Second time's a charm!

Attempt number two commences!

Maybe this time I can remember to actually keep up with this thing!

I have been really getting into trying out new recipes (Thank you, Pinterest!) and making up my own as I go. 

I love going to the grocery store and picking up new items to experiment with. I probably make at least 3 trips a week to the Strack's down the road. I'm surprised they don't know me by name yet! Even Dave knows how I get. If I want to make something, and I am missing an ingredient and can not substitute it with something else I have in the house, I will make a special trip just to get it. Maybe I should start riding my new bike there to save on gas!

Here is my new ingredient for the week. It's kind of a cheat ingredient if you ask me, but hey, on those nights when you don't really want to cook or you don't have all the time in the world, cheat ingredients come in handy!

Progresso Recipe Starters - Creamy Roasted Garlic

I am not quite sure exactly how I am going to incorporate this into my cooking, but I am sure when the idea strikes, it will be a great one! 

Now onto last nights meal: 

Oven Roasted Salmon with Parmesan-Mayo crust

Steamed broccoli

Rice A Roni's Long Grain & Wile Rice

Rice A Roni:

(Follow instructions on box)

Before you cook any of the other dishes, start the rice. It takes about 30-45 minutes to make so it should finish cooking around the time that everything else is done.

Salmon:

Preheat oven to 425

1. The first thing that I did was line my 13x9 pan with foil, which made clean up a breeze! The pan wasn't even dirty after I took the foil out.

2. Next I cut my salmon filet into smaller portions, placed them in the pan and & lightly salt and peppered them. 

*Hint: spray the foil with nonstick spray before placing the salmon on it, they kind of stuck to the foil when I tried to get them off. 

3. The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise and two tablespoons of Parmesan cheese for a 16-18oz. fillet. Mine was about 24oz. and that was way too much. Next time I will probably cut that in half.

4. Mix the mayo and cheese together & spread on top of the salmon.

5. Place the salmon in the oven. The recipe says to cook it for 14-17 minutes or so, but mine took longer. I let mine go for at least 20-25 minutes because at 15 minutes the mayo crust was still pure white, which again, could have been because I put wayyy too much on there. I'd say that your best bet would be to just check on it every now and then. 

Onto the broccoli! 

I grew up in a household where my dad cooked, and when he cooked vegetables, he always microwaved them. I always stayed true to that method, until recently. I have been cooking carrots on the stove and they have been a lot better than microwaved ones, and they do not seem to take as long. Last night I attempted to steam my broccoli on the stove, and it turned out amazing also!

Steamed Broccoli:

1. Take a pan and fill it with 1/4 inch of water and bring to a boil.

2. Once water is boiling, add salt followed by broccoli florets.

3. Place lid on pan and let cook for 4-8 minutes. 

If you like your broccoli with a bit of a bite to it, four minutes is probably where you wanna stop. I like mine a little softer so I left it on there for 8. 

The only time I've ever had fresh salmon, was a couple of months ago when Dave used a salmon filet to make homemade salmon patties. Before that, I'd only ever eaten it out of a can. What a difference fresh salmon makes! It is DELICIOUS! This recipe was awesome. I definitely would tweak it a little for next time, but I will be making this again. Everything went so well together. It was filling, but not heavy and somewhat healthy! 

I had planned for that to be the end of the post, but as I was sitting here typing the UPS man delivered my package! Saturday I ordered a Progressive International Lettuce Keeper. It is supposed to keep produce fresher longer. I read many great reviews on the product and decided for $10, it was worth a shot. We throw away so much produce because it just goes bad before we can eat it. We try to eat healthy, but it gets expensive when you have to throw away half of what you buy because two people cannot eat a mountain of spinach in two days!

So here is my new toy!

I already washed it and put my Romaine lettuce that I purchased yesterday in it. We will see how long it lasts! I am crossing my fingers! I will keep you up to date on how well this works for me.

Thanks for stopping by & happy cooking!

xxo

-Brooke 

A thrift & a tip

Hey y'all! 

It was super nice out yesterday so I decided to do some running around to get out of the house. I've been so inspired by everyone's creativity on Pinterest that I was hoping I could find some treasures of my own at our local Goodwill to turn into some sort of project for myself. There were a few cute shelves & one very awesome rustic picture frame that I wish I could have purchased but they were marked a little too high for this penny saver! I did, however, find this awesome telephone! 

And while I didn't buy it, it is still super cool! You could see all of the little do-dads and whatchamacallit's in it and they were all bright colors too. Oh man it was awesome! 

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Although I was not able to get creative in the crafty sense, I was able to get creative in another way! I am a lover of bags. My mother is a first hand witness to this. I used to save every bag I had ever gotten and just add them to an over flowing collection that was in my closet. I loved them! Unfortunately for them, and myself, my mom made me get rid of my collection. What a sad day that was! (Plastic bags are my favorite because you can just put them inside one another and they don't really take up THAT much space. (That is the hoarder in me talking)). Since I've purged my largest collection, I've learned to only keep a few on hand at a time. (My honey uses them for his lunch when he goes to work & I use them in the bathroom garbage can.)

Anyways, besides my love of bags, I also love those cleaning wipes that Clorox and Lysol make! They are absolutely wonderful for cleaning up a messy kitchen, let me tell ya!  Well, the other day I saw a tip on Pinterest about where to put all those lovely plastic grocery bags that no one knows what to do with. It said to put them an empty Kleenex box and have them pop up like the tissues do. That was EXCITING! Finally I knew what I could do with my bags that are shoved underneath the kitchen sink. Then I came to the realization that I did not have any empty Kleenex boxes and I surely my excitement was not going to allow me to wait until one became empty. 

Today I ran out of my Clorox wipes and decided that there was a better way to use the container than just pitching it! 

And with that, my bag container was born! It's so cute too! I just tore off the label and drew my own little design on there and badda-bing we have a plastic bag holder! It's such a space saver too & holds the perfect amount of bags! 

Happy thrifting!

xxo

-Brooke

Marvelous Monday

MENU:

-Lasagna Roll Ups

Preheat oven to 400

1. The first thing I did was boiled water for the lasagna noodles, once that was ready I salted the water and placed the noodles in the pot.

2. Next I took cottage cheese, grated parmesan, and shredded mozzarella cheese and mixed that with about half of a package of (thawed) frozen spinach, one large egg, & some garlic powder and dried onion flakes

 4. Once the mixture was made and the noodles were cooked I laid some noodles out on a cutting board and got to work spreading the mixture onto the noodles!

Tip: Let the noodles cool some before trying to work with them. I learned the hard way and ended up burning my hand! Ouch!

 5. After you spread the mixture on the noodles just roll them from one end to another then place them in a greased 13"x9" pan.

Tip: Remember when putting the filling on the noodle that it will be rolled up so you do not need to over do it!

6. Once you have all of your lasagna rolls in the pan, spoon or pour your sauce over the top. I added shredded mozzarella cheese to mine as well.

Before

7. Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes

After

Below is the link I used as a base recipe for the lasagna rolls. I do want to say that I did tweak mine quite a bit. For these lasagna rolls I ended up using cottage cheese instead of ricotta. I also made half of them with some left over ground Italian sausage I had from Sunday's meal. (I made the cheese ones first then added the meat to the rest of the cheese mixture) My honey can't have a meal without some meat! I did not use all of the meat in the cheese mixture so I put the rest of that along with the remaining spinach into the spaghetti sauce that I used to cover them with. 

These ended up being perfect serving sizes compared to making a whole lasagna because the portions are already made for you! 

Happy cooking!

xxo

-Brooke

& let the games begin!

Oh me oh my what did I get myself into?!

Of course, the first day of my little project everything turns into a disaster!

I always like to cook in a clean kitchen, so, with that in mind I began putting the dishes away.

The last thing to put in the cupboard was one of our wine glasses. I set it in the cabinet and closed the door and....

Crash!

The glass had somehow fallen as I was closing the door and shattered into a trillion pieces, covering the counter top and blanketing the floor. Needless to say, I cried because it scared me half to death. 

Welp, I got my little house shoes on (I'm turning into my mother, Lord help us) and began the clean up. I got everything swept up from the floor and gathered all the little slivers of glass into a pile on the counter. I swept them into a bag, soon after noticing that the bag had a hole in it and everything that I just put in the bag was now ALL OVER THE FLOOR. Ughhhh! So I swept again, twice, making sure that I got all those little stinking pieces of glass all picked up. 

Finally, I was able to start cooking!

~ Sweet Sunday ~
MENU:
-Italian sausage burgers with mozzarella cheese
-Loaded french fries

When the sausage was finished I placed some shredded mozzarella cheese on top, placed the lid on the skillet, and let it simmer until the cheese was melted...or something like that. My honey and I were too impatient to let it melt completely! Then I made him close his eyes while he sat at the table until I got everything set up for him to eat!

I had to take these pictures quickly because I knew the food wasn't going to be there for long once he got his paws on it!

Like I said, the cheese didn't melt completely so it looks kinda funky. It tasted delicious nonetheless! 

And the loaded fries were better than anything that I have ever eaten at a restaurant. You can cook up a whole heaping mound of these for a FRACTION of what a small portion would cost you at a restaurant. 

Mmmmmmm they were mighty tasty! We dipped ours in ranch dressing which made them even better!

Happy cooking!

xxo
-Brooke

The Beginning & Meal Planning: Week 1

After putting in countless hours drooling over Pinterest, I've made the executive decision to start recording all of the little tidbits of information I've discovered! Hence, this blog. I've done blogs before but haven't kept up with them. With my newly found free time, though, hopefully this blog will become a success!  It's going to be a work in progress for a little bit while I search the nooks and crannies of my memory trying to remember how to use  HTML codes and such. But, I shall be up and running soon!

So why not jump right in, right?

Alright, I take your challenge!

Since I've moved out of my parents house and in with my honey, I've been the designated cook. Woohoooo! (sarcasm) Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to cook and was taught by one of the most special and talented men in my life, my father, but sometimes I feel like I have run out of ideas, or I am too tired, or I'm feeling just plain lazy and do not want to cook. So to put some spice back into my life, I've decided to use the oh so wonderful Pinterest** to help me out!

Getting started has been rather challenging. I've never been the "Martha Stewart" type (if you can imagine learning from a man you'd understand why), but I've found that I do have the capability to become one. What a scary thought!

I woke up this morning with a vision of walking to the gas station, grabbing some coffee and the Sunday paper, and getting a head start on clipping coupons and making my grocery lists for the week. Did that happen? Heck no! I slept way past when I should have and ended up driving to the gas station instead. I did, however, pick up the paper and began looking through the ads.

My usual routine is to check out the grocery ads to the stores I shop at and make a list of what is on sale and then go buy those items. It dawned on me recently though, that I never really had a plan of what I would be making with my purchases. I just bought what was on sale and threw something together out of what I had. Having that talent is never a bad thing, but I'd find myself making two, three, and four trips to the store during the week to buy the few ingredients I didn't have for the meal I was planning to prepare. So today I decided to try something new!

I began by going through my Where's my apron? board on Pinterest and picking out recipes that I could actually make and would probably enjoy eating. I grabbed some of the honey's index cards (shh, don't tell) and began writing down the recipes so I could have them on hand.

Then I started making a list of things that I usually cook or at least know how to cook, even if I don't attempt to make them very often. After I finished up all of that, I began using my list to plan our meals for the week! I had one card for each day, Sunday through Saturday, and just started filling them in. Since I do all of the grocery shopping, I pretty much have our food inventory memorized. My goal was to try to use things that I already have so that I wouldn't be spending a lot of money when I went to the grocery store.

Here's what I came up with!

• Sunday:
• Italian sausage burgers 
• Ground Italian sausage
• Mozzarella cheese*
• Spaghetti sauce
• Loaded French Fries
• Ore Ida frozen fries
• Shredded cheddar cheese
• Green onions*
• Crumbled bacon*
• Ranch dressing (to dip in)
• Vegetable to be determined
• Monday:
• Spinach Lasagna Roll Ups
• Lasagna noodles*
• Frozen spinach*
• Shredded mozzarella*
• Tuesday:
• Chicken Kiev
• Rice
• Green beans
• Wednesday:
• Beef roast
• Mashed potatoes*
• Mixed veggies
• Mini Apple Pies
• Pre-made crusts*
• Apple filling*
• Thursday:
• Crock pot chicken tacos
• 1 jar salsa*
• Sour cream*
• Tomatoes*
• Shredded lettuce*
• Mexican rice
• Re-fried beans
• Friday:
• Pizza Balls
• Biscuits*
• Pepperoni*
• Colby jack cheese*
• Baked Mozzarella Sticks
• String cheese*
• Crescent Cinnamon Rolls
• Crescent rolls
• Saturday:
• Roast beef sandwich sliders (using left over beef from Wednesday)
• Hawaiian rolls*
• Mozzarella cheese*
• Cooked carrots

*The asterisks stand for the ingredients that I did not have.

There were a couple of important things that I needed to remember while creating the weeks menu:

1. There were definitely going to be left overs from certain meals (ex. beef from Wednesday's roast). This is why I decided to use whatever left over beef I had to make sliders on Saturday. It gives plenty of time in between so we don't get bored with our food, too. You could also freeze whatever leftovers you had to use at a later date as well.
2. Tuesday's and Thursday's my honey and I have night classes so whatever I planned those days had to be simple. I get home before he does so I have time to cook certain things before he arrives. That is why I chose chicken kiev for Tuesday & a crock pot meal for Thursday.

Then I got my shopping list ready and headed to the store! 

I picked up everything I needed, for the most part.

Here are just a few of the items I picked up today!

I will document my progress throughout the week and have pictures to share with everyone on Saturday! I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes well!

xxo

Brooke

**If you need an invite to Pinterest let me know and I will gladly send you one!