Spaghetti Squash au Gratin

OMG. Best way to get your veggies, ever! I ate half of a fairly large spaghetti squash tonight...

I was running a bit short on time and didn't do the onions, red peppers, or thyme - just added a couple tablespoons of margarine and the sour cream and cheese. The top got nicely brown and it tasted amazing. Definitely pintastic - this will probably be the only way I make spaghetti squash from now on!

http://dandydishes.blogspot.ca/2011/10/spaghetti-squash-au-gratin.html#.UGj-K5hJJmw

Baked Apples with Oatmeal Streusel Topping

This is basically a lazy man (or woman)'s apple crisp, and I love it! So much faster than peeling and slicing apples, and it has another advantage of being healthier, since you're eating the skin and there's no sugary coating on the apples themselves - just some sugar in the streusel. And it was T-A-S-T-Y! And pintastic, of course :)

http://nonrecipe.blogspot.ca/2012/03/baked-apples-with-oatmeal-streusel.html

Sensory Bags for Babies

So, I have lots of ideas for my own versions of these to make, but I started with a basic ocean squish bag. 

Here is the one I made:

I bought the plastic sea creatures from a dollar store, and used food coloring to dye some clear hair gel blue. Then I used blue duct tape around the edges (to seal the top and frame it) and put duct tape across the back to make it a bit less flexible, so it can be squished from the front still but not balled up. I like how it turned out for the most part; I just wish I had used a bit less food coloring, as it is darker than it looks in this picture, and dyed the sea creatures blue as well. Right now my son is more interested in gumming it than anything else, so we may need to wait until his bout of teething ends to get his verdict, but overall I'd say this idea is pintastic! Here is a link to the original pinned website: http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2012/07/fun-with-sensory-bags.html

Mocha Iced Coffee Recipe

Bow down to me fellow Mommas, for I am reviewing our first coffee pin. You're welcome.
I found this pin with a super simple recipe for a Iced Mocha.

The long version of the recipe has you add a hot chocolate packet with coffee, sugar, and creamer, whiz it around in your blender, and pour it over ice. I tossed in a few white chocolate chips too and used Vanilla Coconut Milk instead of creamer. I blended it up the first time I made it and it was delish!

The second time I made it, I decided I didn't have time to pull out extra appliances. A blender? Really? Unless I was planning to add ice and make it a Frapp, I had no need for the blender. A plain ol' spoon will do the trick. I wanted hot coffee too since it's fall now and warm coffee make me smile. I tossed a few white chocolate chips into the bottom of my mug, added a whole pack of hot chocolate mix, and added my normal amount of coffee (We have a Keurig and I just brewed what I usually do). I skipped adding sugar since I was adding a whole packet of chocolate. I didn't notice a difference. Then I added my normal amount of milk, swirled with a spoon, and got my happy on.

The "easy" way of making it is definitely faster and has less clean up (win!), but it does leave some chocolate chip residue in the bottom of your mug. I was okay with that. It melted enough to add a taste to my coffee even without blending it.

This has changed my coffee drinking life. I've had more hot chocolate/coffee in the past week than I should probably admit, but it's cool. I'm a mom. Coffee is my fuel.

-AM

Copy Cat Zupa's Wisconsin Cauliflower Soup

I love Zupas.  Love love love them.  Honestly I could probably eat their soup every day (if I was rich and could afford to eat out every day).  I don't normally put much trust in copy cat recipes, but I have been craving good soup for a while now so I decided to give this recipe a shot.

Click here for the original recipe

I have a tendency to alter recipes as I go.  Since I was reviewing this recipe I tried to stick to the recipe as closely as possible, but some changes were still made.  First I started out with 3 Tb. of butter instead of two.  I felt like two was going to disappear really quickly when I added the onions.  When I added my diced onions to the pan, I knew that 3 Tb. was much better.

The part of the recipe that I had an issue with was the adding flour and salt.  The original recipe says to let this cook for two minutes.  1/4 cup of flour added to 3 Tb. of butter and onions is sucked up really quickly.  If you wanted to make a thinner roux (which I'm assuming the recipe was trying to achieve at this point) you would only add a tablespoon or so of flour before adding more liquids.  So if you wanted to more closely follow the recipe I would suggest flour then liquid and repeat until you're out of flour.  I added all of the flour, whisked it around and then added some of my milk.  

I did straight milk instead of water because I wanted my soup to be creamy and thick.  After adding all of the liquids, I added the cauliflower as directed.  I let the cauliflower reach a boil and then turned it down.  I simmered mine for closer to fifteen minutes.  I wanted it to be pretty soft when I threw it in my food processor.  

After processing the soup (I did mine in two batches, but my food processor is pretty large), I added it all back to the pan.  At this point I added a lot more salt, some pepper, the mustard, and my cheeses (I did 1 1/2 of pepper jack and 1/2 cup of extra sharp cheddar to start).  After letting it cook for a minute (so yeah I ignored that part of the recipe too) I added more salt and another 1/2 cup of extra sharp cheddar.

The end result was a tasty soup.  Was it as good as Zupas?  Not even close.  But it was a good homemade soup.  Personally I would have added another cup of cheese, but my family isn't as cheese happy as me.  I added some to my bowl though and it was quite tasty.  Before I try this again, I might visit Zupas and try to figure out what flavors I'm missing.  Like I said, this is a good cauliflower soup and it's pretty simple to make.  But if you're expecting it to taste like Zupa's cauliflower soup, I think you'll be disappointed.  

-KP

Hamburger Cupcakes and Sugar Cookie Fries

A few days before our Labor Day cookout, I decided to search Pinterest for a fun dessert. I found this pin that linked to this blog with a super fun cupcake idea. The basic idea was to make cupcakes, cut them in half, put a brownie as a burger and then jazz it up with some colored "ketchup" and "mustard" icing. It sounded easy enough and I was so excited to make a super cute dessert.

The first thing I did was make a batch of cupcakes with liners. I thought I'd be sneaky and do the "add a diet soda to cake mix" trick that's floating around pinterest too. I mean, I was putting a brownie in the middle of the cupcake... I had to 'skinny' them up somehow. I used a yellow cake mix and diet ginger ale. I always have a problem with my cupcakes (or muffins) sticking to the paper liners... and that caused a bit of a problem. I put a few in the fridge over night to see if that would help and left a few out. The ones I left out fared the best. Don't put them in the fridge. It didn't work and I had to toss out a few cupcakes.

So, now I had a couple "skinny" cupcakes to work with. (and the diet soda trick - Super Pintastic except for the sticking. It was so easy and you really couldn't taste a difference. I think it makes them more moist).

 

 

The next day I baked my brownies. You can do the diet coke trick here too, but I didn't since I've never tried it with brownies before and didn't know how it would change them. I didn't have a round cookie cutter, and found out that an Avent bottle cap made the perfect sized 'burgers.' Mom ingenuity at its best!



 

 

Here's where it got messy. I wanted to get a bunch of 'burgers' so I started punching holes right at the edge. Well, you know the nice, crunchy edge brownies get? It's not very good for cutting with a plastic bottle cap. Just start more in from the edge and you'll be fine. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough, but I did. As you can see, the most you could get would be about 14 burgers anyway, so my cupcake disaster didn't make a difference anyway. 

 

 

Now you'll have a bunch of extra brownie pieces left over. I'm sure you'll figure out something you can do with them... I'll wait while you stuff your face with them... Mmm.

 

 

I bought a box of sugar cookie mix and followed the direction on the blog to make roll out cookies. I didn't really have a problem with the fries at all. Mine expanded like she said they would. I just cut them in half again when they came out of the oven with a pizza cutter. Warning: The sugar cookie fries are addicting. You will eat a ton of them. Some will break or won't be perfect and you will have to dispose of them accordingly. Don't worry. I won't tell.

 

I decided to skip the "lettuce" icing and just stick with the "ketchup" and "mustard." It was really hard to find get a shade of red that didn't look pink, but it worked and everyone drooled over my adorable little burger cupcakes and fries. It fooled almost everyone.

"Burger and Fries" cupcakes and cookies

The verdict: These turned out super adorable and I got a lot of attention for making them (and who doesn't LOVE that!) so overall I would say they were Pintastic. The only problem was they took forever to make. I really didn't put it together that I would have to bake cupcakes, brownies, and cookies for two days. It was a lot of baking and then assembling. These would be great to take to party, but if you're HOSTING the party (like me), save some time and don't make these. You have more important things to worry about... you know, like the actual hamburgers.

 

 

-AM

 

 

 

Honey Cupcakes with Honey Cream Cheese Icing

Original Pin

When I was planning for a family party, I knew I wanted to make cupcakes, and I found these in a Pinterest search.  They looked and sounded delicious, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make them look as attractive as these pictured.  I tested my talents anyway, and the recipe turned out to be easy to follow, and the cupcakes were a hit at the party.

I actually doubled the recipe to get 24 cupcakes instead of 12, which still worked well.  I will say that it's important to follow the recipe - when combining the liquid and dry ingredients, it is important to end on the dry ingredients.  When you add the liquid ingredients, the batter becomes runny, but the dry ingredients makes it the right consistency again.




The cupcakes themselves were delicious, and the icing definitely kicked them up a notch.  The icing was easy to make, though I think if I had used the amount of confectioner's sugar that was called for in the recipe, it would have been too sweet.  I only used four cups instead of six (again, I doubled the recipe).  I will warn, however, if you are making the cup cakes a day or two ahead of time, plan to make the icing the day of.

I had kept the icing in the fridge over night, which caused the sugar to draw in a lot of moisture before I iced the cups.  I warmed the icing in my hands to try and keep it from getting too warm or falling over on the cup cakes. As the day went on, they went from being nice swirls to droopy.  You can see in the pictures to the right, this is about 30 minutes after icing them 24 hours after making the icing.  They were already starting to fall.



All in all, though, I found the recipe easy to follow, the cupcakes were absolutely delicious!  There is a perfect amount of honey flavoring, and they were very moist.

No Bake Energy Bites

http://richestoragsbydori.blogspot.ca/2012/03/no-bake-energy-bites.html

So, the first time I made these, I suddenly realized I was out of smooth peanut butter, after having mixed most of the ingredients already. So I used some chunky peanut butter that had been sitting in our pantry for a couple of years (my husband prefers it, but never thinks to use it). BAD IDEA. Did you know peanut butter can go rancid? And that it's even worse with chunky peanut butter, because the little chunks of peanut are rancid? Yeah, that batch went into the garbage...

The second time I made them, with fresh ingredients, they turned out fabulous. Healthy, tasty, and SO EASY! Plus, bonus for breastfeeding mothers - both oats and flax seed are supposed to help with milk supply. If you're not, don't worry, you're not going to suddenly start squirting milk ;)

Beer Crockpot Chicken

the picture from the website of the chicken...not so sure why it looks browned

I decided to menu plan for the next two weeks, as I have gone back to work and needed a way to make sure my husband had some food at some point! So this recipe made it onto my menu, simply as a result of it being uber easy to make! This morning while getting ready for work, I plopped L down in the living room with cartoons on (don't judge me...I only had 2 hours of sleep). Anywho, I started to pull out the ingredients for this recipe - 5 chicken breasts (frozen), some garlic powder, salt, pepper, basil, and beer (we used Sam Adams Octoberfest). I also added in some Frankie's Creole Seasoning (yummo - it makes its way onto many of our dishes). As I tried to pry the frozen chicken from it's styrofoam home (I mean seriously - could they make it even harder to get off that thing?) it kept sticking. So the chicken went in the microwave for a few minutes.

I finally got the chicken into the crockpot, added the spices and beer and set for 10 hours on low. It was 6 am and I would be home around 4 pm, and we would eat maybe around 530ish. So it worked out.

And it was great! This recipe will remain in our arsenal. I may try it with different types of beer and sodas even. Of course, I will update if I do :)

Go here for the recipe :)

<3 Kari

Slow Cooker Bacon-Wrapped Apple BBQ Chicken

I liked this chicken, but 8 hours is WAY too long. The BBQ sauce started to burn and we took it out early - can't remember exactly how long, but I'm sure it would only need 2-3 hours.
http://www.sixsistersstuff.com/2011/08/slow-cooker-bacon-wrapped-apple-bbq.html

"Sand" Pudding

Growing up, my amazing Aunt always made this dessert called Dirt Pudding. Us kids would literally fight over who could get the last bite and the seasoned older cousins knew to hit the dirt pudding first before your dinner so you'd have it before it was all gone.

When I needed to make a dessert for a Fourth of July Beach Party, I thought dirt pudding would be yummy until I found this super Pintastic variation called "Sand Pudding" It was basically the same concept as dirt pudding, alternating layers of pudding and crushed cookies, but instead of using Oreos to make dirt, you use vanilla wafers and just a few Oreos to add some black specks into the sand. Don't buy a whole bag of Oreos (unless you want them for later). I just got a snack pack of Oreos. I found them in the checkout line.

The only problem I ran into was my lack of a food processor. I hastily threw in a whole box of Vanilla Wafers into my blender and hit pulse. My little blender couldn't handle all of those cookies at one time, so if when I make this again, I'll split the box in half.

When I went to "pimp out my pudding" with cream cheese, vanilla pudding, and cool whip, I opted to use the reduced/low/no fat versions (as well as the Vanilla Wafers). Guess what, with all that powdered sugar in the mix, no one was the wiser anyway and I didn't feel one ounce of remorse when I went back for a second serving.

I got SO many complements on this dessert. Everyone wanted to know how I made the sand. I told all the little kids that I scooped it off the beach (until I realized this was freaking them out and then none of them would eat it). I let the adults in on the secret.

The directions split the up the pudding between two buckets, but I found that everything fit into one bucket. At 99 cents, it was great to take to the party and leave there for the littles to keep.

"Sand" Pudding