Decorating Notebooks by Brooke

School is about to start for Brooke, watch her get all crafty decorating her composition notebooks in anticipation - especially watch the "outtake" part at the end when she calls washi tape "washing tape", it's cute. Enjoy!



2022 update - why do my old videos keep disappearing?!

30 Day Ab Challenge

Yesterday's post was about the delicious chocolate peanut butter dessert I made for my sister's birthday (click here for that post, but then come back here for some exercise haha!) so I thought it only right to follow that up by sharing with you the ab workout I found on Pinterest and
started last week.

I'm up to 40 sit-ups and tomorrow is a rest day - yay! So far it hasn't been as hard as I feared haha and I'm not all that sore so I'm going to keep going and see how far I can get...on the last day it's 125 sit-ups and 200 crunches, wow - will I be able to do that? I'm not doing the leg raises tho, they hurt my back.

I also started a hand-weight program at the same time following a book I have (Smart Girls Do Dumbbells) - every day they have a "menu" of a few fairly simple exercises to do, takes me about 15-20 minutes. So between that and the ab workout (and I walk a lot) at least I'm trying to do something healthy to balance out all the good food I've been eating lately :)

Anyone up for doing the ab challenge with me?

Chocolate Peanut Butter Dessert

My sisters birthday was Saturday and since they'd been traveling all week she said she didn't want any dessert for her birthday dinner (click here for her main dish) - but of course I'm going to make her something! She loves peanut butter/chocolate/reese's (me too!) and lots of times she'll request buckeyes but quite truthfully I was tired and those are time consuming...I saw this recipe on Pinterest and knew she'd love it, and when I saw that it's no bake I was down with trying it. Click here for the recipe.

The crust is crushed oreos mixed with melted butter, next is the peanut butter layer which is thick, almost tasted like smooth silky fudge...heaven..., topped with chocolate pudding mixed with cool whip. Decorate the top with more crushed oreos and chopped mini reese's peanut butter cups. We died it's so good! It's fabulous if you like this combo as much as we do!! Dave of course just had to watch us eat it and I was sad for him, he doesn't know what he's missing having that awful nut allergy! But that's ok, I still had a couple cookie ice cream sandwiches in the freezer so he had one of those (click here for that post).

first layer - crushed oreos and butter

second layer - peanut butter/cream cheese topped with chopped mini reese's

third layer - chocolate pudding/cool whip, topped with crushed oreos and more chopped mini reese's

The recipe came from Pinterest, "flavorite.net", in case you can't open it thru my post for some reason. You should totally try this recipe, it's a winner for sure!

Mashed Cauliflower

The mashed cauliflower instead of potatoes idea has been around for a long time but in case you haven't tried it I thought I'd share - it's easy, quick, healthy, and a great alternative to potatoes. Obviously it doesn't taste just like mashed potatoes (sometimes I'll mix half potato and half cauliflower together if I want it to be more potato-y tasting), but it's a perfect substitute if you're looking to cut down on your potato consumption, don't like potatoes (gasp!), have a head of cauliflower sitting around waiting to be used, or you just want to try something different.

steam until soft, then put in food
processor with a little butter, salt
and pepper to taste

It's basically just like making mashed potatoes, only with cauliflower. I chop up cauliflower into biggish pieces and steam them on the stove until soft (I have a vegetable basket that I put into a pot with an inch or two of water, cover and let steam). Put the cauliflower in a food processor (or mash by hand, or do whatever you do to mash potatoes - the food processor makes them super smooth and creamy which is we like, hand mashing will leave them with small pieces and not very smooth but I do this when I'm in a hurry) and add a little butter, salt and pepper and process until smooth. Usually they don't need any milk or liquid but if you want them runnier then by all means add some.

We had them with meatloaf (click here for my recipe) and peas in vinaigrette - so good!

Repurposed Dresser by Cathy

Cathy sent me this picture and said she was mad at herself for not taking more pictures so I could blog it - after yelling at her that she keeps doing this to me (she and her granddaughters are super crafty and do fun projects all the time but forget to take pictures so I can share them with you! C'mon Cathy - don't you want to share? Don't keep all these cute ideas to yourself haha) I told her I was going to blog it anyway and asked her to at least write out what she did to transform this piece. Isn't this a clever idea?

It was a white 5 drawer dresser with lime green handles to start with, she removed the bottom two drawers to create a bookshelf and then painted it. Here is her description:

The first thing I did was remove the piece of wood in the front of the dresser that served as a spacer between the two drawers and then I removed the smaller piece of wood inside the dresser that served as glides for the two drawers.  Al cut and inserted a piece of wood on the bottom of the dresser to hold the books since once the drawers came out there was no bottom to the dresser.  I lightly sanded the dresser and brush painted it with an interior paint/primer. I got it at Home Depot (the color is Peking Orange).  I spray painted the knobs with a dark brown paint.  Then let everything dry overnight and put it together.  I wish I had pictures – it was so easy.

these are the parts she removed to turn it into a bookshelf on the bottom. 

My Sister's Birthday Dinner (aka: Quebec Chicken)

For my sister's birthday she requested Quebec Chicken - a dish we have been making forever. So this may or may not be a stolen recipe, it's a long ancient story - let's just say I heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another... and leave it at that! Wherever it came from and however I got it, it's an excellent recipe and we are all crazy for it (oh, and for the record I changed the name to protect the innocent hahaha!! ). 

Ingredients:

• 1 pound chicken tenders
• a couple sweet peppers (I like to do different colors), chopped in bite sized pieces
• 1 small onion, chopped in bite sized pieces
• 1 cup sour cream
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1 cup grated parmesan
• 1 T. montreal steak seasoning
• 1 t. lemon pepper
• 2 T. olive oil
• 1 pound cooked angel hair pasta

Directions:

Cut the chicken tenders in half (big bite sized pieces), put in a big bowl. Drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with the montreal steak seasoning and lemon pepper, toss to coat evenly. Sauté chicken in the remaining olive oil in a large saucepan, turning once, a couple minutes on each side. Remove chicken from pan and add the peppers and onions, sauté for a few minutes until softened. Add the chicken back to the pan and then stir in the sour cream, mayo, and parmesan. I like to add additional montreal seasoning but that is up to you. Bake in a large casserole dish 1 hour until bubbly, serve over the pasta.

note: I normally double this - we rarely have leftovers, and the sauce is so good you'll want lots of it! Cover for the first half hour, then remove the cover so it browns a little bit. The sauce is super thick to start but will loosen up as it bakes. There are a bunch of people in the family that don't like peppers and onions so I don't usually add them to the sauce, bake them in a small dish separately and then whoever wants them can add to the chicken and pasta - if everyone at your house likes peppers and onions though, the sauce tastes even better if you bake them all together. I've made it with broccoli and mushrooms which is also good - but I personally like the onions the best!) 

OMG this is so good - you guys are gonna love it!

Copycat Purple Drink

So Brooke loves to order the new "purple drink" - why isn't there a catchier name haha? - at Starbucks so I thought I'd surprise her and see if I could figure out how to make something similar when she visited me the other day.  I found the ingredients they use online but no amounts or directions are given, so as always I just winged it - Brooke tasted my very first attempt and after sipping, thinking, sipping, thinking, I asked if it tastes like theirs and she said nope, it's better. Yay! We did tinker with it a little bit to try to get it exactly like theirs but I kept thinking "why are we working to make it taste not as good?" LOL. We got close to the original by adding more tea and sweetener, but I liked my first batch and am sharing that recipe with you :)

ingredients:
.Tazo passion tea - I steeped 4 teabags in 2 quarts of hot water for a couple hours on the counter. Remove teabags and refrigerate until ready to use.
.vanilla soy milk
.blackberries
.vanilla coffee syrup - I couldn't find this at our grocery store so made it at home, see below for recipe.


directions:
In a shaker jar with tight lid I mixed equal parts tea (1/2 cup) and vanilla soy milk (1/2 cup). Add 1 or 2 tablespoons of the vanilla syrup and 4 blackberries. Shake to blend, the berries will break up a little. Serve over ice.

I found a recipe for vanilla coffee syrup here. I only made half of the recipe: boil 7 ounces of water with 3/4 cup white sugar and 1/4 cup brown sugar, and half of a vanilla bean if you have one (if you don't that's ok, just add another teaspoon of vanilla extract after boiling). Boil for about 5 minutes, remove from heat and add 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract (2 if you didn't use vanilla bean). Let it cool before using in the drink recipe, refrigerate the rest. Note I have been using this in my coffee all week even though I finally broke my creamer/splenda habit and have been drinking my coffee black for a couple months now - but it's really good and I can't resist using the syrup!

here she is sipping and thinking, sipping and thinking...such a cutie.

Candy Bouquet

Brooke and I made this candy bouquet to take the birthday party last weekend (see here for the desserts we made) - it's a pretty easy project and makes a great, fun gift or centerpiece.

I found this flower pot at a dollar store, you want the container to be weighted or else it will tip over when you put the candy in it. I bought a small piece of floral foam that fit in the pot but you can fill it with whatever you can find that will hold the candy in place. Next time I will tape the foam down (criss cross tape across the top of foam and stick to the edge of the container), when I started adding the candy the foam wanted to pop out - I just kept shoving it back in and eventually it held. Cut up small squares (maybe 4" or so, does not have to be perfect cuz you're scrunching them up) of tissue paper, I sort of folded them and bunched them up so they are ruffly, and attach them to the foam around the edge of the pot. Note: I burned my finger bad doing this so be careful! I still have a blister on the whole top of my index finger - my advice is to use a skewer or something other than your finger to press the tissue squares in place!

Next attach the candy to bamboo skewers with clear packing tape - note for the rolos we just stuck individual ones onto the tip of the skewer. Place the largest candy in first -  this is just like if you're flower arranging, put in the green cover that covers the foam, add the eye-catching large blooms, then the medium flowers, and last fill in with the small filler - followed by the medium sized candy in wrappers and lastly I filled in with the shooty rolos. Isn't it cute?

Citrus Pesto

I'm not a fan of making videos of myself but am going to try to do them more often to make it easier to show you some of our projects - watch this one to see how to make a pesto that we love.

Citrus Pesto:

1 bunch basil leaves (about 3 cups)
1/2 cup toasted pine nuts
1 garlic clove
grated zest and juice of 1 lemon, and 1 orange
1/2 teaspoon each salt and pepper
1/2 cup olive oil (or to taste)
1 cup grated parmesan

Blend the 1st 7 ingredients in a food processor. Stream in oil until creamy. Stir in parmesan.

Lots of uses for pesto - one of our favorites is to combine it with 1 lb of cooked pasta and 1/2 cup of the water you cooked the pasta in.

This recipe came from "Everyday Pasta" by Giada DeLaurentis

2020 update: I make this all the time and we love it. I have no idea why this post mentions a video of me making pesto - there's no video here? Hmmmm....whatever, just follow the recipe - you don't need a video, it's super easy. And I promise this is delish!

Birthday Dessert Assortment

Went to a birthday dinner the other night and was assigned dessert :) The birthday boy doesn't like cake so I decided to make mini ice cream sandwiches and mini banana cream pies. Both are super simple:

For the bite-sized ice cream sandwiches Brooke and I made basic chocolate chip cookies following the recipe on the back of the chip bag, but we substituted 1 cup of m&ms for 1 cup of the chocolate chips just to be different. I had what I thought was a super good idea to make one giant ice cream cookie sandwich so split the cookie dough in half and put each in a large round baking pan and baked until done. I will keep working on this idea in the future but this time it didn't work the way I envisioned - each half was too thick to make into a sandwich (well Dave didn't think it was too thick, but he would enjoy eating a super thick sweet cookie sandwich LOL, for me it would have been way too much cookie).

I almost gave up on the idea and just served the giant cookies without making a sandwich, but then figured I'd attempt to make mini bite size sandwiches first. So I put mini cupcake liners in a small cupcake pan, then using a small round cookie cutter I cut out circles of the baked cookie and put in the bottom of the liner. Scoop a small bit of softened vanilla ice cream on top and then finish with another small circle of cookie. Freeze until ready to eat (obviously).  Turned out good and everyone loved them.

For the banana cream pies: first I baked the pie crust blind (that means without filling in them). Roll out premade pie dough and cut with a small 2" circle cutter, gently press into a mini cupcake pie (I've done this part before, click here for that post). When you bake crust without filling in it the dough will want to puff up so you need to weigh it down - they sell pie weights for this exact reason but I do not have any, an easy substitute is to weigh it down with dried beans. But I didn't have any of those either so I went online to see if I could find other substitute ideas - there were a few suggestions (rice and popcorn are the 2 I remember seeing, but doesn't baking popcorn seem like a mess waiting to happen?) and I went with trying dry rice. It worked really good, you just have to make sure to get all of the rice out after the crust has been baked - pretty sure baked in rice isn't going to taste good! I just used the edge of a small spoon handle to lightly scrap the rice out. Not the perfect scenario but it worked and the dough didn't puff up.

For the filling I just made banana pudding using 1 1/2 cups of milk, let it set up and then added chopped banana and using my small cookie scoop filled the pie crust with the pudding. Top with either a little piece of banana or cool whip.

In case those 2 things weren't enough Brooke made brownies that turned out so good - I think the secret was she put them in cupcake liners to bake, love that idea, and they got rave reviews!

Easy and delicious :)