I've completed two of the projects on my list of things I wanted to accomplish this year. I'm pretty pleased with them. The first is the "I love you because..." frame. I had the perfect frame, just needed to get off my butt and print up "I love you because..." We've been taking turns writing messages for each other on it. It sits right next to the coffee maker, since that's the most important thing in our house. Saturday, I had a few free moments before heading to our final Christmas celebration with Husband's family, so I made the snowflake ballerinas. Unfortunately, I only have white paper right now. They turned out quite well, but Sunshine didn't like they were just white. She, of course, wanted pink and purple. I also tried out a new recipe for our final Christmas dessert. I made what I would call Cherry Fluff, but the recipe is actually called Cherry Salad. Way too sweet for even my taste. I ended up just picking out all the cherries to eat. It also made enough for an army. I only used 1/2 a bag of mini marshmallows and 16 oz of cool whip and that was still too much, in my opinion. After the initial taste test, I decided to add almond extract, which turned out to be a good move. It was really easy to make, but not worth repeating.
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I don't have resolutions. I also try not to set unrealistic goals. 2012 was a pretty good year for accomplishing and creating things. However, the last two months, I slacked off big time. This year, I'm creating a list of things I'd like to do. Here are my hopes for 2013.
Now the fun stuff. Here are the crafts/activities I would like to do this year: There are also so many recipes I'd like to try, but I'll just highlight a few here: I am realistic. I know I may not get some of these things accomplished, and that's fine. These are just hopes, not goals. If I don't, they go on the list for 2014. Even if I don't get one of the things on here accomplished, I plan on being happy, and that's what really matters most. The past two weeks, I've been trying some pretty good new foods with my family. Problem is, my family doesn't like change all that much. I grew up on foods like pork chops, city chicken, steaks in the broiler, potatoes, and veggies. Each time I try pork chops with my family, they turn up their noses. Steak? Forget it. This week, I tried City Chicken. You would have thought I was trying to poison them. Yesterday, we went to my parents and my mom made baked spaghetti. Monster loved it! He had 5 helpings. He won't touch pasta with sauce here normally. Sunshine, who is normally a pasta sauce dipper, wouldn't touch the baked spaghetti. This past week I also made my husband's favorite meal, tortellini soup with beer bread. It's a super easy crock pot meal that I adapted from a Sandra Lee recipe. So far adapted it looks hardly anything like the original recipe. I've gotten it down to a science now, so I don't even measure, or else I'd give out the recipe. Some of the new things new things we tried the past two weeks were good. Some, not so good. Honey Apple Pork Tenderloin. Everyone in my family, including my husband would have rather starved than eat this. Personally, I thought it wasn't bad. A friend of mine got to have my leftovers (since 3 of 4 of us wouldn't touch it, there was a lot left) and she thought it wasn't horrible. It was dry reheated, but she said the flavor was decent. Garlic and Brown Sugar Chicken. Awesome flavor. The recipe that I found though had me bake it at 500 degrees. I should have listened to my gut and just done them at 400 for 20 minutes because they were a little dry. Husband didn't like it. Too sweet for him. Sunshine and Monster weren't thrilled, but ate it. Parmesan Crusted Chicken. I really liked this! I used Greek yogurt instead of mayo. Very flavorful and moist! The rest of my family turned up their noses. Actually, Sunshine started to eat it until Monster said he didn't like it. Then she didn't like it either. Ranch chicken strips. These were fantastic! Husband and Sunshine didn't like them, but Monster and I did. I didn't have corn flakes, so I used Special K. Don't think that made a bit of difference. I also made cake mix pumpkin muffins for Monster's Halloween party at school. I've done this many times in the past, but because of allergies in the class, I used plain white cake mix as opposed to the spice cake mix I usually use. I did not like the muffins as much.
Something else I tried, that I would love to take credit for but can't, was Tastefully Simple's Beer Cheese Soup. It was fantastic! If anyone is interested, I have a consultant you could order from online. This week is going to be low key due to the yucky weather, Husband being gone, and Halloween falling in the middle of the week (it's trick or treating here on Halloween). It will be back to meals we have regularly. Maybe being stuck inside will encourage me to bake. Probably not, but I can hope! This week I decided to try a couple of new recipes for sweet treats. One was great. One completely bombed. The one that was horrible was Two Ingredient Pumpkin Brownies. Supposedly all you need to do is throw some pumpkin and brownie mix together. Simple. Bad. Why were they so bad? Well, let's start with the basic...taste. They just didn't taste good. Second was texture. They were not brownie like by any means. Then there was the fact that they could bounce. Yes, bounce. Husband picked one up, tossed it down, and it bounced. When I went to get rid of them, I was able to pick up one end of the whole slab and pull the whole thing out of the pan and wiggle it. On the bright side, I have never had a brownie pan that was that easy to clean. One friend, who I made try it, said, "It's edible, but not enjoyable." She was being positive. I wouldn't even call them edible.
It was a good thing I also made some yummy granola bars for this get together or else we would have been eating dry cereal as snacks. This granola bar recipe, I got from a friend. It is so simple and so yummy! Homemade Chewy Granola Bars 1/2 cup peanut butter or sunbutter 1/3 cup honey 1/4 cup coconut oil (or another oil of your choice) 1 cup oats 1 cup total of any combination of: sesame seeds, coconut flakes, sunflower seeds, dried fruit, mini chocolate chips In a medium sized saucepan, melt together peanut butter, honey and coconut oil. Remove from heat and add one cup of oats. Choose your favorite combination of coconut flakes, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, dried fruit and mini chocolate chips, to equal a total of ONE CUP. (I just got out my one cup measuring cup and poured in the ingredients until the cup was full.) Pour in and stir well. Stir well, then spread mixture into a 8×8 or 9×4 pan. Chill for two hours, then cut into bars. Store in air tight container I used cashew butter because Sunshine isn't a huge fan of peanut butter. Then, for my one cup of extras I used chopped dates, raisins and sunflower seeds. For my particular taste, I'd probably use less honey next time. My kids are asking me to make them again already. As for new meal ideas, well, I just didn't get those planned on time this week. I'm hoping to get some good ones in for next week. My migraine had me fall behind on the recipe thing. This week, my family didn't eat so well. It took me until yesterday to feel better and actually get out the grocery store for real food. The only thing new I tried this week was spaghetti squash in the crock pot. Super easy, which is why I was able to handle that with my head. All you do is pierce squash with fork all over to prevent it from blowing up, put it in crock pot, add one cup of water, and cook on low for 9 hours. It turned out pretty decent. I've never cooked a spaghetti squash before, so I don't know if this is common, but it turned out a little runny. By runny, I mean it seemed like it actually had some water in it. Maybe it was over cooked. Maybe I pierced it too much. Or, maybe that's just how it turns out. It was still good though. Monster and I liked it with butter and pepper. Sunshine wouldn't eat it and neither would Husband. For two weeks, I did pretty well with keeping up with more than one new meal for the week. Here were some that I tried. Chicken, potatoes, green beans. This was so easy and so good. It will most definitely be made again! It's just chicken breasts, cut up potatoes and green beans, frozen, canned or fresh, put all together in a casserole dish. Use a packet of dried Italian dressing and sprinkle over everything (I did't put it on the green beans because I didn't think my kids would like it). Then, pour a stick of melted butter over everything. Cover. Put in 400 degree oven for an hour. So yummy! African Pulled beef with yogurt mint sauce. This one wasn't so great. It was pretty bland. Plus, no one in my family liked the mint sauce. If I would have put dill rather than mint, they would have enjoyed it a lot more. This wasn't worth my time to make. The lack of flavor was really disappointing. Bacon wrapped chicken. This was OK for a change, but probably not something I'd make again. It was so simple and had good flavor, but the bacon didn't get crispy enough for me or my family. It could have been the kind of bacon I used, but, honestly, it's not worth me trying again. However, the chicken was great. Husband thought it was too sweet, but I really enjoyed it and the kids didn't hate it. I may flavor the chicken that way again when Husband is out of town. Taco Pie. My son literally ate half of it. Half of a pie. I used ground chicken instead of beef. It was very good. Sunshine didn't eat it, but that wasn't a surprise she doesn't like ground meat of any sort. This a definite make again meal! All I did was use a roll out pie crust, bake it for 10 minutes, added seasoned, cooked ground chicken, topped with cheese and baked another 15 minutes. After that, we put sour cream, olives and tomatoes on top. Chicken Ranch Tacos. The meat was very good, but I added season salt to it. Everyone, other than Sunshine (do you see a pattern here?), ate it and enjoyed it. The recipe that I found for this modified it for the crock pot, which is what I did. It was just one cup chicken broth, 1 lb chicken breast, 1 packet dry ranch dressing, 1 packet taco seasoning. Combine in crock pot, cook on low for 4 hours, shred chicken and cook extra half hour. I added just a touch of season salt and more taco seasoning. After shredding, it literally soaked up all the juices and it was incredibly tasty. None of us added ranch dressing to our tacos though. I tried, but liked sour cream better. These next couple of weeks will be bringing lots of pumpkin themed recipes. I can't wait! I love pumpkin!
As a side note, our pumpkin experiment did not go well. The pumpkin molded, started to rot, and was attracting all sorts of bugs. It was seriously gross. Monster thought it was really cool that it was so gross. It's pumpkin time! This year we planted pumpkins. Horrible year for crops, but we did get one pumpkin that turned out perfectly! Sunshine couldn't wait to pick it off the vine, so we bought one at the store. We decided to do a science experiment with the store bought one. The experiment was super easy. Cut off the top, stick in soil. Water. Watch. Since we only did this on Tuesday, there's nothing growing yet. We have high hopes though! Another thing we did with the store bought pumpkin was pull some of the seeds out to roast. We've had horrible luck with pumpkin seeds in the past. This round, they turned out great. At least Sunshine and I thought they turned out great. Monster and Husband didn't like them so much. Sunshine and I liked them so much I almost want to buy another little pumpkin just to roast the seeds! What I did was let the seeds dry for 3 days on wax paper. Then, I sprayed them with canola oil. After that, I tossed them in salt. I roasted them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, flipping them after 10. We've got another pumpkin on the vine that should be ready by Halloween! So excited about all the wonders of autumn!
I'm really trying to stick to at least one new recipe a week, but with our packed activity schedules, it will more likely be every other week. I do have a couple that I have tried, pass and fail.
My kids love oatmeal. In fact, that's what they consider cereal. They don't eat dry cereal. When I saw a pin for Apple Pie Breakfast, I was sure my kids would love it. Luckily, I'm an early riser. This takes 2-4 in the crock pot. I woke up at 5 am, and got it all ready. It smelled wonderful. The kids were so excited about it. And then they took their first bites. No go. Sunshine, who is the picky one, at least picked the apples out of it and ate those. Monster wouldn't even do that. Pretty sure it was the steel cut oats they didn't like since I use regular oats and put all kinds of fruit in it normally. There's one more pin that got deleted. A recipe that went over really well was Mexican Pizza. The great thing about this is that I was able to change it up to meet the tastes of all family members. Monster and Sunshine shared one and Husband and I each got our own. There was a layer of refried beans and then a layer of ground chicken. After that, we changed it up to meet the needs of our family. Kids got mozzarella cheese because they don't like melted cheddar, no sauce, and olives and tomatoes. Husband and I did cheddar cheese and sauce. I got tomatoes, he did olives. We completely forgot about the scallions that I had in the fridge for this meal. We'll do that next time. Sunshine was the only critic. Next time, we'll leave out the chicken layer for her. Everyone else loved it. Another night, I Hawaiian Luau chicken. Along with it, I decided to try crock pot mashed potatoes. We ended up with chicken and a last minute thrown together side dish. The potatoes were supposed to take 4 hours on high. I was also supposed to use 5lbs, which I didn't. After 6 hours on high, the potatoes still weren't very soft. Even though we couldn't have them with that meal, I finished cooking them (7 hours on high) and saved them so we could at least try them out. That didn't work though. No one in my family wanted to give them a shot. I was going to fry them up into potato pancakes, but then completely forgot. So, I had to toss them. I'll try this again, making sure I give them longer to cook! Swim nights are difficult to find things to make for dinner. By the time we get home, we can't have anything that takes too long if I actually want to get the kids in bed at a decent time. Last several rounds of swim lessons, I gave up and just had junk for dinner, and by junk, I mean processed popcorn chicken and fish sticks. I'm making a real effort this time around to get back into crock pot meals for swim nights. Since we love Mexican food in this house, I decided to try Mexican chicken in the crock pot. The directions were to put the chicken and enchilada sauce in the crock pot and cook on low for 4-6 hours then top with cheese and cook on low another half hour. That's not how this turned out. It was so runny that if I tried to melt cheese on it, it would just sit in liquid. The flavor was good. However, if I had to do this again, I wouldn't bother with the crock pot and just bake the chicken using this recipe. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try a wrap with Laughing Cow and cucumber. The actual "recipe" calls for turkey, but I can do without lunch meat. I'm not the biggest fan. This was awesome. Seriously great. I used the herbed Laughing Cow, which gave it a nice flavor. Since then, I've also used regular Laughing Cow, which is still good, but the herbed is better. Even though my family rarely ever eats red meat, I decided to try beef roast in the crock pot. I was the only one who liked this because I am the only one who loves salt. And even for me, it was a bit on the salty side. Husband watches his salt intake, so I rarely ever use salt in anything. When the kids bit into this, they were spitting it out telling me it was way too salty. Husband agreed with them. Aside from the saltiness, the flavor was good. Not sure how to tweak this to make it less salty, so I'll probably have to delete this one, too. Last night was supposed to be Pizza/Movie night, but Monster has handwriting tutoring now on Sundays, so there's less time to make the pizzas. I had pinned a recipe for pepperoni pizza quesadillas, so I figured that would be a quick fix to the pizza issue. Since I was with Monster, Husband was left to make these. When I got home, he told me we should never make these again. The recipe calls for a cast iron skillet, which we don't have. I didn't think it would make the much of a difference, but, apparently, it does. The food itself turned out to be a big hit. They tasted great. They were just more of a hassle to make than actual pizza, at least for Husband (and I'm not allowed to fry things since I may burn down the house). I've got two new recipes on deck for this week and hopefully some sweet treats also. Happy Eating! In my continual journey to try to organize my life, I came across an idea on Pinterest that sparked my idea for corkboard in my cupboards. Well, the Pinterest idea and a friend of mine. My friend has pictures hung up in her cabinets of friends and family. I have always thought this is an awesome concept, but never got around to doing anything like it. After seeing something similar on Pinterest, I remembered I had two cork pieces left from a project we did years ago. One afternoon, I finally got around to hanging them. They will eventually have more stuff, I'm sure. For right now though, only important info. All the emergency contact information is in snack cabinet for Monster or a babysitter. Medicine information is in the cabinet that contains the medicines (and, as a side note, did you know you shouldn't store medications in the bathroom because of the humidity from the shower? I just read that). My plan is to get at least two more squares for the pantry door as well. Also in my search for organization, I'm always looking for something to make my van not a disaster zone. I don't even really keep much in the van anymore. I'm old school when it comes to kids in the car. I believe they should be able to drive to Target without watching a DVD. However, I remember when I was younger, I used to take coloring books and books to read. Those are things my kids have in the car. For Christmas, Nana got each of the kids this awesome Color Wonder travel set. LOVE it! It is completely perfect for the travel. Since my kids are readers, they also enjoy books in the van. I have tried a basket in the middle, I have a tried a basket for each of them. Those kept the van neat, but the biggest problems were the kids having to step over the baskets getting in and out and Sunshine not being able to reach anything. I have seen some awesome Pinterest ideas, but most involved sewing, which I just don't do, and the other involved baskets, which I just explained, don't work. While making the paper holders for the kids, I came up with this idea. I really wasn't sure it would work, but using all recycled materials, it really didn't matter. This is attempt two at making yogurt drops for the kids. First attempt went smoothly until taking them to the downstairs freeze. The wind blew the door shut on me and the tray of drops fell on the floor. Attempt two was a success! The kids loved them, and frankly, so did I! This week's failed recipe? Crockpot Italian Chicken. Honestly, I didn't think it was all that bad. Not great, but not bad. Husband and the kids, however, didn't like it at all. Sunshine chose to go to bed instead of eating it. One more food pin I can delete.
I have been working on several other projects this week, also. They are in the process of being finished, so stay tuned! I have really been slacking on this whole thing of one new dish a week thing. However, I have done a couple this week. So, here they are, along with my family's opinions.
First up, berry cobbler with cake mix and Sprite. Look at how simple this recipe it. And it was. Problem? It was so disgustingly sweet that you couldn't take more than two bites. Even the kids wouldn't eat it it was so sweet. Next up, Tandori Chicken Burgers with Cucumber Sauce. Personally, I didn't find this horrible. I probably would use turkey and not chicken if I had to do it over. Husband actually made me order pizza just looking at these. Southwestern steak and cornbread dressing didn't do too badly. Husband and I didn't hate it, but the kids down right refused to eat. After getting over the look of it, both decided it wasn't gag worthy. Monster picked out every last tomato and Sunshine only ate the meat, which is actually a win because she doesn't eat much meat. I had planned on another new past meal, but after reading it, decided my kids wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, and neither would Husband. The rest of this week and weekend is full of eating out with visiting family, so I get to start the process of new recipes again Monday. I am determined that my kids will eat new foods, even if they don't like them. Getting Husband to do this may be a bit more tricky. I found a recipe on Pinterest and really wanted to try it. It was for Lemon Brownies. I love lemon and thought these would be a great change from lemon bars. I decided to try out the recipe on the Bunco crowd. Not so good. Not very lemony. A couple of people asked me if there was almond in it, which there's not. There's a strange aftertaste. It's definitely different. It's not so horrible I would never eat it, but it's not so good that I will ever make it again.
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