can of evaporated milk (Carnation)
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 8 cinnamon sticks
  • 8 cloves
  • half cup of raisins
  • * 1 lb sweet potatoes boiled and diced

  • In a blender, mix the beans and a cup of the water from cooking. In a soup pot add the two types of milk and bring the mix to a boil, add the sugar and the spices and let it cook over medium heat for approximately 15 minutes. Add the sweet potatoes (if you use them) and the raisins. Let it cook until desired thickness.  Do not walk away from your pot,  you have to stir every few minutes or it will stick to the bottom and burn.  Serve cold.
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