Pot Roast Recipe

My very first from scratch recipe as a wife was a hit. It smelled sooo good all day, and Eric and I both loved it! It has surprising ingredients, but its super easy. While it was cooking, I also conquered the laundry (finally!) and did some other cleaning around the house. I'm super wife!

Coffee Pot Roast

• 3 pound beef pot roast
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 can (approx. 15oz) diced tomatoes with liquid
• 1 cup black coffee
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1 1/2 cups diced carrots
• 2 1/2 cups diced potatoes
• 1 package (10 ounces) frozen veggies
  
• flour mixed with cold water to thicken liquids, optional

PREPARATION:

Brown meat on all sides in butter in heavy kettle or Dutch oven. Add tomatoes, coffee, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Add onion and carrot; simmer for 15 minutes.

Add potatoes and cook until vegetables are tender; add frozen veggies and cook for 3 or 4 more minutes.

To thicken liquids: Make a paste with 1 or 2 tablespoons of flour and a little cold water; stir until smooth. Stir into hot liquid a little at a time until desired consistency is reached.
Pot roast serves 6.

Wife'n it up

We're finally getting into a somewhat normal schedule. All of the out of towners have gone home and Eric went back to work. Yesterday I had to work too, Eric got up and made waffles and we ate breakfast together before going to work. We had our first married shopping trip on Monday night. We had so much chicken left over from the wedding, and a lot of strawberries and grapes from Larry and Vlad's surprise, and Eric stocked up on pasta before I moved in so we didn't need much. Frozen veggies were on sale so we stocked up on that, and ground beef. We forgot milk and ran out of eggs so we went back last night and decided we needed more beef, we're so sick of chicken. So we bought a thin steak for stir fry, and a big chunk of meat that I'm going to attempt to make roast with. We bought freezer paper, so I cut the chunk in half, I think I used the freezer paper right, and put half of it in there (remembering to label and date it clearly) We didn't get the crock pot we registered for so I'll be attempting the pot roast in an actual pot. If the recipe is good I'll share it. Last night was our first real dinner here, I made macaroni and cheese and we put some frozen veggies in, and Eric shred up one of the chickens from the wedding and put some of the onions and peppers and sauce from the chicken container. It was really really good. We had what Eric thinks is called a brown cow for dessert...pepsi and chocolate ice cream. We have so much pop and ice cream left over.

We put the bookshelf together in the bedroom, and it even has books on it! We went and picked up the entertainment center but haven't put it together yet. The house is really coming together. We'll put up more pictures soon.

Eric's potatoes are old so I'm off to buy some new ones.

Pictures from the disposable cameras

There were 573 pictures taken on the disposable cameras. Some of them didn't come out, a few were innapropriate, and there were a LOT of me, and a lot of the little girls, who were so cute taking pictures of everyone. Feel free to save any of these to your computer or make prints of them, I think there is a picture of just about everyone that was there.

Don't forget to share your pictures with us (we know you took them!)

We'll get to see the professional pictures in about 2 weeks but these will do for now.

pictures please

Thanks to everyone that came and celebrated with us, we had a perfect wedding. We know we smiled for a lot of pictures, but none of them were on our camera. So if anyone took pictures at the wedding, could you email them or put them on a cd for us?

Charnesky777@gmail.com

The whole day was kind of a blur for us so we would love to see the pictures!

Hopefully we'll get everything organized here at home and be able to post more later. We're really enjoying married life!

With love,

Eric

This is our first entry as a married couple! The wedding was great, we'll have pictures of that at some point. We have pictures of the rehearsal dinner, which was fun, we ate dinner and played games and hung out with our friends. The wedding day was a lot of fun, it was pretty hot in the church and there were some minor issues, but nothing that we can't laugh about later. It was fun to spend the whole weekend with all of my closest friends. The reception was great...Larry and Vlad were mischievous as usual, but they actually came through and left us a great surprise when we got home. A bowl of strawberries and grapes, candles everywhere, and some romantic music.

We also have some pictures of the church reception, and of our 'day after' party, where a few close family members came over to help us eat leftovers and watch us open our presents. We also had a surprise birthday for Kana.

Kana's visit has been wayyyy too short, but it was fun to meet her mom.

I haven't quite settled in to married life...I still feel like I'm just visiting. And figuring out where everything is, and having a choice of bologna or ramen for a snack. But its a lot of fun.

We'll be sure to keep everyone updated as the pictures start coming in but enjoy the ones we have, and thanks to everyone that shared our special day with us!

4th of July

Yesterday was SO much fun! Its one of my favorite days of the year, everyone goes to Uncle Rick and Aunt Laura's and just hangs out by the water. It may be a little less relaxing for them since they're the hosts and had to get everything all ready for it, but everyone just has so much fun. There were boat rides and paddleboat rides, yummy grilled food, SO many desserts, the kids went fishing, and when it was getting dark we made s'mores and played with sparklers while watching the fireworks. It was nice to just relax at a party that isn't all about me...between birthday stuff and wedding stuff I feel like I'm always in the spotlight lately, which I don't always mind but it was nice to just enjoy myself and not have to entertain.

Here are some pictures of the day

Eric and I were sitting out on the dock at one point, and Mikal and Adam came out and told us they were going fishing. They got their poles and got all ready and in position, and then looked at us and said "where's the worms?" The worms were in a box by our feet, and they were the huge nightcrawler kind. So I said "they're right here, you can get one out" and Mikal said "I'm not touching that!" and Adam said "You think we're crazy enough to touch a worm??" I wasn't about to touch them, they were too big, and Eric doesn't touch any creepy crawly stuff. Finally Malik came to my rescue and got one out for them. There weren't any big fish hanging around, but they caught a couple of small ones.

The fireworks on that lake are always so good! Everyone just sets them off on their own so there were little firework shows all around the lake.

This may be my last entry before I become Mrs. Jasmine Charnesky. I don't know how long it will be until that name starts to sound normal.

Today Sam and I are going to the Tricho salon and spa for my facial and nails, and Sam is getting a manicure. Then back to her mom's salon to get our eyebrows done. I can't believe the wedding is the day after tomorrow!!!

We had a little scare last night with the oven. My mom is making the wedding cake, and she was going to start baking today. The oven light burned out so my dad was replacing it, and shorted out the oven! Luckily he was able to fix it and wedding cake baking is going as planned. It smells so good in the house!

Aunt Karen loaned me some cds to use for wedding music, songs like the hokey pokey and the chicken dance, and then some other party songs. One I had never heard before, but am going to remove from the list, is Strokin' by Clarence Carter. Most innapropriate oldy song I have ever heard in my life! I'm glad I was listening to them while I was ripping them to my computer! There are a lot of really good ones on here though, I'm really excited!

Time to get ready for the spa! I'll see a lot of you tomorrow!

Bachelorette party!

My bachelorette party was tonight, I was a little worried because literally half of the party backed out at various times during this week, so there were only 5 of us but it ended up being really really fun. We met at my house and drove out to Ann Arbor to Janelle's house, then Janelle drove us to Sodako? A sushi restaurant. We got a huge platter of sushi, and managed to eat it all. Then we went to....an adult themed store, where they wanted to buy me some accessories. I convinced them to let me get away with just a sash and tiara that both had flashing lights and said 'bride to be'. Once I was all suited up, they started the first 2 games. In one game, they gave me a task, such as asking a guy to show me his belly button. The other game, I didn't know it but they each had a word that, if I said it, they made me do something. So when I said shoes (which I said often because they were killing me, I had to do a hula dance. And when I said Eric I had to flex my muscles. So I had to pay attention to what I had said right before they made me do it and had to guess what the trigger words were. I also had to get advice from 5 married couples, and 3 business cards. The other tasks you can see in the pictures.

We were walking around downtown Ann Arbor, right near the university, so there were a lot of young guys around, and 4 of them just happened to be playing beer pong in the front yard of their frat house. I had never played before, and didn't even know the rules, but they let me play, actually they just let me throw the balls until I got one in. I only drank a sip of the beer because it was soo gross but it was a fun experience.

Eventually we went back to the house and made some drinks and had chocolate fondue, and played some games. It was a lot of fun. The girls gave me a gift, a little nightgown and a robe. Shannon also gave me a lingerie set from Victoria's Secret, and a lollipop from Brandon. I'll let you guess the shape.

Ryan has a well stocked bar, so I got to try a couple of things, (kahlua and milk is going to be one of my favorites) and I found a recipe online that I thought sounded good, so I had them pick up the ingredients and I made it for all the girls (that were 21) and they really liked it, so I thought I'd put it up here:

Big Hawaiian (aka Jasmine's bachelorette party drink)
2 not quite full shot glasses of coconut rum
1/2 shot glass of watermelon schnapps
a 6 oz can of pineapple juice
1/2 shot glass of grenadine

It called for rum and coconut rum but we just used coconut. It made 3 little glasses of it.

It was a fun party night...Eric is in Canada right now with his bachelor party, I'm sure he'll post about it tomorrow.