Creamy Chicken Noodle Soup

This has become a favorite in our house, and it's the perfect soup to enjoy on such a cold day. I think we hit a low of 5 degrees in Chicago, not that I would know since we didn't venture out today. I try to stick with recipes that are not difficult or complicated with lots of strange ingredients, and this one is no exception. It's another easy one with great results. I've made it a lot and have tweaked the original recipe...it seems to work well for us!

Recipe: Adapted from Real Mom Kitchen
Ingredients:

• 2 split chicken breasts (or 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts)
• 1 teaspoon celery salt
• 1 onion, chopped
• 2 qt. chicken stock or broth
• 1 qt. water
• ½ teaspoon poultry seasoning
• 3 large carrots, sliced
• 3 celery stalks, sliced
• 3 teaspoons salt

For the cream sauce:

• ¾ cup butter
• 1 cup flour (sometimes I use 1/2 white with 1/2 whole wheat flour for a nuttier taste)
• 4 cups milk

Directions:

1. Boil above ingredients for 1 hours. When chicken is tender, remove from broth and remove from bones. Cut into 1 inch pieces and set aside(I like to tear mine so it's in big chunks). 
2. If the liquid has reduced too much you can add some more water at this point. Add 2 cups of uncooked noodles and continue to boil for 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, melt butter in large sauce pan. Whisk in flour, stirring constantly. Gradually add milk, stirring constantly until thickened (get it pretty thick). Add salt and pepper. 
4. Add cream sauce to broth/noodle mixture. If the soup is too thin after adding the cream mixture, continue cooking until desired thickness.

Note: Once your cream sauce has thickened, do not allow to boil as it may separate. Also, if cream sauce has a strong white sauce flavor, add ½ to 1 tsp. lemon juice.

New Play Area

With Quinn's arrival, we had to pull a bunch of stuff out of storage and our living room was quickly taken over by toys and such (not to mention all the toys acquired from birthdays, Christmas, and Santa.) So we decided to spruce up a corner just for the kids to go crazy, and I think it turned out pretty cute! We upgraded the play kitchen to this fun "full-size" one from Ikea. Lillie has made countless batches of pancakes, birthday cakes, "oni-oni & cheese" and cookies - you'd think all we feed her is sweets and pasta! She definitely takes after both of us on that. I found a cute upholstered ottoman to store the toys that don't fit in the wood chest anymore, and Lillie loves to sit on when it's closed. That has led to using the couch as an obstacle course for climbing over. It's pretty cute to hear, "Ninnie did it," upon her successful landing on the cushions. My favorite part is the alphabet decal on the wall. I bought it when we first moved in with the intention of putting it in the office by my letterpress (appropriate, I thought), but it's so much better here. Since some of the letters are within other letters, Lillie has fun trying to find where they all are. For now, Lillie has full run of the corner, but soon enough, Quinn will be right there beside her, wanting everything his big sister has.

Four Months

Four months have already passed since Quinn was born. Huh?! Today marks his 4th month birthday, and he's getting so big. At this point, Quinn is close to rolling over from back to front, but he's very content to just roll to his side and hang out there. He has a favorite toy and loves to play with it (well, mostly drool on it.) He's decided that we still shouldn't get a full night sleep, but we're not holding it against him. And just like his sister, he loves to laugh. A lot. At everything. We're heading to his check up this afternoon, so I'll have an update with vital stats later.

Update: Quinn is a healthy 18lbs and 2' 2.5".  I couldn't help but go back and look at Lillie at her four month check up. 

Homemade Oreos

photo from Sugar Cooking

Ok people. I'm going to be trying something new here on the Sullivan Four. I have a great collection of cookbooks, great websites bookmarked on my computer, and some wonderful family recipes at my disposal. My problem is that I often make something that is family(Conor)-approved and if too much time passes, I forget about it and never get to making it again. So, to help myself keep track of it all, I'll be writing about recipes that I try and want to make again (and maybe the recipes that don't make the cut too, just so I remember that too.) This way I have just one place to look if I need inspiration to make something tried and true. Hopefully it gives you some inspiration too!

I hosted a play date at our house today and wanted to have a little something on hand for some snacking, especially since the other moms in attendance are pregnant. So (against Conor's advice) I decided to try a new recipe. I saw this recipe on Sugar Cooking,  and the result: thumbs up from all! These cookies are SO easy to make and they really are tasty. It is absolutely essential that you enjoy these with a glass of milk!

Recipe: Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Ingredients:
For the chocolate wafers:

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened Dutch process cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) room-temperature, unsalted butter
• 1 large egg

For the filling:

• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) room-temperature, unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
• 2 cups sifted confectioners sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Set two racks in the middle of the oven. Preheat to 375°F.
2. In a food processor, or bowl of an electric mixer, thoroughly mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda and powder, salt, and sugar. While pulsing, or on low speed, add the butter, and then the egg. Continue processing or mixing until dough comes together in a mass.
3. Take rounded teaspoons of batter and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet approximately two inches apart. With moistened hands, slightly flatten the dough. Bake for 9 minutes, rotating once for even baking. Set baking sheets on a rack to cool.
4. To make the cream, place butter and shortening in a mixing bowl, and at low speed, gradually beat in the sugar and vanilla. Turn the mixer on high and beat for 2 to 3 minutes until filling is light and fluffy.
5. To assemble the cookies, in a pastry bag with a 1/2 inch, round tip, pipe teaspoon-size blobs of cream into the center of one cookie. Place another cookie, equal in size to the first, on top of the cream. Lightly press, to work the filling evenly to the outsides of the cookie. Continue this process until all the cookies have been sandwiched with cream. Dunk generously in a large glass of milk.

Sibling Revelry

By Conor
Contributing Editor

Perhaps the most frequent question we get lately regarding the kids is how well Lillie is adjusting to having Quinn in the house. At this point, nearly 4 months in, I wonder if Lillie even has much of a memory of life without him. Still, something happened two nights ago that I thought illustrated pretty well how she's adapted.

Lillie and Quinn share a room, and while we were given assurances from many parents who had two little ones as roommates that it worked fine, we never quite understood all the logistics. How would we keep Lillie, who isn't exactly the soundest of sleeper, calm in her crib when Quinn gets up crying multiple times in the middle of the night? How would we keep Quinn asleep when Lillie has a complex bedtime routine that involves her babbling and singing herself to sleep for up to an hour?

The answer, it has turned out so far, is to implement things bit by bit. We've moved Lillie's story and song time to our room while Quinn nurses to sleep. When Quinn wakes, we've been quickly going in and bringing him to our room to calm down. We've also told Lillie she can sing a song to Quinn if he's crying and that might help him go to sleep.

Which brings us to two nights ago. After a good six weeks or so of limited nighttime interruptions, Quinn's been having a tough time sleeping this week. Is it gas, teething, hunger, growing pains? Who knows, but it's been exhausting to shuttle him out of the room over and over, which probably wakes him up even more. Lillie had been surprisingly okay with all the crying, and in fact, she's often singing "Too Ra Loo Ra Finn!" when we walk in. So two nights ago, I decided I would just rock him in the nursery, and let him cry it out.

After about 15 minutes of Quinn's inconsolable crying, I looked over in bleary darkness to see how it was that Lillie wasn't crying like crazy herself after all this disturbance. I was startled to see her, sitting up, her Elmo doll in her arms in the same position Quinn was in mine, rocking back and forth just as I was doing in the chair.

This, I thought at the time, sums up just how she is as a big sister. She has her moments of revealing that she is, after all, a two year old, and wants her share of attention, babying, and playtime with everything that Quinn touches. But in the end, Lillie's natural instinct as a big sister is to care for her brother as best she can (which she shows with big hugs and shoves of pacifiers in the mouth), and when she can't help, she's mimicking the care with whatever substitute works. Sometimes it means she hilariously nurses her baby doll by lifting her shirt up, and sometimes it's by being up at 3 in the morning with Mom and Dad silently trying to get Elmo back to sleep.

And for any of you who wonder how Quinn likes having Lillie around, this happy baby looks at his big sister with nothing but wild adoration, even when she tackles him with a hug.

Quinn's Rolls

Need I say more?

Piggies

Just couldn't resist posting these cute pics of our Lillie. I love piggies of all varieties! (On a side note, I'm also loving that Lillie is finally starting to be more comfortable in front of the camera instead of behind it looking at what we just took!)

Quinn Rolls

Christmas in Ohio

We spent a great week in Ohio for Christmas. Lillie and Quinn had so much fun playing with their cousins and learning all sorts of new things. (Thank you Sydney for showing Lillie how cool it is to use the big girl potty!) Our message to Santa must have made it successfully because he found us with no problem and left some great presents. We were waiting for the snow to come so Lillie could use her new sled, but of course Mother Nature had other plans. Pataskala was hit with a big snow storm the day we left to come home. Not to worry though, Chicago has had it's share of snow! Christmas is my favorite time of year, but I'm glad that the new year is here and life has finally gotten back to a more normal, calmer pace. 2010 has already been very exciting...and it's just getting started. I can't wait to see what's in store for us.

The Big Guy

Before Christmas, the kids and I met up with Conor downtown. We went to Macy's to see Santa and have lunch and yummy hot chocolate by the ginormous Christmas Tree in the Walnut Room. Lillie was so excited and couldn't stop talking about Santa all the way there, "ho, ho, ho, Merry Santa Claus!" As we rounded the corner to Santa and his chair, all that changed, and panic and fear took over. The best we could get was to have Dad hold her and get a family photo with Santa. Maybe next year won't be as scary, but perhaps we'll still get a family portrait...I didn't realize how much I missed talking to the Big Guy!

Zoo Lights

Back before Christmas, we headed to the Lincoln Park Zoo to check out all the lights they put up for the holidays. Lillie absolutely loved it, while Quinn slept through it all. Our favorite part was the area where they synchronized the lights to a soundtrack of holiday tunes...we couldn't get Lillie to move on! They do a great job of setting up a wonderland of fun, and hopefully we'll have time to go again before it closes this month.

Lillie's Purple Birthday

Back in November we had Lillie's birthday (the same weekend of the baptism.) Since purple is her favorite color, we decided to have a purple theme. Mom, Dad, and Lillie all wore purple, we decked the house in purple decor, and had a purple birthday cake. It was a lot of fun, especially the part when Lillie blew out her candles. Just check out the video!