Sweet Chili Cream Cheese Dip

I went to a get together last year and this was served along with other amazing finger foods.

BUT...

This one was my favorite! When she went out of town, I had my friend who hosted the party buy me two bottles of the sweet chili sauce because nobody in town sold it. This was a serious matter, I needed the stuff. They have been sitting on my shelf, gathering dust, waiting for the right moment to be popped open.

Tonight was the night. And oh what a glorious night it was.

I take such pretty pictures.

Crockpot Parmesan Ranch Mushrooms

May 17th was my last post. WOW. Talk about falling off the wagon. My cookie business has (thankfully) been keeping me busy but I still have been trying new recipes.

This one is a few months old but let me tell you, it was a HIT! Normally at our family gatherings, my mother in law will put mushrooms in boiling water with butter and some garlic salt. They are delicious every time. Yet, I wanted to try this new recipe since I love ranch AND parmesan.

The original picture was sooooooooooo "try me"...

Good gracious, who wouldn't want to try that? I did and it is going into my "Tried it, KEEPER" board. Great twist on a dinner classic!!

http://www.food.com/recipe/crockpot-parmesan-ranch-mushrooms-500090

A New Venture

Noticed I haven't been posting lately? Two reasons:

#1- It's towards the end of school so life is crazy!!

#2- I started a cookie business! Totally random.

It's a long story but basically, I am now selling cookies. Here are some samples of batches I've done.

I have a facebook page you can go to HERE and I'm slowly working on a blog you can check out HERE.

Since summer is soon upon me, I will still be trying out new recipes and posting since I will have much more free time. Until then, go like my facebook page!!!

Apple Nachos

I think I pinned this one before baby was born, which was 2 1/2 years ago! Just now getting to it. Kind of.

I went my own direction with this but got the general idea from this pin...

This calls for peanut butter. That is the yumminess you see drizzled on there. Well, I had just made apple cider caramel sauce that I found in a Southern Living Magazine. I didn't know what I was going to use it for but I made it anyway. It looked tasty!!

After stewing on it a bit, I realized that I could make apple nachos since I thought I had everything in the picture. I had the apples, coconut flakes, chocolate chips, pecans (chopped) and instead of peanut butter, I drizzled my caramel sauce over them. I had a blast putting this together! I was expecting fireworks in my mouth!! Take a look at the final product...

They LOOK good, right?! Meh. Instead of fireworks, I had a big fat "pffffff". Totally lame. Two bites and they went in the trash. I am sure the original recipe is 10x better than this pile of junk.

http://www.allysonkramer.com/2011/10/apple-nachos/

White Chocolate Cinnamon Pretzels

I was in a making mood today.

So far, I have made...

1. Apple cider caramel sauce
2. Apple nachos
3. Trix treats
4. These yummy things!!

Don't these look tasty?

As I think I've mentioned before, cinnamon is my favorite thing in the world. This calls for sugar, cinnamon and best of all, CINNAMON SUGAR!! It took probably a total of 10 minutes to make with no baking. The thing that took the longest was melting the white chocolate on the stove. Other than that, this was ridiculously easy.

I made these about an hour ago and they're almost half gone. SOOOO good!!!

Look at that deliciousness

http://www.yourcupofcake.com/2011/02/white-chocolate-cinnamon-pretzels.html

Potato Topped Mini Meatloaf

I follow a Pinterest board from Kraft and have recently pinned a lot of recipes from them. I tried this one out a couple of weeks ago.

I was hesitant to try it out only because I know Husband's fondness for real mashed potatoes over instant mashed potatoes but I told myself that if he didn't know they were instant, maybe he wouldn't notice.

My first problem that I encountered was finding the stuffing mix. I searched the whole store twice then finally caved and asked someone (I have a slight phobia of talking to strangers). She pointed me to the bottom corner of an aisle and there were about 40,000 choices for stuffing. The recipe just says "stove top stuffing mix" and there was not ONE box that said simply that. It was either herbed up, for pork, for chicken, with this flavor and that flavor so I just got the stuffing mix for cornbread.

Unfortunately, Husband noticed the empty bags of instant potatoes and made a comment. I had a two word reply for him.

I tried to get the final product to look as close to the original as possible. The meatloaf held up pretty well considering I have no clue if I got the correct stuffing mix or not.

Mine could almost pass for the original!! When we all sat down and ate, I asked Husband how he liked it. The first comment out of his mouth was "I wish they were real potatoes". After my backlash, he had nothing but nice things to say so this recipe is a keeper and the next time I make it, I will still be using instant mashed potatoes :)

http://thepinningpirate.blogspot.com/2014/03/potato-topped-mini-meatloaf.html

Vegan Banana Ice Cream

Vegan or not, this looks GOOD!!

Let me start by saying that this is attempt #2. Ummmmm, attempt #2 because although I am quite book smart, I have a common sense deficit.

The recipe calls for 5 ripe (yellow with brown spots) bananas and those are totally ew so I used 5 semi green bananas. I read over the recipe extremely quick (b/c that's how I get to do things with a needy toddler; extremely quick) and I remember it said to freeze the bananas. So I did. I plopped them in the freezer. I proudly announced to everyone that I was going to be making banana ice cream later!!

That night, I got the frozen bananas out and pulled up the directions. I learned I was supposed to peel and cut the bananas before putting them in the freezer. So I had fully frozen, fully unpeeled, fully uncut bananas sitting on the counter. My husband laughed at me and said "Really?"

A week later, I had new bananas. They got peeled, cut, and placed in the freezer last night. I pulled them out this morning, ready to make some yummy ice cream. The recipe said to put the bananas in, the vanilla in, then to start with 1 c. of the vanilla milk. Everything finally got blended together after about 10 minutes of shoving a fork into the blender to move stuff around.

The final product?

Slush. WHERE IS THE ICE CREAM PART OF THIS, YO?!

Back into the freezer it went. After about 2 hours, I scraped the top with my fingernail and it was nice and hard, ready to be scooped into beautiful, solid balls of ice cream.

I got the scoop.....


dug in.....


scraped for about 1 second......


then......


The top collapsed in on the gooey center and smoothie remnants shot out of the bowl at super banana speed!! A few choice words spewed out as well  BUT I was able to form balls with the hard ice cream I had.

Too bad it kinda tasted like crap.

http://berryripe.com/recipes/vegan-banana-ice-cream-recipe/

One Pot Mexican Skillet Pasta

How good was this?

Well...

'Nuff said.

http://flavorofjoy.com/one-pot-mexican-skillet-pasta/

Brown Sugar Chicken Wings with Roasted Red Pepper

Although I have my favorite wing recipe, which I wrote about here, I'm always down to see if there is a recipe out there that can trump it. I believe this is my second attempt at something new. The original picture looks extremely tasty... (you will notice I am now too lazy to do my pictures side by side)

The sauce is what really perked my eyes up because it looks yummy and it is made from red peppers, which I love. LOVE. I also wanted to try this because unlike the wings I always make, these can just be put in the oven and you're done with it. With mine, after they bake, I put them in a skillet with extra seasoning stuff and top them off. But that's totally worth it because they're delicious.

Anyway, on to the results.

Once I got all the seasoning in the bowl, it was time to throw the wings in to coat them. I started out with trying to mix it all with a spoon but I gave up and just got down and dirty with my hands. For some reason, it was exhilarating tossing around raw chicken in a bowl of goodness!! It looked and smelled heavenly. Yet I found myself in a predicament when baby was adamant that I hold him so he started tugging on me and about pulled my pants down which would have rendered me helpless since my hands were filthy.

I stuck them in the oven and on to the sauce I went. This was extremely easy to make. I cut up the peppers, put them in a skillet to brown them up then put everything in the food processor and mixed it up. It didn't have NEAR as much flavor as I would have thought. It was actually kind of boring.

Wings were done, sauce was done, aaaaaaaaaaaaaand??

There was nothing fantastic about it. They were just ok. We agreed that they are not worth making again and I will just stick to my other wings. But of course, if you haven't had amazing wings (like mine), then these might be good to you but since I've had better, these didn't make the cut *insert scissor gesture here*

http://damndelicious.net/2012/05/29/baked-brown-sugar-chicken-wings-with-roasted-red-pepper/

Apple, Granola and Peanut Butter Sandwich

Behold my next new thing...

I was hoping for a healthy snack but after seeing how many calories total this guy is, maybe not so much.

But it is really, REALLY good and plus I found a new granola product that is amazing!! This was the only semi plain granola selection at the store. The rest were flavored some way or another and apparently this is actually a cereal but it's really good just by itself.

I cut a granny smith apple into about 1/4" slices and slathered (yes, slathered- no skimping on pb for me) about 1 tablespoon on each side then slammed some granola down. Duh-LISH.

Straight up yum.

You know, only 522 for two of these. No big deal.

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/123004633546663037/

Chevron Cake Roll

Dear lord. Where to begin with this one?

I guess I could start with the fact that I amazed myself by thinking that I could actually pull this one off. I have been very confident with my cooking lately. Although I have been counting calories and reducing sweets dramatically, I really needed to try something new.

I'm glad I had a measurement converter on my ipad because this recipe uses grams. I translated the amount as best as possible but that didn't matter because I had to blow up the proportions to get even remotely close to what things were supposed to look like.

I'll start with the egg whites and fine sugar. First, I am totally assuming that "fine sugar" is powdered sugar because I didn't see "fine sugar" at the store. Now, I translated 70 grams into a little less than 1/3 of a cup. While whipping the egg whites and sugar, I was supposed to have "firm peaks". So I guess I was supposed to have the Rocky Mountains and I ended up with a Louisiana bayou.

Nothing firm about that.

I proceeded to the egg yolk mixture and quite frankly, got confused with having to "fold" the yolk mixture UNDER the egg white mixture. ?????? I just dumped it in.

Next I had to add the flour and gently fold it in. Once again, there was absolutely nothing to fold. The recipe called for 70 grams of flour (1/3 c.). I was supposed to have DOUGH. I did not have dough. I dumped in another 1/3 c. and still didn't have dough. Another 1/3 c. later and I kind of have dough! HOLLA!

I followed the next few steps and colored some of the dough, buttered the wax paper down, and started the chevron pattern. In the beginning, it said to print out a pattern to put under the wax paper. As a design major, I got conceded and didn't think I needed a picture underneath to do a chevron pattern. Hellooooooooooo, it's SQUIGGLES for goodness sake! My chevron was horrible. The further down I got, the further away from looking like the first line it got. I learned a lesson here.

But I continued on as I always do! After cooking the chevron for 2 minutes and letting it cool, I poured the remainder of the dough on top and cooked it. It didn't turn out too bad!

The next part involved very confusing directions with more wax paper, cutting boards, sugar, I had to read it over and over to get it. My next step was to roll it while it was still warm but I think I took too long messing with the cutting board flipping, sugar and wax paper because my rolling didn't go so great. I'm pretty sure the directions should have said to roll IMMEDIATELY for fear of imminent roll destruction. You will see what I mean here in a little bit.

On to the mixture I was going to be putting inside...

In the original picture, it looks like whip cream!! Even though the recipe said "heavy whipping cream", I still had whip cream in my head. At the grocery store, I knew I had to get heavy whipping cream, so what did I do? Go to the whip cream section and try to find a container that says HEAVY. I didn't find one so I just got regular whip cream and hoped it would work. It was only when I got home that I realized I was an idiot.

I had to find out how to make homemade whipping cream. What I found called for 3/4 cup of milk and 1/3 cup of butter and so that's what I did. It was ugly yellow though and the original picture showed such pretty white!! I heated my nasty whipping cream, added the white chocolate and was supposed to whip it until it had the consistency of cream cheese. In order to semi get there, I had to add twice the chocolate that was called for. Oh the calories that were coming.

When I poured it on the roll, I was so disappointed that it looked nothing like the picture and in fact resembled something rather unpleasant. Snot. I'll go with snot on this one.

I plopped the strawberries on.

Rolled it up.

Took a picture :/

It kind of looks like an extremely happy crepe.

This is what it was SUPPOSED to look like...

Weeeeeeell, how did I do?

http://andcute.com/how-to-make-a-chevron-zig-zag-cake-roll/

Avocado with Cottage Cheese

So I've been doing the whole "eating healthy" thing this year. I got the "my fitness pal" app and have been tracking my calories. I have worked out twice in one month but mostly staying under my calories that I'm given. As of yesterday, I've lost 5.4 lbs just from eating better. If I worked out more, I'm sure it would be much more than that. My husband and mother in law have been doing both and Husband has lost 17 lbs (so he's a muscle stick right now!) and my mother in law has lost 12.

With this app has come my desire to try newer, healthier foods. I saw this one on Pinterest and thought I would give it a shot. I hadn't had cottage cheese in probably 20 years but I was told to take a bite. So I took a bite, and it wasn't bad.

Alas, I tried the cottage cheese and avocado combo with a bit of salt and pepper. Here is what it looked like on Pinterest...

And here is what mine looked like...

It was VERY good! But be warned, it was extremely flavorful, a bit too flavorful so I couldn't finish it. I would recommend half an avocado with cottage cheese at a time. It's hard to explain unless you've tried it.

So I suggest you try it, just not all at once.

Brown Sugar Barbecue Chicken

I get to claim this recipe as my own! For once, I didn't copy something I found on Pinterest.

I came up with this recipe all by my little self and I'm really proud because it's delicious. I had two others concur that frankly, this was the bomb.

I will elaborate more at a later date, but I am eating better. We all are. I was home with a sick little boy and knew I had plenty of time to think about a semi healthy dinner. I saw there were huge chicken parts in the freezer so I got the bag out to grab a few.

First, before I even started, on the front of the bag there were big letters that said "YOUNG CHICKEN". How sad!!! I'M EATING BABIES!! Anyway...

I've learned through my Pinterest trials that there are some good marinades out there. Since I had about 7 hours until dinner, I wanted to find something good so the chicken would be nice and juiced up.

The previous night, we had cooked some sausage links and Husband had bought some KC original barbecue sauce that was on sale. It was actually really good. There was plenty left so I thought I would just use it up.

But it didn't stop there. I thought "Hmmmmmm, how about some brown sugar?!" *good choice*

Let me break it down for you:

1- I added the remaining 3/4 bottle of barbecue sauce into a gallon bag.
2- I added 3/4 c. brown sugar. I closed the bag and shook my booty until it was well mixed.
3- I put the thawed chicken (3 leg looking parts) in, got all the air out of the bag and let it sit.
4- I turned the bag over every hour so each side got the same amount of goodness to soak in.
5- I marinated for about 5 hours.

I got a pan that had holes in it (like a pizza pan), sprayed it and set the oven at 350. I've learned that if you just use a cookie sheet, the chicken sits in that juice and the bottom doesn't get crispy. I put the cookie sheet on the shelf below the chicken to catch all the juice.

I let it cook for about an hour. I just decided the top looked nice and it turned out to be the right amount of time. Ready for the final product? Feast your eyes on THIS...

Oh yeah. It was gooooooooood!! I suggest you give it a try, it will be worth it :)

Cheesy Zucchini

Do you ever have a recipe that is really good but kind of takes a long time and you wish you could just have a time traveling version of it? As in, it can travel 30 minutes into the future and be done?

I think about it every time I cook. Since I've been binge watching Fringe, I think about stupid sci-fi stuff all the time now. What does the me in the other universe look like? Is she as awesome as me? Does she screw up her recipes as much as me? You only know what I'm talking about if you like Fringe. I swear I'm not weird.

This is a time traveling recipe. Take broccoli cheddar casserole. Does it take forever? I've never made it so I don't know :) If it does, then this stuff is your go to. It tastes exactly like the real casserole. And it only took about 10 minutes. The best part is that my Saladmaster slicer chopped up the zucchini in 20 seconds. It also chopped part of my finger and blood got everywhere but it's ok, I totally rinsed it off.

I overdosed on the cheese because I didn't want what was left to go to waste. Bad call on my part.

Still good! I recommend it as an easy side dish.
http://www.howdoesshe.com/zucchini-coming-out-your-ears/

Chicken Tortilla Stack

The picture for this recipe looks SOOOOOOOOO good!!

Aside from that, the ingredients are so simple and the putting together seemed simple as well. I was worried that with no real flavoring to the chicken, it would be just another bland dish. I don't think I've ever mixed these three cheeses either. Sharp, pepper jack and mozzarella.

Lucky for y'all, I only screwed up one cheese and it still tasted delicious!! I used monterrey jack. White cheese is white cheese, right?

Everyone loved this and it was sooo easy to make and totally yummy to my tummy. I recommend this for one of those nights where you don't have a lot or time or energy. 8 out of 10.

You know you like that ghetto slice of avocado on top.

http://damndelicious.net/2013/05/05/chicken-tortilla-stack-and-a-giveaway/

Creamy Crockpot Hot Chocolate

I decided to spice up the hot chocolate selection one night and try this recipe that I had pinned a LONG time ago. It was cold and we were all in the mood for a little chocolate bubbly. I happened to have all the ingredients so I gave it a shot.

The part that sounded the yummiest was the whip cream!!

So on I went...ingredient 1...ingredient 2...ingredient 3...and so on...

Let's see the final product.

Looks like hot chocolate huh? Well well well, hot chocolate can be sneaky because this melted poo tasted just like that...

POO!! As in, EW. It was extremely bitter and INSANELY ew. Such a waste of incredible ingredients. So save your chocolate for something you know is good because this isn't it.

http://www.mrshappyhomemaker.com/2010/12/creamy-crockpot-hot-cocoa-best-ever/

Yikes!

It's been a month. My bad! Life has really taken over. The weeks leading up to Christmas break are hectic when you're a teacher AND a mom. So I am finally getting some down time. I have some new recipes to show you so I promise I will have something new this weekend!

Toodles :)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread

This is the recipe I was talking about that didn't turn out so great.

I've got my famous pumpkin chocolate chip cookies so I thought I would try it out in loaf form.

There was only one problem. Since we just moved, I couldn't find my loaf pans so I decided to use a bundt pan, add a little flare. My sister in law lives one block over and all of us were going over there for some fun and games. Husband said "Bring whatever you're baking over there."

So in my brain, that translated to "Bake it then bring it over." but everyone was already over at sister in law's house so I called and asked if I could leave it in the oven for an hour and come over because I didn't want to just sit there for an hour while everyone else was having fun.

The answer was no and I was promptly told that Husband meant to bring my pan and put it in SISTER IN LAW'S oven. DUH!!!!! So even though the "bread" was already in the oven and hot, I took it out, sat it on my lap and took it over to put it in her oven.

After I put it in her oven I totally forgot about it. After a while, sister in law said "Is your cake done?". Oops.

It was beyond disgusting. Burnt, yet gooey on the inside and lacking flavor like crazy. Ew.

http://www.feveravenue.com/whet-your-appetite-wednesdays-fall-is-in-the-air/

Snickerdoodle Cake with Brown Sugar Cinnamon Buttercream

This recipe is not the disaster I mentioned in my previous post. This is something entirely in its own category.

My sister in law explained this cake the best...

"It's like snickerdoodle on crack."

Yep. It sure is. 9 cups of powdered sugar. 6 sticks of butter. Can you say TOTALLY UNHEALTHY?! But as we all know, if something is unhealthy, it's good.

And this is good. Beyond good. It's so good I couldn't finish my piece. I have never in my 30 years not been able to finish something sweet. I met my match y'all. This is so incredibly good but holy crap it is sweet.

Snickerdoodle. On. Crack.

There was no pretty angle. Just saying.

Good gracious.

For real, eat at your own risk.

http://www.foodiewithfamily.com/2011/08/26/snickerdoodle-cake-with-brown-sugar-cinnamon-buttercream/

I know...

I know. I KNOW!!! You're like "where are you?!"

Well, we one day decided to sell our house and we worked hard on getting it ready for a week or so, sold it in less than 24 hours and moved somewhere else so I've been kinda busy. One month is too long to not post my fun.

I've tried one recipe since the move and it was disastrous so I will post that as soon as I get a chance!! Please stay tuned and don't "dessert" me!