If you are a parent you know watching your kids grow is fascinating, sometimes frustrating, and most of the time a wonderful thing to watch. You also know it isn’t a continuous curve of growth. They’ll tick a long and suddenly there is a leap forward.
Our daughter tried out for the Honors Band for our state. They pick the best 8th graders to participate. Last week they had the day of rehearsal and they practice all day long before the concert. A lot of hard work went into the pieces they performed and I was blown away at how well they did. The music was very technical and sounded excellent. I was sitting there thinking how far she has come in just a few years. She is really coming into her own on so many levels. It is a joy to watch.
Our son has been making leaps of his own. We had a great parent teacher conference last week. He’s seeing the result of hard work in his report card and his teacher is encouraging him to speak up for the class. Apparently a student at school was wiping the white board and posters have gone missing. So the principal made an announcement to the whole school that the 5th grade can no longer move about the school without a teacher. My son thought this terribly unfair so his teacher is encouraging him to meet with the principal to discuss this. What a great opportunity! His teacher said to us that he was confused about the way the issue has been handled so we are all curious what the answers are going to be.
On to the food! 🙂
I bought some chicken thighs to do a Spanish dish called Pollo a La Española that I found in a cookbook I found at our library sale. It’s called The Complete Spanish Cookbook by Pepita Aris.
It’s a mild but flavourful dish and relatively easy to make during the week when it is hectic.
Preheat the oven to 350F/175C.
In a large skillet heat up a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Rub paprika on all sides of the chicken thighs and season with salt and pepper. Pan fry both sides to brown.
Place in the oven to finish cooking. In the skillet add about 3/4 cup of finely chopped onion, 3-4 cloves of garlic chopped, and a 1/2 cup of pancetta. I use uncured pancetta and sometimes it doesn’t have the full saltiness. Just something to keep in mind when adjusting the seasoning.
Cook until the onions soften then add a 14 oz can of diced tomatoes and a few teaspoons of fresh thyme. I added this because we didn’t have any parsley like the recipe called for.
Stir and bring to a simmer. Add about a cup of chopped bell peppers. I love how colourful this dish is.
Adjust the seasoning with paprika and the salt and pepper.
Serve with rice of your choice and enjoy!
On a side note, it seems I can no longer do my posts in the classic mode. Not thrilled with that and I’ve noticed that pictures I post are showing as smaller than they showed before. The files sizes are the same as before. Any idea on how to fix that?
Was your daughter chosen for the honors band? That’s a tremendous honor she must be a very good musician and your son sounds really mature. The chicken dish really sounds wonderful, simple and delicious. Your photo’s are a bit on the small side, this just happened randomly? I wonder if your theme updated and changes were made to the template.
Yes she was chosen for the band. 🙂 I’ll have to check the template after taxes are over. I wish they wouldn’t change things without our say so on our pages.
I save the photos to my picture drive on my computer. There i can edit them, including enlarging. Then I upload them to the media library.
Wordpress drives me crazy. They keep changing things and don’t tell the clients. I have complained but they just say, that is a good suggestion. We don’t always like upgrades.
I do the same but I don’t know why they are suddenly showing the pics smaller than they did a week ago. I usually don’t like the upgrades either.
I don’t know either. I have not seen that so far. You could try contacting them through support in the help section.
I did try once but I didn’t get any response!
If you can click on the photo within draft it should give you the option of resizing. I’ve just checked using the new version and it came up with a small box at top of photo. Simply click on the pencil icon and change the size to what you want. It’s essentially the same format!
Fabulous, thank you!
Your last comment has sorted out the resizing so that’s done. I was going to mention how good your pictures are looking….very nice post:)
Thank you so much! The tripod has helped a lot and I’m learning more about my camera settings by playing around with it. Getting there bit by bit. 😊
That chicken is to die for! I’m just happy I don’t have to meet with teachers and principals anymore…..
We’ve been pretty lucky with the teachers for the most part. And I love being involved but every once in a while you think to yourself “Really? That’s the road you are choosing?” My son was supposed to sit down yesterday with the principal but it was cancelled so I’ll be keeping an eye on this.
You should be able to add new posts in the classic mode by going to https://ourgrowingpaynes.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php
I had a little “hissy fit” after several comments that weren’t responded to and much searching by google with no good result. An administrator sent me the link for mine.
I just wish they’d stop messing about with it. Before they gave me the choice to switch back but they took it away. I’m getting used to it now. And at least they provided a preview button which they hadn’t the last time.
There are just some things you can’t do – I like to change my url’s – have a working title but other words in the url for instance so a search engine will pick it up, and I can’t do that with the new editor. Well, at least you have an option, now. 🙂