Blog Consolidation

To anyone who might actually read this:

I'll be consolidating my blogs over the next week. If you'd like to keep reading, you can head over to http://hobbygoround.blogspot.com/ where there will be all sorts of different randomness...book reviews, recipes, ramblings on life in general, knitting chat, TV show recaps...basically anything I do on a regular basis.

Adios!

Tweaking the Cookies

A couple weeks ago, I was involved in a discussion about how many bakers and cooks fall into two different categories. There are those that eye their measurements and just toss them in and somehow everything manages to come out great. Then there are those that measure religiously and don't vary from the recipe hardly at all.

Because I didn't grow up with any love for baking and have only recently become a fan, I'm of the latter group. In fact, I get nervous when I have to make substitutions or if I can't find a half tablespoon measure because I'm afraid I just won't get it right by eyeballing the same amount in a full tablespoon measure.

Recently I made these cookies and were really happy with how they turned out. In fact, they seemed to be well received when I took them for hot pot night. This is one of the few recipes that lends itself to substitutions that seem fairly easy. For instance, I baked these again today and used regular sugar instead of confectioners sugar. The texture is slightly different but I almost prefer the texture of this new batch. Also, instead of the vanilla pudding, I added pistachio. The taste is wonderful if you're a fan of pistachio (which I am). Now my thoughts are turning to add ins for this cookie: cherries, peanut butter, and toffee are a few I've come up with in conjunction with the pudding variations there are.

My next experiment? Butterscotch.

Bento and Lunch Boxes

My future brother-in-law is spending the summer in San Francisco and recently surprised me and Jon with some gifts. No more do I have to take lunch in boring rubbermaid and plastic grocery sacks.

This little lunch set has been used everyday since I got it, and I absolutely love it. That little box there in the back between the bag and thermos is two stackable containers, perfect for cereal and hardboiled eggs. The only thing I'm not yet sure about is if that container in the front there is microwaveable. Even if it's not, it's the perfect fit for a sandwich.

Thanks R!

Baking Double Time

This past week I've done a little bit of baking, not just because I enjoy it but because it was kind of therapeutic during my grieving for my grandma period. (http://hobbygoround.blogspot.com/).

Tonight I realized I had to go shopping soon and was low on a few baking essentials. I also had a few things that needed to go, like the ripe ripe bananas that were sitting in my kitchen and the strawberries that needed to be used before they went bad. First recipe was Strawberries and Cream Banana Bread.

The first time I made this earlier in the week, I forgot to grease the pan (doh!), so it kind of mutilated on the bottom a little bit. This time, I remembered and it came out beautifully. We had a slice tonight, and the rest will be good for breakfasts this weekend.

Second was Soft Buttermilk Sugar Cookies. These are a little weird. They're not dense like sugar cookies you get from the store. Instead, it's like eating a cloud...or a fluffy piece of cake. Definitely tasty, but very crumbly if you're careful.

No picture of the after, just be careful when removing these bad boys. Also, I used buttermilk but was informed this week that you can actually make recipes calling for buttermilk with slightly soured milk. It sounds weird, but maybe worth a try in the future.

Sausage Potato Bake

We’re breaking out the crockpot again. Unfortunately, after a failed attempt at making crockpot monkey bread this past weekend, we are down one since the burnt concoction is impossible to get out of the crock. Believe it or not…I burnt something in the slow cooker.

I left last night’s dinner to Jon, who managed to not fail miserably at slow cooking. Unfortunately, we both failed at picture taking and so have no tasty images to dish up to everyone. But I do have a recipe to share:

Sausage Potato Bake

Jon didn’t seem too thrilled with it at first, at least not with the theory of it. But I thought it tasted great and he ended up liking it too. I even ended up buying the vegetable soup with the letter noodles, so that made if fun too. We used smoked sausage and canned potatoes we had in the cabinet which were surprisingly good. I ended up bringing some to work with me for lunch, though it’s now been designated to tomorrow’s lunch due to an unplanned pizza delivery bought by one of my co-workers.

Frugal Girls Giveaway: Home Free Organic Chocolate Chip Cookies

While working to be healthier, the fiance and I aren't about giving up anything completely. We are, however, open to trying new things. One of my favorite snacks is a chocolate chip cookie, and Frugal Girls is currently hosting a giveaway for Home Free Organic Chocolate Chip Cookies. While we want to try them for the good/organic value, these cookies would be great for anyone with food allergies or a palate refined to natural ingredients.

Visit the Frugal Girls Cookie Giveaway Post for your chance to win two boxes of these cookies. Everyone can earn up to six chances to win, so head on over and hook it up. Who can say no to cookies??!!

Kitchen, Cookies, and the Farmer's Market

As promised, I managed to get a few pics of our kitchen, but let's face it...there's not much to it.

Friday night was my first trip to one of our local farmer's markets. In truth, it was my first trip to a farmer's market anywhere. Believe it or not, I've always just done grocery store produce. I may have continued to do so too, but the peaches I bought at the store a few weeks ago were really bad, and I've been craving a good peach.

The bananas are actually from Aldi because that's the cheapest place to get them in town. At the Farmers Market (Eastside Market if anyone in the area reads this), I also picked up a garlic clove and an onion for a recipe I'm doing this week and a jar of honey. I've been wanting honey for awhile now, but I prefer it fresh and local than processed in a bear. Not that the bear isn't cute, but this honey jar was perfect.


On Friday night, I also got the baking bug and decided to make some cookies. I found this recipe and made some tweaks, substituting applesauce for the butter and shortening and ignoring the orange peel. They game out pretty good...a little over chewy and maybe a little too sweet (my bad for using regular applesauce instead of unsweetened), but I'll probably make them again.

I have everything I need to make banana muffins except a few ripe bananas. I also have a recipe for crockpot monkey bread that I was going to make this morning. I still might make it this afternoon for an evening snack. It'll go perfect with the chocolate milk I picked up this morning.

Post Move Update

It’s been about forever since I updated this blog. It’s hard to keep up on it when you don’t have a kitchen of your own, and baking and cooking both kind of got pushed to side. However, we just moved into our own apartment and can use our kitchen whenever and however we want.

The downside…it’s extremely small. In fact, I hesitate to call it a kitchen at all. It’s more like a sink, a counter, and an oven in a hallway (not so strategically placed next to the bathroom, I might add). But it’s great because it’s mine (for the time being).

How much have we cooked in it? Well actually quite a bit, though nothing worth getting excited over. Money’s tight so we haven’t really had the funds to buy things to experiment with new recipes. Mostly it’s been hot dogs, since we got a bunch of them on sale and they’re easy to make. One of our first meals consisted of a crockpot steak, salad with balsamic vinegar, and some “gourmet” bread:

Another one was white cheddar mac and cheese with hot dogs. Not gourmet, but definitely tasty:


One of my new “interests” is Bento boxes done with the food I like (which doesn’t include sushi or most vegetables) in cheap plastic containers (not the $30 traditional boxes you buy online). In reality, it’s nothing more than a packed lunch, but it’s so much more swanky to call it a bento…not to mention the fact that it makes it okay to get artsy with it. My first foray into this was a breakfast bento.


Mine is really messy looking compared to the one my fiancé made me this morning, but we didn’t get a picture of his work of art. This is a banana wrapped in a tortilla shell spread with peanut butter, then chopped to resemble a sushi roll. The colorful things are gummi worms (they were on hand and colorful) and the green stuff is pistachio pudding. I don’t know if it’s Kroger pudding or the fact that I use skim milk to make it, but the pudding always looks strange…not that creamy color but a glassy color. It freaked me out for the butterscotch pudding but it looks neat with pistachio.

Next time I’ll try to have some pictures of my itty bitty kitchen and who knows? Maybe I’ll have made some brilliant baked good by then too!

The 30s List

I finished my list a few weeks ago, but hadn't gotten around to posting it. I haven't been posting much in general due to the fact that life is freakin' crazy right now. Not in a bad way, per se, though there have been a few rough moments. Today, my future brother-in-law reminded me that he wanted to read my list. Since I've actually already accomplished one of the things, I thought I'd better go ahead and post so I have more blogging material in the follow-ups.

In no particular order, here are the 100 things I want to do in my 30s:

1. See Tori Amos in concert again
2. Reach weight goal #1
3. Walk a 10K
4. Walk a half marathon
5. Walk a marathon
6. Walk the Relay for Life
7. Send a book in for publication
8. Apply to The Amazing Race
9. Weight goal #2
10. Run a 2-Mile event
11. Run a 5K
12. Run a 10K
13. Run a half marathon
14. Run a marathon
15. Do a triathalon
16. Go snorkeling
17. Take bellydancing lessons
18. Go to Las Vegas
19. Get married
20. Go to an amusement park...and ride the roller coasters
21. Knit or crochet a hat
22. Knit or crochet a top
23. Knit or crochet a purse
24. Crochet a set of washrags
25. Open up an etsy store
26. Spend a weekend at a Bed-n-Breakfast
27. Master Dance Dance Revolution
28. Make three layer cookies
29. Adopt a puppy
30. Go dancing at a club
31. Read the Anita Blake series (no matter how bad people say it is)
32. Visit New York
33. Ride in a limousine
34. Highlight my hair
35. Plant and grow something without killing it.
36. Spend the day at a waterpark
37. Go parasailing
38. Visit Europe
39. Take a cruise
40. Learn to bike
41. Visit the Grand Canyon
42. Meet someone famous
43. See a musical
44. Spend a week at a nudist resort
45. Take a spinning class
46. Buy something at an auction
47. Throw a dinner party
48. Throw a “Repo!” party (with costumes and everything)
49. Start or join a crafting group.
50. Bake homemade bread from scratch
51. Learn sign language
52. Grow an herb garden
53. Hike the Konza Prairie
54. Get a deep tissue massage
55. Color every page in a coloring book
56. Visit the Chicago Museum of Art
57. Eat at an expensive restaurant
58. Splurge on a purse
59. Have a day at the spa
60. Walk in the Breast cancer walk
61. Make my own laundry detergent
62. Walk 1000 miles (not all at once)
63. Get past level 20 on SpongeBob Collapse
64. Kiss the Blarny Stone
65. Attend a music festival
66. Enter a karaoke contest
67. Do my own online radio show
68. Get 1000 Twitter followers
69. Go horseback riding
70. Visit Seattle
71. Take a "fitness" getaway
72. Run a D&D Campaign
73. Ride a jetski
74. Ask for a raise
75. Spend the night somewhere haunted
76. Take a yoga class7
7. Take an art class
78. Make a set of friendship bracelets
79. Learn to make jewelry
80. Try decoupage
81. Take a trip by train
82. Make a homemade headband
83. Go antiquing
84. Try geocaching
85. Spend a week on a houseboat
86. Play on an organized sports team
87. Send a postcard to Postsecret
88. Take an unplanned flight somewhere for a weekend
89. Make "hoodie" chairs
90. Get a pedicure
91. Get another tattoo
92. Get my ears permanently pierced
93. Climb a rock wall
94. Take a wine tour in California
95. Visit Washington Dc
96. Go to a sci-fi or webcomic convention
97. Buy something off a late night infomercial
98. Go to a Detroit Red Wings game
99. Visit Yellowstone National Park
100. Make it to 40.

Alot of these are pretty easy, some are a littel crazier. I figure if I can do 10 things per year, I'll accomplish everything on the list.

Follow ups may be on different blogs depending on which category they fall into, so if you want to keep up, make sure to follow or subscribe to my other blogs.

Craigslist Kitchen Finds

In preparing for our move in a couple of months, I'm in excitement mode over getting things we need for our kitchen...the kitchen we will no longer have to share with anyone else! So when I browse Craigslist, I tend to go almost straight to the household items (after "Free Stuff" of course). This week, I found an electric griddle for sale for $5.

And this knife set...again for $5:

I also scored one of those little carousels filled with random kitchen utensils, measuring spoons and cups, etc., and a dishtowel/potholder set. Most of these things get to wait for the new apartment, but I think we'll be using the griddle soon to make some pancakes.

Baked Apple Oatmeal

Up until a few months ago, I never bothered with breakfast. But in the interest of losing weight and getting healthy, I've been trying to make it a part of my day. Most mornings consist of a granola bar, a piece of fruit, and some chocolate soy milk. It's good and keeps me going until lunch, but on weekends I like to experiment with different things. I've also been on a quest to find things that will keep well and give me variety for the coming week.

I decided to try Baked Apple Oatmeal from the Betty Crocker website.

Apples were on sale this week and the rest of the stuff we either had or was really cheap, so already, I can consider this to be a value meal.

It was also extremely easy. The only part I didn't so much like was chopping the apples. We do have a small chopper, but with everyone else in the house still sleeping, I thought it would be rude to try to run any kitchen gadgets (I'll be so glad when we have our own place...just a couple more months).

Everything mixed well in the dish. Two medium granny smith apples yielded alot of chunks, but they were tasty so it was okay. Here's the before pic:

And the after pic with some chunks already taken out:

The recipe calls for whatever toppings you prefer. The taste of the oatmeal without any toppings was a little bland and could have probably used more of something in the cooking process. I think I might like to try it with vanilla soy milk and a different fruit. To add some flavor to this batch, I just mixed some extra raisins into some brown sugar.

It's amazing the difference it made. This ended up being really tasty and pretty filling (go fiber!). After the bf and I finished ours, I packed the rest of it in tupperware. He's not a big breakfast eater, so I know have at least four breakfasts to get me through the rest of the week.

It'll be interesting to see if it makes good leftovers!

Chicken Quesadilla and Fiesta Rice

Because he had the afternoon off, Jon decided to do the cooking tonight. He always seems to get the more complicated recipes, but hopefully that'll start being more even the more we cook.

The recipe we used can be found here: at AllRecipes.

We tweaked it just a little bit by adding taco seasoning to the quesadilla. I don't even like fiesta rice but this was delicious. The plan for the next go round with this recipe is to use medium salsa instead of mild and a little more seasoning.

Definitely an A rated meal!

Two Nights of Simplicity

Things have been crazy around here lately, so we decided to play it low key for a couple days with two really simple meals. Last night was sloppy joes, straight out of the can. I've found all kinds of sloppy joe recipes on the 'net, but I'm pretty sure that for me, sloppy joes will always taste the best from Manwich.

This first picture is my version of the sloppy joe dinner, complete with frozen french fries and ketchup. See how neat and tidy I am?

My boyfriend, on the other hand, really likes to do it up sloppy:

What we have here is two open faced sloppy joes, topped with mustard and french fries. Right behind it is a mustard/Frank's Hot Sauce mixture for fry dippage.

Tonight's fare was even simpler. We went with the fries again and I drew on one of my childhood favorites: hot roast beef and cheddar sandwiches.

This used to be one of my favorite meals and is very simple. The sandwices consist of deli roast beef and cheedar cheese from the dairy department. After baking the fries, I lowered the temp from 450 to 350 degrees and put the sandwiches open faced into the oven for about 5 minutes, until the cheese was melted. It looks a little plastic in this pic but it was delicous. Jon ate his with some generic Miracle Whip and I ate mine topped with zesty italian dressing.

Tomorrow we're getting experimental in the kitchen again, and hopefully I'll be back with something good.

Teriyaki Ranch Chicken Tenders

First of all, big apologies for the picture. Every Sunday night we got to our friends' house to play DnD (yeah, total nerds, right?) and usually we order fast food or pick something up on the way. Tonight though, we had thawed chicken tenderloins we needed to use and to save money, we made a quick dinner and took it over there to heat up when we got hungry. I forgot my camera, so I had to use my camera phone. The camera takes pretty crap pics but the camera on my phone is worse.

My boyfriend, Jon, made these tonight and they turned out really well. I call them Teriyaki Ranch Chicken Tenders but he'll probably call them Felber's Famous Fingers or something crazy like that.

This was a quick makeshift dinner he threw together, so I don't have measurements. However, it's extremely simple:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix some teriyaki sauce and ranch dressing together. Drag thawed chicken threw the mixture, then coat with breadcrumbs. Bake for about 30 minutes.

The yellow "sauce" is honey mustard that we made ourselves...just mixed some regular mustard with a generous squirt of honey and voila! The other was some leftover spaghetti sauce we had. The tenders tasted delicious in both sauces. We didn't have fries so we served with chex mix and used our friends paper plates so we wouldn't have to wash their dishes.

Chocolate Banana Bread

Most people who are fans of baking seem to find it calming. I never understood this because being the kitchen generally made me nervous. Tonight though I decided to try it out. After yet another issue with the roommate situation, my irritation took me to the store to cool down and pick up the ingredients for Chocolate Banana Bread, a recipe I've been wanting to try since finding it here.

For the record this is my first attempt at making any sort of bread. I even bought two new bread pans in honor of the occasion.

The only part of the recipe I did different was instead of toasting any nuts, I just bought a small bag of already chopped pecans and through them into the batter.

For an evening snack, I had two slices of this with Blue Bonnet Light butter and a glass of Silk Light Chocolate Soy Milk. It was awesome and I'm totally psyched that it came out as well as it did for me.

I ended up feeling much calmer and chilled out after the actual act of baking the bread too. Still can't wait to be out of here and in my own apartment wtih my own kitchen....but it's good to know baking therapy is always an option no matter where I am.

Swiss Chicken Casserole

So I fell pretty behind in my quest to keep a food blog, but c'est la vie...it's the way of the world. Lately we've been cooking more and I've decided to get back into blogging and so I wanted to update this one as well. I'll be honest, the BF has been cooking more lately, so not all of these recipes will be mine. Take this one for example...I'll take credit for the planning, but he gets all the props for fixing.

I know it looks like a mess on the place, but this was absolutely delicious. The recipe can be found at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Swiss-Chicken-Casserole-II/Detail.aspx. I don't even think he tweaked it much. We used eight chicken tenderloins and reduced fat soup.

The corn was leftovers from last night's dinner and the recipe wasn't all that expensive and so will be x-posted to http://frugalandhappy.blogspot.com/ with a listing of the how much everything cost.

Because of the roommate situation, we don't often enjoy romantic or comfortable meals. This one was spent in the living room in front of some re-run of CSI: New York. Unfortunately, after living with a law student, I can no longer enjoy this show because reality has ruined it for me. But the meal was good and it was probably better that I focused on the food rather than the TV.