Bouchee a la Reine

A recipe I want to share happens to be one of Vincent's favorite.   Sophie likes it because of the meatballs.  It kind of reminds me of a chicken pot pie but totally different at the same time, if that makes any sense.  This is my personal recipe that I developed and modified to our family tastes.

Ingredients

Meatballs:
.5 lb ground pork
1/4 cup Breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 teaspoon parsley
pinch of nutmeg
Salt
Pepper

Mix all ingredients together and make very small meatballs. Put meatballs in a pot of water. Bring to a soft boil until meatballs are done. Set aside.

Sauce:
4 tablespoons Butter
4 tablespoons Flour
32 oz (2 lb) (907 g) chicken or vegetable stock
8 oz (227 g) Sliced Crimini mushrooms
Roasted chicken from your local supermarket
Cream
Lemon juice

Bouchees are pastry shells you can buy pre made ready to fill or frozen. My favorite is Gourmet Pidy. There are 4 bouchees in a box. Refer to package for heating instructions.

Note: Veloute sauce "is a rich white sauce made with chicken, veal, pork or fish stock, thickened with cream or egg yolks."

The beginning stages of making the sauce starts out as a roux, then later becomes the veloute sauce.

Instructions:
In a medium sized pot or stockpot, make the veloute and/or roux sauce by melting butter completely. Turn off burner. Add flour slowly until smooth. Turn fire back on stove and cook until slightly beige/brown. Add chicken stock, stir and let it come to a soft boil, stirring occasionally until smooth.

In the meantime, melt butter in a sauté pan. Add mushrooms, salt and pepper, until mushrooms are slightly brown. Drain mushrooms on paper towel.

Roasted chicken:  Shred chicken in small pieces

Add meatballs, mushrooms and shredded chicken. Add salt and pepper to your taste. Allow sauce to thicken to your preference (I prefer it thin, while Vince likes it thicker, so ours is somewhere in between). At the end, add a little cream. Cook for another minute or two. Lastly, add about 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. At this point, it is ready.

Spoon veloute sauce over bouchees and enjoy.

Preparation Time:  1 hr

Cooking Time:  30 mins

Eating Time: 5 mins for Vince, 15 mins for MA, 30 mins for Sophie

Bug Off

Apparently there's a bug that's making it rounds at preschool.  A lot of Sophie's classmates have been out sick several days.  Even Sophie caught the bug and was out for one day.  She told me "my kids made me sick."  Thank goodness, knock on wood, Vince and I have not caught anything from her.

I took Soph for her annual physical a couple of weeks ago.  The doctor said she's a little knock-kneed.  But that's okay, she will eventually outgrow it by the time she's 7 or 8 years old.  If anything, the doctor said it will make her a fast runner.  That probably explains why I was always lagging behind since I was bow legged.....and still am slightly.  I always thought it was because I had short legs.  

She also has 20/20 vision, which from what I understand is very good for her age.  Apparently, most kids her age do not have 20/20 until they're a little older.  All in all, she has good muscular strength, tonicity, reflexes, blood work and all came back normal.  So, I'm pleased and happy.

Who Believes In Ghosts

Past Monday, my husband encountered two unexplainable aberrations, both occurring within a couple of hours of one another in his office.  When he was telling me about it, I must admit it kind of freaked me out, especially if you know my husband who is extremely logical, analytical, intuitive and of course highly intelligent.......AND very technically advanced.  For some reason his iPhone did not ring, but there was a voicemail.  One might conclude, yes, he just didn't hear the phone ring.  True, but when he checked to see who called, there were no missed calls, only a voicemail.  Has this ever happened to anyone???  

The other was with his laptop.  When he stepped away from his laptop, he always locks it while away per his company's security protocol.  An hour and half later, when he went to unlock the computer, it had been totally shut down as if someone had pressed the power switch.  When he turned his laptop back on again, it started back up as if nothing happened.  Usually if something is shut down without properly closing all applications, I believe you get a message that indicates that the computer was not shut down properly.  This was not the case.  Like I said, it started as if nothing happened.  To me this is pretty eerie.  I wonder if this "ghost" was playing with Vincent's feet (a Belgian expression).  Who knows, we'll never know I suppose.  It's easier to blame it on the ghost for now.

Our Visit with Uncle Eric

Once again Uncle Eric from Belgium paid us a little visit in combination with his yearly ski holiday.  As always it was a delight to see him.  Most of you have already been updated via emails from Vincent, so I will not reverberate everything again.  

But, aside from the skiing, we also went Tubing at Gorgoza Park (Sophie's favorite winter activity), ate at a couple of new restaurants.  Carvers and the Italian restaurant, Tucci's Cucina at Trolley Corners were both surprisingly delectable and satisfying.  

Uncle Eric bought me a new Trivia Pursuit game as we always play this game when we're together.  I must admit it was quite difficult and we never finished the game after staying up all hours of the night,  two nights to be exact.  However, I can't resist in mentioning that I had the most pies....sorry, honey.  Actually, if truth be known, "honey" usually and always wins.

As most of you already know, I've always had an interest in health and fitness when I was younger.  Now I'm more into health and nutrition and overall well being.  I was surprised that Uncle Eric was interested in having a Bio-Scan performed.  This is such an easy test and yields a fairly accurate assessment of your total well being.  So we all, including Sophie, went to the Herbs for Health store and were enlightened in ways that made us go....hmmm.  All I'm going to say is Sophie had the least red dots and her green dots were closer to the core.  In other words, as one would expect, she's pretty healthy.

Before we knew it, it was time to take Uncle Eric to the airport.  To Uncle Eric, we enjoyed our time with you and hope to see you next winter or summer possibly.

Let's See How It Goes

Well, let's see if I can pick up where I left off.  I have a couple of friends that use this blog site and so I thought I'd give it a whirl.  I still have a lot to learn and so my posts will be minimal to start.

Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Schampaert Family Update - 2008

Well, I'm sure most of you are like us and can't believe 2008 is nearly over already. As I ponder on what to write this year, there are so many things that make Vince and I feel a sigh of relief, especially amidst all the bad news on the economic front. After nearly 7 mos, we were able to sell our house in Arizona. We had been renting our house to a very nice couple for 2 yrs. You would think we would have waited until the market turned around but the renters were very wishy-washy not knowing what they really wanted. And so, we decided to put our house on the market while they continued to rent it. In the end, all went well and we closed EOM November.

This past year, we also had 2 family visits from Belgium. Uncle Eric was here in Feb and Christel and Catherine came over in July. In April, we went to our usual vacation spot in San Diego/So. CA. We plan on returning this Jan or Feb to see the whales migrate.

Vincent traveled to Phoenix for almost 5 mos straight, from July thru Nov. for work. Caremark, now CVS, had requested Vince for this particular project and since it was only for 3 days a week, it was doable and a nice break from Micron. If he ever loses his job, I think he would do great selling paraphernalia on ebay. He seems to have a knack for making money quickly, especially when it comes to selling our used electronics, taking him only hours to sell anything --- quite amazing I must admit. I only mention this because he just recently sold his blackberry and my cell phone in less than a day and has a history of selling other items in the past just as fast.

MaryAnne has been occupied being an administrator, chauffeur, volunteer at Sophie's school, as well as, being the project manager and multi-tasker of everyday domestic work to ensure things are run smoothly, efficiently within our household (aka super mom in disguise). Battling Utah County for property taxes owed to us the past 2 yrs was finally resolved in our favor. Initially, we were told it was extremely rare for anyone to receive a refund. So, after many months and acres of time and utilizing Vincent’s clever way with words and logic, our appeal was finally granted which paid off handsomely.

Sophie will be 5 yrs old Dec 22. I'm amazed how much she has accomplished in a year. She's fascinated with words, eager to please and is non-stop with her questions and “whys”. She's a very simple little girl only wanting balloons and a cake for her birthday, no presents. Her current favorite extracurricular activity is gymnastics. She attends preschool 3 hrs a day, 4 days a week and looks forward to it everyday… and wishes she could go to preschool even on the weekends. (I wonder how long that’s going to last?) In her words, she loves doing the centers, painting, coloring, arts and crafts, going to recess, learning how to kick her legs on the swings, playing on the monkey bars and slides, learning how to do a good job as the star helper, pass out papers, pass out napkins, be a line leader, be a good example and lead the other kids in the pledge, going to P.E., singing, etc. Whew !! As you can see she absolutely enjoys it very much. Her favorite shows are Caillou & Fireman Sam. Overall, she’s a very sweet, funny, considerate, creative and expressive little girl.

Wishing you well with lots of love and peace into your hearts and homes.

Love,

Vincent, MaryAnne & Sophie

Bingham Canyon Mine

Bingham Canyon Mine

We finally visited Kennecott’s Bingham Canyon Mine. You can’t miss it from where we live. It’s the only mountain that is yellowish, golden-looking with a flat top. My curiosity finally got the best of me; we decided to venture out to see what it was all about.

It is known as “The Richest Hole on Earth” as it produces copper, metal, gold silver and molybdenum. It has produced more copper than any other mine in history. And it still contains enough copper to last through the next century, based on 150,000 tons of copper ore being extracted per day.

The mine is considered as a National Historic Landmark since 1966. It began operations in 1906. The mine is so big that it can be seen by the space shuttle astronauts as they pass over the United States. It is a pit more than 3/4 mile deep and 2.5 miles wide, thus making it the largest man-made excavation in the world. Also, if you were to stretch out all the roads in the open pit mine, you’d have 500 miles of roadway, enough to reach from Salt Lake City to Denver.

In the pictures below you will see Sophie standing next to a very large tire. The tires go on a huge truck that hauls the ore. These trucks are larger than many houses and weigh more than a jumbo jet. Each tire costs up to $26,000 and lasts 9 months -- there are 6 tires total on a truck.

There you go! More than you probably ever wanted to know.

Drive up to Visitors Center

12 feet, 6 inches high, weighs over 10,000 lbs.

Bingham Canyon

By 2015, the mine will be 500 feet deeper than it is now.

The first known use of copper dates back 10,000 years ago.

To make all the pennies, nickels, dimes & quarters in 1999, 

the US Mint used approx 36,000 tons of  copper.

It takes about 15 diff minerals to make a car, 35 to make a TV, 

30 to make a computer & as many as 42 to make a telephone.