Posts by Kerry Weisser
Pizza Sauce with Pizzaz
We love making homemade pizza in our family. Pizza has always been our go to Friday night dinner. So when we were growing up we started a tradition of having Friday night-Weisser Pizza night. The last time my mom was visiting we decided to try a new recipe for homemade pizza sauce with pizzaz. We started with a recipe from Kitchen Treaty and we changed it up a bit and made it our own. It was fantastic.
Ingredients
1 Tablespoon olive oil
4 cloves garlic smashed
2 cans (14.5 oz) petite diced tomatoes
4-6 leaves fresh basil chopped fine or 1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Saute garlic in olive oil, in a sauce pan. Add basil and oregano and stir for 1 minute. Add canned tomatoes, salt, pepper, sugar and red pepper flakes. Stir until combined. Bring to a boil over medium heat, turn to low and simmer for 60 minutes. Sauce should thicken up. We like chunky pizza sauce but if you want it smooth, pour into blender and blend until smooth. Store in a mason jar. Lasts at least 1-2 weeks in refrigerator, but we used it up the day we made it on two large pizzas.
This really makes the homemade pizza even better that ever!
To see another pizza sauce recipe that we love, check out Bethany’s past post “Food for Mommy’s Day” from Mother’s Day last year.
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A Spectacular Sewing Kit Solution
Have you ever had those simple sewing or mending projects that would only take a few minutes to complete if your supplies were right on hand and easy to access? Well, the Spectacular Sewing Kit is an easy organizational solution to a common problem. I have always had a large sewing basket and just recently added a sewing supply tote to my attempts to keep my sewing and mending supplies arranged in an easy grab and go container. But I still wanted something smaller with scissors, thread, pins and needles that I could keep in the kitchen or near my chair in the living room. I had resorted to a ziplock bag filled with essentials. But this morning I saw a great idea on Pinterest and decided to make one for myself. Thus, my Spectacular Sewing Kit Solution!!!
Supplies needed:
1 Quart Mason jar
1 scrap of cotton fabric 8×8 inches
1 piece of fiber fill batting 8×8 inches
1 hot glue gun
small scissors
1 or 2 spools of thread
pack of sewing needles
needle threader
safety pins
straight pins
measuring tape
seam ripper
any other sewing or mending supplies that you use regularly
Take the flat round seal piece of your mason jar and plug in your glue gun. When the glue gun is ready, place a generous amount of hot glue on the top of your mason jar seal. Fold your piece of batting in quarters and scrunch it on top of the glue on your flat round seal. Hold in place until secure.
Take scrap of cotton fabric and cut out a circle about 2 inches wider than the top.
Place the cotton fabric with wrong side on top of batting and stretch over the batting and glue in place on the back of the mason …
Growing Through Conflict
If you are a member of a family, you will face conflict!
Conflict can range from small disagreements to differences of opinion about certain topics to serious struggles over big issues. Each conflict that arises gives us an opportunity to learn, grow and change. Sometimes we need to use tough love, sometimes we need to simply offer forgiveness. Sometimes we need to manage the conflict with discipline and sometimes we need to step back, reevaluate and wait for wisdom and insight to help us know how to deal with the conflict. Dealing with controversy and struggles by getting angry or using avoidance techniques are other options but do not tend to provide resolution and these choices usually cause anxiety, pain and more confusion.
Patience is one thing we need in abundance during conflict resolution. Last week, I was listening to a teaching on patience. I do not usually like pat answers or formulas, but something the speaker said about developing patience during conflict really resonated with me…..
“CONFLICT plus COMMITMENT leads to CHANGE”!!!!!
I have been thinking about this quote all week as I have observed various scenarios in my own family. And it actually seems to work…..
A parent needs to be patient when their child disobeys or willfully chooses to not follow directions. A parent who is committed to unconditionally loving their child and helping develop a strong moral character in their child will make choices to use conflict as a teachable moment to help their child grow and change.
A spouse who is devoted to his or her mate is more likely to demonstrate patience when disagreements or disappointments arise. A true commitment to respect and love one another in the midst of conflict combined with patience will help resolve the problem and will hopefully lead to …
Read MoreValentine’s Day Love Crafts for Family
Valentine’s Day is one day each year that reminds us to focus on the people we LOVE! I absolutely LOVE everything about showing LOVE to others but my philosophy is to focus on loving others EVERY day of the year.
Wikipedia summarizes the history and folklore of Valentine’s day
“Saint Valentine’s Day, also known as Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is observed on February 14 each year. It is celebrated in many countries around the world, although it remains a working day in most of them. St. Valentine’s Day began as a liturgical celebration of one or more early Christian saints named Valentinus. Several martyrdom stories were invented for the various Valentines that belonged to February 14….. A popular account of Saint Valentine of Rome states that he was imprisoned for performing weddings for soldiers who were forbidden to marry and for ministering to Christians, who were persecuted under the Roman Empire. According to legend, during his imprisonment, he healed the daughter of his jailer, Asterius. An embellishment to this story states that before his execution he wrote her a letter signed “Your Valentine” as a farewell.Today, Saint Valentine’s Day is an official feast day in the Anglican Communion, as well as in the Lutheran Church.The Eastern Orthodox Church also celebrates Saint Valentine’s Day, albeit on July 6th and July 30th, the former date in honor of the Roman presbyter Saint Valentine, and the latter date in honor of Hieromartyr Valentine, the Bishop of Interamna (modern Terni). In Brazil, the Dia de São Valentim is recognized on June 12.
The day was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. In 18th-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed …
Healthy Apple Cake and more Super Bowl Treats
The SUPER BOWL is this coming Sunday and many of you will be gathering with family and friends to watch the game and celebrate. I am going to share a wonderful dessert recipe that is easy to make and healthy too and would be a delightful cake to take to any Super Bowl party. Before I share the apple cake recipe, I am including links to other recipes we have posted in the past that would also be excellent to make for any Super Bowl party.
Mexican Taco Cupcakes
White Vegetarian Chili
Salsa, Corn and Black Bean Salad
The “I’m Never Hungry for Dinner Kind of Salsa”
Hummus
Honey Whole Wheat Pita Bread
Tabooleh
Mexican Quinoa Salad
Rice Salad
Family Favorite Salsa
And don’t forget, the “”Magic button that you see on each one of these recipes is a link to a wonderful website where you can get nutritional information for each of these recipes.
Healthy Apple Cake
This apple cake is moist and full of flavor. You can make it gluten free and it is full of fiber, so as far as a healthy dessert recipe goes, this is a keeper. Since I chop all the apples in a food processor with the peel on and I also chopped the nuts and raisins together in the food processor, it is a quick and easy dessert to make and take to parties.
Ingredients
2 cups flour (you can use gluten free flour here without changing the taste or texture)
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 ½ cups walnuts
1 cup raisins
5-6 large tart apples (4 cups when chopped)
½ cup oil (I use coconut oil)
1 cup sugar (you can use honey, coconut sugar or brown sugar)
2 eggs
1 …
Feeling Important-Honoring a Loved One
When we have opportunities to honor or bless someone we love at a birthday, anniversary or special event, we take the time to think about what that person means to us and try to create ways to make them feel important. We plan a party, we cook their favorite meal or invite over their special friends to help create a celebratory atmosphere. In our family, the honored guest chooses the menu for the meal and we set the special red plate at their place at the table. We incorporate the tradition of going around the table and saying something about the person being honored that day- some way they have blessed us or something about their character that we admire.…
Read MoreWeekly Wisdom Newsletter
Good morning friends,
Each week Rachel writes a newsletter that automatically goes out to all our subscribers. It is a great way to receive a reminder to check out our blog and it gives you a short recap of the articles written the previous week. I decided to post these newsletters each Monday for awhile to increase awareness and to increase our number of subscribers. To receive this newsletter as an email, just click the link at the bottom of this post or go to the bottom right corner of our blog anytime and hit the link to the subscriber form and you will begin to be a member of the Growing Weisser subscriber’s community.
Welcome to your weekly wisdom with Growing Weisser.
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Read MoreWhen God says NO!
How do you react when God says NO?
Sometimes we have good intentions and a great plan and a selfless vision and God still says NO. Sometimes we think we know better than God, what we need to handle a tough situation. Sometimes we assume we are truly trusting the sovereignty of God but we still get a NO answer to our prayer.
My relationship with my dad was complicated-at best. I have found myself thinking more about him in the past 10 days since his passing than I ever did over the past many years. I did pray for him ALL the time but with regards to actually thinking about his life, his feelings, his dreams, his regrets, his passions……I just didn’t think about him very often.…
Read MoreMission Possible-Organizing your Life into 4 Suitcases
As I write, Bekah and Ashkon are literally taking off from the San Francisco airport for their last 5 months of their adventures in Grenada…yes we did get up at 3:30 am and drive them to SFO and we are safely home and it is only 6:20 am. So I volunteered to author her post today since they were up packing until late last night and are now on their flight bound for Grenada.
Their adventure began one month after their wedding in the summer of 2012. With six 70 pound suitcases packed and checked in and two carry-ons each, they boarded a plane bound for Grenada to begin Ashkon’s medical school education at St. George’s University Medical School.
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Read MoreOffering Grace and Unconditional Love to Family
Happy New Year to all our loyal followers, friends and new Growing Weisser readers!
We are hoping and praying that 2014 will bring many opportunities to offer grace and unconditional love to your family.
Our family’s holiday season was bittersweet this year. We experienced the sweetness of the holidays as we gathered with family and friends during the Christmas week enjoying wonderful conversation, celebration of the birth of Jesus, gift giving, carol singing, gingerbread house decorating, baking and lots of eating.
We then started the New Year with the bitter part of bittersweet as sadness invaded our family with the hardship of saying goodbye to my dad, as he passed away suddenly on January 4th. I am so grateful to God that I spent the extra time coordinating with my sister and mom this year to enable my dad to attend our Christmas day celebration. We had just recently helped him move into a Skilled Nursing facility and that meant it took more of an effort to coordinate his visit. We all pulled together and our beautiful Christmas celebration became his last time together with us as a family. Offering grace and unconditional love to my dad made this possible.
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