My last few years in Hawaii were tough. Actually most of my years in Hawaii were tough! It’s an expensive place to live and I went through a lot of difficult situations. But my last couple years I had a string of crazy accidents that seemed impossible (breaking my foot jumping up and down, hitting a junkie who ran in front of my car and having him chase me with a knife, getting stabbed in the stomach- not by the junkie, getting cut to the bone under my eye by a window shade, etc).

I really would not have gotten through all these things without the support of some wonderful friends who really are like family. One of these people was Denise Silver.

The Silver family is a military family who went to Hawaii Kai Church. They had high school and middle school age kids who I absolutely adore. They adopted my into their family, fed me, loved me and really filled that void left by not having any family nearby. They even had me stay with them when I broke my foot! Denise was my “Hawaii Mom” and loved to fill my belly with home cooked meals when I couldn’t afford groceries and didn’t have a kitchen in my ridiculously tiny apartment.

One of my favorite meals she made was “Green Chile”. I don’t have her recipe, but I experimented around and this reminds me of it, and so reminds me of her.

INGREDIENTS

• 4 Chicken Thighs
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1 teaspoon dried marjoram
• 1 tablespoon dried basil
• 2 habanero peppers, seeded and minced
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 5 carrots, chopped
• 5 stalks celery, chopped
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes with green chiles
• 3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Bake thighs in 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. When done, shred using two forks (much easier if you wait until they’re cool). Fill a large pot with 8-10 cups of water. Add spices (cumin through basil) and bring to a boil.

Add chicken to the pot and add the green chile peppers, habanero chile peppers, onion, garlic, carrots, celery, tomatoes and potatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes, or until the potatoes and carrots are tender. In a separate small bowl, mix the flour with some water and add to the soup, stirring well so the flour does not clump. Raise heat, bring just to a boil and remove from heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

I like to mix in a spoonful of sour cream for each serving and serve with tortillas. It’s delicious!

Lori (my friend and co-leader) brought a box of oranges to our High School girls’ Bible study. There were about 15 left at the end and she only wanted a couple, so I took the rest home. I typically prefer my oranges very sweet or very tart, but these were actually a little bitter, so I knew Eric and I wouldn’t finish them all before they went bad unless I made things out of them.

I decided I wanted to serve some for dessert the next night, and wanted to make them a little sweeter, so I thought I’d drizzle them with honey. But that seemed a little too boring, so I threw some cinnamon in for good measure.

They turned out delicious! After we ate them all, I mixed the drippings with some melted butter to make Cinnamon Orange Honey Butter!

Ingredients

2-4 Oranges
1/4 cup honey (approx no need to measure)
1 tsp Cinnamon

Instructions

Slice oranges and remove the peels. Arrange on a plate.

Melt honey in a heat proof dish in the microwave. (I suggest 30 seconds. I did 40 and it was a little too liquidy.) Stir in cinnamon. Drizzle mixture over oranges. Enjoy!

Last week was rather crazy. The weather was gloomy, which meant Eric and I were often gloomy. I’ve really been having trouble sleeping. But there’s been some big positives too. Eric’s Middle School boys’ small group has almost tripled in size! My High School girls’ group is going really great and I am learning so much from these girls! We also got 3 applications in from potential leaders for Life Hurts God Heals. Woo-hoo!

I did have a lot of fun cooking last week. These pictures actually only represent 2/3 of our meals I made (Eric helped too!) Not only did I make some really delicious dishes for us, but I also made tons of pizza dough for my High School girls’ fun night out. We will be making our own pizzas and playing with the wii (tonight). It’s going to be a lot of work but I’m really excited about it. My fridge looks like a pizzeria right now!

Food we’ve been blessed with this week:

-Box of oranges for free from my friend Lori

-The innards of our date pumpkin

-Stir Fry Veggie Bag free for Eric from Safeway (Broccoli, Carrots, Snow Peas)

-Organic Chicken Sausages free for Eric from Safeway

-Still have free zucchini from Becky

In case you haven’t heard, Pizza Hut is trying some changes by putting pasta on their menu. In fact they’re even changing the name of some of their stores to Pasta Hut for a month or so!

Kristen of Dine and Dish has been given free coupons for one of their pasta dishes, and she’s giving them away! If you want to enter, comment here by tonight. I personally don’t think I’d buy pasta from them (cause I make such good pasta at home, why pay more?). But I’m curious about how it tastes so wouldn’t mind some for free

I needed a fast simple chicken dish, and decided to try something new. Eric and I love Chicken Parmesan but usually I made it fancy with bread crumbs and seasonings and browning and baking and it takes a little while. I decided to keep it simple and try just browning. It started to burn a little ( I had it on high the whole time) so I pulled it out and stuck it in my oven to finish cooking (it was already on for the potatoes). I think that if you cook it on medium high it will be able to cook in the pan alone.

Parmesan Chicken
serves 4

Ingredients
2 large chicken breasts cut in half
1/2 cup freshly shredded Parmesan
pepper
3 TBS olive oil

Instructions
Pour about 3 TBS olive oil into a pan and heat on medium high.

Sprinkle chicken with pepper. Put parmesan on a plate or other work surface. Pat both sides of chicken onto parmesan pile to coat. When oil is hot, carefully (it will splatter!) place chicken in pan using tongs.

Cook about 6-7 minutes on each side until chicken has golden brown crust and is cooked through.