06/05

It's been a long day. Hmmmm I feel like just stopping there. :) I'll have fulfilled my daily blog commitment, right?

Here's an interesting tidbit:

I've been doing monthly meal plans for a few months now, and I love it! We save money, eat out less, eat healthier, and throw less food away! Win, win, win, and WIN!

These were on tonight's menu:

Baked Lump Crab Cakes with Red Pepper Chipotle Lime Sauce
http://www.skinnytaste.com/2010/04/baked-lump-crab-cakes-with-red-pepper.html

and
Baked Seasoned Fries with Skinny Garlic Aoili
http://www.skinnytaste.com/2011/02/baked-seasoned-fries-with-skinny-garlic.html

and
Sweet Corn on the cob.

YUM!!!! Everything was so yummy! My crab cakes looked nothing like the photo, but they were still good. :) My fries looked very similar to the photo and they were amazingly yummy!

Now I'm trying to remember if anything happened today that was especially noteworthy for any particular reason . . . OH! For the second time, Natalie helped hang up clean laundry on hangers! This is SUCH a HUGE help, and it makes her feel like she's SO BIG! I told Brad we need to make it a Sunday night tradition for everyone to help with laundry that I've washed over the past few days. Mollie's not too helpful yet. She tries - with washcloths. She holds them up like we do, then says "FOWD IT. FOWD IT. FOWD IT." While she attempts to fold it, and it's just about the sweetest thing you've ever seen. I pretty much died from the cuteness. Then she started stealing all the socks and tossing them in a corner. ;)

My First Fondant

I have always admired smooth fondant-covered cakes, and I am thinking of trying to make one for each of the girl's birthdays this year instead of buying them. It's so expensive to buy fondant cakes, and all I ever hear is that the fondant doesn't even taste good at all. So one of the crafty-mom blogs that I follow had a recipe for Marshmallow Fondant that is supposed to be easy AND tasty, so what better opportunity to practice a bit than Mother's Day?

Using some recipes I found online and the advice of a friend who has is a professional baker, I made a yellow cake with raspberry creme filling and covered it with white marshmallow fondant. I will just say that none of the steps were as hard as I thought they'd be, but there were a LOT of steps! I'll definitely only be attempting these again for special occasions! I would do it again, though! I was really proud of how mine turned out! It tasted good, and lots of people went back for seconds, so I think it's safe to call this cake a success!

Mashmallow Fondant Recipe: click here

Deeeeelicious Drip Beef

So after hearing lots of friends RAVE about The Pioneer Woman's "Drip Beef" (aka French Dip Sandwiches), I finally made it today. Oh my gosh, it is SO good. It was way better than I'd even imagined! Here is the recipe. I did as many others suggested, and used more of the juice from the peppers than it called for. I wasn't sure if I should use ALL the peppers AND ALL the juice, so I used the amount of peppers she suggested, then used about 3/4 of the juice in the jar. We ate it on toasted deli rolls with melted provolone cheese. Oh. My. Goodness. SO.GOOD. And so easy too!! Can't wait for the leftovers - hee hee! :)

Yummy Birthday Lunch

So here's my yummy snowed-in birthday lunch. Seriously THE easiest pasta sauce ever - it only has THREE ingredients! And it's SO good. I didn't even have the right tomatoes, but I wanted to give it a shot anyway. SO. GOOD. and SO. EASY. Yummmm!!!!

Here's the recipe: Tomato Sauce with Onion & Butter

Cake Balls

So Kim and I saw the recipe for these Cake Balls on Bakerella's blog, and we had to try them out for Thanksgiving. I'm sorry to say that ours did not turn out nearly as pretty as hers, but they did taste good. They are quite a bit of work, and we still haven't totally perfected the chocolate-dipping part. Our advice is to make sure the balls are VERY cold/almost frozen when you dip them, and make sure your chocolate bark is very hot and thin. It would probably be easiest if you could keep it warm in a fondue pot or small crockpot or something. And, if you are going to attempt them, definitely read through the comments and answers from Bakerella. There are lots of helpful hints there! :)

And here's a photo I love of Mollie. Looks like she's getting excited about having some cake balls. We're still working on cereal though. ;) Maybe next year!

Chocolate Cake

I just put this chocolate cake into the oven, and I'm so excited that I'm already going to post the recipe even though I haven't actually tasted it yet! I found the recipe a long time ago and have been planning to make it for Mother's Day. Sheila made it a couple of weeks ago and said that it was super yummy, so that makes me all the more anxious to have some! It really was easy since you start with a boxed cake mix and then add a ton of stuff to it. I'm using cool whip instead of buttercream frosting, since we're not huge fans of buttercream. Plus, a cold chocolate cake with cool whip frosting just sounds perfect for a warm day!

Here's a picture of my cake! It was really good, but I think ours was a bit overdone - definitely don't cook it too long - maybe take it out even if you think it might need a couple more minutes!

Mmm...Chicken Enchiladas

OK here's another recipe post. :) I found a new recipe blog - Kevin & Amanda's Recipes, and I made these Creamy Chicken Enchiladas for dinner and they are seriously the best enchiladas I've ever made and possibly ever eaten. They were actually really simple, too. I made a whole batch and instead of baking them all, I'm freezing half of them and freezing half of the cheese and cream separately so the tortillas don't get soggy. Oh, and I used a Colby/Jack shredded mix because I was too lazy today to grate the cheese myself and our Wal-Mart doesn't sell plain Monterey Jack already grated. They were still awesome, but I would probably prefer the plain Jack cheese if you have the energy to grate it (or if your store has it already shredded). :)


Here's a picture from her site (I didn't take pics of ours, but they actually looked exactly like this):

Japanese Mum's Chicken

I just made another great recipe from the The Busy Mom's Cookbook blog, and it was so good and really simple! It's Japanese Mum's Chicken, and here's the recipe. I didn't want to go to the store and had everything but the chili peppers, so I used a pinch of chili powder instead. Also, I cut up boneless skinless chicken breast into bite-sized pieces and only simmered for about 12 minutes instead of her 20. It was great!

Potato Soup

Well some kind of Susie Homemaker bug must have bitten me today because I made not one, but two meals from scratch! We had a really good potato soup recipe for dinner - you can check it out here if you're interested: http://busymomscookbook.blogspot.com/2009/04/quick-and-easy-potato-soup.html It was tempting to try because you don't have to cook, peel, or slice any potatoes - you use frozen hashbrowns! It was very yummy! Natalie agreed - she ate two whole bowls!