When I Grow Up

Easy Turtles

TripleL — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:46:20 +0000

This recipe has been floating around the cooking message board I read. It looked simple and delicious, so I gave it a shot. Mine did not turn out as pretty as others, but they were very tasty.

Easy Pretzel Turtles

Waffle style Pretzels

1 bag Dove Candies with Caramel

Pecan Halves

Preheat oven to 350

Place a dove candy on each pretzel. Bake for 3-4 minutes or just until chocolate gets soft. Remove from oven. Place a pecan half on top of each chocolate. Let cool before serving.

Turkey Pesto Panini

TripleL — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:26:14 +0000

I got a Panini pan/press for Christmas and have been excited to try it out. I used it for the first time today with what I had on hand. The result? Yummy, gooey, crunchy lunch.

Turkey, Pesto Panini

Focaccia Bread

Turkey

Provel Cheese

Pesto (I used jarred)

Slice focaccia into two slices. Spread some pesto on each side. Layer turkey and cheese on one half. You can brush the outsides with olive oil or butter, but I skipped that to save a few calories. Place in pan and lay the press on top. Cook for about 4 minutes on med-low heat. Remove press and flip sandwich. Cook for another 3-4 minutes.

Gooey Butter Cookies

TripleL — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:56:06 +0000

St. Louis is the birthplace of a fantastic dessert/coffee cake called Gooey Butter Cake. If you have never had one, you need to look up a recipe and make it stat. One day I will steal my sister’s recipe and blog about it, but until then you’ll have to settle for gooey butter cookies. These are simple to make and really delicious.

Gooey Butter Cookies

1 box Butter Recipe Yellow Cake Mix

1 stick butter – softened

1 8oz block cream cheese – softened

1 large egg

powdered sugar for coating

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl – I use my hands, which can be real messy. Let dough chill for a few hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 350. Roll dough into balls – about 2 tbsps each. Roll the ball in powdered sugar and place on parchement lined baking sheet. Bake for 16 minutes. Remove from oven and slide parchment paper with cookies still on it onto a cooling rack.

Brie Baked with Pesto

TripleL — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:45:49 +0000

I don’t have a great photo of this one – but it was AMAZING. I bought a jar of pesto at the store the other day – maybe I’ll make my own one day, baby steps – and wanted to try making a cheesy pesto appetizer for Christmas Eve. It turned out really good except that there was an oil slick in the dish. I mopped up most of it with a paper towel. If I had made my own pesto, I would have just cut waaaaay back on the olive oil and it would have been fine.

Baked Brie with Pesto

1 8oz Brie wheel

Pesto

Crackers or Bagel chips for dipping

Preheat oven to 350

Cut the rind off the top of the brie wheel. Top with about 1/4 – 1/2 inch pesto

Bake for 20-30 minutes

Serve with a plain bread or cracker. Something with little to no flavor, as the pesto/brie combo is pretty amazing on its own.

Amazing Sugar Cookies

TripleL — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:04:46 +0000

I finally found a good recipe for un-iced sugar cookies. Another thing from work that I miss and tried to recreate. I was never a huge fan of sugar cookies – especially the iced ones. The catering we had at work always included these amazing, soft sugar cookies. I haven’t stopped thinking about them.

So I’ve been testing recipes and sending them to work with my husband. His co-workers have liked them all, but I still wasn’t satisfied. Until I came across this recipe for Soft Sugar Cookies.

They turned out so good. The only change I made to her original recipe is that I chilled the dough for an hour and between batches because the first batch (of unchilled dough) came out flat and crispy.

From Delish

Sugar Cookies
Yields: 2 dozen

2 cups granulated sugar*
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
14 Tbsp (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350°F. Spread 1/2 cup of the sugar* in a shallow dish for coating and set aside. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together and set aside.

Beat the butter and remaining 1 1/2 cups sugar together in a large bowl using an electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3-6 minutes. Beat in the vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time, until combined, about 30 seconds, scraping down the bowl & beaters as needed.

Reduce the mixer speed to low and slowly mix in the flour mixture until combined, about 30 seconds. Give the dough a final stir with a rubber spatula to make sure dough is combined.

Chill dough for 1 hour

Line large baking sheets with parchment paper. Using wet palms, roll 2 Tablespoons of dough at a time into balls, then roll in sugar to coat. Place balls on parchment-lined baking sheets, spaced 2 inches apart. Flatten cookies with the buttered bottom of a drinking glass, then sprinkle and remaining sugar over flattened tops.

Bake cookies, one sheet at a time, until the edges are set and just beginning to brown but the centers are still soft and puffy, 10-12 minutes, (13 minutes in my oven) rotating the baking sheet halfway through baking. Allow cookies to cook on baking sheet for 10 minutes, then serve warm or transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely. Keep remaining dough in the refrigerator

* If you have vanilla sugar, substitute 1/2 cup for vanilla sugar for rolling cookies

Source: Adapted from America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, 2006.

Chili Cheese Dip

TripleL — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 14:54:20 +0000

Our local grocery store sells a lot of pre-made food items – one of which is this chili cheese ball that is to die for. We used to get them all the time for the office to share for potlucks and such. The not-so-great thing about them is that they are something crazy like $6. So, being the cheap-skate that I am, I decided to try to recreate it and got pretty close. I left it as a dip and served it with Fritos. You could certainly roll it into a ball and then roll the ball in a paprika, cumin, chili powder mixture. Sorry – no pictures of this one!

Chili Cheese Dip

12 oz cream cheese (softened)

1 1/2 tsp chili powder

1 1/2 tsp smoked spanish paprika

1 3/4 tsp cumin

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1/8 tsp cayenne

1/2 tsp season salt

mix and enjoy!

Introducing – my jewelry!!

TripleL — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 19:35:53 +0000

I’m going to post a few pics of my hand beaded jewelry. It’s all for sale and I do have most items in stock. I can also custom make something if you can’t find anything you love. You can also find me on facebook . Most necklaces are 20 inches with clasp closure and the bracelets are 7 inch stretch. There’s still time to order for Christmas!

Homemade Pizza

TripleL — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:33:40 +0000

We’ve made pizza at home before but have never made our own crust. Now with my new fancy-schmancy mixer, I can make my own dough! And that’s exactly what I did. I used Tyler Florence’s recipe and it turned out great. My only change for next time is to make 2 crusts out of it instead of 3. It made 3 small pizzas – 2 were bbq chicken and the 3rd was buffalo chicken (substituted wing sauce for the bbq sauce). Ingredient amounts are vague…I eyeballed most of them.

Homemade BBQ Chicken Pizza

1 batch pizza crust

1 rotisserie chicken

bbq sauce

1/2 large onion

1/2 package Oscar Meyer Bacon Recipe Pieces

Pizza Cheese

Penzey’s Pizza Seasoning

Butter

Corn meal

Make your favorite dough – or buy a pre-made crust whichever suits your fancy. I used Tyler Florence’s recipe

Preheat oven to 450

Slice onion into strips and saute in a little butter until soft

While the onions are cooking, pull the chicken from bones and skin. You can leave the skin if you want, but I removed it.

Divide dough into two equal balls. Roll out dough on floured surface – it should be about 14 inches

Sprinkle cookie sheet with corn meal so pizza will slide off when done. Place dough on cookie sheet and brush with olive oil. Top with bbq sauce (Sweet Baby Rays), pulled chicken, onion, bacon, cheese and spice.

As you can see I took extra time to make sure my crusts were perfectly round. I’m anal like that.

Bake for 15-17 minutes

Slice and enjoy!

Amazing week

TripleL — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:08:14 +0000

So I got older last weekend. We won’t say how old – but I’m not 20, 25 or 29… Anyway my mom and uncle got me a KitchenAid stand mixer and the poor thing has been used almost every day since. I started with Alton Brown’s soft pretzels. Which turned out to be the ugliest pretzels you’ve ever seen, but quite tasty if I do say so. Next I tried cookies. I had some random things in the pantry and thought I was being creative by putting them together in one cookie and then the next day found several recipes for my ‘creation.’ woops.

My husband works in a 90% male office so I sent the cookies with him knowing they’d be gone in an instant instead of staring at me and calling my name over and over. He took them in and they were devoured. I got requests for more. Well I have to do what the people want, right? So I made more cookies and more cookies and more cookies. I may have started a problem because now they’re going to expect them. Oh well.

Oh! I didn’t tell you what kind I invented – or didn’t invent. They were Oatmeal, White Chocolate, Cranberry. Yum!

So then Tuesday night I had plans to go with my mom to meet my idol. I joke with my husband that I want to be her when I grow up. I’m not sure what I love more – her stories, photos, or recipes. Check out her blog if you get a chance, you’ll love it. We gave ourselves plenty of time to get there -or so we thought. Traffic was a nightmare and we barely made it in time. We lucked into getting some seats up front, but off to the side. So no great pictures, but that’s ok. Her hursband and kiddos were there too and we made small talk with them while we waited for her. She was just what we expected. A little shy, a lot funny, and very real. We waited in line to have our books signed, took pictures with her, her hubby, and her son.

On Thursday I got to indulge in another of my obsessions. The Twilight Saga: New Moon came out at midnight. My sister and I bought our tickets ahead of time, slammed some caffiene and waited for the movie to start. Oh emm gee. Amazing movie. Still not as good as the book, but much better than the first movie. I loved every minute of it, even the cheesy lines and scenes. I do wish that there was more of the romance from the book in the movie to help people understand why Bella is as obsessed as she is and why Edward did what he did. Oh well, I will still probably see it again in the theater and will for sure buy it. How old am I? Hahaha.

Friday night I made a recipe from Pioneer Woman’s cookbook and TOTALLY forgot to take pictures of it. I’ll do better in the future I promise. I will say though, if you happen to be married to, dating, living with etc. a meat eater, you must make this sandwich. The meat eater will grunt and thank you profusely.

Sunday capped off the week with surprise tickets to a box at the Rams game. As usual the rams were disappointing, but we had a blast anyway. Very thankful for our friends.

Well that’s all I have for now. Hopefully this week I will actually get some pictures and recipes up here. That’s my plan at least. I also need to post some pictures of my jewelry. I got another order last week and I’m really excited. The more people I have wearing it, the more orders I’m likely to get! Right? Right!

I think I will try not to make long posts like this one in the future. Too much to say about each thing. Still finding my voice.

Welcome!

TripleL — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:31:26 +0000

Hi and welcome to my blog. I am a 30-ish wife, mom, daughter, sister and friend. A little over two years ago I was a working woman. I had a job in event planning/coordinating and loved it. I really enjoyed the sense of accomplishment I got when an event would go off without a hitch – hell, I even enjoyed the occasional fire that needed putting out. I became pregnant with our first child and assured everyone at my job that I WOULD be back after the baby arrived. “There’s no way I could be a stay at home mom.” I would tell people. I need adults.

All that changed in the blink of an eye. I became very ill suddenly, and had to deliver our son 7 weeks early. Once I held that tiny, helpless baby in my arms, I knew there was no way I could not be with him all the time. It was a bizarre feeling. I knew that I would love him unconditionally, but I had no idea how intense and immediate the feeling would be.

After meeting with our pediatrician and learning about preemies and their immune systems, we were told if he were in a daycare he would need an extra set of vaccines – monthly – that were not covered by insurance. This was the last piece in the puzzle that made us decide I needed to stay home with him. After we paid for daycare and extra vaccines, I would be bringing home very little money and it just did not make sense to put him at risk.

And so began my life as a stay at home mom – or a SAHM.

The first few months were easy – so to speak. We were so busy taking care of him that we did not have time to think about anything else. It wasn’t until he was a little over a year old that I really started feeling… lost almost. He didn’t need me as much and I had some free time on my hands during the day when he napped or played independently. That’s when I started trying to find something that was ‘me.’ I needed to find a way to contribute to the house, preferbably financially. I started with coupon clipping. I obsessively checked websites and blogs looking for deals and freebies. I soon got bored. I got into photography. This is one thing I don’t think I will ever get tired of. I love trying to capture expressions and memories in a new and different way. I’m still learning about my camera and don’t always take the best pictures, but I’m learning.

I also found my love of cooking. I have followed many cooking blogs and message boards and love trying new things and trying to take pretty pictures of the finished product. I recently got my first stand mixer and have made a batch of cookies almost every day since.

Another hobby I’ve taken up is jewelry making. Wandering through the craft store one night when my husband was out of town I found a kit for making jewelry and bought it. Since then I have designed and sold several pieces and hope to sell more this holiday season (and beyond!)

So that’s me in a nutshell. Not to sound too after-school-special – but I’m trying to find myself and decide what I want to be when I grow up and I’m using this blog to keep track of it all. Please feel free to comment, ask questions, and introduce yourself.