Monday, February 16, 2009

Candies!


I've had these candy molds since our wedding when I was naive and thought I could make a bunch for our wedding.. riiight. Needless to say I made some tonight just to see how they would turn out. Great first trial. I think next time Ill find some strawberry filling or raspberry. I had an assortment of chocolate, white chocolate, both, peanut butter, and a mix of all three! Super easy too!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Dinner With What I Had

Well I went to the store to get stuff to stock up our cabinets (ie: cornbread mix, mac n cheese, can goods, etc) Well I forgot to look to see what I wanted to make for dinner before I went to the store so I could get some special ingredients if needed. Needless to say, this is what dinner consisted of (green beans, chicken, spices, and Kraft Blue Box):


This meal turned out pretty well :) It wasn't like I could mess it up or something. I was a bit nervous because I had never made a pouch out of aluminum foil to cook meat in and I have a hug texture thing with my food. Esp, chicken. If it doesn't even look right I refuse to eat it. J could say it tastes amazing and I still wont touch it. I put lemon pepper, a tad of garlic salt and some lemon zest in the pouch and cooked it on 375 for about 45mins. I also put a little bit of brown sugar in our green beans and it was overall a good meal. J approved.



And this was the final meal. Minus the Mac N Cheese, I don't like it to touch anything else lol.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Farmer's Porkchops

Since J and I were off for two days together I wanted to make a meal we had never tried before. We were tired of chicken and beef recipes so we went with pork! I looked and looked through my recipe books and found this great recipe in Paula Dean's "The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook". I had never made a white sauce before and was terribly intimidated. I don't know why but I was. Any who this turned out to be a great meal & def. added to the list to make again.

Ingredients:
8 medium potatoes (I used red potatoes)
1/2 medium onion (I omitted this, we hate onions)
Salt & pepper, to taste
White sauce (see recipe below)
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp Lawry's Seasoned Salt
8 center-cut pork chops, about 1/2 inch thick (We used 4)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
White Sauce:
8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 to 2 tsp salt
1/2 to 3/4 tsp pepper
4 cups milk
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley or chives (optional)

Directions:
Melt butter; remove from heat. Stir in flour; add salt and pepper.
Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is bubbly.
Add milk, 1 cup at a time. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring frequently.
Reduce heat and simmer 1 to 2 minutes, then let stand at least 1 to 2 minutes.
Stir in parsley or chives, if desired, we didn't desire :)

Directions For Meal:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes; slice 1/4 inch thick and cover with cold water. If you are going to use onions slice them into thin slices & then cut the slices in half. Start the white sauce now so it will be cooking and thickening as you prepare the potatoes in the dish.

You can either use a well-greased 15x10 casserole dish or if you don't have one like me I sprayed Pam into a large 13x9 glass bake ware dish. It was pretty full but never bubbled over the top.

Next, drain potatoes and layer them in the bottom of the desired dish. If you're adding onions place 1/2 over the potatoes and then layer more potatoes and then more onions, etc. Once all of the ingredients are in place salt & pepper them to taste.


Once the white sauce is done and has thickened up quite a bit pour the sauce over the potatoes and place in the oven & bake uncovered for 15 minutes. Start the pork chops by dredging them in the flour/season salt mixture. Lightly fry the chops; however, don't cook them all the way. Once the chops have browned place them directly on top of the potato/white sauce mixture and place uncovered in oven for about 45 minutes. Serve & enjoy!

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Tie Dye Cupcakes & Valentine's Day Cupcakes

While searching on the the web I saw where someone had posted a lady's blog, The Omnomicon that contained the following recipe for a tie dye cake. It looks amazing and so fun. So with J at work today and knowing that he MAYBE got 3 hours of sleep before he had to be at work I decided to bring him cupcakes and the rest of the crew as well.

I made two batches of these. The tie dye version and red/pink/purple version for Valentines Day coming up. Ingredients:
1 Box of Betty Crocker's White Cake Mix (sure go ahead and make it from scratch if your heart so desires.. mine didn't :)
2. Sprite Zero You'll Need 16oz (I never knew you could cook with soda :/ It was strange to me but then I found out a lot of people do it to cut out fat and such.. I bought a 2L because it was more cost effective and lets face it $1.98 for a L is cheaper than paying $6.00 for the 6pk of 16ozs)
3. Food Coloring (Recipe suggests gels but I had the liquid kind so I used it and didn't have a problem.
4. Cupcake Sheet (I used a 12 silicone cupcake pan & a 12 metal mini cupcake pan.)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F. If you have a KA Mixer, use it. First dump the cake mix into large mixing vessel. Second add 16oz of the Sprite Zero. (You can def. omit this and follow the cake mix's directions to add the 3 egg whites, 1/3 cup of Veg. Oil, and H2O.) Mix together. Mixture will be lumpy, that's okay.

After batter is prepared have 4-6 different small mixing bowls ready to portion out the batter. Portion about 1/2 cup into each small bowl. I had 5 Colors, Red, Blue, Green, Orange, & Purple.
Purple: Red & Blue Orange: Red & Yellow.. FYI.

Spoon about 2tblspns of 1st color into each cupcake hole. Then use the next and use less of that color, spoon next color using less than 2nd color..etc..



Follow baking directions on box. If you are using the soda method then add 5-10 more minutes to baking time checking every few mins. I used a silicone baking pan and for the large cupcakes it took about 23mins.



Here Are The Pictures Of My Valentine's Day Cupcakes.




To make chocolate designs just melt semi sweet chocolate in microwave for 30seconds and then 15second intervals until melted. Place in piping bag, cut small tip and draw designs on wax paper. Let cool and place :)