Enchilada Lasagna

When I showed this picture to Husband and said "I want to make this enchilada lasagna!!!", he curled his nose up like a little kid and basically shot me down because it has the word "lasagna"<----which he hates.

This was about 2 months ago but I secretly kept this recipe in the vault for the future. At this point, I had never looked at the ingredients, I just thought it looked good. I tried a couple more times to get him to try it but he flatly refused each time. So closed minded.

Yet one day, when baby wasn't clinging to my neck and hitting me in the face with the books he wanted me to read, I was able to sit down and actually READ some of the directions of dishes I wanted to try. Lo and behold, this recipe was NOT a lasagna!! It was a completely mexican dish!!

I ran as fast as I could to Husband, pretending like I was Charlie Bucket from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Running as fast as I could with the golden ticket, with people in the hallway telling me "don't stop!! run all the way until you get home!!". Seriously!

I sat him down, explained to him that it was not a lasagna but in fact a tasty mexican treat and he gave in. Total defeat. Me-1, Husband-0.

He would end up thanking me in the end. We both gave this dish an 8. It was GOOOOOOOOOOOD!

Instead of cutting up and cooking chicken, I boiled and shredded it. I prefer my chicken that way instead of chunks. Regardless of how you do your chicken, this dish will give your mouth chickenbumps. Ha, get it?!

Go and get it!
http://www.mogwaisoup.com/2009/08/enchilada-lasagna.html

Mexican Shrimp Cocktail

I went to Papadeux's (I don't EVEN know how to spell that) once and had this shrimp cocktail contraption and fell in love and have tried multiple times since then to reproduce it. I'm sure as you can imagine, each time was a complete failure.

Guess what. This was no exception. I hate the picture on Pinterest for looking so good because it made me spend the money on the ingredients and mine sucked.

Hers looks all thick and juicy whereas mine was runny (I'm assuming I used the same "V8" as her) and tasted like shrimp. And tomatoes. And green onions. And onion. And avocado  Yet for some reason, the flavors didn't mix together and what I'm saying makes absolutely no sense. Yet it's true. Boooooooooring.

It was SO boring that I didn't even take it for lunch the next day. I sat in my classroom and pouted with my peanut butter and crackers.

http://www.buyplaya.com/blogs/rob_kinnon/archive/2010/08/16/lunch-at-la-suegra-de-john-gray-in-puerto-morelos.aspx

1-2 lb shelled and cooked shrimp (50-60 count)
 2 large chopped tomatoes
 ½ small white onion (chopped)  
2 green onions (chopped)
½ cup cilantro slightly chopped
½ jalapeno (diced with seeds)
1 avocado (chopped)
tomato juice (V8)
lime juice
salt and pepper
Mix all in glass bowl and chill; serve with crackers or tortilla chips

Homemade Salsa

I'm on the fence about salsa. I find it to be "ok" but every now and then I find a yummy salsa. This isn't it.

I figured it would be so exotic because there seemed to be some delicious ingredients in it (garlic, green onions, green chilis, mmmmmmmm) that I haven't tasted in other salsa. I was sorely disappointed  let down, depressed, etc...

This is normal, every day, run of the mill salsa. Husband insisted on adding cilantro, which I despise, so that knocked the taste down the scale for me.

I hate cilantro AND chick-fil-a. Apparently this is rare?

This is not worth the work.

Homemade Salsa:
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 can green chilis
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
1 clove garlic
4 green onion, chopped
couple shakes of red pepper flakes
1 tsp. salt

Honey Cinnamon Banana

I noticed my tummy was pooching a little today and I attributed it to not eating enough fruit over the last month or so. Also to not exercising, eating like the world is going to end, stressing out, drinking Dr. Pepper all the time, binging on cookies when I'm tired, etc...

But mainly because I haven't eaten fruit. So I solved that problem today!! And lucky for you.

I like to think that since I'm educated that I know what's in my pantry. I knew I had honey. So I didn't put it on the grocery list because I knew we had it. I know everything. About everything. Did you know that the Kuiper belt is full of comets and is about 15 billion miles past the orbit of Pluto? See I told you.

When we got home and I cut up the bananas to slap cinnamon and honey on, I knew exactly where to look for the honey. First came the cinnamon and it smelled soooooooooo good. Now for the honey.

The trip to the grocery store a second time sucked because I had to park in the middle of nowhere and I saw 20 people I knew as I was in snotty clothes, a dusty hat and no make up. You're probably wondering if I ever look like a functioning piece of society. I do. Monday-Friday from 7:00-6:00.

Husband was smiling as I  finished drizzling the honey on and I have to say I was more impressed than he was but he still liked it. I on the other hand LOVED it!!

Baby? I gave him a piece and he gagged and puked a bit on his shirt.

It's simple:
Bananas
Cinnamon
Honey

And I know you'll like my new dishes. Anthropologie all the way baby.

Introducing

Oh yeah, this happened.

Honey Sesame Chicken

HOOOOOOOOLY MOLY!!!!

I can't describe the yumminess of this!!

8 out of 10. I don't know where the 2/10's deduction comes from but it's there. Regardless, this dish is uh-mazing!

The sauce that you pour over the chicken smells like happy memories. If it would be healthy to snort it, I would. These six sisters that come up with this stuff are pure geniuses. They came up with this recipe that I tried and bombed the first time but salvaged the second.

I wish I had their kitchen prowess. Maybe this summer, when I have a life again, I can try some stuff out but until then, I'll be hitting those sisters up.

And I didn't mess this recipe up. That's always a plus.

Enjoy!
http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2012/01/slow-cooker-honey-sesame-chicken-recipe.html

Egg Bites

Since Baby is still asleep, I'll keep going. I am doing something different here. I got an IDEA from Pinterest and kind of went my own direction with it.

In the mornings, the last thing I have time for is to cook breakfast for anyone. It's instant breakfast and we go. I saw a pin for cooking eggs in a muffin tin and thought I would try to make scrambled egg bites and see how they turn out.

I took 5 or 6 eggs and stirred them and added about 1/2 a cup of cheese, salt and a little bit of pepper. I used a mini muffin pan and cooked them at 350 for about 15 minutes. They came out fully cooked and they were actually pretty tasty.

I froze them and I warm them up in the morning for Baby and he tears them up! It's a nice, easy way to get him his protein in the mornings without having to stand there and cook while I'm yawning, half dressed and freezing.

If you try it, I hope you like it!

Pudding Pops

This is one of those pins that I pinned when I first joined Pinterest. Like most things on Pinterest, the hardest part of having all those pins is actually DOING them. I've been looking at the picture of these for months thinking about how goooooood they look. So I just DID it.

I bucked up my courage, went to the store, whipped that cool whip off the shelf, snatched the pudding with an Indian war cry, and skipped over to the milk to finish my purchase. I had a smile on my face the whole way home, ready to jump back 20 years and be a child again.

It took a total of about 10 minutes from start to finish and before I poured the mixture into the cup, I had about 12 spoonfuls. This was a good sign.

When they were nice and frozen, I peeled the cup off and took a big bite. It was like in the movies, when the world pauses and the camera zooms into your eye, and shows flashbacks of jumping on a trampoline, running around a tree, jumping rope, having pigtails, kissing a boy (yeah right, that didn't happen until I was 16), swimming and then the camera zooms back out to the current moment and shows me hopping over the Husband to take a bite. I'm sure that was a run on sentence.

These.are.so.fun.

I LOVE them. Your kids will LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE them. You could make a ton of pops for little money. I 100% believe no one should go without trying these. Good thing the Mayans were wrong because y'all would have missed out.

MMMMMMMM!!!

1 package instant pudding

1 1/2 cups milk

2 cups cool whip

Dissolve pudding in milk

Whip in cool whip

Spoon into 3 oz. dixie cups

Insert popsicle stick and freeze

Chicken Spaghetti

I haven't posted anything lately because I thought "What's the point. The world is going to end and all this testing out of food will be pointless and no one will be around to read it."

Just kidding.

As all you mommy/teacher hybrids know, you have no time for yourself so sitting in a room by myself, updating a blog post, is so rare that the only way I am sitting here right now is that it's 6:45 in the morning (during my Christmas break, of course) and after pulling my child into our bed last night after a 5:00 am fit, I left him in there to fall back asleep and just got up and had a cup of coffee and caught up on news. He's still asleep so here I am.

Here is what I've been up to lately...
1. Cheesy Quinoa Bites
2. Creamy Chicken Piccata
3. Breakfast Hashbrown Bites
4. 8 Can Taco Soup
5. Pudding Pops
6. Chicken Spaghetti

I'll start with the most recent. I made the chicken spaghetti earlier in the week. You must know, this recipe was given an 8 out of 10 by myself, Husband and Baby. In fact, Baby kept ripping the spoon out of my hand  in order to fling it around and THEN put it in his mouth. He really liked it even though half of it actually made it in his mouth.

Looking at the picture directions I will really overwhelmed and thought I would have a good 2 hours of cooking ahead of me but the prep only took about 30 minutes. As usual, I somehow managed to misread the ingredients AND the directions and used green chili's instead of a green pepper. Lucky for me, it didn't matter because this dish was AMAAAAAAAAAAAZING!!!!

Hit this recipe up!!
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/06/chicken_spaghet/

Sour Cream Cookies

I'm back! I apologize for my lack of culinary adventures. Life has kind of taken over. But I do have a YUMMY recipe for you!! I'm so proud that I finally have a winner. Let me start...

I didn't read the directions before choosing to do this recipe. So when it came time to decide to make these *two week ago*, I looked at the directions and read that I needed to chill the dough for about an hour. That automatically put this recipe in the trash. Literally. I am an instant gratification kind of person and I don't want to wait around to make something.

Yet, at the childish urging of Husband, I pulled it out of the trash and proceeded. Since I threw the recipe away after reading "chill for one hour", I didn't read the rest and as I continued to read, I was once again given an annoying direction that I wasn't happy about. One reason being that I didn't want to do it, second being I didn't have the utensil.

Roll the dough out with a rolling pin. EFFORT! No thank you! I didn't have a rolling pin. But I'm creative so I compromised.

After rolling out the dough, I had to use a cookie cutter. I had a few shapes to choose from and since I'm a mature adult, I didn't use the shape I received at my bachelorette party...

I chose a flower! It was hard and annoying to get the spatula under the dough in order to transfer an uncompromised flower shape to the cookie sheet but I obviously did it. So I baked them and OH MY GOODNESS!!!! They were heavenly! Melt in your mouth, soft, bouncy, light, just plain awesome.

I followed the directions for the icing verbatim but it tasted absolutely awful. I did two tries and it was just nasty. Now, I have a minor in art so I'm pretty good with colors and what not. I guess I had a blip when trying to make purple. I ended up with this...

Ew.

But on the second try I was able to successfully create blue. But the blue didn't save the taste. I ended up scraping the icing off all the cookies I ate. Husband liked it but he's a dude so he'll eat anything.

Anyway, you need to hear me.....THESE COOKIES ARE AWESOME! Just use pre-made icing.

The End.

Enjoy!
http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2011/12/by-requestmy-moms-amazing-sour-cream.html#comment-form

400 Calorie Breakfasts

"10 morning meals that will keep you full 'til lunch"

Best line of false advertising I have ever been fooled by!!

As a teacher, and a mommy to a little one, I get up early. Therefore I eat early. By lunch, 11:00, I'm usually ready to gnaw my own arm off. So I thought I would give this article a try.

I needed something quick and easy, and something that sounded tasty so that removed about 9 out of the 10. But since I love peanut butter and green bananas (but not together), I tried that one. I branched out and actually put the banana ON the peanut butter slathered english muffin. For the first time trying it, it wasn't bad. I didn't do the blueberries because I don't like blueberries.

So far, success. I felt full. 7:00 rolls around, doing good. 8:00, still doing ok but starting to envision buffalo wings. 9:00, getting hungry....oh no. 9:30, it's official...I'm hungry. 10:00, don't get near me, i'm starving and cranky. By 10:15, I was about to go into full zombie mode, tearing apart my students and screaming "BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINS!!!!"

As a science teacher, I think this would have been acceptable.

Regardless, I was hungrier than I've ever been in my life and I was so weak with hunger that I could barely open my mouth to talk. I was dragging my arms on the ground, moaning incomprehensible vocabulary words, and drooling onto the heads of my kids.

When 11:00 rolled around, I got this massive burst of energy, pushed all my kids out of the way, sprinted to the lunch room, jumped the counter to the lunch lady side and chowed down.

Ok, that part isn't true.

"10 morning meals that will keep you full 'til lunch"?? Total crap.

Lie. All lies.

http://www.prevention.com/weight-loss/diets/low-calorie-breakfasts-400-calorie-fix/honey-sweetened-granola

Best Burger Recipe Ever with Secret Sauce

The title says it all right?!?! Who WOULDN'T want to try this? Not me! So of course we tried this recipe, which was going to be so good, so different, so amazing, so delicious and you will not believe me when I tell you what they tasted like......




Are you ready?......



They tasted like......



A hamburger.

Mine looked exactly like theirs so I didn't take a picture.

Bah Humburger.
http://www.littlemissmomma.com/2011/10/best-burger-ever-recipe-with-secret-sauce.html

Cinnamon Sugar Pizza

As you may or may not know, cinnamon sugar is my favorite thing on the face of the Earth. I also love crescent rolls, and of course I love powdered sugar. So basically my diet consists of carbs and sugar. Totally healthy.

I knew that even if I messed this recipe up (which was slim), I would still love it. And guess what I did. I messed up. Are you shocked?

It started simple enough. With my experience with the these, I didn't pile on the butter mixture on top but I put enough to make magic. The directions say to let them cook 8-10 minutes and make the glaze in the meantime. Well when you have a 1 year old, there is nowhere to run, hide, rest, or do anything you need/want. During these 8-10 minutes, my wonderful child required my full attention and when he didn't get it, he threw a god awful flailing tantrum so I got a little side tracked. And guess who forgot about the crescent rolls? Yep.

Oh well. They were a wee bit crispy. No big deal. On to the glaze!!! I butchered this when I tried it with the crescent roll ups but second time is a charm. In fact, that's a lie. The fourth time is a charm.

I kept remembering flour from the recipe. Flour flour flour. So as I was making the glaze, I softened my butter and added the flour. I stirred and stirred and kept thinking "Geeeeeeeeeez, this is so dang thick!!! LOOSEN UP!!!". I stirred and stirred and stirred.......and gave up. I was going to start again with melted butter. So I put the flour and butter together and stirred and stirred and stirred............and guess what? I was supposed to be mixing butter and powdered sugar together. I started the glaze a third time and was so miffed with myself that I made it, it looked nice and thick and I was so ready to plop it on the burnt crescent rolls that I forgot the vanilla and milk.

So I had burnt crescent rolls, foiled and unfinished glaze and a hungry husband. I am such a winner wife.

They were still delicious though!!! I totally finished them off.

Worth a try!

http://thesweetestpear.blogspot.com/2011/12/cinnamon-sugar-pizza.html

Southern Pimento Cheese

Let me start off by saying that I could eat cheese by the pound. There is always cheese at our house. I love cheese. Husband loves cheese. Baby swings his hands in the air, squeals like a Bieber crazed fan and opens his mouth huge when I say "want some cheese?" so of COURSE this recipe would be on my to do list!!

I give it a 10 out of 10. My only gripe is that the recipe doesn't suggest letting the cream cheese sit out for a while so it's not so hard. I was flinging sweat all over the kitchen trying to stir all of this together. My pits were dripping, my hair was wet and I was panting by the time I was done.

I made it yesterday and about half of it's gone. SO good!!! We ate it with regular saltines but I'm sure this stuff would be the bomb even on a cracker made of dried up baby boogers. (ew, I just grossed myself out there)

Holla!
http://addapinch.com/cooking/2010/10/02/pimento-cheese/

Pistachio Salmon w/ Parmesan Squash

I am stepping outside of the Pinterest box and sharing a recipe that was not from the world of Pinterest! Such blasphemy! But this was so incredibly delicious I had to share.

Husband found this recipe in one of the inserts of the paper and said I should give it a try. I hadn't had pistachios in years and I highly doubted that pistachios and salmon went well together but as usual, I was wrong.

How long did it take for me to open all the shells to get the pistachios out? I don't know but I had grey hair when I was done. Strike 1.

I have since thrown away the recipe somehow so it goes something like this.

Chop up pistachios. Smash the pistachios on top of the salmon and put a dollop of butter on top. Cut the squash into cubes and top with salt, pepper and parmesan cheese. Bake at I don't remember, how does 325 sound? And cook for I don't know how many minutes, 20-30 sounds good. The end.

There were lots of pistachios left so I decided to plop down and eat the pistachios like they were popcorn and I had the worst tummy ache the rest of the night and into the next day. Strike 2.

Cranberry Breakfast Cookie

It's official folks!!! I am NO LONGER trying any Pinterest oatmeal recipes!! I get way too excited and end up moping around for the rest of the week because the recipe didn't turn out like I had hoped.

The failures have been so nasty, like this one, or this gem, that I'm done. And there is the treat I have for you tonight, total fail.

I've had one winner, and it was the winner of a lifetime, and I will feel lucky that the oatmeal deities showered me with this gift.

Tonight's loser made me think that I might have a turnaround. Even though this recipe contains my arch nemesis- bananas, I thought I could handle it. The ingredients took 30 seconds to mix and about 2 minutes to plop on the pan. The pan that I forgot to spray.

WHY CAN'T I DO A RECIPE RIGHT JUST ONE TIIIIIIIIIME?!?!?!?

They smelled really good while they were cooking and as I'm sure you can guess, when they were done, I had to rip them apart to get them off the foil. Time moved in slow motion as I moved this delicacy to my mouth.....took a bite.....tasted a craisin (mmmmmmmmmmm) and then I tasted everything else and my whole body just sagged with depression. Not that great. The ONLY thing that saved these "cookies" from being on my s-list is the craisins. Those were pretty tasty.

Husband's response was "Eh." so that's when I know it's a failure. So I'll probably pout until Wednesday when I try a new recipe.

There is no link, just a picture that fakes you out.

Fall Dip

This was an interesting creation. Before I opened up the cool whip, I told myself I should have just stuck it in the freezer and then devoured it like ice cream and made this recipe later. But then I looked at my butt and realized that small portions here and there would be a better option.

This recipe didn't come with portions so I had to fly by the seat of my pants and PRAY this would be something edible. And by edible I guess I meant that it would end up all over my face, arms, lap and on various walls throughout the house but I will get to that later.

I bought the big container of cool whip, added one serving cup of vanilla jello, forgot to add cinnamon (of course) and a whole can of pumpkin. By this point, it was bursting out the top of my bowl because I severely miscalculated a good mixing bowl size. I would have put the dip in a pumpkin like the picture but the only pumpkin I had laying around was old and decrepit so that wasn't going to happen.

After tasting it, I wished I had not added all the pumpkin but it was still ok. I tried it with a Nilla Wafer and it was on. Delicious!!! It was SO on that I convinced Husband to come in the kitchen and try one and that is where things went down hill.

As a busy married couple with a young child, you have to try to find the funny things in life. So when Husband had his wafer topped with dip in his hand, I thought it would be hilarious to knock it out of his hand. Well, I somehow ended up making the dip fly in the air and land on my arm instead, all while he still held the cookie. That was ridiculous and I wasn't having it so I tried, and semi achieved, to smear it on his head and such. He apparently has ninja stealth skills because before I knew it, his hand was in the dip and it was on my face.

Ok, so hahaha, right? Truce? Sure. As I was leaning into the kitchen sink, giggling, and wiping off the dip on my face, here comes the spatula COVERED in dip and it slams into my face and in my hair and then it was ON!!!!

I was chunking it here and there trying to splatter him, all while baby is cracking up in the highchair, Husband is keeled over in laughter (like a little girl) and I am now dripping with dip. I was able to chase him in the bathroom and land a shot but by now there was dip all over my kitchen, on the floor, on the walls, in the bedroom and in the bathroom....nothing was spared.

So was the dip good? Sure. But the memory is the sweetest part.

I even added a few wafer chunks for visual effect. It totally worked.

Delish!
http://northcarolinacharm.blogspot.com/

Country Club Chicken

I could type a novel over here about my experience with this recipe but let me sum it up then try to explain a bit...

It took so long that by the time I was done, I was so pissed off and tired that I didn't even have the energy to eat it so I went to bed without dinner. Well, I had some rolls.

My first problem is that I read the directions ONE time, paraphrased them in my head, somehow switched the order of them and just flat out screwed up.

I saw that I needed spaghetti noodles so what was the first thing I did? Put the stupid noodles on. After mincing my garlic and apple, I was slicing whole mushrooms when my idiot light bulb went off and I chastised myself for not buying mushrooms that were already sliced. I was irritated by this fact and the fact that baby was clinging all over my legs, tripping himself and whining nonstop.

After cooking the onion/apple/mushroom mix, I added the wine and soup. This smelled like some cheap, dollar store cherry candy and I was really turned off but hoped the cheese would help. I bought fancy NY sharp cheddar but once I added that, the smell graduated to smelling like a truly dirty dog fart and I just about threw up in my mouth and sent the husband to taco bell.

At this point, I decided to look at the directions again and realized I didn't sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper OR brown it in the skillet that was now filled with a soupy soup. This REALLY irritated me so I had to scoop that soup out and fix up my stupid chicken so I could freaking brown it. I put the chicken in the casserole dish and poured the stinky junk on top. I also decided to pop my rolls in too because the chicken was supposed to take 25-30 minutes.

I was pushing 35-40 minutes by this point. Who knows how. In the mean time, I relaxed a bit, picked up a bit and when the time was up, I checked the chicken. Totally raw. My irritation level was EXTREMELY high by this point. I realized I started my noodles at the wrong time so they would probably be ruined by the end and my rolls were now done. I guess I bought the most obese chicken on the market.

So we just had to wait for the chicken to cook. During our wait, I bathed a child, went ahead and ate my rolls, rescued a stray cat with a ladder, we lost a fossil fuel, and my cheeks were sunken in from starvation. But was the chicken done an HOUR later? No. By now I was really really really really really really irritated. I was at the 2 hour mark from when I started this STUPID recipe.

I was tired, cranky, irritated, hungry and then I looked at my noodles and most of them were nice and crisp. Nothing like air drying noodles for an hour and a half.

So when the chicken was finally done, husband ate it and I just left the kitchen. He said it was good but I was too mad at this recipe to even take a picture. So I really have no useful review for you.

http://www.kayotic.nl/blog/country-club-chicken

Apple Pie Breakfast

Ok people, I have a treat!! And a tasty treat this is.

If you enjoy the taste of....well....nothing, then this delicious recipe is for you!!

I take that back. It has a taste. I will give it that much credit. It tastes like glorified cardboard. Cardboard with a hint of apple and cinnamon. And by a "hint", I mean not enough to save my mouth from the abomination that entered it.

I know that people have all sorts of disabilities but I was unaware that not having taste buds was one of them. The poor lady who came up with this recipe just is missing out on so much yumminess and I am so sad for her.

But I am even more sad that this recipe put a damper on my super excited mood. This made the house smell SO good. Yankee Candle good. It just put you in one of those Martha Stewart, apron wearing, cupcake making, smile having moods even though once again, I was wearing clothes with snot and slobber on them, no makeup, chapped lips, and dirty socks. But I was happy. WAS.

Back to the drawing board for breakfast tomorrow...

http://www.cookingwithjax.com/2011/01/apple-pie-breakfast.html

Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal Squares

Considering I hate bananas unless they are still in the peel and the peel is still green, I really stepped out of my shell to try this recipe but only because it had the ingredient that is probably the cause of some cellulite on my hiney.

PEANUT BUTTER.

I can tear up some peanut butter.

And I'm afraid that because of that fact, pigs have flown...

I am on a diet. Kinda. I get to blame the cholesterol (and my doctor for ruining my day with that news).

I haven't had a Dr. Pepper in two days!!! And I only had ONE mini snickers today!! I'm so proud of myself. But I've kind of had a few oreos. And a taquito. And a brownie cookie. Dang.

These sounded healthy so I tried them. They were SUPER easy to make and they smelled delicious going into the oven and coming out.

But alas, I was disappointed. They SMELL amazing but they lack flavor. Despite all the yummies that are in the recipe, they are kind of bland. Husband only took a few bites (I wish he would stop doing that and just man up and EAT IT!!) I love you honey.

I got one bite of un-mushed banana and it was revolting. This tasty sounding treat gets a 5 out of 10. So sad.

http://gingerbreadbagels.com/2011/03/22/peanut-butter-banana-oatmeal-squares/