Tag: family recipes

End Of The Year Food
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End Of The Year Food

LSiehLeave a comment

I got overwhelmed with food while simultaneously not wanting to eat anything again the last couple weeks of the year. Writing about food has not been something that has been super interesting to me. I started to go over all my food posts for the year to get a count of everything, but it was a lot. So I’ll show you some fun foods from the end of the year and beyond. The featured picture is our charcuterie tray from the virtual wine tasting with the Husband’s work.

The traditional family meatballs were served on Christmas Eve along with noodles, buttered herbed carrots, and pickles of course! Cookies were served for after dinner treats, but they are in their own post.

We made Rulle for New Year, as we had planned to have our bubble friends over, but it didn’t quite work out. We ended up having a party foods dinner with the rulle, pigs in blankets, and crab dip. It was yummy! I was quite pleased with my rulle this year. I got enough allspice in them finally.

We had lobster mac and cheese later, since we had been planning to have it NYE. It was yummy, especially with the crunchy, buttery panko crumbs on top. I used the recipe from Grandbaby Cakes. https://grandbaby-cakes.com/lobster-mac-and-cheese/

I did reduce the recipe by half though, as we didn’t need 14 servings.

We tried a new chicken noodle soup recipe with a mix from a local charity, Motown Soups, that helps support local food pantries, clinics, and shelters. We actually liked it better than the one we normally use, so I think I’ll buy some more from them. I made pizza dough cheesy breadsticks to go with it. It was very warm and comforting.

I made this amazing Red Wine Chocolate cake with some of the wine from the Husband’s work. It’s probably the best chocolate cake I have ever made. I used a different recipe for frosting, as I didn’t think we would like the wine in the frosting listed. That recipe is from Sally’s Baking Addiction. Here’s the cake recipe: https://bakerbynature.com/red-wine-chocolate-cake/

Here’s the frosting recipe: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/favorite-chocolate-buttercream/. My only criticism for myself was that I should have added more buttercream in the middle. I seriously could eat this frosting by the spoonful, it’s that good! It’s chocolately, creamy, and not super sweet.

I made a couple different breakfast things, egg muffins, fruit muffins, and a really good Greek Yogurt Coffee Cake. Recipe for the coffee cake is here: https://belleofthekitchen.com/greek-yogurt-coffee-cake/

We had a country scramble after eating glazed ham and potatoes for dinner one night. It was delicious. We cooked them separately, as the Husband didn’t want peppers and likes it squishy with cheese.

I made pancakes on one of our vacation days and topped them with yogurt and a dollop of fruit soup. Oh, it was so good! I think I made an almost perfect fruit soup this year!

We had regular mac and cheese too. I used ritz crackers for the top, as we were out of panko. It was also good. Those are dino shaped noodles, by the way. We’re almost out of silly shaped pasta, so I should add some to my next grocery order. 🙂

We had a few stir fry dishes. One chicken and one special fried rice with ham and shrimp. That’s literally what the recipe is called in the Wok and Stir fry cookbook I was using.

I would definitely make both again. They were pretty tasty!

I don’t have a picture of the chicken, I don’t think, but ended up using some of it in this filling chef salad. I made homemade naan with it too, as I had meant to make it with curry the night before.

Here’s the curry. The Husband had pork. I used dried chickpeas for this, which I soaked/cooked in the Instant pot. It only took about an hour instead of having to soak them all night and I was very pleased with that. This curry wasn’t as thick as some and I wasn’t sure if it needed more cook time, or if it was because I was using a carton of coconut milk instead of a can of it. I’ll have to do some more experimentation.

This potato soup was lovely, although I paid dearly for the bacon. Apparently my digestive system hates bacon as well as pork. I’m going to refuse to believe it though and just make sure I have stomach meds on hand. It’s so good!

I need to make more pasties, but make them a little bit bigger next time. These were more like snack pasties than dinner pasties. They were yummy though

I had a hankering for a fried chicken sandwich yesterday and used this recipe to make a knock off Popeye’s sandwich. It was good, although I had problems keeping my oil to temp. I made a quick spicy mayo by adding garlic powder and sweet chili sauce to mayo. We were out of fries, so had some roasted potatoes for dinner as well. https://gimmedelicious.com/popeyes-chicken-sandwich/

One thing I didn’t like at all this past week was this Asian Crockpot Shredded Beef. It was weird because it smelled really good while it was cooking- I was home all day getting tortured by the smell. And then when I opened the lid and started shredding it I was just absolutely done. I couldn’t even eat it! I think I took two bites and that was all I can manage. My stomach was upset for the rest of the evening too. I ended up eating chicken with pico and cilantro rice leftovers instead.

I’ll leave you with this ‘love-ly’ apple pie I made today because it looks so pretty even if it did have a slightly soggy bottom.

I hope your week is as sweet as this pie!

Thankful Cooking
Recipe Roundup

Thankful Cooking

LSiehLeave a comment

One of the things that I have noticed myself being grateful for is the ability to get and cook food. My cooking confidence has definitely grown and this year I was confident enough to make a turkey! It was lovely and golden brown, but of course, I forgot to take a picture of the whole turkey. Here’s the full Thanksgiving plate with turkey!

We had a basic herb and butter basted turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and roasted rainbow carrots from the garden!

We also had Ranch deviled eggs and the white chocolate snack mix for snacks before dinner.

K2 made this amazing sweet potato pie with this absolutely scrumptious mile high meringue with a hint of orange. It was so smooth!

The Husband requested this raspberry Jello salad dessert which is lovely as well. I accidentally forgot to add the Cool Whip with the cream cheese and ended up using two packs of cream cheese with the filling ingredients and had the Cool Whip on top. It was still really good! Recipe is here: https://iwashyoudry.com/raspberry-pretzel-salad-recipe/

Of course, I made homemade cranberry sauce. This time I used oranges, 5 spice, sugar, and water. It was so yummy! It was a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. We used our fancy china and goblets that were my great aunt’s. Aren’t they pretty?

We enjoyed these English muffin pizzas with homemade sauce and a salad side. We used ham, peppers, mushrooms, and onions. They are a super quick dinner and quite good.

I accidentally made a buttermilk batter instead of a dredge for these chicken tenders, but they turned out pretty good. I ended up making onion rings a week or so later with some more buttermilk. I don’t think I have that picture loaded yet, so it’ll come later.

A quick, but yummy dinner was these stuffed chicken breasts. We get them frozen from the store, because I don’t have time to make them from scratch.

I’ll leave you with a picture of my pasties! We used beef, potatoes, and onions, since I can’t eat pork. They were really good! I haven’t made them in quite a while, so it was nice to do it again. We even have some in the freezer. One of my friends said I must be really grown up, because I served it with a salad, or in my case, green beans. Mmmm. That makes me hungry again!

I hope you have had some delicious meals with treasured family or friends lately. I do think food has a unique ability to bring people together and we could all use a few more connections right now. So enjoy!

Recipe and Cookbook Review
Life Posts · Recipe Roundup

Recipe and Cookbook Review

LSiehLeave a comment

I promise we have still been eating! It’s taking a little while to get back to normal. This week we will be having smaller meals because we have party leftovers and we’re going visiting at the end of the week, so don’t need leftovers for the weekend. We’re leaving Fancy with a friend who’s housesitting for us though, so she might be persuaded to eat some delicious leftovers if need be. 🙂

The featured picture is our Anniversary ice cream. 🙂 The Husband had a Cookie Dough Frostbite (Like a DQ Blizzard,) and I had the Margarita ice cream. They were both good and we were in the store where we took our wedding pictures. 🙂

I haven’t picked a new cookbook to focus on lately, but we did use The Joy Of Chinese Cooking by Lo Mei Hing a few weeks ago. I’ve used this cookbook before, but there were a couple of new recipes that I thought we could try. The book is older, so ignore the part of every recipe where it says to add MSG. It’s got good pictures and very detailed instructions. Oddly, there are only about 10 beef recipes in the whole book, I think. It’s quite a thick book too. We tried the “5 Color Shau Mai,” but only used three colors. We used imitation crab, bok choy, and mushrooms for the color toppings. The recipe also included instructions for scrambled eggs and seaweed, neither of which sounded good.

They were kind of bland and we liked our normal dumpling recipe better. We used chicken instead of pork.

We tried one of the fried noodle recipes and it turned out pretty close to the restaurant version, although we used different noodles.

It was pretty good and we would try to make them again.

We also used the “Beef with Green Peppers” recipe, but I added a bunch more veggies. Also only sort of, maybe, kind of followed the recipe?

It was a pretty good stir fry. We’ll keep the book, because it has some interesting looking recipes in it, but I will need to go with my instincts on when to change things around.

Rounding out our Chinese food journey was a Shrimp Stir Fry and an Asian Meatball recipe from Gimme Some Oven.

https://www.gimmesomeoven.com/saucy-asian-meatballs/

The Husband ate his plain, but I sauteed a veggie mix that I had in the fridge to go with mine. We liked them and might make them again. (So, we didn’t have these on the same night, despite having the same bowl for all three of them…)

We’ve also had some staples, like Tequilla Lime Chicken and Pico, Spaghetti, and Pizza. The potatoes in the first picture were thinly sliced and roasted with the Galena Street Rub from Penzy’s and some olive oil. The chicken looks oddly pink, but I think it must have been a little frozen when we put it in. It was cooked properly.

This pizza is a white pizza with chicken sausage, mushrooms, and onions. It was delicious! I didn’t used a recipe, just made a garlicky white sauce and slapped it on.

The spaghetti was the Husband’s suggestion when I had to go out of town suddenly. He ate for most of the week, so we probably won’t have spaghetti anytime soon.

I tried a couple of new breakfast items. Blueberry Banana Bread from the Pillsbury: Best Muffins and Quick Breads cookbook, and a Cinnamon Coffee Cake Recipe from Baking Unplugged by Nicole Rees. Both were yummy!

I would make both again. The Husband didn’t really care for either of them, so I might only make half a recipe in the future.

We have had a couple of good storebought meals too, which I do need to remind myself, count as actual meals as well. One of the things I’m working on is not beating myself up when I’m just not able, due to scheduling, illness, etc, to actually cook.

Two of those meals were these Panko Crusted Shrimp from Costco and Crab Cakes and a salad from Aldi. I think we had both of these during Shark Week!

Also pictured with the shrimp are Kung Pao Chicken mini egg rolls, cilantro rice, a pear, and a yellow garden tomato.

For a belated Shark Week recipe, we had “Shrimp and Scallops in a Creamy Garlic Sauce” from chef Robert Irvine on Food Network.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/robert-irvine/shrimp-and-scallops-in-garlic-cream-sauce-recipe-2014083

It was good, although we used Bay Scallops rather than Sea Scallops. They are smaller and less expensive. I didn’t like it as much as I might have, but I am in a little bit of a food funk and didn’t really want to cook that night, which is probably why.

We did have a party on Sunday, but I am falling asleep, so will detail that post and the Husband’s birthday meals in a different post. For now, here’s a picture of my very alcoholic Shark Week drink, which I have lost the recipe for.

It was pretty much rum, blue carauco, and sprite, I think. Possibly orange juice as well? I’ll see if I can find the recipe. It was pretty delicious, but at one point the gummy shark had so much booze it flipped over upside down… Whoops!

Before I do the same, I will say goodnight!

Monday Munchies
Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Monday Munchies

LSiehLeave a comment

Sorry for missing Simple Sunday. I had a very bad migraine and screens were making my vision double, so I couldn’t concentrate enough to pick a topic or see to find quotes. I’ll do a Wordy Wednesday post with some pictures and quotes later this week.

I was going through my food pictures though and realized that we have been having a lot of delicious meals. The featured picture is Fancy at our dinner tonight. She was very hopeful that she would get some and was very sad to only get her own dinner. We both seem to be out of our food funk, so even though meal planning has been haphazard, we have made it work.

Tonight, for example, we were supposed to eat yesterday, but the Husband had to go into work. Apparently bad things happen to electronics if the power goes out? 😉 He had to go make sure everything turned on okay. I knew there was no way I was going to make this just for me, so we had a very fancy dinner on a Monday. May I present Garlic and Rosemary Crusted Rack of Lamb?

Rosemary from the garden, olive oil, and garlic made up the crust. I completely forgot salt and pepper and neither of us noticed. Here is the recipe I used. https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/garlic-crusted-roast-rack-lamb

It was very good. Sometimes I don’t enjoy lamb, but this one was much milder than normal and tasted more of herbs than the gamey taste it can get. I think I cooked it just to done, not overly done too, so that was good. We had cheddar biscuits from the Red Lobster mix and I had asparagus as well. I also tried mango sprinkled with Pico De Fruita from Penzey’s.

It’s a spicy seasoning for fresh juicy fruits like mango and peaches. It has a surprising bite, but did give another layer of flavor. I might try this in a fruit salad with mangos and strawberries and see how it is. I think it would be good on grilled pineapple too, which I do plan on making this summer.

Side note, how is it suddenly summer? I still haven’t managed to completely switch my heavier clothes out of my drawers and have realized how many tank tops I need, but don’t have! Luckily, I have a couple of patterns to try, but that’s another story. Back to food!

We have grilled again this last week, on the one day it didn’t rain! Now that I’m home earlier on Monday and Tuesday, dinner can be a little more fun. We had grilled steak kebabs!

I would say I followed a recipe, but my parents told me never to lie. 😉 I did use the cook time in a Food Network magazine, but used our own ingredients and spices. They were seasoned with Sandwich Sprinkle from Penzey’s, which I have used on approximately 10 things, none of which are sandwiches… It’s basically Italian Seasoning, garlic, salt and pepper, if you wanted to try to recreate it. My kebabs were the ones with tomatoes and peppers. The Husband had manly kebabs- no veggies allowed, just meat and starch. They were delicious! We will definitely be making them again. Kebab all the things!

We have had a couple of fancier breakfasts too, not just dinners! I made the sour cream muffins from a couple of weeks ago with blueberries instead of chocolate chips.

They were good, but I think I liked the chocolate chip ones better. The Husband tried the blueberry ones and did like them. He’s not a huge breakfast eater.

I made these egg cups this morning in an effort to eat more protein to ward off migraines. Newsflash, it didn’t work, but they were a good breakfast. They would be a good lunch too.

They are filled with chicken breakfast sausage, red peppers, green onions, mushrooms, and fresh parsley, oregano, and basil. I forgot to add cheese and any spices, including salt and pepper. My brain was having fits this morning. They’re still pretty tasty though. The Husband will hopefully help me eat them. I had them with cinnamon toast, but had eaten in stages this morning, so no pictures.

We had a few standbys: Shells and Cheese with veggies and chicken sausage, Creamy Shrimp Pasta, and Instant Pot Korean Beef.

The Husband had the Korean beef sauce on country style pork ribs in the crockpot, but they messed with his stomach, so I don’t think he ate them all. Too fatty, I think. We haven’t had them in forever, since it seemed like too much for him to eat on his own. He said they tasted good though, just regretted it in the morning.

We did enjoy lettuce wraps too and I had the leftover meat on a salad the next day, which was pretty delicious.

We discovered that the Husband likes Boston lettuce better that romaine, so we might switch to that. Chef’s salad is more appealing in the summer sometimes.

Another really fun new thing I tried was Pineapple Sage Lemonade!

My pineapple sage is growing like crazy and I know you can make it into tea, but the hot tea wasn’t sounding appealing in 80 degree weather, so I made lemonade instead. I looked at a recipe, which I cannot find, but in the end, just made something up. I didn’t think to grab fresh lemons at the store, so I mixed about an 1/8 th cup of lemonade concentrate with water and then added sugar to taste. I bruised and ripped up five or six pineapple sage leaves and threw them in and let it sit for a while. It turned out to be very good! There was a subtle taste of the pineapple sage and it went really well with the lemons. I am planning on trying some cocktails too. Here’s some websites if you’re interested!

https://www.geniuskitchen.com/recipe/pineapple-sage-tea-hot-or-iced-386388

https://punchdrink.com/recipes/pineapple-and-sage-martini/

https://www.fakefoodfree.com/pineapple-sage-bourbon-lemonade/

And some food recipes too!

http://theessentialherbal.blogspot.com/2009/05/pining-for-pineapple-sage-recipes.html

I have used the lemon thyme in my water too, which gives it a lovely flavor. I’m excited to investigate other ways to use the herbs this year, since they are all growing so well!

Fancy is being super weird about the windows. We think there’s a small animal out there taunting her, but we haven’t smelled skunk yet. I’d better go distract her before she attempts to exit the house through the window. Have a lovely (non-smelly) night!

Catching Up- Lunar New Year Party
Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Catching Up- Lunar New Year Party

LSiehLeave a comment

I had good intentions to write this post for the last couple days and then had very bad news at work and a couple of migraines. I’m feeling better today, luckily.

Our Lunar New Year Party was lots of fun! We had planned to watch Crazy Rich Asians, but I went a little large on the guest list and we just don’t have comfy seating for 13 people! So we’ll have to watch it another time.

We had a Dim Sum theme this year and didn’t have a big main dish, just a bunch of smaller ones. But there was still lots of food. I went to the Asian market and got huge bags of produce, which we are now eating in everything to use up. I foisted some off on my in-laws today though, so hopefully we can finish off the rest of it.

We did have some store bought things this year. I’ve given up trying to make egg rolls or spring rolls. They just aren’t worth the work for me and never seem to come out right. We bought veggie spring rolls from Costco this time.

I also used these rice packet things from the Asian market. We get these for Dim Sum, but I can’t eat them because of the pork sausage that is in them. These ones just had dried shrimp, so I picked them up. They have some lovely spices too and were nice for lunch. They are wrapped in tea leaves, so you only eat the inside.

Another Dim Sum favorite of mine is the steamed Chinese Broccoli, or Gai Lan. It’s very much like broccoli in taste, but has leaves instead of the the florets. I’m sure I was the only one to eat it, but it made my heart happy. 🙂

I did make two kinds of bao, although these are just the pork ones. I had 5 spice chicken bao as well, but they got eaten up quick. These were both made up recipes, although I did use a recipe for the Bao dough from The Food of China. I think I posted the recipe last year in the party post, but can repost it if you’d like it.

I roasted a whole pork loin in thinned out char sai sauce (Chinese bbq sauce) and chopped that for the pork filling. The chicken filling was ground chicken, sauces, bamboo shoots, garlic, and scallions in them.

We had pork shao mai, which was from the Husband’s family recipe book! According to the Husband, his mom and dad may have collected the recipes from his paternal grandma. Most of them are typed, but there are a couple that are handwritten. The shao mai were eaten before I started taking pictures.

The crab stuffed mushrooms were also from the book and were delicious! They called for a “creamy white sauce” so I made one to go in it. Fake crab was used. We’ve discovered that we don’t always need real crab. It was exciting to use it and there will certainly be some dinners from there as well.

The lettuce wraps look a little sad in this picture, as we had eaten most of them. These were made with ground turkey. These were my own recipe, meaning I threw a bunch of sauces and sauce ingredients at them until the filling tasted good. 🙂

A new recipe, that I may not make again, was fried pork ribs. I texted the Husband from the Asian Market and he was very enthusiastic. I was, of course, thinking I didn’t have enough pork and would need one more dish. I was told they were good, but only fried half of them. They spit at me a lot and burned me.

The Husband baked the rest of them for dinner during the week and said that worked too. They marinated for a long time in a 5 spice based marinade and were then battered and fried, or baked. These were from the Food of China.

We had Clementine Cakes from The Woks of Life. https://thewoksoflife.com/2014/10/clementine-cakes/

I highly recommend this website, as it has so many recipes and information on it for all your Asian culinary dreams. Someday I’ll get brave enough to make the coconut buns!

Back to the cakes though. I used blood oranges. The clementines were hard to find and I didn’t want to use them. I also didn’t glaze them and intended to make a frosting, but they didn’t get frosted. I did use super cute silicone cupcake molds though that had fortunes on the bottom!

Traditional almond cookies were also served. I used the recipe from my Food of China book and didn’t have blanched almonds and just left them off the tops. These didn’t brown, except on the bottoms, so be aware of that if you make them.

I think that was all the food! We didn’t manage a picture of the whole table, but I do have a picture of a table to share!

I found this Lego version of a Lunar New Year Dinner on Amazon really randomly while looking for the lucky coins we gave as favors this year. It was only available in Malaysia, but was somehow being sold by a toy company in New Jersey. I had no idea of any of this, the Husband found out after I gave it to him. 🙂 One of his superpowers is research. It was perfect for us though! It even has the Chinese broccoli!!

Here’s a close up of the table.

We also have started collecting the Lego zodiac sets, so here’s last year’s dog and this year’s pig.

I’ll leave you with some other pretty pictures of our decor. I nerded out a little and made the bookshelf display Firefly themed. I couldn’t help myself!

It was very fun and next year we’ll have to do some experimenting with how we want to run it. I made all of the fillings ahead of time, which helped, but I still need to rethink how we do this party. I end up making everyone feel awkward, I think, while I’m racing around trying to finish things. When I suggested a potluck idea to the Husband, he said “I’m surprised you can even say those words!” Ha.. Ha.. Ha..

I’ll let you know how it turns out. 🙂 Have a great weekend!

Recipe Roundup
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

LSiehLeave a comment

The weather here cannot make up its mind about what to do. All our snow melted in a day after getting several inches and now it’s freezing again. We’re supposed to get 4-6 inches by tomorrow. Fancy has spent most of the last couple of days curled up on the bed, or by the heating vent. She’s currently keeping my feet warm with occasional breaks to bark at the neighbors.

We had a good amount of variety in our meals this week. For dinner tonight, it will be “clean out the fridge.” I think all we have left is the chicken divan though, so that will be easy to finish off.

We had a pre-seasoned boneless lamb leg on Sunday, with mashed potatoes and fancy carrots from a Food Network magazine.

I consulted a couple of different recipes for the lamb, mainly just for tempature. It turned out really good. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/herb-roasted-lamb-recipe-1943577.html?soc=itksocialsharedefault%7Cios%7Ct Herb-Roasted Lamb By Ina Garten

I think this is the one I finally settled on. The link is being weird and linking back to the app instead of the webpage, so if it gives you trouble, search the Food Network site.

The lamb was delicious! We will definitely be doing this again. The Husband was super happy with it. I liked it. It masked the lamb gameyness and had a bit of a kick to it.

The carrots were from Food Network April 2015, Herbed Green Beans and Carrots. I only used carrots and I used a cranberry-pear white balsamic vinegar. I did reduce the sugar a little in the recipe. I julienned the carrots, feeling very fancy while cutting them.

We also had chicken divan. I accidentally mixed the cheese in and forgot the bread crumbs, so it was a little bit different. I also didn’t measure and under seasoned it. It still tasted alright though.

I made another muffin recipe. Blood Orange Pomegranate Muffins from Food Network, Jan/Feb 2018. 

They browned up a bit more than I was expecting. They have two full sticks of butter in them… The pomegranate arils were supposed to go on top, but I accidentally mixed them in. I didn’t make the glaze. I typically don’t like it. These were good. Slightly over baked, I think. They also made a full 24, when the recipe only said it would make 18. I’m not sure what size muffins they thought I was making…

I had chocolate chip banana waffles for breakfast one night. It had been a rough day, so they were a nice treat. https://hilahcooking.com/chocolate-chip-waffles/

I had them with butter and lingonberry jam. Mmm… I would make these again. The Husband was out for the night, so I didn’t have to share. I would make these again. I reduced the sugar a little and would do so again. The chocolate chips and jam made these sweet enough.

Last night I used the lamb to make a lamb stew, loosely based off a recipe in A Taste of Lebanon by Mary Salloum.

It was spicy from the lamb seasoning and warming from the cinnamon. We had cheese biscuits with it. We ate most of it last night. I would make this again if we have leftover lamb.

In other news, I started an Instagram account for the blog, with the same name- Notso50shousewife. If you have an account, feel free to follow along.

Stay tuned on Monday for my monthly review! I’m starting pretty strong on sewing projects this year.

Party Post and Recipe Catch Up
Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Party Post and Recipe Catch Up

LSiehLeave a comment

I realized I never shared the party post! And I have a lot of recipe catching up to do! I’ll start with the Epiphany party, because that’s much more fun. 🙂

I made way too much food as usual, and people kept getting th cold or flu that was running around, so it was a smaller party this year. The Husband’s Grandma and some of the other family came though, so that was fun. Fancy got to see her favorite uncle who buys her fun toys. 🙂

Fancy did very well at the Epiphany party. We kept her on leash and in her party harness, so she seemed to be a bit calmer. We had several friends who were comfortable holding the leash for us too, so we could actually talk to people. She had one incident of guarding/biting a box, but she did give it up when the Husband got out a beef chew for her. She was very sleepy that night and the next day.

New recipes included two gluten free/dairy free cookies, one of which was Keto friendly. We also had pigs in blankets with homemade crescent dough, because I couldn’t help myself.

I mean, I could have used the crescent roll dough in a tube, but that doesn’t taste nearly as good.

The smaller ones are gluten free almond flour chocolate chip cookies from off of the Trader Joe’s almond flour bag. The butter was switched out for margarine.

The other ones are Keto friendly snickerdoodles from I Breathe, I’m Hungry. https://www.ibreatheimhungry.com/low-carb-snickerdoodles-keto-gluten-free/

They were both pretty good. They ended up being soft, due to the almond flour. I’m not the biggest fan of artificial sugar, so I borrowed some from my friend Kayla.

She was lovely enough to come help the Husband and I food prep for the party and it worked out well to have help. Something hilarious happened though that kind of made the kitchen look like the Mayhem commercials happened…

This would be what happens when you hit the mixer switch to the highest setting by accident and have just put about a pound of powdered sugar in the mixer… After the initial shock, Kayla laughed too and I’m pretty sure she was the one to remind me to take a picture for the blog. 🙂 I had removed a few things from the counter  before taking the picture, I think, the spatula and a measuring cup. It was a mess. We got it all sorted though.

I made peppermint bark from the December Food Network Peppermint Insert, but completely forgot to serve it! We had plenty of other sweets. 

I had frozen the other honey sugar cookie dough, so those were made into sweater bears. The Husband likes bears in sweaters, ever since I bought a tin with a bear in a sweater holding a tree a few years ago.

We also had regular chocolate chip cookies, Berliner Kranzer, peanut butter balls, and the peppermint sugar cookies.

Other savory options were crab dip, a cheese and sausage tray, chicken salad, and the traditional rulle.

Also, a veggie tray and pickle tray. The Husband brought home some fancy popcorn and sugar cookies, so we had those too. It was lovely. We have been happily munching on the leftovers.

So that’s the party part of the post. On to the regular recipes!

I think I mentioned we got an Instant Pot and maybe the fact that I was a little terrified of using it…

It wasn’t as scary after I let the steam out the first time. I made a tomato, hamburger, and pasta soup.

https://www.skinnytaste.com/beef-tomato-and-acini-di-pepe-soup/

It needed more seasoning and I already added more than what the recipe called for. It was good enough to add to the recipe bank though.

I also tried two recipes from the Gordon Ramsey’s In The Heat Of The Kitchen cookbook. Homemade pasta and Tagliatelle with Mushrooms, with the homemade pasta. Technically this is fettuccini, but it worked.

We had the mushroom dish with steaks on New Year’s Day.

The pasta was delicious. I thought it was one of the better batches that I’ve made. It was silky and smooth. The dough was drier than previous dough and I think it made it less prone to sticking together.

Fancy was very determined to share our dinner.

I have made two recipes from the 2018 January/February Food Network Magazine already.

It has 12 muffin recipes! I used the Lemon Zucchini muffin one, but switched out the lemon to orange. I had the latter, but not the former.

Mmmm… they were delicious! I will happily make them again.

We had the Chili Shrimp from the stir-fry insert tonight and it was also good.

The last couple weeks have been a blur, so I’m sure there are ones I’m missing. I’ll post them when I remember them.

Have a wonderful weekend! My back is acting up again, so I may not be able to do much, but can maybe get some meal planning done. There are more Instant Pot recipes to be explored!

Recipe Roundup- Leftover Edition
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup- Leftover Edition

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This week was a week of one recipe and two leftover recipes. I had a few freezer dinners and chili at work. It was “Hell Week” for the Husband’s play and he was gone until late all week. Fancy and I missed him a lot! His group performed “The Laramie Project.” It was so powerful! I’m not sure if I’m ready to blog about it, because it brought a lot of stuff up. Maybe I’ll tackle it all in a future post.

Fancy did get a new toy over last weekend, from the Husband’s uncle to distract her from the Husband being gone for so long. Poor little pig didn’t even know what was coming for him…

She’ll get one of her treat bones today with some homemade treats in it. It’s raining and she won’t go out except to use the bathroom. She’s going stir crazy though, so if anyone has a need for slightly crazy puppy cuddles, let me know. 🙂

I just made a chocolate applesauce cake today, so I’ll start with that recipe and end with the leftover recipes.

1- Chocolate Applesauce Cake from Taste of Home. https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/chocolate-applesauce-cake

I was trying to recreate a chocolate applesauce cake my Mom makes, but this was not the right recipe. It’s delicious and moist, but not dark chocolaty enough. She said another name for it was “Chocolate Tea Bread” maybe, so I might look that up. I used my homemade applesauce for it. I wanted this cake since I made the applesauce, so I am happy with it. 🙂

2-Slow Cooker French Onion Chicken from Pillsbury. https://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/slow-cooker-french-onion-chicken/ec69f51d-b79d-4ac0-8619-693a35167a87

First off, I didn’t make this in the crock pot. I baked it at 350 for about 45 minutes, maybe? I also used boneless thighs and drumsticks instead of chicken breasts. I ran out of time for the crockpot.

It was good. I liked the garlic and always like caramelized onions. I had it with green beans and a homemade herbed french bread roll. I forgot to oil the mini cast iron, so the bottom of it got stuck. It still tasted delicious though.

So I made a lot more chicken than I needed by accident and had to come up with a few things to do with it. I have no pictures of these ideas, but can give you the measurements from what I remember.

3- Chicken Salad, recipe by me.

I chopped up a couple of pieces of the chicken, added a few tablespoons of chopped celery, and about a 1/8 cup mayo. Also, salt, pepper, and I accidentally dumped at least a tablespoon of dried tarragon in the container. It was delicious! I was going to eat it with crackers, but they had gone stale in my snack drawer at work. Apparently my face was absolutely hilarious because my client burst out laughing in the middle of her sentence. 🙂 I ate it by itself after that.

4- Slow Cooker Chicken Tortilla Soup, recipe by me.

I chopped up the rest of the chicken, a small onion, a garden jalapeño, and two cloves of garlic. I added them to a box of chicken broth, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of diced green chilis, and a can of tomato paste. Spices were cumin, garlic powder, a little turmeric, oregano, and salt and pepper. I let it cook overnight and promptly had it for breakfast on Friday. It’s delicious and spicy! It’s helping the Husband’s cold, we think.

I did learn that the massive jalapeños are probably massive in heat level, not necessarily size. I know this because I rubbed my eyes at 4:30 AM and cried for a very long time. I had cut one (only one!) up, washed my hands multiple times and went to bed. Apparently it was extremely potent. I think I might need gloves to make the salsa. Yikes! Not a good way to wake up for sure.

My work schedule is crazy as usual. I decided to move to one counseling center full-time, instead of part-time at two centers, so while this will eventually make it better, right now it’s not the easiest. I’m attempting to tell clients I’m leaving, but both last Friday and Monday, I had three no shows or cancellations each day. It makes it hard to move things along for sure. My plan is to be full-time at only one center by January. Hopefully I can have a couple of earlier nights  during the week to actually cook things again.

Speaking of cooking, I should go make dinner for me. I’m going to make a grilled cheese with the herb bread. I’ve used it before and it was delicious!

Have a great weekend! May it be filled with naps!

Recipe Roundup
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

LSiehLeave a comment

Fancy, the Husband, and I are tuckered out. We went on a grand adventure today to our college’s homecoming. We took Fancy with us and discovered that she can be in the car with just the car harness belted in and not in her crate for about 2 hours. We had the crate with us in case, but it’s nice to know that we can do that.

We all had a great time! It was a little weird being back on campus and realizing I graduated 10 years ago. Gosh, I’m getting old.

Some things we discovered during the parade: Fancy does not like drums, is unsure of bagpipes, and would very, very much like to eat the cheerleaders’ pom-poms. She’s currently snoring on her blanket after meeting several new dogs and a very many new people. She was quite the attention getter and is now an honorary Phi Mu Alpha (The Husband’s fraternity) house dog. 🙂

Because it was homecoming, I made one of our college’s famous foods, Highland Chicken. It figures, the only school spirit I have comes out in food… Of course, I improved it a little.

1- Highland Chicken, recipe by me. Absolutely no measurements, sorry!

Saute mushrooms and onions in olive oil until tender. Add garlic powder, salt, pepper, and parsley. Add half a brick of cream cheese. Cook until melted. Roll out puff pastry and cut into 6 squares. Divide mixture between puff pastries, twist corners into center. Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes.

It was good and brought back a bunch of good college memories. 🙂

We used left over chicken from the next recipe to make the Highland Chicken.

2- Roast Chicken With Herb Butter from In the Heat of the Kitchen by Gordon Ramsey. Section: Poultry and Game Birds. 

I was brave and popped the legs off as suggested and roasted them separately. I didn’t get this one too badly  off, although I forgot to make carrots to go with it and we had salad instead.

3- Old Fashioned Bread Stuffing from The Comfort of Cooking. http://www.thecomfortofcooking.com/2010/02/old-fashioned-bread-stuffing.html

This was good. A little dry for the Husband. I normally don’t like stuffing, but it was good.

4- BBQ Beef Ribs, by me!

I threw some boneless beef ribs and homemade BBQ sauce in the crockpot with some garlic cloves and cooked it for 7 hours. We had it twice. The picture is from the second time when we had mashed potatoes and carrots. The Husband had it with a salad the first time.

We managed to have a few new recipes in the past week, even being busy. The Husband starts being at play rehearsals more this month to figure out the production side of things, so our meal schedule may be a bit crazy.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Fancy is currently making this face at me to try to get me to play. 🙂 Stay tuned for my monthly report tomorrow!

Recipe Roundup
Recipe Roundup

Recipe Roundup

LSiehLeave a comment

I love my job! Sometimes it’s difficult, heartbreaking, and crazy, but other days I do feel like I’m accomplishing something. This week in particular has been stressful, due to long hours and some difficult situations. On Tuesday though, my dollhouse was home to a puppy party and the dolls were buried in puppies! Then on Wednesday, the dinos took over. They made a huge mess! It made me smile though, so that was good. The fireplace was also built by a client and I think it’s great.

So with this week being long, we didn’t have many new recipes. We had another of the freezer/crockpot meals, an original recipe, and I made a special biscuit recipe for Fancy. She may even like them better than her store-bought treats.

Speaking of Fancy, she is currently aggressively snuggling me on the couch. The Husband is off at Cedar Point with people who don’t get horribly ill on roller coasters, so she is a little clingy. She’ll just climb on up on your lap because she’s in denial about not being a lap dog. I say this like I mind, when it should be fairly obvious that I love snuggling her. How could anyone not love this pup?

Here are her treats and recipe so you can spoil your pup, just like we do.

1-Ridiculously Simple PB Dog Treats

http://simplificlife.blogspot.com/2013/11/ridiculously-easy-peanut-butter-dog.html?m=1

They are unbaked in this picture, but didn’t really change much when baked. I used chickpea flour instead of regular and half water/half chicken broth.

There was way too much liquid! I don’t know if chickpea flour causes problems with texture or not, but both dog treat recipes I used it in were way too sticky. I had to add at least another cup of flour. They also have a little rye flour after I ran out of chickpea flour.

I only made half the batch, as I didn’t have time before work to make it all. The rest is in the fridge, where I am hoping it will be better behaved after being chilled.

Fancy loves them! Her tail starts going a mile a minute and she gets dancy feet. 🙂 They came out very crunchy, so if I can get the dough figured out, I may make these again.

2- Sweet Chinese Beef from Freezer Meals by Julianna Sweeney. 

I added peppers and a little bit of broth, since it was a little less than half the crockpot full. It was alright, needed a little more seasoning. Good for a quick dinner though. I didn’t get a picture of it though.

3- “Catch Your Man” Chicken Potpie, recipe by me.

So, two out of the four guys I have ever made this for proposed and I married the second one, so I figured the name was appropriate. 🙂

This is one of the Husband’s favorite dishes, especially when I make it with pie dough. He thinks I should make this my Masterchef audition dish, but I’ll have to find a way to elevate it first.

I based the recipe on a Betty Crocker one, but never use it any more. I use a roux first and then add milk and broth. I’ve used both frozen and fresh veggies and either works. It’s a great comfort food.

4-Flamingo Mac and Cheese, recipe by me.

I made this last night. I didn’t want canned soup and didn’t actually want to eat anything, but needed to eat. The flamingos helped. I added peppers and shallots, Pensvy’s “Forward!” Spice, salt, pepper, and smoky bacon cheddar cheese. Fancy was extremely interested in it.

I am planning on making Fancy pupcakes for tomorrow and am debating between a pumpkin recipe or a pb one. I think I can just use gluten-free flour, but need to double check. I also have rye flour, so may just use that. Fancy is a wheat free dog, so the rye should be okay. She’s fancier than us for sure!

She is also demanding a walk, so I’d better take her out. She’s been waiting patiently all day while I was gone. Tune back in tomorrow for a pupcake update!