How to find the recipes

I just realized some of you (less tech-savy) might not know that w/in each post are the links to the recipes I used. If you see words w/in the post that are a different color (right now it's a green color but that may change someday) than the rest of the text- that should be the hyperlink you can click to open up the website where I found the recipe(s) that the I talk about in that specific post. Always post a comment/email me if you have questions or a link doesn't work. 96% of the time I initially find the recipe idea on Pinterest but I always try to link to the original recipe for you so there's less chance of confusion.

Bubble up Enchiladas

I'm not a big fan of mexican food, enchiladas usually being one on the "I'd rather not" list most of the time. This twist on the average enchilada is more to my liking though as it does not use corn tortillas (which I don't like so much), instead it calls for biscuits.
Our local grocery store didn't have any ground turkey so I opted for our go-to very lean ground beef. That's the only difference I made and all was pretty darn tasty :-) and The site has a pretty good collection of recipes that have WW+ points already calculated (unfortunately the serving size is not usually listed or obvious). In fact, stay tuned for a lite french toast later in the week ;)

pre-cooked biscuits

finished product

Weight Watchers Baked Chicken

This recipe was simple, fast and fine. It could have been much more flavorful. The only big change I made was to use the LIME juice we already had instead of the lemon juice it calls for, and of course we never have fresh herbs so I always use the ground, sprinkle-on type. This pic is the finished chicken after a little over 30 minutes in the oven. I'd probably recommend the whol 35 mins.

Breakfast &pb cookies

I told mom I would make these breakfast muffins so she'd have them before she had work early Tues. or wed. - forgot mon. pm and most of tues until around midnight- decided to go ahead and make them anyway. Benny & Pace came over when they smelled the bacon & started begging of course ha. We happened to have a big bag of frozen hash browns from Schwann's for some weird reason so I used half of that- but if I do it again I'd use less hashbrowns. the ratio was a little off for my personal taste. It was a little too starchy. Pretty tasty still.

yummy bacon at 1ish am!

crispy hashbrowns

uncooked hashbrowns

gross looking egg mixture

and finally the finished product

• Today was Peanut Butter cookies day to celebrate Dad being able to eat again after his colonoscopy. I came up with the idea last night so I went ahead and mixed up the dough for this Paula Deen recipe. My goodness was that dough ever tasty!! I think it was that Mexico vanilla I used! I refrained from eating too much, stuck it in the fridge & left it for this afternoon. Mom and I wondered how this would go because it doesn't have flour, baking soda or anything obvious to cause the rising. But as you can see it did indeed work. They were good but mom and I preferred them in straight dough form!! yum =)
• I decided we needed more and before the Paula Deen ones were done I wasn't sure if it was going to work so I started on a second batch with another recipe I'd seen last night when I was looking on Pinterest for crunchy peanut butter cookies. This one doesn't have flour either but it does have baking soda. Since our eggs are only medium size I added a 2nd (calls for extra-large i believe) so the dough was pretty runny. As you can see in the picture these cookies were looking like giant pillow cookies (although that may have been because I didn't want to have to use a whole other cookie sheet (small one is missing) for just 4 or so cookies so I made them bigger blobs than I should have). I thought they'd be nice and fluffy (how I love them but they were for dad so they were supposed to be crunchy) but I guess for one thing they ended up in the oven too long. They turned out chewy in the middle, crunchy on the edges and so hard (sticky) to eat that it detracted from the taste. I never got a clear "read" on them- they even reminded me of the taste of pork rinds at one point!!!!   obviously I don't highly recommend this particular recipe. 

-oh & fyi I used crunchy pb for both recipes because it's Dad's favorite.

Paula Deen recipe

the other one "exploded" into giants!

crunchy, chewy, sticky other version

CHOCOLATE snickerdoodles

2 things I love in one cookie- w/c I also love!!
The only change I made was to sub some of the butter for whatever generic GREEK yogurt we had. The following is a link to a conversion chart I've used several times before to sub buttermilk or butter etc.:
http://chobani.com/community/blog/2011/04/chobani-kitchen-conversion-chart/

You have to be careful not to over mix everything-think I might've a little too much. they have to be REFRIGERATED (dough) for at least 30 mins before you bake. I just left them overnight. The only personal touch was me sprinkling some extra stuff (actually I'd say use a lot less cinnamon & stuff for the mixture (maybe a little more than half of what's called for) because we had SOOoo much left over that was just wasted) on top right before I baked them.

had to crush the chocolate

couldn't fit all the dough in anything else flat

ta da! :)

Cracker Barrel copycat "grilled" chicken tenderloin

I love that I found this recipe on Pinterest because this is probably my favorite menu item at Cracker Barrel :)
Make sure you read the instructions fully before making plans because I did not and didn't start soon enough to marinate it in the fridge for 4 HOURS. Whoops!! Oh well. it was well ready for the next night's supper. I added extra honey because I wanted it to be sweet. It's VERY easy &oh SoOoOoo tasty!!!!!!!!! I highly recommend you try this recipe ASAP. Oh and just so you know, it DOES taste like Cracker Barrel's! Perfect blend of sweet&tangy

Stay w/Matt & a few other things

One day I made my own meatballs!!! which of course we ate on spaghetti. I've apparently lost this recipe but it was really easy. from what i remember:

• ground beef
• salt
• seasonings of choice (i know it called for Italian season cause i forgot until after the first batch was baking, so i just sprinkled some on the top of the second batch) 
• quick oats

roll them into balls (may have used the cookie scoop for starters) & bake. done. they were really good! 

Adventures at Matt's: 

• I made the Easter version of monster cookies, using lots of Twix, 1 Snickers egg, 1 Milky Way egg, a few mini Reeses pb eggs all crushed up into regular cookie dough. What's funny is I used their hand food-chopper thing & i pushed down hard at the wrong angle & it went flying onto the kitchen floor where his dog, Archer, happened to be there waiting! luckily we stopped him from eating any of the chocolate!! Anyway, they still turned out good. I don't think I ended up using as much chocolate as they did in the recipe so it surprisingly wasn't flavorful enough for me. but I think it could be a yummy, unhealthy new tradition after each big "candy holiday." -no pic because we lost the ones I kept aside to bring home somehow before I could take a pic of them. but basically they looked like the ones in the pic on the recipe-
• Matt likes to make breads & he'd been wanting to try homemade bagels, so we gave it a stab while I was there. 

instructions out of a book

I'm pretty sure these are the ones I made w/the method you can see in the book

the 2 on the left are the ones Matt made using whatever method 2 was

Matt added some sort of seed to the top of his



We made them into breakfast sandwiches (for supper) w/GIANT but tasty turkey sausage

Whacky cake

I discovered this cake while I was staying w/my Mema who was temporarily on a lactose-free diet. I was searching on Pinterest and found this recipe: no eggs, no milk, and no butter.

First I added all the dry ingredients & it looked like this

then I added the wet stuff- tried to do the "rivers" like the recipe suggests, but it didn't react the same way

& then it looked (&smelled) like chocolate pudding!

After it baked it had weird brown spots- i guess those parts didn't get mixed well enough

the brown spots eventually soaked in 

mmmm it was even better w/ice cream! to add some dairy back to it haha

It was actually really pretty good. If you're in need of a lactose free dessert/cake give it a try. Otherwise the majority of the time I'll be sticking to LOTS of dairy/moist-goodness =]

Easter

I discovered at Christmas this year that I'm not very skilled at dipping things in chocolate/bark & making them look pretty. Despite that fact I gave this idea (once on that site they have another link to the actual "recipe") a go:
Strawberries in disguise as carrots!!

one w/closer to the orange shade I was trying for

one on the left was the best color but an epic fail as the chocolate consistency was not working any more :(

there are 1 -4 relatively decent ones in there. & the blob of ridiculousness haha. 

I had other plans, but this is all I ended up making. oh except this "carrot" (yep, got the idea of Pinterest somewhere)

Recap- stay w/Rach (February)

   This is post is all about the last time I stayed w/my cousin, Rachael, for a week.

Breakfasts 

• baked oatmeal w/apples & cinnamon: I really don't remember much about making this one or what it tasted like, except that it was decent -no pic I guess-
• strawberry muffins: could be breakfast, snack, or dessert. these were YUMMY!!! We had some white chocolate chips laying around so I tossed in some of those for good measure. I've made them again since but for a lactose-free diet, so no chocolate chips =[ sad day- oh and that second time I forgot to put the strawberries into the mix- of all things!!! i stuck them down in each mini cupcake after they'd already been in the oven several mins- still good but very soggy because it messed w/the consistency/the way it baked the tops. :/

Lunch/snacks

• apple chips: I had to slice all of the apple VERY thin w/just a regular sharp knife because we didn't have any kind of tool like the one listed on the recipe. they were alright ish but they weren't very memorable- maybe needed more flavor or something. The main problem was that they weren't thin enough to get crunchy/chip-like enough to be worth it

• pb banana wrap: (this one could just as easily fall under breakfast) We got some kind of wheat/whole grain tortilla from her (I think) HEB that ended up being really tasty & the granola we bought had almonds in it (w/c I would have prob have preferred to nix)-- but this was actually a really tasty creation! & healthy too :-) -no picture-

Supper

• buttermilk biscuits: I had my hopes up for the light & fluffy KFC-style biscuits I love..... that is NOT how they turned out at all!! haha. 

the counter after it was floured

brilliant salve that Rach happened to have that cured my burn!!

my burn ={

•  Chicken asparagus penne pasta: SHe steamed the asparagus first & I think it ended up a little too slimy to compliment the other stuff well. It was pretty good though- even though the top got burnt (but it gave it a nice crunch)!! haha oh dear....

• Skinny baked rigatoni: I believe we used a wheat pasta & ground turkey instead of beef. was decent. I'm fairly certain I didn't cook the noodles before hand for some reason!!! so it was quite crunchy hahaha. 

• buttermilk chicken strips: We had some buttermilk in the fridge that we needed to use up so I searched for recipes on Pinterest. These were apparently tasty because they were all gone before I remembered to take a pic! The only change I made was to use gluten-free breadcrumbs that we already had in the pantry. -no pic-

Desserts

• chocolate oatmeal bars: I used a Splenda brown sugar substitute and didn't remember to do the conversion- so w/all the extra brown sugar the consistency was not quite right and the oatmeal stayed soggy- I've had these before, and these tasted nothing like them.......although the top was basically like pb/chocolate fudge 

all in all NOT the best cooking/baking week for me! but the strawberry muffins were the best for sure.