Category Archives: Food

more fall fun

Friday night we had our first annual (hoping there will be many more in the future) International Student Pumpkin Carving and Chili Party with American friends from our church and their “friendship partners” through UNT. It was so much! I didn’t get a pic of the finished pumpkins, but they were sooo good! who knew that they would be so good talented at pumpkin carving?!

the kids painted little pumpkins… Lydia was super into it.

Halloween week 2015

Our third annual Halloween Party with the McGough clan! We ate, talked, laughed, celebrated the fall birthdays, decorated pumpkins with stickers and glitter glue and the cousins had tons of fun running around. Always a fun time when we all get together. Thankful for this tradition!

Happy Birthday to Uncle Scott, Daddy, Colin & Liddy bug!

we love Papa

These two are so much fun to watch as they interact with each other. Lydia now calls Chloe, “chlo bo”, which is the cutest thing ever. They have started to “play” together, Chloe follows Lydia everywhere, they love to hug and kiss each other goodnight, Chloe can’t wait for Lydia to wake up each morning, we have heard them giggling and “talking” as they both fall asleep, they have started to fight over toys because Chloe now claims things as “mine”, Chloe likes to slug Lydia when she is doing something she doesn’t like (she even tried to pinch her the other day for sitting in my lap… guys, I am little nervous about 2s with this one! ha), they love each other and I pray they become the best of friends and that they will always love, laugh, cry, encourage and pray for each other as they walk through life. Sisters are the best!

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    Happy Thanksgiving…

    …to you from our little family!

    We have so much to be thankful for this year. To name a few.. our sweet little turkey! We are so in love and could not be more thankful for her, my sweet little nephew Landon, wonderful family whom we can’t wait to see in a few short weeks, great friends, the ability to communicate (depends on the day how much, but at least much better than we were this time last year) in Arabic, and each other. I am so thankful to be on this journey with Chase- thankful for the husband he is and the dad he is becoming.

    We were blessed to get to spend thanksgiving this year with some of our dearest friends out here plus some Brazilians and Costa Ricans! We had all the traditional foods- turkey (we found one in Dubai), green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, homemade rolls, pecan pie (pecans came America) and even cranberry sauce (yes it was found at an import store). And in my family Thanksgiving and Christmas is not complete without 7-layer dip! The only things that were missing (and were greatly missed) were the beauty of fall outside and our family & friends back home.

    Thank you Jesus for all your blessings, your salvation, grace, and mercy you extend to us each day.

      Posted in Family, Food, Holidays | Comments Off on Happy Thanksgiving…

      Our little pumpkin

      We celebrated Lydia’s first Halloween at a fall festival at our friend’s house. It was a great party, with awesome weather & yummy fall snacks! Since the seasons pretty much all feel the same here (well there is really hott, hotter, hot, and then nice) it is nice to get together with fellow Americans (or westerners) and celebrate the seasons changing & holidays together. This year Lydia slept through the whole party, it will be fun next year to see her running around trying to keep up with the bigger kids.

      Lydia received 3 different Halloween outfits from Nanny & Gramzi-and of course she had to wear all of them! Thanks. Our little pumpkin turned 4 weeks on Halloween.

      A fall festival isn’t complete with face painting, games & carmel apples! I love fall.

      (above collage is from Jord)

      Lydia has lots of friends already! The little Tiger is just about 3 1/2 months older than her… can’t wait to see them play together. The pot-of-gold, rainbow, & Leprechaun (i.e., Sayla, Kead, & Evie) just love holding Liddy & they are really good at it! I made decaf Pumpkin Spice crockpot lattes for the party (from pintrest) & they were delicious! Perfect fall drink.

      Happy Halloween & Fall to you all! Hope you had a great one complete with pumpkins, carmel apples & candy!

        Posted in Food, Holidays, Mcnugget, Parties | Comments Off on Our little pumpkin

        summer celebrations

        I have been up since 6:30 am (it is now 9:15) and I finally decided to stop fighting it and just get up and do something on my to do list– catching up on the blog… 

        It has been so fun having Jord here for almost a year now (hard to believe!) for many reasons, but one of my favs is throwing parties with her! She is so talented and has so many great ideas. I love getting to help plan, craft, decorate and cook for parties she is throwing. This summer we have had a several fun ones and have 4 coming up soon! (one of them being miss Lydia’s baby shower!)

        While Jord’s sister, Kirsti, was in town they threw me a SNAP Photography party for my birthday! It was originally supposed to be a 30th birthday dinner for Jord, but since Kirsti was here during my birthday Jord wanted to throw it for me instead- sweet friend (we will be doing her 30th birthday with a fall theme in September- only a few months late.. ha) Anyway, they went all out with the food, decor and a super fun photo booth. For more details on the food and decor check out their awesome blog.

        The photo booth was a huge hit- fun had by all!

        24 weeks!

        I am blessed with great friends- thanks for helping me celebrate my 26th year of life! (p.s. don’t ask what Jord and I were doing- we don’t know…?)

        The food table… there was all sorts of yummy “photo” themed food items like Photatoes, Snappy Cupcakes and Photobomb Brownies

        4th of july Desert Bash…

        Since we don’t live in the USA, but still love our country and are proud to be Americans, we thought is only proper to throw a BIG party and invite all the Americans living in our town to celebrate the 4th. We had about 50 Americans at the Remke house…! We asked everyone to bring a side dish or dessert and since Americans love a good pot-luck BBQ we had plenty of delicious food, drinks and desserts.

        *I can only take credit for a few of these pics- my camera died right as the party was starting :(.. thanks Jord for sharing yours! 

        We worked on the decor for several weeks leading up to the 4th while watching Anne of Green Gables

        I made these pies! – thank you pintrest for the flag cherry pie idea:)

        For fireworks we did these massive candles that are actually used on indoor birthday cakes out here, confetti poppers for the kids, and diet coke with Mentos for “firework” rockets (I didn’t know this before, but if you put about 6 Mentos into a 2 liter diet coke bottle the coke shoots up about 8-10 feet!). These were great replacements for fireworks and made it really feel like the 4th!

        Always need a belly pic… 28 weeks!

        Also, a fun fact: as people were arriving for the party at 5:30 pm someone told us it was 120 degrees outside! How’s that for a HOTT 4th?!

        Happy (very late) 4th! Hope you all had fun celebrating yours! We hope to make this an annual tradition out here… helps make it not as hard to be away from home during holidays (all thats missing is family and our stateside friends)

          Posted in Food, Parties | Tagged | 1 Comment

          summer parties… (part 1)

          Since I can’t  haven’t made room for new pictures, I have decided to catch up on some posts from this summer.

          Besides driving about 5000 miles (and we didn’t even leave Texas or New Mexico), visiting friends & family, and eating lots of yummy food this summer, I threw a few parties. The first one was a bachelorette party for Aubrey! Brooke & I had a great time planning & baking for this party.

          Decor:

          – bras hung from the mantel

          – Black & Red napkins, plates, & silverware (Aub’s isn’t a pink girl so we decided to got with black & red)

          – Black & Red tissue balls hung from the celling

          -Red Roses

          Food:

          –      Delicious Slushy Strawberry punch: (thanks for the recipe Liz!) (I will put recipe at the bottom- a must try)

          – Heart shaped cookies, made into lingerie cookies! Brooke found this idea- so cute! (my favorite part of the party)

          – Cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting

          – Strawberries & apples with chocolate and carmel sauce

          We went to Savoy Bar & Grill for drinks and appetizers before returning to the house for dessert and lingerie! She got a ton of great stuff and we all had a great time! Still can’t believe my baby sister is married…

          Slushy Punch Recipe 

          2 ½ cups white sugar

          6 cups of water

          2 (3 oz) packages strawberry flavored gelatin mix

          1 (46 fl. Oz) can pineapple juice

          2/3 cups lemon juice

          1 quart orange juice

          2 (2 liter) bottles lemon-lime flavored carbonated beverage (sprite works too)

           

          In a large saucepan, combine sugar, water & gelatin. Boil for 3 minutes. Stir in pineapple juice, lemon juice, & orange juice. Divide mixture in half, and freeze in 2 separate containers. When ready to serve, place the frozen contents of one container in a punch bowl & stir in 1 bottle of lime-lime soda until slushy. 

            Posted in Family, Food | Tagged | Comments Off on summer parties… (part 1)

            Easter

            We had a great Easter considering it was our first holiday away from home, family & familiar…

            I made sure we had some familiar things to eat…

            Deviled eggs– notice the orange centers! The egg yokes here are more orange!

            cupcakes with Easter egg toppers (thanks mom mcgoo for these!)

            Quiche for breakfast with our friends…

            I didn’t make these- my friend did, but don’t they look delicious?! Let me assure they were.

            We also died some eggs with our friends kids- not sure if  I had more fun or the kids?! We also had dinner with our friends the night before Easter- we had burgers, veggies, deviled eggs, beans, chips… Chase was calling it a “4th of Easter” celebration- since we ate food more related to the 4th & the weather resembled July more than April 🙂

            Easter morning at sunrise (yes we got up at 5 am!) we went to the desert with some friends to worship & read. It was such a gorgeous morning & refreshing for our souls..

            We also watched The Passion on Friday (it was my first time to see it)- very moving. It is well with my soul. Thank you JC for your love & that you are alive!

            What did you all do for Easter? We would love to hear about it.

              Posted in Everyday Life, Food | 1 Comment

              venturing out

              This afternoon a friend of our let us borrow his car so we could go exploring- it was just what we needed!  I was very proud of Chase because it was his first time to tackle  the round-a-bouts and drive a standard out here (Knate’s School of Driving paid off- thanks Knate!).

              While we had the car we drove around town, took pictures, went to a store that had more than groceries in it– and my favorite part of the evening– we went to a textile souk. It was interesting to say the least. I wanted to buy one meter (or one yard) of fabric to do some more crafting and it took 5 men and two stores (since they each only spoke a little bit of english and we only speak even less Arabic) to try and explain what we were wanting… it was a great memory. I will show you what I do with the fabric once I do it.

              For dinner I fixed taco soup- it turned out great! It was just missing green chiles… the New Mexican in me will always miss those. I am learning how to use what we can buy here & do it as cheaply as I can. So for the soup I used my first batch of dried beans, fresh tomatoes for diced canned tomatoes, left over chicken & homemade pitta chips!

              off to bed…. it was a good day here in the desert.

              p.s. we also met a few of our neighbors today- excited for these relationships to develop

                Posted in Everyday Life, Food | 5 Comments

                granola

                last week Chase and I made home-made granola! and it is DELICIOUS! Mix it with ca-raisins and pour it over vanilla yogurt and you have yourself a pretty yummy breakfast…

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                  Posted in Food | 2 Comments