Catching Up With The Kelnhofers-28

This week on Catching up with the Kelnhofers, I’m talking about how the heck people can keep plants alive, how to save time in your week by cooking straight from the freezer into the Instant Pot and all the fun we had on Valentine’s Day and date night.

So remember how my husband so sweetly got me a plant for my office because he researched and it was supposed to be a ‘low maintenance’ plant? I proudly had it in my office for about a week until it had big brown spots on it. I googled and it said it needed more light. Ok, so out of the office it went and into the living room. Welp, that lasted a month. Now it is just completely dead looking. I wanted to be a cool plant person! My friend Ren is a plant person said I could bring it over and she’d try to save it. I originally thought the plant was a boy and was going to name it a boy name, something like Marty the Monstera, but now I’m naming her Sally, short for sensitive sally lol. The plant lasted not even two months in our house! Some leaves even fell off on the way to her house, so embarrassing. I’ll keep you posted on Sallys recovery or demise.

On the other hand, we have a peace lily plant which we got at Nick’s grandfathers funeral and we call it the ‘deda plant’ and it’s been alive and thriving for 10 years. It’s a sweet plant that has a lot of meaning and is special to us. I’d say the peace lily is a low maintenance plant that doesn’t need a lot of maintenance, because we’ve done nothing but water it a little and it’s stayed alive. Also, Freddie really wants to get his hands on it so bad lol.

New on the Blog

Catching up with the Kelnhofers – game night, Ben reading cookbooks and how I display my kid’s artwork
Fail Proof Whole Wheat Pizza Dough – This is one of my favorite recipes and I’ve updated the post with a few new tidbits
5 Ingredient freezer to slow cooker honey mustard chicken – super simple dinner that can be prepped ahead of time

What to Make

Last week, I got home from work super late and didn’t have plans for dinner. So I looked in the freezer where I had a freezer chili con carne made as a freezer meal. I experimented to see if it would go directly from freezer into Instant Pot and be ok…it was not only ok, it was delicious!!!! So I can tell you that this meal goes from freezer into instant pot in about 20 minutes and it was perfect. We also enjoyed my sweet potato cornbread muffins on the side. So, this week, I’m sharing a few of my favorite Freezer to Instant Pot Meals or Freezer to Slow Cooker!

Reader Comments

I love this sweet, simple comment on this super tasty cake:

“This IS the best chocolate layer cake I have ever made or eaten… and I have given this out countless times !!!“

Reader ReCreations

This week, my readers shared their recreations for two tasty dishes: One pot thai shrimp quinoa and my healthy lentil and vegetable soup. Both dishes look amazing and I love seeing these recreations!

Anytime you make one of my recipes, be sure to tag PhiliaKelnhofer on instagram or send me a note!

Things I’m Loving:

I couldn’t decide which meal to make from Home Chef so I decided to make them both and then have one for dinner and the other for lunches!

We had some bananas that needed using, so I decided to make banana bread. I opened three different cookbooks and asked Ben which banana bread he wanted to make. He chose the one from Jessica Merchant’s (How Sweet Eats) 1st cookbook Seriously Delish (that book is listed in my favorite cookbooks list) and helped make it. So cute.

Links/things from around the web:

We are loving THIS popcorn, Nick said it tasted better than typical microwave popcorn and I completely agree.

I got an email from school that Ben had to be brought inside because his cheeks got red and blistery looking. Who knows what happened because it’s gone away since, but never fun. I bought THIS hat, it has since seemed to be working and we call it his ‘ninja hat’ and he likes that.

I use THIS moisturizer on my kids skin/faces. It’s also the same brand of diaper cream that we use (the only one that works after having tried like 8 different kinds)

What I’m reading:

Just finished reading The Whisper Network – in the middle I started to get worried it would be a little ‘meh’ but then omg at the end I could not stop reading it!!
This article made me want to buy this book, what a beautiful morning practice.

What I’m watching:

Ford v. Ferrari – have you heard of this movie with Matt Damon? It was surprisingly good and fascinating. I didn’t expect to like it and I even cried at the end.

Family fun:

Ben had a Valentines Day party at school so we went to the store to buy cards. He picked the cheapest ugliest ones ever, the small rip off kind, lol (these). I kept asking if he wanted to get his friends one with some candy like a chocolate or a bag of pretzels attached, but he insisted on the plain ones and kept saying “no mom, these”. I went to drop him off with his ugly cards, and I looked in his cubby and there was this beautiful handmade card with a cute saying on it and a snack attached. I’m like awesome, here’s a trashy one we got you, you’re welcome lol.
For our Valentines Day, Ben got a balloon and the kids got little gifts and cards. Nick got me the cutest gnome cookies and flowers, and we cooked a meal together. We tried this Instant Pot mushroom risotto. It was super delicious. It made the whole Instant Pot full and used so so many mushrooms. It was delicious so we definitely didn’t mind the leftovers.

Nick and I went on a date night! It was so lovely, we went to Braise. This year we’re trying to plan one date night a month, so it’s something I truly look forward to. Before we left, I tried out these reusable press-on nails from Static Nails.
The nails worked and made me feel so sexy, but oh my goodness, I do not know how one can do mom things with long nails. We have baby proof locks on our drawers and I couldn’t open them, lol. I ended up taking them off when we got home 2 hours later (also, our babysitter laughs that we are only gone for like 1.5-2 hrs).

Potty training update: when we were on our date night we got a message from the babysitter that Ben had pooped in the potty lol, definitely don’t mind getting that kind of message from the sitter! He’s almost done with his second chart! Also, he cannot be fooled. He gets little cars as prizes, and had gotten all of them. So I put some that he had already gotten that he never played with in the prize bin. He picked it out and said ‘look mommy, I have two now’ … um….lol, Nick and I tried so hard not to laugh.

We had our second cookbook club! I meet with friends (Erin from Well Plated and Abby with Heart of a Baker) and we pick a cookbook and each make a different recipe from that book. This month we cooked from the vegetarian cookbook Love Real Food; the food was all really good and we were all so excited that we were able to do this two months in a row. Check out this post to see how our first one went.

The twins are getting so big and are so sweet. They’re getting into everything and love eating and playing with Bens toys!

Another cute moment from the week – Nick went to the store and bought pizza dough (speaking of pizza dough, I just shared a new IGTV video of making my favorite whole wheat pizza dough) and then he showed Ben how to roll it, but Ben just wanted to make dough balls, lol. Anyway, we made simple calzones (stuffed the pizza dough with mozzarella and turkey pepperoni) and had them for dinner, it was so simple and delicious.