Cooking Club

A while back I got one of those random mailings requesting me to join a club. A cooking club. Normally, I would have taken a looksy through the stuff and then sent it on its merry way into the trash can...but this time I didn't. That's right, I got sucked into the hype. But I kind of like it!

For $1 a month I get a magazine, access to their website and the option to test out products for them. (Which of course, is the main reason I signed up. Free stuff!)

And I have been chosen to test a product...

..the Rouxbe online cooking school. Yeah. That was kind of a let-down for my first test product ever.

I get a free 14 day trial, where I have access to everything the school has to offer, and at the end of the 14 days I fill out a survey or something giving feedback on my experience. I really have to say - this online cooking school thing has not turned out to be too bad. I'm on Day 2 and I have learned how to make a roux-based soup (should I ever wish to) and how to properly scramble and boil eggs. (Let me just say - I will NEVER cook scrambled eggs the way they want you to. Yuck! Way not done enough.) But the soup thing looked pretty tasty.

Hopefully, next time I get chosen to test a product, it will be something really super cool. Like a skillet. Or a pepper grinder. Or something!

I feel so much better!

My clothesline is full of clean clothes, my entire house is clean, and my husband is gone to the store to get ice cream so we can sit and be lazy and watch a movie tonight. Does it get much better?

The clothesline bit was quite a struggle today. We had hung the lines with a tensioner to hold the line tight on all three - only to find out when I hung sheets out that the tensioners we bought were not going to work. At. All. They stripped the plastic coating off the clothesline wires. After about an hour of fighting with the stupid things, we ended up using a mixture of the wire we had bought and the cloth line we had bought for temporary use right after we got married. It seems to be working now, thank goodness! I love line-dried clothes. My house smells wonderfully fresh now.

In future events, I'm going to be having my first rummage sale. Well, I guess it's not just my rummage sale - I'm participating in the annual city-wide sale. Which is good, because then it won't be such a big deal that I don't have a TON of stuff to sell. A lot of books, and a few odds and ends and that's about it. Good thing my mom, grandma, and mother-in-law are going to donate some items to my sale! It won't look so bare then. I'm rather excited about the whole thing. I bought 3 packs of 315 pricing stickers. (I wanted to be sure not to run out...)

Yoshi is enjoying the warm weather...and the fact that that means we can take him on nice long walks through town. He LOVES walking and sniffing everything in sight. The other dogs that bark at him have no effect on his confidence, whether they are the same size as he is or not. He just wants to play with everyone. (He thinks he is a chihuahua-sized pup, I think.)

That's about it! I managed to save a couple bananas that have gone over a little, so I think I'll go mix up some banana bread really quick.

Catching Up...Again

I'm not very consistent anymore...sorry about that. Seems like the same old stuff going on around here all the time, so I guess I'll have to work to get a little more interesting!

*Yoshi, the once very sick dog, is now very NOT sick. Which is good. If you don't mind getting mud on your clothes every single time you get around him. (We're still working on the whole jumping/staying down thing - he IS getting better!) He's still being given quite a cocktail of 3 different medicines, one of them twice a day. The free dog is now a very expensive dog. Good thing we love him so much.

*We are starting to wonder when we should start getting our garden ready. We're not very good at this sort of thing yet, seeing as how it's only our second go-around. All I know is I want some sugar snap peas! (But I don't know how to grow them yet!)

*My sister-in-law just had her gall bladder out on Tuesday, which if you know her (and I'm sure many of you reading this do)was a slight bit worrisome because of all the POSSIBLE things that could go wrong. Everything went super smooth though, and she is on the road to feeling much better. (Those pain pills she's on don't hurt anything either...she's just a bit looped!)

*This weekend I will be going (with all the family) to see my sister compete in her first (and last, because she's a senior) flags competition. I'm excited to see it, and I'm sure they will do excellently.

*We've been getting rather creative in the kitchen - a product, I'm sure, of being a little more confident. Which leads to more disasters or misses (as in, not very tasty) than we've had before. (I made cream cheese corn as a side the other night, and about died from too much cream cheese and not enough corn. Yuck. I think I may stick to the crock-pot and large gatherings for that one.) Tonight we made pizza with pork sausage and red onion. And lots of cheese. It was pretty good, but I think I prefer other meats.

*A coworker is due to go on maternity leave any day (and I do mean ANY day), so that should liven up what has been a very slooowww time. I will have plenty of work to do to help keep up with her stuff, that is for sure!

*A's birthday (26!) is this weekend. I'm having a terrible time getting any presents for him. Everything is not coming on time (internet order) and I can't find anything in the stores to be a smaller present so he at least has something to open! Ugh. Stupid Walmart and there cutting back on CD stocking. Bummer. (Plus, they didn't have any brown dress socks. I need some in the worst way.)

There. That should give you something to ponder for a bit.

Experimentation - It's what we do around here.

So. Last time we actually had enough money to do my regular (or I guess, semi-regular) shopping trip, we had decided we need to eat more fish. It's good for you, supposedly. So we bought a salmon. Or rather, half a salmon. It was frozen, and it has waited patiently to be cooked. Until tonight.

We had discovered in a magazine (Family Circle? I can't be sure.) a recipe for Barbeque-Glazed Salmon. I was skeptical. A thought it sounded delish. Super delish, in fact. So we resolved to try it (Oh, how I love my husband - to eat barbequed fish? I must love him. I don't even generally like any fish. At all.).

Tonight, the salmon was finally thawed. The recipe came out of the piles waiting to be tried. And we cooked salmon.

And actually, it was not too terrible. Pretty ok, actually. It had a lot of spices and was pretty warm (spicy-wise) for me, so the fish taste was drowned out pretty well. A, of course, loved it.

So I suppose we will be making Barbeque-Glazed Salmon again.

Maybe next year?

Cheesecake!

I made one tonight. It happens to be "Pumpkin Spice". It also happens that I found out tonight that it is very difficult to make a smoooooth cheesecake with off-brand cream cheese.

Should still taste pretty good anyway. I hope.

Well here we go...

...it's family reunion day! My salad is in the works (even though I think I boiled the eggs a little too long...I kind of forgot about them. Whoops.) and I'm cleaning house like crazy this morning so it will be done and I can not worry about it when we get home.

Now if only I had a bowl big enough for my salad.....

Looks like I'm heading over to Mom's house to borrow hers!

Have a good weekend everyone!

Pampered Chef party! And other short stories.

Tomorrow is my big-time Pampered Chef party! Yikes! (It’s actually rather small-time, as I am too nervous to invite many people that I am not related to…anywho.) I have bought all my ingredients and can I just say that chocolate graham crackers do not exist?

They don’t. I don’t care what you tell me about them, they don’t. At least not at Walmart. Which is all I had time to hit up. (I didn’t even have time to get my rings cleaned because the traffic was so bad, and let me tell ya, they NEED cleaned.)

Tonight will be dedicated to the cleaning frenzy. Ahem. I get really nervous when I have people coming over and go into cleaning overdrive. I’m pretty sure A does not appreciate it, but he takes it all with good grace and no complaining. (Pretty good husband, if I do say so myself!)

Yesterday we had a couple of friends over and we made homemade salsa. Two big vats of the stuff (and by vats I mean bowls). I think I will be serving some salsa at my PC party because even after sending an entire bowl home with the friends, A and I still will not be able to consume that much salsa before it goes bad. (I should perhaps mention that the salsa is “fresh” salsa and is a mixture of bell peppers, jalapenos (yeah, fingers still burning over here) tomatoes, olives, shredded cheese and Italian dressing. It is delightful. But it doesn’t get cooked and canned and only lasts in the fridge about a week.)

Yoshi poked a hole in one of our watering cans. With his tooth. And we had to buy another watering can. Good thing they’re cheap. (Watering cans, not Yoshi’s teeth. Just in case there was any confusion about that. No? Good.)

And now I must go back to worrying about details for my party tomorrow night. Wish me luck!

Invention from all forums

The sun is shining! I can’t believe it. Hopefully we will be able to mow some grass tonight. And maybe Yoshi’s pond will recede a bit so I can actually feed him in the morning without being splashed foot to waist in mud. Good thing he’s not taller.

We are now in the process of trying to figure out how to work the crazy plumbing through the new cabinets when they come. It was not done correctly at all the first time around, and the floor is concrete so there’s no moving it now without way more work and hassle than we are currently prepared to deal with. I’m sure we’ll come up with something. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.

Last night, we had another cooking invention that turned out acceptably, if a little strange. I came up with it on the spur of the moment so I’m actually surprised it turned out as well as it did. Here it is, so if you think you’re brave enough, you might try it:

Cook some bow tie (or any kind, bow tie is what I had in my spaghetti container thingy) pasta and mix it with the sauce. The sauce stuff is a mixture of thawed ready-to-eat frozen shrimp, a jar of Ragu Alfredo sauce, some dried basil and lemon pepper salt and the juice from one lemon. We heated that up a little, added the pasta and heated it all until it was hot. It was pretty tasty, but a little strange. Probably would make it again with a few minor adjustments.

Now if only I could come up with a cookie recipe to take to the birthday party this weekend…

Good thing I had 4 pounds.

Last night when I was chopping up the 4 pounds of strawberries I got for $4 (yeah, that’s a pretty good deal, huh?) I found a huge beautiful red strawberry.

I chopped it into about 6 perfect bite-size pieces.

And promptly threw them in the trash.

Instead of the green leafy strawberry top I MEANT to throw in there.

Good thing there were 4 pounds of strawberries so I wouldn’t miss the one.

Wonton Sausage Cups

What you'll need:

1 pound seasoned pork sausage (but probably any kind of sausage would work)
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/2 cup ranch dressing
wonton wrappers

Note: the recipe said to make this in mini muffin cups, but I don't have a mini muffin pan, so we doubled up our wontons to make them bigger and used regular muffin tins. We made about 2 dozen of these (leftovers!)

Spray your muffin tins with nonstick cooking spray and bake your wontons for 5 minutes in a preheated 350 degree oven. Allow to cool (we skipped that step 'cause we were hungry!)Brown crumbled sausage in a skillet and drain any excess fat. In a large bowl, mix your sausage with both cheeses and the ranch dressing. Spoon into wonton cups and bake for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Enjoy!

We loved these and thought they would be very good for party snacks or something like that.

Wonderful Weekend Review

Wasn’t this weekend fabulous? I think it was anyway.

Saturday, A and I went to his grandparents’ house to help them spread a load of gravel on their driveway. I helped weed the flower bed…there was a worm. It grossed me out. But I got sent home with two big bunches of hostas (I’m not really sure how to spell that, but they are pretty leafy flower things), and we got those planted at my house that evening. Whew! Hard work!

Yesterday, went to church, then ate some scrumptious leftovers of Wonton Sausage Cups we made Friday night. Delicious! I’ll post the recipe.

After sausage cups came Yoshi’s first bath! He was very good, and only shook twice. Now he looks twice as big as he did before because his fur is so darn fluffy! If I had a camera hookup here I would post a picture, but alas, you will have to wait. We did a superfast housecleaning after that, because A’s parents were coming around 2. His dad helped A put some sheet metal around our falling apart shed, so it will be more sturdy and weather-proof. His mom helped me weed beggar lice plants from under my grapevines (I know, super cool, right? I can’t wait to get grapes! We found out we have a fruit tree, too and its blooming! It smells fantastic and is so pretty! I think its an apple tree, but I really have no idea. Anyway.) and his sister played with Yoshi.

I made tacos for supper and they were delicious, too. (Good food weekend for sure.) Gardening does a really good job of making you hungry apparently. It worked for me anyway.

After his family left, A got set to weedeating, and I watered my hostas and new lilac bush (Yay!) and washed dishes and did laundry. We were both really tired. A’s hand was numb, too from weedeating, so next time he’ll have to split it up a little more I think. It still wasn’t 100% this morning, but it was better, so that’s good. We were both so tired last night we went to bed a half hour early or so, and I slept like a rock!

Hopefully we will be able to get some more projects done this week, because next weekend we are going shopping at the surplus store for floors! Wahoo!

Recipe alert!! Right after my story...

We have ants again. I guess not again, they never really left, so I guess I should say we have ants in our PANTRY again (we took all the food out, so it's all good). But the bugman has come to assess and will be back tomorrow, so HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY they will be gone soon. Or at least manageable. This is really ridiculous.

We asked the former owners (yep, sure did! No fear here, haha!) if they had any problems with ants. And they said they hadn’t at all, more with spiders. We have only seen ONE spider since we moved in and it was dead. So I have decided I don’t believe them. There is no way the ants are this bad this close to us moving in and they didn’t have any problems. So there!

On a different note, last night we tried out a new recipe. It was very good-I think its definitely a keeper! I do think it needs full size taco shells though…we had to use toothpicks (lots of toothpicks) to hold them together so we could cook them. Its similar to the Taco Bell grilled stuft burrito (my absolute favorite!), but with a smidge of difference in fillings. I’ll let you know the ingredients to my best guess, but we adjusted them ourselves, so I’m sure you could make it however you please:

3 cups cooked chicken
1 ½ cups Monterey Jack cheese
½ tsp. black pepper
1 can black beans, drained
1 can corn, drained
1 16 oz. jar of salsa
1 red onion (we couldn’t find a good red one, so we used white. Tasty anyway!)
3 cups rice
Cilantro (we used dried but it called for fresh)
Tortillas! (get the big ones—trust me on this one)

You mix your corn and onion together in a (BIG) skillet and cook for a little bit before adding beans, salsa and rice. We just left that on the stove on medium while we dealt with the rest of it. Mix the chicken, pepper, and cheese in a bowl. Okay, now you’ve got all your filling.
Fill your tortilla with a bit of the rice/bean mixture and some chicken/cheese mixture and then top the filling with a smidge of cilantro. Fold up your tortilla into a burrito and coat lightly with cooking spray. Then put it into a skillet to cook until the tortilla gets nice and crispy (I would recommend not getting your skillet too hot…our burritos were a little black. But still yummy!), then devour with all sorts of intensity! Yum!

Since we used little shells, we didn’t fill up a ton of burritos. 3 for each of us was MORE than enough…I couldn’t even eat that much. So we have lots and lots of filling left over! Awesome!

(I got that recipe out of a magazine…can’t remember if it was Family Circle or Better Homes and Gardens though, or something else.)

Birthday success and other recipe projects.

The birthday went off this weekend without a hitch! Which really isn’t saying much, because all I really had to do was make a cake. But I went out on a limb and made it a 3 layer cake instead of a sheet cake…which didn’t go too bad. Everyone said it tasted good, but I think next time I will use a different cake mix, and maybe cook it a little less. It seemed kind of dry to me. But maybe I’m overanalyzing it, because everyone else seemed happy with it!

We went through a bunch of recipes, too and made our shopping list. So now we have a nice little stack of new recipes to try, and if it doesn’t taste good or is super hard, it is getting thrown out! I have a ton of cookbooks and recipes and just keep adding more, so we definitely need to pare some of them down. I’m excited to make some different stuff (you know, since we’ve actually planned to buy the right ingredients we’ll be able to branch out a bit).

I think I’m getting the spring cleaning bug. I just want to go around and throw away a bunch of stuff that is not accomplishing anything. But I’m a packrat of the first degree, so not too much will actually be cut…

Donkey ball and birthday cakes

Last night we went to see a donkey basketball game, which for all of you not in the know, is exactly what it sounds like. Basketball played on donkeys. They put rubber shoes on the donkeys and send them into the gym for a game. The players have to be seated on the donkey to make a goal, and cannot go get the basketball without their donkey (though this rule was broken a bit last night).

The donkeys are each specially trained to do some activity that makes them hard to ride, i.e. bucking, ducking, etc. Which usually makes for a hilarious show, because people try so hard to get on the donkey only to be dumped off within a couple of seconds.

But last night, for me, was not as entertaining as it usually is. The players just got on the donkeys to shoot the ball and then got right back off and pulled the donkeys back and forth across the floor instead of riding them. It was quite boring after awhile.

But anyway, others events this week include a trip to the grocery store this evening to buy ingredients to make one of A’s birthday cakes for Saturday. He will be the big 2-5! A whole quarter century! (At least I’ve still got 7 months before I get there, so he’ll be old by himself for a little while. )

ANYway, the point is this cake I will be making. It’s called mandarin orange cake, and is basically a cake mix with oranges added in, pineapple in the icing. It is one of the best kinds of cake I’ve ever eaten, and this is my first attempt making it. I really hope it turns out well, because I really want to eat it!

I also (mildly) sprained my ankle this morning. By stepping on the side of a ledge approximately one inch off the ground. Aye yai yai. But this is coming from the gal who literally fell all the way to the ground in the Arby’s parking lot at one point, because I stepped off a HALF INCH step that I didn’t see. Actually, I think the step was even smaller than a half inch. So at least I didn’t actually fall on the ground this time…

Sunshine makes me productive.

This weekend was very successful for me, but I still didn’t get my seeds planted. Darn it.

I did, however, work up an area about 4 feet by 6 feet to start our garden area, catch up the laundry, haul a bag of incredibly heavy dirt from the shed where it was stored to our porch, vacuum the ants (dead) from our windows, and make meatloaf and mashed potatoes (and I only cut myself twice peeling potatoes! I know, I’m cutlery challenged. Don’t call me to defend anyone from or with a knife. Ain’t happening.)

That was just Saturday afternoon! And my sheets smell wonderful now from hanging them outside in the awesome sunshine. *happy sigh for sunshine*

Yesterday, A and I went to his parents’ house to celebrate his sister’s 26th birthday. A good time was had by all, and she had a very good birthday. (Whoopee cushion + S = a red-faced non-breathing laugh for about 5 straight minutes)

Hopefully we will manage to get the garden worked up more and the seeds planted before the rain comes this week…

Fish frys, Playdoh, and NEW STUFF! Oh my!

Well, boys and girls, this weekend was certainly packed chock full of entertainment.

Saturday was a beautiful sunshiney day, and after the necessary errand running in town to the bank, post office and my parents to get the baked bean pan and visit my cats, A and I headed home again where we just basically puttered and enjoyed the nice weather. That evening we went to A’s parents for a fish fry—I brought baked beans, which I am proud to say turned out very well. Not quite like Mom’s, but good nonetheless. Everyone said so. Just ask ‘em. Well, ok, maybe you could just trust me on this one?

Anyway, after we all had lots of yummy food everyone settled in to play cards. A and I ended up (kind of by default) being the “babysitters” of J and J, the two kids, ages 4 and 1. Lots of fun! And let me just say, if I wasn’t before I am now an expert PlayDoh ball roller. I can make them faster than you can say “bah” in the words of the 1 year old. But oh boy, can you say exhausted when we finally got home around 11:30? Well, I could.

Sunday after church we headed up to the city to buy cereal bowls (we broke one and had a coupon and decided that we needed more anyway because we kept running out), a birthday present for A’s sister and a new computer chair. We ended up getting all that plus a brand spanking new knife set and all the seeds for our garden this year (which we CANNOT wait to start!). This was a little more than we intended to get…but let me explain.

First of all, our knife set was junk. Every single knife in the set was serrated. Every. Single. One. Even the paring knife. Do you have any idea how difficult peeling a potato is with a serrated knife? Well, I do not advise you find out if you don’t know. You might lose a finger. Or something. Anyway.

We decided to use some of our wedding money to buy a better set and we had a coupon to Kohl’s plus the Kitchen Aid and Chicago Cutlery brands were both 20 % off. After much agonizing and hemming and hawing, we finally decided on these:

Which so far seem to be fabulous. (And pretty.)

We also filled out our cereal bowl set in these two colors (we already had six blue ones, one broke, so we replaced it and bought two in the red color):

Our computer chair searching was also successful, as we were able to find one for only $25 at Staples that is light years ahead of our old chair comfort-wise. Which is all I care about for my Sims marathons important computer work. Here’s the one we picked (we got the gray one…which I think totally looks black.)




All in all, a very successful and enjoyable weekend!

I'm back!

I’ve been on hiatus again. Sorry.

My eye has been messed up with some crazy inflammation going on, so it makes me a little cranky and therefore inspires me NOT to blog. And we all don’t benefit…


In better news, my iPod came yesterday and I absolutely love it! The ease of transferring songs from CD to the player is so much better, and it now has 102 songs on it and is in absolutely no danger of becoming full. Not even halfway. Which is way more than my old mp3 player could hold. The sound quality is a lot better, too and the earphones are more comfortable. So, all in all, I think it was a good decision and I will be spending a bit of time in the next few days loading it up with music.

This weekend on Saturday A’s parents are having a fish-fry/get-together with me, A, his grandparents and A’s boss and his family. It should be a good time. I am bringing baked beans and have hijacked my mama’s recipe so they should be fantastic. If I can get them right. We will see.

We didn’t quite get our taxes completed Monday and have to go back Tuesday to finalize them. We had to make some decisions about some things that would have an effect on the return, so we opted to wait and make an informed decision instead of jumping right in.

Tids and tads

This week has been interesting, to say the least.

This weekend was my first butchering experience….it definitely could have been worse, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. That kind of thing is just not my cup of tea. But I’m and expert taper of packages now!

We are getting lots of snow and ice and roads are sl-ick. Not fun.

I have to go the eye doctor Thursday to get a spot checked out. Which would be no big deal except I can’t wear my contacts until then. And nothing throws my day off quite so much as not being able to see like I want to. Hate wearing glasses. *sighs dramatically*

I watched the Bachelor last night for the first time…I pretty much don’t believe any of it, but it is entertaining if nothing else. We were analyzing all sorts of things (that we couldn’t possibly know anything about, since this was the first episode we saw). Tons of fun.

On a more positive note, we had French Toast and scrambled eggs for supper last night, which I LOVE. And we made homemade cinnamon rolls. The rolls are good…the icing not so much. But for a first attempt, they definitely aren’t bad.

Salad!!

Well, I promised pictures, so here you go:


We took this salad to a celebration for A's grandparents' 60th wedding anniversary party. And it was a hit, I think. We at least had people who didn't like salad usually enjoying it! I thought I had a picture ready to go of the side view so you could see the layers, but I was wrong. So you can just use your imagination. Just know it was very pretty. ;)

Jane Austen and Operation Repo in the same place. I cannot believe it.

So apparently I’m no good at keeping promises to blog more regularly.

*smacks forehead*

But…this last weekend was a long weekend so I beg your leave and we will move on!

I finally finished my Jane Austen book (which was about 3 inches think and in tiny print….I loved it!) of the 7 novels she’s most known for: Pride and Prejudice (of course), Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Emma, and Lady Susan. I really enjoyed all of them. Even the ones like Emma, which moved incredibly slowly at times and made me wonder “What’s the darn point of this?!” ended up being quite good. All seemingly unnecessary information became suddenly important and everything made sense. Ahh, I love that. *sigh of relief that I was not kept hanging and everyone, good and bad, got their just desserts*

Lady Susan was actually quite an interesting piece of writing—at least to me. It was just a collection of letters written from characters to other characters, which made it possible to understand what was happening in the characters’ ‘actual’ lives. I was dying the whole time to know what would happen, but really I did not like Lady Susan. She was very manipulative and made everyone around her and herself miserable. But I still really like the book.

Switching subjects. I made a pot of chili on Monday (since I had a day off I thought I should make something kind of ambitious since I would actually have time). It turned out quite well despite the fact that I forgot to set the hamburger out to thaw before I left to have Grandma take in my dress pants (yay!), didn’t get started on the whole thing until 3:30 (I’ve only ever used a crock-pot before to make chili so I had to make it on the stove and make everything up as I went along as to what would work, what wouldn’t, and all that. But anyway.), only remembered about half the recipe to begin with so just guessed on what should be thrown in the pot (I think I forgot the chili seasoning), ran out of one kind of beans so had to mix in another and well, yeah. You get the idea. It was very good! A success if ever I had one! (You know, if we ever have a non-success it will just about kill us—we’ve had such good luck so far we think we’re much better cooks than we probably are!)

I didn’t manage to get a workout video done last night like I intended because, well, A and I got hooked on watching about 6 episodes of….you’ll never guess. Operation Repo. Yeah. I actually asked A why we were watching these people yell and scream and be ridiculous, because it just didn’t make any sense when I thought about it. He said he didn’t know—I could change it if I wanted. But I didn’t…because I wanted to see what happened. Yikes.

Tonight I think we are planning on watching the collection of Pixar short films that will be on ABCFamily. Much nicer to watch for sure.