Under theWeather

 I had such high hopes for continuing the recipe roulette this week but that went completely out the window when little one came down with a nasty bug. So instead of hitting the grocery store for lots of fun ingredients, little one hit the floor and I made myself comfy on the couch.

On the upside I managed to work my way through the last 20 magazines that have been cluttering up my coffee table. I did find about 30 more recipes to put in the note book to try once things get back on track. 

Sadly it took little one the entire week to recover. She felt so bad that she actually took an afternoon nap on the couch. I can't remember when she last took a nap.

I did send her back to school this morning, she has been fever free for about 36 hours. Unfortunately it seems that her cold decided to become my friend, I have been trying to will it away for 2 days now. I have gone into full blown cleaning mode to try to rid the house of any remaining germs.

Hopefully with the upcoming weekend to recover recipe roulette can get back on track. There are so many recipes that look delicious, I just need my sense of smell and taste to return so I can enjoy them.

:)

Recipe Roulette

Last weeks new years task of sifting through a years worth of old magazines left me with a huge stack or recipes that looked worthy of trying. I have for several years cut recipes out and shoved them in two different notebooks. One for desserts and sweets and the other for random entrees and side dishes. The notebooks are now overflowing with recipes that I have yet to try. I have a bad habit of getting in a cooking rut where I will find a few super yummy things and then cook them over and over again. In order to make room for the gigantic stack of new recipes I need to eliminate some of the old. I am determined to try at least 3 new recipes each week.
So first up in the love it or leave it recipe roulette is...

Caramel Chocolate Chip Bars

the recipe was from duncan hines website, has been in the book for approx. 2 years. Caramel cake mix is not sold at all grocery stores so I just recently ran across it at our local Food Lion.

Recipe is : 2 large eggs
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
6 tbsp. butter softened
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
1 caramel cake mix

Mix all ingredients together, stirring in chips last. It becomes a thick cookie dough type batter.

Spread in greased 13x9 pan and bake for 24-27 minutes in preheated 375 degree oven or until toothpick in center comes out clean. Cool completely in pan.

Share a sample with chef's helper, who says "YUMMY, can I have more?" But she is willing to wait when I determine that it would be better with the suggested chocolate frosting added to it.

It was worth the wait after I whip up some homemade chocolate icing and let her lick the spatula.

The finished product.

This recipe although tasty will not be a keeper. It was really the frosting that made it super yummy and it is a standard icing recipe I use all the time, not the store bought icing the actual recipe suggested. The caramel cake mix was somewhat bland, nothing spectacular.

Moving on to new recipe number two...

Hearty Chicken Tortilla Soup

Brown 1 lb of chicken cut in pieces in sauce pot sprayed with vegetable cooking spray.

Add 3 1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup rice
1 tsp ground cumin
Heat to boil, cover and cook over low heat for 20 minutes.

Stir in 1 can Mexicorn
1 cup salsa
1 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
2 tbsp lime juice
Heat Through

To make Crisp Tortilla Strips, cut 4 corn tortillas into  thin strips, place on baking sheet, spray with vegetable cooking spray.
Bake in preheated 425 oven for 10 minutes or until golden.





I served with an additional garnish of shredded cheddar cheese.

This recipe was a definite keeper, hubby and I both enjoyed it. It definitely lives up to its name of being a hearty soup. If I was serving more than the two of us, I would most likely make more of the tortilla strips as we both enjoyed dipping those and scooping up the rice and corn with them and finished off all of them. I will be whipping up some more to eat with my leftover soup lunch tomorrow.

All in all not a bad day in the kitchen. One keeper is not bad. The other recipe is good but just not worthy of a spot in the notebook. I'm not sure what recipes are up next, I figure it is safest to do both a dessert and entree in the same day, that way if one totally sucks hopefully the other one makes up for it!  

Date Night

For Christmas one of hubby's bosses gifted him with a gift certificate for a fancy restaurant named Manna here in town. I love to eat fancy food I just hate to pay for it. The guilt of a hundred dollar meal always gets to me. In the back of my mind I always think about the weeks worth of groceries I could have bought with that much money. So needless to say it was a super nice treat to drop the little one off at the grandparents and have a nice quiet expensive dinner out on someone else's dime.

Manna is a very small restaurant in downtown Wilmington. I stole this picture off their website but I swear it was taken from the table we sat at, which was in the front window. There is a pretty bar, but I think it's kind of frowned upon for the pregnant lady to hang out there so we skipped right to dinner. ;)

Hubby and I started with a super delish smoked prawn appitizer, I could have easily eaten about 20 of those prawn but alas it only came with two!

For my entree I had a grouper dish that was very yummy and hubby had porkshank. Neither of us shared our meals, so his must have been good because he didn't even offer one bite.  There was nothing but a pile of bones left on his plate as evidence that there had at one time been a meal there.

For dessert we had something that included the words chocolate cake, ganache, passion fruit ice cream, etc. Needless to say it was gone shortly after arriving at the table, YUM!

Our short date night was a delicous treat! It will probably be a long time before we can have a nice dinner like again,

since we will soon be bribing the grands to take on not just one kiddo but two! :)

New Recipe and a New School

So due to a friends new obsession with Pinterest and my weakness for desserts I was compelled to try a new recipe this week. She posted a picture of a pie on her blog and overwhelmed by the power of suggestion I printed the recipe out and ran to the grocery for all the ingredients. The fact that the pie only contains 3 ingredients made it all the easier to give in.

So here it is Butterfinger Pie...

The recipe called for 6 full size bars, I used about 20 snack size.

1 8oz. cream cheese, softened.

A 12oz container of cool whip (they don't make that size anymore so I guesstimated out of 16oz container)

1 graham cracker crust

 Combine all of the ingredients and put in crust and there you have it. Ouila!

Pie needs to be refrigerated for at least a few hours before serving.

All in all for a quick simple dessert its not that bad. I have managed to eat my way through it without complaint but I think I would prefer a peanut butter pie if I was going to go to the effort which is only 1 ingredient more.  :)

In other news little one started back to school this week at her new school. She goes Mon, Wed and Friday mornings and was very excited about the fact that she gets to eat her lunch there with the other kids, as this school has extended hours. She seems to really love it already. I love that it is definitely more academic then her previous school. Today I received this month's curriculum and was impressed to see that in addition to their daily reading lessons they will be learning about such cool things as

fossils and rocks, Thomas Edison, Anarctica and one of my all time favorites...

This image stolen from some random website, Thanks!

Vincent Van Gogh and his painting Starry Night!

I hope that her enjoyment of school continues, I know I'm enjoying the 12 hours a week she's there :)

It's Been 6 months, Oops!

So it's been a while since I've blogged. I know of a thousand excuses I could use pregnancy, moving , chasing around a preschooler, holidays, yada yada but honestly I got slack. :)

 Since it's the new year I thought what better time to get motivated to start blogging again. This upcoming year already looks to be an exciting one with the new addition due in February and the continued house hunting. Which eventually means another fun and exciting move to look forward to. I should have lots to update you all on but in the meantime I must get back to my new year's must do list which includes such fun things as unburying my desk and going through a years worth of unread magazines. Whoohoo!

Bed side table redo...

 We have recently been redecorating the little one's bedroom because she is no longer in her toddler bed but is now in her " big girl bed". One of hubby's co workers was nice enough to gift us with a really cute twin bed frame that hubby fixed up and painted. Our dilemma became what to do for a nightstand. I had an extra bed side table that had been residing in a closet in the guest room...

 Not exactly what I had in mind to go in a little girl's room but it was already paid for which made it perfect! It was my intention just to paint it white to match the bed frame and book case. Hubby fortunately had another plan in mind...

After hubby was finished it doesn't even look like the same table. He cut down the base and top of it and flipped the drawer fronts and changed the hardware.

The drawer pulls are perfect! The lavender petals match her rug and her new bedspread without being to over the top cutesie!

I have to admit it is really nice to have a hubby who knows his way around a power tool and isn't afraid to pick out little flower drawer pulls!

:)

It's Freakin Hot!

Even the squirrels think it's to hot to do anything outside!

Caught this little guy resting on the fence the other day.

A Busy Month Recap and the Princess Cake Debacle...

April was a crazy month for us which is why it has taken until almost mid may for me to blog. So I decided that it would be easiest to recap by going back through and picking some of my favorite photos from the month.

For my birthday hubby got me my favorite Dairy Queen ice cream cake and a sweet new zoom lens for my camera.

Little one came down with a nasty virus the week before her birthday, which involeved a Friday afternoon trip to the doctors. It took three people to hold her down so the doctor could tell us that her ears were fine and it was a virus. Hubby and I both got colds thanks to her. :)

One of my sister's came for a visit to help with little one's 3rd birthday. 

We went on a beach adventure while she was here. Here is little one recreating a scene from the movie The Birds.

We also let her white trash it up at the beach by letting her go in the water in her undies. Who would have thought she would want to swim with the water temp only in the 60s?

The birthday cake for little one's party was quite the adventure. She had specifically requested a pink princess cake. I refused to pay $50 for the grocery store version, so instead I spent probably about that much to make it. ;)  Sister and I thought it would be best to make a practice cake. I went to the craft store and bought the Wilton Wonder Cake mold  but neglected to read the instructions fully. I read the part that said use a two layer cake mix. What I did not read was the fact it said you may need 1- 2 two layer cake mixes ! Oops!

Good thing we did the practice cake! The first cake seemed teeny tiny!

The second cake was perfect!
Sister had  recently taken a cake decorating classand managed to bust out with this...

A perfect princess cake! Totally the cake I always wanted when I was little.

I will say that the practice cake was a great idea except my waistline paid the price!
It looked a lot like our little princess shown here modeling her new princess dress.

The birthday party was a big success even though it poured down rain. The kids still enjoyed the princess  jump castle

and an indoor picnic.

Hubby and I gave her a big girl bike, which at first she seemed excited about but now is refusing to touch it. Go figure.

Maybe in a few weeks she will decide that she is ready to try it again.

:)

I will end this post with a picture of one of the four beautiful flowers my wonderful little old lady nieghbor gave to me.

She has the most randow assortment of flowering things in her yard which she loves to share.

Lucky me!

:)