S'mores Dip

It's summertime and one of America's favorite desserts this time of year is S'mores! Nothing will ever really take the place of the "old fashioned" way - toasting marshmallows on a clothes hanger over a cozy firepit. But this way is super fast and will feed in a crowd in just a few minutes. Definitely worth trying when in a hurry, you're without a fire pit, or you just want a pretty, yet tasty summertime treat!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1/2 tablespoon butter
• 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips, semi-sweet, milk chocolate, or a combo
• 15 jumbo marshmallows, halved
• Graham cracker squares

INSTRUCTIONS:

Adjust oven rack to center position and place a cast iron skillet onto it. Preheat oven to 450 degrees with the skillet inside. Once oven is preheated, use a pot holder to remove it from the oven. Put one tablespoon of butter in the skillet and swirl the skillet until the melted butter coats the bottom and sides. 

Pour chocolate chips (or really any kind of baking chips you'd like; I like to mix chocolate with caramel:) in an even layer in the bottom of the pan. Arrange marshmallow halves over the surface of the baking chips, until they are touching sides and completely cover the chocolate. 

Bake for 5 to 7 minutes or until marshmallows are toasted. Pay attention to them - they can go from white to crisp in no time! Carefully remove skillet from oven and allow to sit on counter (but not hot stovetop) for about 5 minutes.

Serve hot with graham crackers, vanilla wafers, or even apple slices!

Enjoy!

- Staci

Rotisserie Chicken, 4 ways!

Rotisserie chickens have become popular for the home cook, like me! 

Probably first made a "star" by restaurants such as Boston Market, this "gourmet" whole chicken has not only spawned other fast-food, but good-for-you food, restaurants, as well as making it super easy for the at-home cook get a quick and delicious meal on the table for the family!

One $6.99 grocery store rotisserie chicken can provide the base for a whole week's worth of mealtime recipes! And all without feeling like you're eating the same thing for 4 nights in a row!

Monday: Take your whole chicken and carve off one breast, slicing it into serving sizes. Serve it with seasoned roasted veggies and maybe brown rice (or - if you're like me - riced cauliflower!) and a simple salad.

Tuesday: Separate the leg and thigh meat and shred for amazingly delicious chicken tacos. Add seasoning and/or a marinade to the shredded chicken and refrigerate for at least a couple of hours before dinnertime. (All day is good too:) Serve hot with all the taco trimmings: shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, salsa, and guacamole. I would eat it Mexican salad-style, but Taco Tuesday for most homes usually means warm tortillas and/or crunchy shells!

**Alternate Tuesday meal choice***: Warm the whole thighs in a non-stick pan with a splash of olive oil, soy sauce, sesame oil, and a touch of sugar or sugar substitute. Add some fresh minced garlic and green onions. Sautee all until the onions are opaque. Serve with steamed rice (or riced cauliflower!) and broccoli.

Wednesday: Remove the 2nd chicken breast and shred it over crispy oven-baked sweet potatoes "chips." Thinly slice sweet potatoes using a mandolin. Toss with a bit of olive oil, garlic pepper, and sea salt. Bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes, or until desired crispiness. Top the chips with the chicken and whatever topping you desire! 

Thursday: Take leftover shredded chicken breast and serve it over a huge homemade salad! Drizzle with desired dressing, salt and pepper. (I am loving a good homemade ranch and avocado dressing at the moment!)

I am not a personification of my social media feed.

Let's talk social media, specifically Facebook and Instagram because they are the only two I can seem to keep my arms around. I confess, for a very long time I had a love-hate relationship with social media feeds. I was torn between wanting to share and also with feeling that posts had more to do with ego than actual sharing.

I finally realized that my feelings were spawned by others' views of media feeds. There seems to be two MAIN camps: those that poke holes at all positivity posts and those that feel some entire feeds are made up of negativity. There is a small segment of us in the middle - in the gray, if you will - that just enjoy viewing everyone's pictures of their families and pets and vacations, and tend to just overlook the more negative posts or the folks who are forever sick or being hurt or feel ignored by others.

While I hope people are "following" us - meaning the B&B - I can honestly say I have no idea how many followers we have on Insta OR Facebook. On the other hand, I spend several hours of research a week on how to use social media to promote our business. The reality is that social media is THE way to advertise today...and it's FREE!! We'd be nuts to NOT utilize this resource that will only continue to change and deepen and grow as the years go by.

Some days, I feel like the more I learn, the more I don't know. I finally switched my personal Insta to primarily business; meaning, I changed it from MY personal name to Wildernest Bed & Breakfast. Yes, I'll still post pics of the grands, the doggies, the food...but those things are WHO we are, so it makes sense to me that our potential guests would like to see what we view as important.

We spend ENORMOUS amounts of hours on our front porch, so front porch pics are important to me. Pictures of our cabins, the food we serve, and views of the property are paramount to - not only promoting our business - but also giving small glimpses into who we are as business owners. We're family people, first and foremost, so there will always, always, ALWAYS be crazy amounts of pictures and stories of our grands, our kiddos, and our pets.

The one area that I question the most is: am I being real? Authentic?

Because THIS I can promise you. For every delicious food picture I post, there are at least THREE that are HORRIBLE! My sweet husband is very vocal and descriptive during our meals together. When it's good, there is NO doubt. His vocabulary and adjectives (some appropriate and some not so much:) leave no doubt that it's a dish worth repeating. But when he is silent; eating but with no commentary, I know it's bad. Very, very bad, usually! Ha!

For every "positivity" post, I promise I could post three things that AREN'T going well in life. Sometimes I think our family could have their own reality show. We have SO. MUCH. GOING. ON. right now! Most good, but some sad, some scary, some uncertain...So, sure, I make the decision each and every day what I want to share with others. The truth is that I WANT to be a voice of positivity. I WANT to point others to what gets me through: JESUS.

At the same time, even though I don't post about it on a regular basis, we have our own set of difficulties that we deal with on the daily. We've given up a regular, dependable salary to take a chance on "us" and this dream of a B&B. We celebrate with our kids who have kids and who are expecting another! (Hopefully we'll have a gender reveal later this week!!!) We also have kids who are going through infertility treatments, including surgery, medications, injections...We celebrate and we console, and many times both on the same day. We have parents with new medical issues, and our place in the "sandwich" of the family is that of the meat that holds both ends together. That's just where we are.

I could post all this, and I would never, ever discourage others from posting whatever they like. For me, I encourage myself with prayer, positivity quotes, and focusing on the good things in life. This naturally segues into my social media posts. It does as much, if not MORE, good for me than it could ever do for others.

Maybe most importantly of all is the growing of our family business - the B&B. We want that to be "the face" of our social media posts. We share certain pictures of family, pets, the grounds, the cabins, etc. because we want our potential guests to have a sense of who we are and what we value. We are two normal people: a couple who are deeply in forever love, who have grown children who are growing their own families, who have parents who are facing new challenges in life, who have meals that flop, ideas that fail, who laugh, cry, hurt, and rejoice.

We are normal.

We are not the personification of our social media feed.

Spicy Meat Lovers Breakfast Casserole for (1) x 2

Happy summer, y'all!

I've been behind in blogging due to a cRaZy end of year in the classroom, plus a frenzied effort to pour every ounce of leftover energy into organizing things around my house to help ease the transition into working/officing from home.  (More about all THAT in a future post:)

We have cabin guests here at the B&B who are staying for 3 nights. Whenever we have guests who stay multiple nights, I always try to alternate savory and sweet "main dishes" for breakfast. This morning it was all about the savory!

It actually started last night since this dish is soooo much better after spending the night in the refrigerator. This gives all of these powerful flavors to mingle and marry nicely, all the while absorbing into the cubed French bread that lines the dish.

Ingredients:

6 oz of pork sausage ( I used hot, but you can use regular or even Italian sausage)
4 slices of bacon
1 cup of seasoned cubed potatoes (You can either boil your own and then saute with a little onion and green or red pepper, garlic pepper, and salt OR you can use Ore-Ida Potatoes O'Brien)
2 medium eggs
3/4 cup of milk (I used half and half for a bit more richness)
salt, pepper and/or garlic pepper to taste
2 cups of French bread, cubed (you can also use day old brioche or English muffins)
1/2 cup shredded cheese (any kind you prefer)

Instructions:

• In a medium-skillet, cook the sausage, drain, and transfer to a paper towel-lined plate
• In same skillet, cook the bacon, drain, and crumble or chop into desired size pieces
• Prepare potatoes 
• In a small bowl, beat the eggs.
• Whisk in the milk, salt, and pepper.
• Spray (2) individual oven-safe dishes with cooking spray. Line the dishes with the cube bread
• Layer the sausage, potatoes, bacon, and cheese.
• Pour the egg mixture over the entire dish. 
• Cover securely with plastic wrap or foil and refrigerate overnight.
• The next morning, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Keep dishes covered with foil and place both on a cookie sheet. Bake covered for 30 minutes, until eggs are set.
• Remove foil, sprinkle with a bit more cheese - if desired - and cook for another 5-10 minutes or until cheese is bubbly and beginning to brown.
• Garnish with parsley or thinly sliced green onions, salsa, and/or sour cream.

Enjoy!

Winnie the Pooh said it best.

"A good teacher is like a candle - it consumes itself to light the way for others." ~ Author Unknown

I am retiring from teaching.

I typed, backspaced, typed again, backspaced again...numerous times, trying to capture the perfect opening sentence for this blog post.

The truth is, I don't think there is one. Even after deciding on the direct approach, I still hesitated over the word retiring. We all know it's not an actual retirement in which I will still draw a significant amount from TRS each month. Because teaching was a mid-life career change, I couldn't possibly live long enough OR work long enough to reach the formula by which teachers can "officially" retire with any hopes of a semi-decent income. 

Yet, I don't think the right word is QUITTING.

You quit something you no longer enjoy. You quit things that are too hard. You quit things that don't ignite your passion. 

If you were ever really a teacher of the heart, as well as of the mind and soul of a child, you don't quit teaching.

You simply leave at the end of a school year and don't return the next.

The thought of this already makes my heart constrict in something close to pain. As all teachers know, most days are mundane, and also filled with attitudes (poor ones, especially if you teach high school like I do:), lots of tardies and absences, headaches, and much longer hours than the general public realizes. But...just ONE of those rare, sweet days when there is a "light-bulb" moment, or when something extraordinary occurs that your lesson plan didn't account for...just ONE of those is enough to carry you for days, and even weeks at a time.

Many of you thought last year was to be my last in the classroom. For a while, I did as well. Then I had the amazing opportunity to return to my hometown high school as the new Culinary Arts teacher and I just couldn't pass that opportunity up! It has certainly been a wonderful year up to this point, and I get to enjoy three more months in this role, one that I've come to cherish and love and embrace. It doesn't replace my English teacher's heart, but it's a close second:)

Since last August, I've been fortunate (that's lucky AND blessed) to be able to combine my two significant passions - that of teaching and of the hospitality industry - and share these two with about 75 students each day. We've learned recipes, methods, safety, OSHA standards, front house etiquette and backhouse rules and regulations. 

We've shared laughter (lots), tears (not as many but very poignant), thrills, field trips, our problems, "counseling" sessions, and more hugs and smiles that I can even begin to count.  

To say that I'm going to miss teaching is so much of an understatement. Yes, I'm going to miss fulfilling that part of my heart that needs to teach. But I expect I'll always find a way to have teachable moments. I don't believe a real teacher ever vacates the profession; you simply widen your scope and allow for other things to have room in your heart and life as well as teaching. 

That's the fork in the road that I have come to. It's time to widen my scope. Our business has been blessed far beyond what we deserve, and certainly much more than we ever expected it to be this soon. "Soon" is relative since we opened the B&B five years ago! Time has flown and we have worked so, so hard to make it a place that is warm and welcoming, a real asset to our community, and the realization of what we had dreamed for it.

It can't continue to grow and flourish without me taking a day-to-day, "hands-on" position here at the B&B and venue. It's almost humorous to me that I thought I could continue to do both for even a couple more years. Whether it's age or energy, or (hopefully) just the sheer magnitude of what a business with four cabins and a wedding/event venue require - I have found that I can't teach AND be a proprietor and do justice to them both.

I had to make a choice.

I'm sure over the coming months I'll blog more about this newest upcoming transition. Once more, a transplanted gal. When I first named the blog years ago, I had no idea how many times I would refer to myself as a girl transplanted. I think God has had His hand in all of this much, much longer than I have. As always, I am trusting Him for guidance, for direction, and - especially - the wisdom to care for the roles in which He has entrusted to me.

My marriage. My family. Our business.

RECIPE: Triple Berry French Toast Casserole

I've had several requests for this recipe, so I thought I'd share it here. I was searching for a really delicious, yet really simple and fast sweet dish to add to the B&B breakfast menu when I came across Mom on Timeout and this delicious casserole!

Due to ingredients on hand and last minute B&B guests, I've at times made a few variations. Each version is just as yummy as the original. I used English muffins once instead of the normal French bread, just cut them into cubes as well.

During the spring and summer I kept gallon-size freezer bags filled with the 5-6 cups of fresh fruit, including strawberries. Lately, I've been keeping the large frozen bags of triple mixed berries from Walmart on hand.

We've eaten this casserole with the syrup and without (it IS truly scrumptious with warm maple syrup though:) but we always include a liberal dusting of powdered sugar after placing on serving platters. Be sure to use the almond milk; it adds a rich, sweet, decadent element that elevates the flavor.

Enjoy! And be sure to visit Trish for lots of great recipes!!

Ingredients:

 1 16 oz loaf French bread, cut into 1-inch cubes
 4 eggs
 1 cup Almond Breeze Vanilla Almond Milk
 1 tsp vanilla extract
 1 tbsp granulated sugar
 ¾ tsp ground cinnamon
 5 cups frozen berries (raspberry, blackberry, blueberry blend)
 ½ cup granulated sugar
 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
 1 tbsp cornstarch
 1 tbsp granulated sugar

 Instructions :

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Spray a 9x13 inch baking dish with cooking spray. set aside.
3. Place bread cubes in a large bowl
4. In a medium bowl, combine, eggs, milk, vanilla extract, 1 tablespoon of sugar, and cinnamon and whisk together until blended.
5. Pour egg mixture over the top of the bread cubes, stirring to coat. Let sit for 5 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally
6. In a medium bowl, combine frozen berries, ½ cup of sugar, cinnamon, and cornstarch. Stir to combine
7. Pour berries into prepared baking dish.
8. Spoon bread over the top.
9. Sprinkle the top with 1 tablespoon of sugar.
10. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until bubbling and golden brown.
11. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and top with fresh berries, whipped cream, or maple syrup if desired.

Recipe by Momontimeout

The Pioneer Woman - my Shero!

Ree Drummond may very well be my favorite #girlboss ever! I have to say, finally visiting Pawhuska after a decade of reading her blog and of watching her cooking show on Food Network these past several years, I was dubious as to whether or not all the hype would live up to my enormous expectations.

Well, um...it did.

Her show’s catch phrase is “Welcome to my frontier!”

We definitely felt the welcome!

Now, more than ever, I am in awe of what this seemingly simple Oklahoma-living, kid-raising, Marlboro Man- loving cook, wife, mom, and business owner has accomplished with such grace, poise, and low-key fanfare. You walk into The Mercantile (known fondly as “The Merc”) and instantly feel as though you’ve stepped into the home of a very close friend. From the gift wrap counter, to the colorfully displayed shelves of dishes, novelties, and linens, to the friendly sales clerks dressed in sharp, black-button down shirts with the now-famous strands of PW’s signature turquoise beads - it all bathes you in a warm, fuzzy feeling of belonging, of truly being a part of her frontier.

Mom and I both picked up this first issue of her new magazine. Y’all. You NEED to stop by your local Walmart and pick up your very own copy! It has been a very long time since I have read a magazine from cover to cover, but that is exactly what I did with this one. The articles are relevant, the editorials are heartfelt, and the pictures are just pure Americana. And in today’s climate - who doesn’t need a bit of THIS in their life?

Just this weekend my niece referred to me as a “fan girl,” and I guess - even though I am a full grown, soon-to-be 50 year old, I am indeed a fan girl. There is something to be respected about a person with a dream that is totally centered around her family, her principles, and her desire to leave a positive imprint on the world around her that completely inspires me.

Maybe - from one transplanted gal to another - there is something about her that further encourages me to press further on my passion here at the B&B. To take heart that great things take great time to create, to nourish, and then to flourish.