I have a new favorite cookie that I am totally in love with- the Reese's chewy chocolate cookies. While I was pregnant with David I craved cookies like every day, so I been making cookies quite regularly for the past 9 months. I finally found one that is perfectly soft and chewy and freezes really well and this is it. (I have a weird habit of freezing half of the cookies I make. This way I won't eat as many and somehow think I can have some for later). This time they didn't last in the freezer very long- they were so addicting. If you'd like the recipe you can find it at my new website: http://dinnerfusion.blogspot.com. It's my latest work in progress; a collection of all my favorite recipes. Basically it's suppose to aid me in deciding what's for dinner since I never seem to know what to make.
By the way, one of my favorite songs growing up was C is for Cookie. Maybe that's why I love cookies so much. I never watched Sesame Street much, but always loved this song because Carolyn and cookie start with C. I'll admit, I have a huge sweet tooth. Are the rumors true that Cookie Monster's been replaced by some vegetable guy now?
I thought I'd share some information with all of you from an email my Grandma sent me a while ago. It has a bunch of really neat ideas and tips. I tried using the hair conditioner as shaving cream and it worked wonders. Bought the Andes Mints for the brownies, but have yet to make them (and now the mints are almost gone). Oh well. :) Thought the info was pretty informative. Let me know if you try any of these things. It's amazing how much I have yet to learn...
Peel a banana from the bottom and you won't have to
pick the little 'stringy things' off of it. That's how the primates do it.
Take your bananas apart when you get home from the store.
If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.
Store your opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil.
It will stay fresh much longer and not mold!
Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating.
Peppers with 4 bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.
Add a teaspoon of water when frying ground beef.
It will help pull the grease away from the meat while cooking.
To really make scrambled eggs or omelets rich add a couple of
spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream in and then beat them up.
For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed. Melt Andes mints
in double broiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.
Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light taste
of garlic and at the end of the recipe if your want a stronger taste of garlic.
Leftover snickers bars from Halloween make a delicious dessert. Simply
chop them up with the food chopper. Peel, core and slice a few apples. Place them
in a baking dish and sprinkle the chopped candy bars over the apples. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes!!! Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream. Yummm!
Reheat Pizza
Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove, set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.
Easy Deviled Eggs
Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing thoroughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.
Expanding Frosting
When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer
for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes
with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.
Reheating refrigerated bread
To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated, place them in
a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food
moist and help it reheat faster.
Newspaper weeds away
Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers,
put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and for-
get about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not
get through wet newspapers.
Broken Glass
Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can't see easily.
No More Mosquitoes
Place a dryer sheet in your pocket.
It will keep the mosquitoes away.
Squirrel Away!
To keep squirrels from eating your plants, sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn't hurt the plant and the squirrels won't come near it.
Flexible vacuum
To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.
Reducing Static Cling
Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and ... ta da! ... static is gone.
Measuring Cups
Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don't dry cup.. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.
Foggy Windshield?
Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car . When the window s fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!
Reopening envelope
If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.
Conditioner
Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It's cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It's also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn't like when you tried it in your hair.
Goodbye Fruit Flies
To get rid of pesky fruit flies, take a small glass, fill it 1/2' with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid; mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!
Get Rid of Ants
Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it 'home,' can't digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains, but it works and you don't have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!
Clothes Dryers
The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.) He told us that he wanted to show us something; he took the filter over to the sink and ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material ... I'm sure you know what your dryer's lint filter looks like.. Well ... the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn't go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh that's what burns out the heating unit. You can't SEE the film, but it's there. It's what is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free ... that nice fragrance too. You know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box .... well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen. This is also what causes dryer units to potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (and to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out and wash it with hot soapy water and an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long! How about that!?! Learn something new everyday! I certainly didn't know dryer sheets would do that. I thought I'd share!
What a fun July 4th this year. There are too many photos so I've put together a web album instead of uploading all of them on here (see below). We did some fireworks on the 3rd in our backyard to kick off the celebrations. Michael already knew what the big ones were from the Rochesterfest activity we went to on his birthday but had fun with the sparklers and little snakes. He has asked me several times since the fourth if we could go outside and do fireworks. When I was planting a few plants in the backyard the other day he went over to the side of the street where Dan and I had set them off. I looked up and saw him sitting on the curb by himself. Too cute. Rochester has fireworks over Silver Lake close to downtown. We rode our bikes to beat the traffic (it takes about 5-10 minutes) and were completely surprised at how many people were out. Had no idea so many people lived here in Rochester- we'll we've never seen that many people out since we've been here. It was a little crowed, but we found a nice spot to pull our our blanket, which rode with Michael in his bike tote and enjoy the fireworks. We came home, enjoyed some cake and did some of our own fireworks in the street to the back of our house. Michael kept saying, "more, more, more." He loved it. I think he's now finally forgotten about fireworks- but does mention them we we talk about camping and he thinks of the campfire. Calls the fire, fireworks now.
(Click on the pictures to enlarge)
I saw a recipe for this jello cake in our Rochester local newspaper and decided to make it for the 4th. I thought it seemed pretty festive being red and white and all and Michael loves blueberries so I thought I'd top it with that. Ended up putting on more strawberries than blueberries in the end (because the blueberries were still frozen). You can't see the inside, but it is swirled with jello. :) So in case you want to try it one day, I included the recipe in this post. This is also one cake that I have made that Dan really liked- it is super moist and nice for the hot summer months. I did find that it doesn't keep in the fridge very long so eat it within a day or two. I used raspberry soda instead of strawberry it called for and didn't put all of the topping on because it seemed like it was going to overflow the edges of my pan. Let me know if you ever make it!Strawberry Jello Cake
Ingredients:
*Box of yellow cake mix
*2 (3oz.) boxes of strawberry Jello
*1 can (12oz.) strawberry soda
*1 box (3oz.) instant vanilla pudding mix
*1 1/2 cups milk
*Carton of Cool Whip
Directions:
Cake- Mix up your yellow cake mixture and bake according to the directions on the box in a 9x13 cake pan. Let it cool 20 minutes and then poke holes into it with a knife to allow for all the liquid to work into the cake.
Take 2 small (3oz.) boxes of strawberry jello and mix with 1 1/2 cups of boiling water. Add a can of strawberry soda and pour over the cake.
Cake Topping- In a bowl, combine 1 box of instant vanilla pudding mix and add 1 1/2 cups of milk. Mix until thick. Fold in a medium carton of cool whip into the pudding mix. Spread over the cake and refrigerate at least 8 hours before serving.
(I didn't prepare enough ahead of time and we only refrigerated it for like 4 hrs and it was still great).
I got this cookbook- Betty Crooker's Quick & Easy Cookbook- when I went to college and remember trying to make a few of the recipes. They seemed really complicated with lots of strange ingredients at the time and I never used the book. But I decided to try a few of the recipes out lately. Now that I've been married 3 years and cooking for a while, I realize the book is great and love almost all of the recipes. I discovered a very yummy dinner last night that was super easy to make: "Cornmeal Chicken with Fresh Peach Salsa."
It took like 5 minutes to prepare the chicken- but it bakes for 45 minutes, and then the salsa just had a few ingredients to chop and toss together. Once the meal was complete I looked at it and thought, ought oh, this might be interesting -you know, one of those things that looks great on paper but ends up tasting gross. But is was surprisingly super yummy and I will totally have to make it again.
I decided to put the chicken over couscous too. We have had a few parties here where they served couscous and Dan and I really liked it. I've been keeping my eye out for it and saw it at Walmart the other day in a little box. I have been trying to find a recipe to use it in and this one just happened to work. It was quite delicious. So if you want to try something new- give this recipe a try. I think you'll like it.
Cornmeal Chicken with Fresh Peach Salsa
Fresh Peach Salsa (below)
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about 1 1/4 pounds) *I used 6 chicken thighs instead
1. Mix cornmeal, salt and pepper. *I also added a few pinches of ground red pepper. Wash chicken and pat dry. Coat chicken with cornmeal mixture.
2. Cook chicken in oil 15-20 minutes, turning once, until juice is no longer pink when centers of thickest pieces are cut. *I put the thighs in a pan, and cooked them in the oven for 45 minutes on 375F instead of frying them.
3. Make Peach Salsa and serve.
Fresh Peach Salsa
3 cups chopped peeled peaches *I used nectarines instead
1 large tomato, chopped (1 cup)
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/4 teaspoon salt.
Mix all ingredients.
I made my first carrot cake from scratch last night. We had a dinner appointment with a cute couple in our ward and I wanted to bring something last minute. I had a package of these super sweet key lime bars that I was going to make, but realized I only had 2 eggs and the recipe called for 3. So I searched for something that would work with 2 eggs and ended up halving the carrot cake recipe. Even made the frosting from scratch too. I am so proud of myself. I was worried that it might turn out strange after seeing how dark it looked coming out of the oven (I ran out of white flour and used 1/2 wheat...you never know how it might affect what you're cooking). But it was super tasty and fat free too. So if you are looking for a yummy recipe or have never made carrot cake- try this one out; you'll be happy. :)
Carrot Cake (Original recipe yield:1 - 9x13 inch cake)
4 eggs
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 cups grated carrots
1 cup chopped pecans
1/2 cup butter, softened
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
4 cups confectioners' sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour a 9x13 inch pan. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots. Fold in pecans. Pour into prepared pan. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.
To Make Frosting: In a medium bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped pecans. Frost the cooled cake.
My alterations: I halved the recipe (from lack of eggs), substitued apple sauce for the oil, 1/2 wheat 1/2 white flour, and no nuts - I'm not too big of a nut fan. For the frosting I only used 1/2 of the required powdered sugar and fat free cream cheese. Let me know if you try the recipe (Can't claim it as my own...I got it from http://www.allrecipies.com/.)
