December Recipes 1 & 2

I did it! I tried two new recipes already since my last post - woot woot!  I had a glass of wine with my dinner this evening to celebrate.  Both recipes are from my edition of "The Woman's Day Everyday Cookbook"


Recipe 1:  Shrimp with Potatoes & Feta

We had some potatoes kicking around and up to no good.  I was able to use them up before they went bad and turn them into something tasty with this very easy recipe.

Recipe 2:  Shepherd's Pie

The shepherd's pie recipe was on the page next to the shrimp with potatoes & feta recipe.  I call that destiny.  That and the fact that we had almost all of the ingredients already made it a very easy experiment.

Honestly, I have always avoided shepherd's pie since it just looks like a mash up of different things.  Although I am still not a raving fan of this dish, it was pretty easy to compile and covered many essential food groups in one nice swoop.

My December recipes mark the completion of my 30/30 List Item to "Learn to cook 2 new recipes each month for one year."  An upcoming post will be a compilation of my efforts in the kitchen with some reviews from my loving Hubs.


Cheers to trying new things!

November Recipes 1 & 2

It's mid-December so I figured I better update you that I did in fact try 2 new recipes last month.

1.  Roasted Shrimp with Spaghetti Squash

Spaghetti squash was on display at the entrance of our grocery store so I figured - why not?  It was seasonal, easy, and healthy.

The shrimp recipe was kind of meh tasting overall.  I think I will serve spaghetti squash with marinara sauce and/or meatballs should I decide to make this in the future.

2.  Summer Squash Casserole

Recipe 2 hailed from a dish that Hubs first tried at work.  He brought the recipe home and asked if we could make it for Thanksgiving as a side dish.  I made it for both Thanksgiving dinners that we attended.  It was pretty yummy.

Unfortunately I didn't take any photos to remember this one.

Here are the cliff notes for my memory:  summer squash, cream of mushroom soup, cheese, carrots, and sour cream.

Since this recipe calls for summer squash, I think it would probably taste a little better when summer squash is in season as opposed to the summer squash that I was able to find in the grocery store in mid-November.

 So, uh, hi December 15th...Guess I better get crackin' on the December recipes!

Homemade LOL Cat Photo Calendar

Every year my siblings and I draw names for a Christmas gift exchange.  This year I wanted to do something special for my little sister.  My little sister is off to the Peace Corps in early 2014 and she loves cats.  I wanted to give her something that would be useful and light-hearted so I looked no further than my cat Wronny and my go-to online photo publisher, Shutterfly.

I had a lot of fun making this calendar.  Below is a step by step guide of how you too can create something fun with pictures from your pet.

Step 1:  Gather some existing pictures of your pet and organize them into categories that align with a calendar.  Do you have a Christmas-y picture?  Or a nice picture of your pet in the foliage?  These can be good anchor photos to get you started thinking of pictures for certain seasons of the year.  It is also helpful to incorporate some of your favorite photos of your pet.  You may decide that you will need to take some new pictures of your pet in both natural and posed settings.

Step 2:  Research LOL cat captions or come up with some of your own!  Be creative and let loose!  Get comfortable with poor grammar and spelling and turning your s's into z's.

Step 3: Find an online photo editor to use to modify your images, play with photo filters, and add your text captions.  I used fotoflexer.com.  I highly recommend this site.  It was very easy to use, offered several photo filters and numerous text font options.

Step 4:  Upload your final edited photos to Shutterfly, choose a calendar template, organize by month, and purchase!

Here is my final product.  Drumroll please...

January 2014

February 2014

March 2014

April 2014

May 2014

June 2014

July 2014

August 2014

September 2014

October 2014

November 2014

December 2014

Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart

Happy November!!

It's time to bring out the "Give Thanks Jar" that I created last year.  It's become our November tradition and it's a great way to celebrate a season of gratitude.

Hubs and I keep this jar on the kitchen table and each night we record one thing that we are thankful for the whole month of November.  On December 1st we'll pour a glass of wine and read through our thankful notes together.

Cheers to giving thanks with a grateful heart!

October Recipes 1 & 2

Hello November!!  Chillier air and shorter days are here!

Recipe 1:  Vegetable Soup with Barley

I was inspired to dig out the crock pot for this one.  This meal fed us for at least 3 meals and then some.  And by "and-then-some" I mean there are at least 4 more servings currently residing in our freezer for later use.  Hooray for leftovers!

Recipe 2:  Kaposztas Kocka aka Hungarian Noodles with Cabbage

Digging deep into family culture here.  I'm 1/4 Hungarian and wishing I knew more about the culture, food, language, etc.  There is a Hungarian restaurant that I have been to where they serve delicious noodles as a side dish to your meal.  I found this recipe in a cookbook at my moms house.  I probably didn't do the recipe any justice because I ended up chopping the cabbage instead of shredding it.

It tasted about as good as it looked....kind of "eh" tasting

Going to have to go out to eat to fix that craving!

5 Dollar File Cabinet

Recommendation:  Try singing the title of this post to the Subway $5 foot long theme song to set the mood.

Our files have been out of control lately.  Between getting married, buying a house, paying bills, and just generally wanting to keep certain papers for record, things were getting crazy around here.

I had been using a plastic file box from my college years which was exploding with papers.  All the exploding papers made me less apt to file items as they came up and I began to acquire a stack of papers to file.  A stack of papers grew into 2 stacks of papers and so forth…

I had searched for solutions to my file problem online and found that new file cabinets can cost anywhere from $100-300+….Way too much money for some let’s-face-it-UGLY file storage.

Then I stumbled upon a $5 file cabinet at Goodwill.

Inspired by DIY-ers before me, I jumped on this $5 opportunity.

Steps to file cabinet rehabilitation:

1.       Sand current state filing cabinet

Focus on sanding down any scratched areas, rusted areas, or areas missing paint.

2.       Wipe down file cabinet

First, wipe down all sanded material with a dry cloth.  Then wipe down with soapy water to prep for painting.

3.       Prime file cabinet

You may be able to skip this step based upon the color you are going to be painting over.  Because I transformed a black file cabinet to a white file cabinet, primer was essential. 

I recommend watching YouTube videos about how to use spray paint before jumping in.  I jumped in with no prior spray paint experience and I ended up with some drips in my primer that I sanded down later.

4.       Paint file cabinet

I recommend doing this in a well-ventilated area, preferably outdoors.  I also recommend purchasing a mask.  I did not have a mask.  I found myself spraying and running to take breaths of fresh air.  It wasn’t optimal.

5.       Assemble drawer inserts

I wanted to defer to Hubs for this but he insisted that I try using some mechanical aptitude.  I was able to assemble them on my own after all…imagine that!

6.       Re-organize your life!

I have so much extra space in my file cabinet!  I love it!  I know I’ll be more organized moving forward with this filing system!

The total cost for this rehabilitation was $42.  This is my estimated breakdown of cost:

File Cabinet	$5
2 Cans of Spray Paint Primer	$7
2 Cans of Spray Paint	$7
Sandpaper	$3
File hanging drawer inserts	$20
Total	$42

 

September Recipes 1 & 2

Happy fall blog world! September is officially winding down and October is a night's sleep away!

Recipe 1:  Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

September started out with a continued abundance of tomatoes from our veggie garden.  To use up masses of homegrown tomatoes I made homemade spaghetti sauce for the first time ever.  I used a very basic recipe I found online.  The whole process probably took less than 1 hour.  I'm sure there are more flavorful recipes out there in which you simmer tomatoes all day but, ain't nobody got time for that!

I served the spaghetti sauce over "homemade" noodles purchased from the grocery store and I topped the sauce with some not-so-homemade meatballs.  Add some toasted french bread, a glass of red wine and enjoy!

 

Recipe 2:  Scalloped Potatoes & Ham

There is something about the autumn season that beckons potatoes for dinner.  For me, scalloped potatoes are a hearty, homey meal.

I estimate that I began preparing this meal around 6:30pm after returning from a 9+hour day in the office.  An hour later I finished peeling the potatoes.  Next, I had my first ever onion induced cry as I diced onions.  Finally, it was time to put dinner in the oven...only to discover that it was going to take 2 hours to cook.

With 2 hours until dinner time I raced to put ingredients in the bread maker and set it for the quickest setting.  Nothing like warm homemade bread with melted butter to pair with this meal!

At 9:45pm, Hubs and I sat down for dinner.  Late dinner was memorable and delicious.  This meal also fed us all week.  Note to self:  Don't peel half as many potatoes next time!!!

Yarn Wreath with Felt Flowers

A few weeks ago I stumbled upon a yarn wreath online.  I wanted to replicate it as fall decor for the front door of our house.

The photo that I saw online actually came from a blog post where the original creator details the "how-to" details much better than I ever could.  Please visit the original creator's blog for all of the how-to details.

The online inspiration

My final product:

 What do you think?

Color Running!

A few weeks ago I saw an advertisement for a Color Vibe race in Vermont.  At first I brushed it off a little.  I didn’t think I was ready.  I totally fell off the bandwagon for my running group.

Also, I saw the advertisement two weeks before the day of the race.  Could I really get back in shape in 2 weeks?

I put the invitation out to a few of my friends to see if I could get any buy in to give me some extra motivation.   All 3 of the friends I asked had interested in doing a color run.  However, only one was able to register and sign up to participate.  I was so happy to have someone onboard with me for the race!

With a friend signed up to run with me, I kicked it into high gear and got out running.  I set my alarm for 5am and got outside and moving almost every morning before the race.

Here is what 5am looks like around here:

Despite the initial “Oh-my-gosh-it’s-5am” feeling, it does feel really good to get up and start moving.  I found that it set the tone for the day.   (Now if I could only keep this up!)

Here were my expectations for the race:

1.       Have fun

2.       Get some color

3.       Catch up with an old friend

All expectations were met.  I had a good time!

The night before the race I was able to pick up my registration packet which included my t-shirt, color packets, sunglasses, and registration bib.  When I picked up these items it became clear that this race was not competitive at all. The bib numbers weren’t matched up to names and there was no tear away piece for the finish line.  Clearly the goal of a color vibe race is to simply have FUN.

Upon arriving at the race a zumba instructor was getting the runners warmed up with some fun tunes.  A DJ then took over and began to release waves of runners every 4 minutes or so.

The course followed a golf course around a few holes, went into the woods for a bit, and then popped back out in a field for a long straight away to the finish line.

Every so often on the route there were packs of volunteers dousing runners with color.  The color stations were fairly evenly spaced throughout the race.  It is impossible to run through them without getting color.

Before:

During:

After:

I would definitely recommend this race to anyone looking to have some fun.  You don’t need to be overly athletic to participate. Many groups were walking or walk/jogging through the race.

I do recommend purchasing extra color packets.  My friend and I carried packets with us and sprinkled runners that we ran past.  It was a little extra motivation for runners that we were passing and a little extra fun for us.

Cheers to a 30/30 accomplishment and a great day of fun with a good friend!

August Recipes 1 & 2 and EXTRA!

We have had a bountiful harvest from our little raised veggie garden this year.  Our tomato plants have done wonderfully.  We’ve harvested 26 tomatoes from our 2 tomato plants so far.  There are many more green tomatoes in the works. 

I focused on tomato based recipes to use up some of the delicious harvest.  YUM!

Recipe 1:  Fried Green Tomatoes

This recipe required a special trip to the grocery store to purchase cornmeal.  I didn’t use nearly as much oil as the recipes called for and the result was still delicious.

Making these made me want to watch the movie Fried Green Tomatoes.  If you haven’t seen this one you should check it out.  It's a great story about friendship.  A classic in my book.

Also noteworthy, I served this meal with iced sweet tea.  So southern of me!

Recipe 2:  Green Tomato Pizza

Throw some green tomatoes on your pizza crust, sprinkle them with salt and pepper.  Add caramelized onions and top with mozzarella cheese.  So good!

Green tomatoes taste different then red tomatoes.  They have a little more bite.  I like eating them green.  Who knew?

EXTRA:  Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

August was our month for hosting a dinner meal with our friends.  We have had some frozen rhubarb from Hubs sister’s garden and I was curious to try strawberry rhubarb pie.  I had never had it before.  This pie was a HUGE hit.  And by huge I mean everyone had two slices the night that I served it.  It was completely gone within 2 days of baking it. 

I think I discovered my favorite kind of pie! Next time I may try making a fancier top pie crust.  I’d like to try weaving or cutting out shapes to make it look a little more special.

Cheers to September and another month of kitchen experiments!