Filed under: Cooking, Cool Finds, FUN!, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things..., tmc, work
I think these could be a new fave! They will be right at home in Sweazy where we love everything orange. I even had one for breakfast :).
Orange Creamsicle Cookies
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 firmly packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons orange zest 2 cups white chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.
In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and creamy. Beat in egg and vanilla until smooth. Gradually add flour mixture until combined. Stir in orange zest and chips.
Drop rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Do not flatten cookies; it will make them dry. Bake 8 – 10 minutes or until golden brown around edges. Do not over cook! Cookies will be plump. Cool for several minutes on cookie sheets before transferring to rack to cool completely. Store in airtight container.
My coworkers and I have a little lunch club going on. It’s actually the female RD meeting, but we take turns cooking for each other. It gives us a chance to try out recipes that we wouldn’t necessarily be willing to try on just anyone. This week I hosted and I got a keeper. Here is my version of Real Simple’s Sweet Potato Chowder.
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound turkey bacon
- 1 whole orange, yellow, or red pepper
- 1/2 red onion
- 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
- 3 13-ounce cans chicken broth
- 3 mild green chilies
- 1 cup of frozen corn or half a bag
- salt to taste
Directions
- Cook the bacon in a large stockpot over medium heat until it begins to crisp, 6 to 8 minutes.
- Add the peppers and onion to the bacon and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are tender, 3 to 5 minutes. Because I used turkey bacon, I also needed to add a little olive oil at this stage.
- Add the sweet potatoes, chicken broth, and chilies and simmer, covered, 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
- Stir in the corn and ½ teaspoon salt and cook until heated through.
I served this with ham, apple, and white cheddar mini-paninis. We had home-made peach fro-yo for dessert. The blueberry fro-yo was a flop :(.
Filed under: Cooking, Friends, FUN!, Hospitality, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things...
It’s been nice to be cooking again. I haven’t been gourmet; the meals have been simple. Instead of practicing entertaining, I’ve been practicing hospitality and you know what I don’t think anyone has noticed. It could, however, be a phenomenon of being around people who regularly eat caf food and think that anything homemade is spectacular or magical. Tonight, this is what was on the menu. I am going to use this again in the future. Simple but delicious.
Chipotle’s Basmati Rice Recipe
Here’s the recipe with some changes I made:
1 teaspoon butter 2 Tbs. fresh cilantro 1 cup white basmati rice 1 1/3 cup water 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 Lime
In a 2-quart heavy saucepan, heat butter over low heat, stirring occasionally until melted. Add rice and lime juice, stir for 1 minute. Add water and salt, bring to a full rolling boil. At boiling, cover, turn down to simmer over low heat until rice is tender and the water is absorbed, about 20 minutes. Fluff rice with a fork.
Crock Pot Santa Fe Chicken
- 2 chicken breast frozen
- 14.4 oz can diced tomatoes with mild green chilies
- 15 oz can black beans
- 8 oz frozen corn
- 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
- 14.4 oz can fat free chicken broth
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp onion powder
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper (to taste). I had to use 1/2 tsp of chili powder because I didn’t have cayenne on hand and because I didn’t know how my guests liked spice.
- salt to taste
.Filed under: Friends, Good Advice, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things...
Make Bostwick’s Banana Bread
2-3 smashed bananas
2 1/2 c. flour
1 c. sugar
3 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp salt
3 TB oil
3/4 cups milk
1 tsp. cinnamon
dash of nutmeg
Combine wet ingredients with bananas. Add dry ingredients grease loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour.
Filed under: Cool Finds, Friends, FUN!, Girly-Girl, Hospitality, My life, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things...
Missy’s Marinated Tomatoes - Delish and Not Too Shabby as Far as Nutrients vs. Junk
Chocolate and Raspberries – Love this combo. Don’t know if this counts as a recipe, but my girls ate these up. Making them again soon.
Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls - I don’t make the frosting. I make my own cream cheese frosting (1 stick cream cheese, part of a stick of butter, and powdered sugar to taste). This last time I also spread some pumpkin on the dough with the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon.
Pecan, Caramel, Pretzel Bites – Just got a request for this recipe. Once again, don’t know if this counts for a recipe, but they are a great trick to have up your sleeve and they are a great gluten-free snack or dessert if you buy gluten-free pretzels.
For a party tonight, I took the ingredients of my fridge, freezer, and pantry and made an apple crumble to go over ice cream. I didn’t taste it but someone called me a P.31 Woman. I think that means it was good, but it’s hard to tell with college students. They will eat just about anything. I mixed together four bags of cut up apples, 1/2 cup pumpkin, juice from one orange, sugar, and cinnamon. I placed that in a baking dish, poured one white dry cake mix over it, drizzled it with 1/2 cup melted butter, and baked until apples were cooked and topping was a toasty brown. Anything is better a-la-mode :).
Filed under: Cooking, Cool Finds, FUN!, Girly-Girl, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things...
Apple Cinnamon Chai Trifle (Too Sweet)
Frosted Banana Bars (A Personal Fave)
Pub Mix (from Costco)
Apple Nachos (because I like all things nachos :) ) – basically caramel apples, but cut up with all sorts of fixings on top like caramel, chocolate chips, pecans, etc.
Carmel Pecan Pretzel Bites (Best of Show and they are a great gluten-free treat if you make them with gluten-free pretzels.)
HT: glorioustreats.blogspot.com
Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies: Mix one yellow cake mix, one white cake mix, one 29oz can of pumpkin, 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice, and chocolate chips as you please. Enjoy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert.
Image from glorioustreats.blogspot.com.
Brown bag flowers, one of many decorative touches:
Filed under: Cool Finds, Friends, FUN!, Girly-Girl, Home, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things...
My Spanish may be lame, but my Pinterest boards are not. If you haven’t heard of or tried Pinterest you will love it. I joined months ago, but haven’t used it until this week. (I wonder why? I must have been busy or something :) ). I am in love… with Pinterest that is. It is like following blogs but it is so fast because it is all pictures and you can save everything you like to your boards and skip over anything you don’t like. I have a board for food, one for photos I like, one for event planning, one I call crafty… etc. So many good ideas all in quick images. Try it today. You know you want to :)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Filed under: Community, Cool Finds, Family, Friends, FUN!, Girly-Girl, Home, My life, Quirky, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things...
I love normal birthdays spent in fun ways with people you love. This birthday I wish I could have had a few more people I love around me, but I always wish that. That’s the tension you feel when you keep loving more people and they live so many different places.
- The day started with carpooling down to services at Grace Community Church with my friends Kellie and Rae with a pit-stop at Starbucks on the way.
- We met other friends at church and added a few more we bumped into there and walked to the car on a side street where they gave me my awesome birthday gift (a toaster) and sang to me in the middle of the street. We then had hugs down the line. I’m sure we were a spectacle :)
- Next we headed down to Portos a delicious cuban bakery where we met two of my former roommies . We took our food to go to the Americana and had a picnic on the lawn. It was lovely!
- Danae and Adrienne met us there. Adrienne treated me to an iced americano and when we got back there was a candle in my chocolate croissant and they sang to me again.
- We walked around. Looked in the shops. Enjoyed the sunshine and the air conditioning and ran into more friends while out and about.
- Kellie dropped me off at Jer’s. We chillaxed a while at his place before we went up to Santa Clarita.
- Jer treated to Starbucks on the way up. Lots of caffeine. Tis the season :)
- Jer being the good brother he is helped me hang some stuff at my apartment.
- Speaking of hanging stuff, there was a sign hanging on my door that my former roommies made for me and flowers with a note from a friend too. Fun surprises to come home to!
- Jer worked for hours while I made dinner.
- I had been dreaming of making these items from what was in my fridge. Jer is always a willing guinea-pig.
- appetizer: stuffed mini-bell peppers – stuffed with a little herbed goat cheese, kalamata olives, and salami – and roasted to perfection. Slightly sweet, very salty, and oh so savory.
- salad: hearts of romaine with red onions, macadamia nuts, and a sprinkle of feta with bacon-wrapped, home-grown, roasted plums and balsamic dressing. If I do this again I will try adding a little brown sugar to the roasted plums :).
- main dish: grown up, baked mac and cheese – variety of cheeses, bacon, and ham
- dessert: vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberries
- Lastly, I had many friendly facebook messages to respond to that evening. I was especially thankful to hear from my former students. That meant so much to me. I love them and can’t believe half of them will be seniors.
I didn’t take many pictures. I mostly have pictures of food. How sad! But it was a lovely day!
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Filed under: Cooking, Family, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things...
I did it again. Voila: dinner from what was in the house. It’s not as difficult at my mom’s house as at my own. She has lots of stuff on hand. Last night we had lettuce wraps for dinner. Lettuce, shredded chicken, garlic, Yoshida’s, sesame oil, nuts, mandarin oranges, and crunchy chow mein noodles. Quick, no oven, and delicious. Enjoy; I know we did.
Filed under: Cooking, Cool Finds, Friends, FUN!, Quirky, recipes, These are a few of my favorite things...
As promised, here are our bacon night recipes:
Phil’s Bacon and Cashew Caramel Corn. I like the kick of cayenne.
Adrienne’s Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes
Pan De Jamon – I use the IBEX challah bread recipe. Roll it out. Place slices of ham lunch meat, raw bacon, black olives and the raisin/berry mix from Trader Joes. Roll up. Bake until toasty brown and slice. Delicious! This recipe is incredible for taking lunch to the beach. The more authentic version (a.k.a. what we would get in Venezuela has black raisins and green olives).
Bacon Wrapped Dates- Stuff date with almond. Wrap in bacon (Usually half a strip). Secure with toothpick and cook at 415 degrees until bacon is browned and done. These are better than you imagine!
Bacon Wrapped Pineapple- I had never done this before. You also bake these at 415. It’s delicious. It tastes like Hawaiian pizza but better and without the white flour and cheese.
