CHEFS

I have found the trick to getting my girls to try something new at dinner without throwing a HUGE fit!! The trick is to have them HELP cook! Sounds simple right? Well, it is. As stated in my previous post - my girls are obsessed with cooking lately. We've been recording the 10 Dollar Dinners show on Food Network. The host is the recent winner of The Next Food Network Star. We like her at our house & are loving her new show. We've tried two of her meals now & have been happy. The first one we tried was her North African Meatballs with Couscous & Glazed Carrots. I've never even heard of Couscous before! So, this was a stretch for us. The girls were so excited to help & were actually a huge help to me!

Here's the girls hamming it up.... Kylie's making her studeous chef face & Jadyn's actually just laughing! (And yes, I made them cook in their PJ's.)

Here's the finished product....

I would highly suggest this meal. It had a bit of a bite to it which I loved. It was yummy & very good for us to try something out of our element!

I did omit a coupe of things from the recipe though if you try it out. Obviously, I don't keep wine around my house, so I just didn't use that part. It still turned out great I think. Also, if you're not a fan of spicy things I'd use maybe half the amount of red pepper. (We used the full amount.) I also didn't use the dried dates in the Couscous & it ws just fine.

Jadyn even asked for seconds! Erik wasn't the biggest fan, but he doesn't care for beef much anymore. I tell ya - this diabetic apetite is gonna kill me. He doesn't like anything anymore. Oh well! At least it's under control.

Last night we tried her Chicken a l'Orange & it was pretty darn good! Check out her site for some good recipes.....

10 DOLLAR DINNERS

BON APETIT!!

FIRSTS

This post is late in so many ways!! And contains two very non-related topics, but here it is....

Last weekend was the first time I was able to meet my newest nephew! Little Memphis D Hallows was born on July 29th weighing in at 8 lbs 5 oz. Congrats to Rennie - oh & Luke :) - on the newest addition to their darling family!

I was waiting on pins & needles for this little guy to show up. And he was just as cute as expected. As his mom would say, "He's a little Dude!" And he is! Here's a pic of Kylie holding him...

As stated above his name is Memphis. I've told his mom for months that his middle name needs to be Raines. But, she didn't go for it. I, however, will still be calling him Memphis Raines! :) (It's the name of Nicholas Cage's character in Gone in Sixty Seconds & is one of my favorite movies!)

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We had another first just a few days later. For the first time EVER I allowed my girls to make cookies all by themselves. Sure, it was no bake cookies, but still a test of my patience since I'm a control freak. I really did nothing but stand in the background & make sure they were measuring correctly & not burning themselves on the stove top.

Here's the final product...

They did so well!! They were just divine & didn't last long! My girls are obsessed with cooking lately (thanks to the Food Network shows we watch). They're always wanting to cook & I figured this would be something easy to start with. We'll see what they can graduate to later on. For now, this was great!

BOUNTIFUL BASKETS

Thanks to my lovely sister-in-law Rennie I just found out about this. Maybe this is old news, but I'm sharing it anyway. There's a great program out there called BOUNTIFUL BASKETS. This past weekend was my 2nd time participating. (There was a couple of weekends that I was out of town.) You pay $15 for a basket full of "goodies". Half the basket is fruit & half the basket is veggies. You never know what you're going to get. Which makes it kind of fun! The above picture is what I got this week. Here's a list of what I got...

1 head of romaine lettuce
1 bunch of spinach
2 heads of broccoli
1 bunch of green onions
1 bunch of raddishes
1 bunch of celery
7 bananas
1 carton of grape tomatoes
1 carton of strawberries
2 cartons of raspberries
8 pears
11 peaches

The first time I participated I got nectarines, cherries, a bag of potatoes, bananas, plums, a bag of carrots, celery, white onions, lettuce, etc...

I am amazed at what I get for $15! You can also add some "extras" to your order. Such as bread - which I pass on. :) The first time I placed an order I ordered an extra box of cherries & an extra box of nectarines. I canned the nectarines & froze the cherries. Every week something different is offered. This is my new favorite thing!! Make sure to check it out (if you live in AZ or UT)....
bountifulbaskets.org

ENABLERS

This is my SIL Rennie....

(Please ignore my ugliness in this picture. This was from when we were in Hawaii almost 2 years ago & we waisted no time on getting ready. We were too busy playing!!) I love her dearly, but she is an enabler in my life. Even though she doesn't know it! She always makes the most delectable quick treats. She always has quick, easy, kid-friendly recipes that I usually salivate at until I try. As I've mentioned before she made the best recipe books for all the girls for Christmas. Luckily for me, it had the yummiest caramel corn recipe in it. She's made it for us before & we craved it afterwards. Little does she know that it's created a monster at our house!! We eat this stuff up! It's so easy & YUMMY - you gotta try it! Thanks again Ren!! My thighs & lack of willpower love you for it! :)

SOFT CARAMEL CORN

Ingredients

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cube of butter

1/2 cup corn syrup

1/2 can of sweetened condensed milk
**This is actually half of the original recipe. This makes enough to cover 3 batches of popcorn popped with an air popper.

Instructions

1. Mix sugar, butter & corn syrup in a saucepan & bring to a boil. Once boiling stir constantly for 2 min.

2. Add condensed milk to mixture & bring to a boil. Once boiling reduce to low heat & stir constantly for 2 1/2 minutes.

3. Pour over popcorn & fold until evenly coated. ENJOY!!

Then there's my SIL Ruth (who I sadly enough couldn't find a picture of) who is an amazing cook! She just recently shared this recipe with me that she found on the internet. These muffins really are the best! And keep in mind that I hate bread, but love these! (Yes, I don't like bread. And yes, I know it's weird!)

THE BEST BLUEBERRY MUFFINS

**If buttermilk is unavailable, substitute 3/4 cup plain whole-milk or low-fat yogurt thinned with 1/4 cup milk.

Ingredients

Streusel Topping

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

3 tablespoons dark brown sugar

Pinch table salt

1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour

5 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted and warm

Muffins

2 cups fresh blueberries (about 10 ounces), picked over

1 1/8 cups sugar (8 ounces) plus 1 teaspoon

2 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon table salt

2 large eggs

4 tablespoons unsalted butter , melted and cooled slightly (1/2 stick)

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 cup buttermilk (**see note)

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions

1. FOR THE TOPPING: Stir together sugar, brown sugar, salt, and flour in small bowl until combined. Drizzle with warm butter and toss with fork until evenly moistened and mixture forms large chunks with some pea-sized pieces throughout. Set aside.

2. FOR THE MUFFINS: Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and heat oven to 425 degrees. Spray standard muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray. Bring 1 cup blueberries and 1 teaspoon sugar to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Cook, mashing berries with spoon several times and stirring frequently, until berries have broken down and mixture is thickened and reduced to ¼ cup, about 6 minutes. Transfer to small bowl and cool to room temperature, 10 to 15 minutes.

3. Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl. Whisk remaining 11/8 cups sugar and eggs together in medium bowl until thick and homogeneous, about 45 seconds. Slowly whisk in butter and oil until combined. Whisk in buttermilk and vanilla until combined. Using rubber spatula, fold egg mixture and remaining cup blueberries into flour mixture until just moistened. (Batter will be very lumpy with few spots of dry flour; do not overmix.)

4. Using an ice cream scoop or large spoon to divide batter equally among prepared muffin cups (batter should completely fill cups and mound slightly). Spoon teaspoon of cooked berry mixture into center of each mound of batter. Using chopstick or skewer, gently swirl berry filling into batter using figure-eight motion. Sprinkle streusel topping evenly over muffins.

5. Bake until muffin tops are golden and just firm, 17 to 19 minutes, rotating muffin tin from front to back halfway through baking time. Cool muffins in muffin tin for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack and cool 5 minutes before serving.

DINNER

OK - I've said this before, but felt like saying it again. I HATE DINNER!!! I'm having major struggles trying to figure out what to feed my family for the next couple of days. I have just spent 2 hours looking on recipe blogs & have come up empty. UGH!! Anyone out there have any good recipe sites? If so, please send them my way!!

Also, I just washed our Summer Movie Fun passes. Yeehaw! That means I yet again win the Mother of the Year Award as my kids are EXTREMELY upset at me right now for that. Anyone have any extras, by chance?

SAUSAGE TACOS

The other night I made tacos for dinner. We sat down to eat away! My girls love tacos & were content. Erik started eating a little after us because he had to take his pill, etc. Erik starts eating when the girls & I are almost done with our first taco. He stops & looks at his taco & asks, "Is this sausage?" WHAT??!! Apparently the ground meat I pulled out of the freezer to use was sausage & I didn't even notice! Yeah - again - I'm the world's greatest mom/wife!!

MISC.

In an effort to get things all caught up here's a post about a lot things....


Poor Kylie had a field trip on Feb. 26th to the Goldfield Ghost Town. I was scheduled to be a chaperone & was quite excited for it. It sounded like a fun place. Kylie was sick the day before & stayed home from school with a fever of 101. She ended up missing the field trip because she had a fever of 102 that morning. I felt so bad for her. She was so sad to miss the one field trip for the whole year. The next day, Friday, was field day at school. She missed this as well due to being sick. As well as it being the last week with her teacher due to the fact that she was leaving to have a baby. It was just a bad week for her. She was sick all weekend & went back to school finally the next Monday. POOR KID!!


Jadyn participated in field day though & had quite the fun time. She even won some awards for some of the events...
3rd Place for the Javelin
1st Place for the Sack Race
1st Place for the Softball Throw


That night while eating pizza Jadyn lost her second tooth...


The next day we went out as a family. We went to my favorite restaurant - CHEESECAKE FACTORY!! Love that place! Look at this salad - YUM....

TOMATOES

What would you do if you all of a sudden inherited 3 cases of tomatoes? As for me, I've been making salse & canning away! Mimi called me on Friday & said they had cases of tomatoes & to come get some if I wanted some. So, you know I did! I got 3 cases & out of those 3 cases I ended up with a little over 2 that were good enough to use. This is how much it made....

8 quart jars
24 pint jars
3 frozen quart bags of puree
& 1 1st degree burn on my middle finger YIPEE!!

Not too shabby for $21. I spent roughly $5 on some other ingredients & $16 on some more jars. After some hours on Saturday & many hours today - I'm happy to say I'm done!!! I'm beyond tired from standing on my feet for most of the day. But, hey - I now have a year supply of salsa on hand - WOOHOO!! Livin La Vida Loca!!

CAKES

At my house we are big fans of the show ACE OF CAKES. The stuff this company can do is incredible! So, we thought we'd try to make our own fun cake today. Keep in mind, however, that we have NEVER done anything like this before. I've never even made fondant before. But, thank goodness for the internet. I was able to find an easy recipe & instructions. Here's some pics of our adventure...
First, here's us kneading the fondant:

Next, is the smoothing, adding the coloring & creating:

Then, is the finished product. I made four sections on the cake, so everyone had their own space. Erik put a person on his. I tried to put a paisley design on mine with out something to look at & it DID NOT work. It ended up looking like a weird fish with polka dots around it. Kylie made the earth & a sun (that looked more like a flower) along with the letters of her name around it. Jadyn made the earth, sun & a star...

Finally, the best part. EATING IT!! It actually wasn't too bad. Most importantly, we had a lot of fun doing it.

I made a new meal tonight that is blog worthy. So, I'm going to follow in my sister Allison's footsteps & blog about my dinner. I found this recipe on Marth Stewart & it has no meat, too!

MEXICAN LASAGNA

I just mixed it up a bit. I doubled the beans & did half of the spinach. (I bought a pre-packaged bag that was 9 oz. & used half of it & it was plenty.) It was actually VERY GOOD! It earned a spot into our rotations.


Then, we topped it off with this beauty:
(Don't be a wimp - just try it!!)

1: Get fresh strawberries...
2: Dip the strawberries in sour cream...(Yes, sour cream)
3: Then dip in brown sugar...
4: Pop it in your mouth & enjoy!! YUMM!!