grass, love, & lasagna

This photo challenge is getting old. I hope I make it to the end of the month!

"grass" 

"love"

And now for the cooking...

This week I made lasagna.  It's a bit of a harder dish, but we went to Olive Garden last Thursday and Lee ordered lasagna.  Afterward he said that the lasagna I make is better, so I wanted to make it.

I got this recipe from my mom, but I don't think she made it up or anything.  Most recipes started somewhere, just not sure where.

Here's what you need for a basic lasagna...

1 lb of beef
Lasagna noodles
1 can of tomato sauce
2 cans of tomato paste
1 1/2 cups of water
1/4 cup onion
2 cups Monterrey Jack Cheese
Cottage Cheese

First thing you would do is to boil a pot of water to cook your noodles (you will need 9-12 depending on how many layers you want to do)

Then you will brown your beef, I usually sautee the onions in a bit of butter and then put the beef in with the onion. (Original recipe calls for a full onion, but I don't think anything needs a full onion).  I also salt and pepper the meat as it cooks, but you could add other spices as well.

Add the water, tomato sauce, & paste to the beef.

Mix the cheeses (grate the Monterrey) together in a bowl.

Put a little sauce on the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan, layer three noodles, then layer sauce, then layer cheese, repeat until you run out of ingredients.  Lastly put some extra Monterrey Jack Cheese on top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. ENJOY!

We also had green salad and garlic bread.

cooking for two tuesday & challenge

This week I cheated; I am running out of new ideas for dinners that haven't been featured.  Yikes! Our featured dinner came from a box.  This box:

It costs somewhere between 2-3 dollars and is easy.  It doesn't taste half bad either.  You pour a can of soup (it's all there in the box, I imagine it's cream of chicken, but it also has carrots, peas, and potatoes) into a pan. Then you add 1/2 cup of water to the powder packet for the biscuits and drop balls of dough onto the top and bake for 35 minutes.

Better than eating out if you ask me.

We also had steamed broccoli, carrots, tomato slices, and apple slices. 

Don't you love lace?

Me too, as featured in a new shirt I wore today.

I'm trying to mix it up here and be more creative so I am going to try
(keyword being try) to complete a photo-a-day challenge during May.

today's photo...

 

"peace"

I wanted to take a photo during yoga class tonight, but I didn't think anyone there would appreciate it.

If you're interested in the photo a day challenge click here.

cooking for two tuesday: tin foil dinners

So hmm... lately I'm not really feeling the whole blogging thing, but I am trying to at least keep up with my cooking posts.  I think I feel a little cynical about the whole thing after spending an hour or two reading the archives of seriouslysoblessed {a spoof blog making fun of Mormon women}.   I don't really think I'm like that girl, but, yeah, I also kind of am. 

At first reading it was pretty funny, and then it just seemed kind of rude.  I do think TAMN is ridiculous, but there's no denying that I (as well as the authors of many of my favorite blogs) have things in common with her.  I think we women tear each other apart enough as it is without taking all of our negative traits and rolling them into one absolutely atrocious person to represent all of us. But consider the source, I take everything in life too seriously.

I obviously need to lighten up.

Moving on though...tin foil dinners.

You need: tin foil, potatoes, carrots, beef, onions, salt & pepper, and any other vegetables or seasonings you are feeling adventurous to try.

Wow, this photo makes the beef look really gross, but I promise it wasn't.

Every time I make this I can never get the time and temperature right.  So let me know if you have any tips.  I found a recipe online that said to bake it at 375 degrees F for 25 minutes on each side, but after that it still wasn't cooked completely, so I upped the temp to 425 and put it in for another 25 minutes.  Usually the carrots are the main issue, but I feel like I cut them small enough.

PS I know nothing is wrong with my oven, because I don't have this problem with any other recipe.

On a somewhat non-cooking related note, I made this apron for my niece's 3 year old birthday. Turns out it was a little too big, but I guess that's what happens when you don't use a pattern and instead hold up an 8 x 11 sheet of paper to your niece's chest to get a general idea of her size.   

cooking for 2 Tues: Easter Classic

Not sure what Easter means in your neck of the woods, but here in Utah, Easter dinner usually involves ham and cheesy/funeral potatoes.

PS: Our Easter was awesome, easily the best part was when all 8 of the adults in Lee's family followed around my 3 year old niece as she had her own personal egg hunt in the backyard.  No really it was fun, but I am pretty sure it was kind of silly.  Don't worry the whole affair is on video.  

Lee says I "cheated" on this cooking post because the ham here was not cooked by me, but was leftovers given to us by my MIL on Easter. 

I did however, cook the potatoes.  These potatoes are in my top 20 favorite foods.  I pretty much love all food so I have to say top 20 instead of 10.

Mix together in a bowl:

1 lb package of hashbrowns (or get fancy and cut up your own potatoes; whatever you overachiever)
2 cans of cream of chicken soup
1 package of sour cream
2 cups of cheese
1/2 c of onion (I prefer green onion)

Pour all of that into a greased 9x13 pan, add more cheese to the top if you're feelin' frisky.
Then you cover the top with about 2 cups of crunched up corn flakes and pour 1/2 cup of melted butter on top.

Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes.

If you've never had this it probably sounds gross, but trust me, it is heavenly.

We also ate some other stuff.

Hope you had a great Easter!

cooking for two: taco tuesday

One of our favorite meals, but not the most healthy. 

tacos

first you need pico

so cut up some fresh tomatoes, cilantro, and green onion

you'll also want some lettuce

You're going to need some shells.  I like to heat up flour tortillas in a frying pan with butter, although you could use olive oil if you want to go on the lighter side. 

I also melt cheese on top of the shell...mmm.

I did not take a picture of it, but I make, "taco rice," which you can buy for $1 at any grocery store in the prepackaged rice/soup aisle.

I also cook ground beef and use your basic taco flavoring/seasoning packet.

Put it all together and you have a fabulous taco.

{Sour cream added also}

If you want to be really disgusting and kind of redneck you can add ketchup like Lee, but let me tell you, you are ruining it.  GROSS!

cooking for 2 tuesday: 5 minute dinner

Sometimes you are just too hungry to wait for dinner to cook.

So you can make dinner in five minutes

or you can go to McDonald's

you choose.

This is what five minute dinner looks like at our house:

grilled cheese sandwiches and soup

this literally took about 5 maybe 6 minutes to cook

Apparently that still wasn't fast enough because I ate a bunch of cadbury mini eggs and pretzels dipped in peanut butter while waiting for those 5 minutes to pass!

cooking for two tuesday: chicken salad

So I don't know about you, but whenever I eat chicken salad at a wedding, bridal shower, baby shower, party, etc. it's like I just can't get enough!  I love it so much I want to marry it.  There, I said it.

So this is how I make mine:

boil 2 chicken breasts (20 min) and shred
(most recipes say canned chicken, but boiling your own is way cheaper)

boil 2 cups of bow tie noodles
(or not if you leave the noodles out you can make sandwiches out of them, but who has croissants on hand? not me, plus again I went for cheap and these are super cheap)

cut up:
celery, grapes, apples, and pears
(Lee says, "Leave out the celery," because he hates it, but I say, "No way Jose you need that crunch.")

dump it all in a bowl with a 1/2 cup of almond slivers

It will look something like this ^

Then, and most importantly, you can't just use regular mayo.
You have to use olive oil mayo, trust me.  It will change your life.

PS: This needs to chill before being served AND make sure you hide the leftovers because if I am there it will be gone in less than 24 hours. No Joke.

We ate it with sides of pineapple and wheat rolls.

Happy Cooking!

Cooking for Two Tuesday: BBQ burgers

Last night we got inspired by the 60 degree weather.

So we went for a classic summer meal: hamburgers on the grill. 

Super healthy? No.

Super tasty? yes.

And that's all I have time to write tonight because apparently being OCD and cleaning my entire bathroom on a random Tuesday night at 9:00 PM is more important than blogging.

Priorities, people, priorities.

Cooking For Two Tuesday: Spaghetti

Spaghetti Dinner 

This is probably the easiest recipe in the world, even though the sauce is homemade (sort of).  

I remember one year {I was about maybe 9 years old} my friend and I made this dinner for my parents on their anniversary and pretended to be waitresses and served them by candlelight
 (in the laundry room of all places and at a card table)
Random.
Adorable right? Well, it was my friend's idea, but you get the point.
 I mastered this recipe at an early age.

PS: sorry mom for revealing your super secret spaghetti sauce

Spaghetti, sauce, & salad. Easy peasy.

 We usually do garlic bread too, but that's just too many carbs for me to comfortably eat
and we didn't have any white bread in the house.  

Wheat garlic bread is not tasty, take it from me.

First cut up your veggies, if you can't do that, you are in trouble.

I keep my tomatoes separate in case there are leftovers, tomatoes will wilt your salad quick.

Boil your water.
Add your noodles.
Don't overcook them.
Some people say throw one against the wall and if it sticks or something it is done?
I don't know. Google it.
I just say, "Lee come eat a noodle and tell me how they are doing."
I like them overcooked, he doesn't, therefore this is his job.

*SECRET* (jk mom) Recipe
First, sautee some onions in butter.
Then you brown hamburger meat.  I usually only do 1/2 lb and freeze the other half, but pictured above I did the whole thing.
Next you pour in a can of tomato soup (I always use Campbell's), 1 tbsp(ish meaning 1 or 2) of ketchup, and about a 1/2 cup of water.  I say about and -ish because it depends on you and you can't really mess it up.
Now this is my own step (not part of the original recipe)
 which is why I say it's only sort of homemade.
At this point I like to dump about 1/2 bottle of some premade spaghetti sauce just to give you some veggies and seasonings without any work.

Lastly, I cut up some nummy cantaloupe.  

Just for a little something sweet and juicy.

We didn't eat it with dinner, but about 15 minutes later.

Enjoy!

If you are doubtful as to the deliciousness of this recipe, just know that my brother-in-law was over at our house once during dinner with spaghetti on the menu and he asked me how I learned to be such a good cook. 

I'm like it's spaghetti? How hard can it be?

Apparently it can be hard.  Apparently it can go wrong.

Cooking For 2 Tuesday: Marinated Chicken & Songs to Listen to On Repeat

It's that time again, cooking for two Tuesday.  Posting at 10:16 PM and Lee is the one who cooked this meal so I think it's safe to say I am a little lazy this week.   I must be resting extra this week since I know I am going to be working extra hard next week during my parent teacher conferences.

This is one of our favorite meals.  It is a pretty standard recipe that most people probably know/love/use.  It is chicken breasts marinated in sprite/7up/store brand lemon lime soda.  I think the first time I made it I googled "sprite chicken" and found a recipe that went something like this: marinate chicken overnight in :
1 can of sprite, 1/3 c. olive oil, 1/3 c. soy sauce, & 1 tsp garlic powder.

Well, the first time we made it, it was good, but a little too salty for us (we are sugar lovers up in this house).  So I swapped out the soy sauce for teriyaki sauce and it was much better, but then we noticed the longer we let it marinade (ideal time is 3 days) the sweeter and more flavored the chicken is.  So it's a pretty basic recipe, but with our own twists. 

I marinated the chicken a few days prior and then talked Lee into heading out to the grill, steaming the broccoli,  & boiling and mashing the potatoes.  What a champ! We also had some left over home made rolls because even though I was lazy on this particular night, it doesn't mean I didn't channel Martha on Saturday.

Lastly (as promised) without further ado, songs that I just want to listen to over and over lately. Click to listen to it. PS You are welcome for not making you listen to them by posting a playlist.

Fun. We Are Young
Christina Perri  A Thousand Years
LMFAO I'm Sexy & I Know It


What songs are you listening to on repeat?

Cooking for Two Tuesday: breakfast for din-din

Sometimes you just need some pancakes for dinner.

The trouble with eating pancakes for dinner is that you feel as if you've already eaten dessert.  30 minutes after dinner I usually get up and treat myself to some oreos and milk, but when I eat pancakes for dinner, I am already sugared out and it's very confusing unto me.  This is followed by a battle within my head if I should eat some veggies as dessert since I ate dessert as dinner? I usually just drink some water and frown.

But without further ado: cooking for two: pancakes for dinner.

You were warned.

Supplies needed:

eggs (scrambled eggs)
milk (to drink)
syrup (sugar, brown sugar, water, & maple flavoring)
pancakes (white flour, wheat flour, oats, baking soda, salt, sugar, egg, milk, oil) recipe
cooking spray

prep time: 20-ish minutes
downside: you don't feel like you deserve dessert & it's hard to keep it all warm at the same time
upside: breakfast, who doesn't love breakfast? oat/wheat pancakes: mmmm very filling!

Cooking for Two: Sunday Dinner Edition

Slow Cooker Pot Roast

More like dinner for 6-8 (AKA dinner for 2 with oodles of leftovers ~ which I am good with)



FYI: I added more potatoes and carrots, but I wanted the meat to show in my picture.  That way, if any vegetarians visit my page I can offend them (joke).

STEP ONE: Buy supplies at the store: roast, potatoes, carrots, optional: onions, celery, olive oil, spices.
STEP TWO: Put a little water on the bottom, put the roast in, put seasoning on top
 (for me that means 1/4-1/2 onion, tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper, parsley).
STEP THREE: Wash your veggies, cut up all your veggies, and plop them on the top of the meat.  Add more seasonings if desired.
STEP FOUR: There is no step four! Ha! You're done, just go about your day and dinner is ready in 6-8 hours.



But, for me, I can't only eat the roast with the veggies that cooked in the same pot with the roast, because IMHO pot roast veggies taste too much like the pot roast.  So, of course, I steamed some broccoli.  Then we ate these nummy homemade rolls we had on hand.  I am kind of obsessed with baking bread these days.  Maybe someday I can write a post about the magical 1:00 PM hour on Saturdays when my house smells like clean toliets, fresh laundry, and baking bread, basically my idea of heaven.  Don't ask me for the (bread) recipe, unless you're a Chesnut, because it might be a family secret, or it might be from Betty Crocker, who knows these things? Certainly, not me.

And just for fun, I found this image on Lee's computer and I have no idea if he found it online somewhere or made it himself.  I like to think he made it, because then it is just that much better.

I hope you have a Michael Scott kind of Valentine's Day, whatever that means.

Cooking for Two Tuesday

Well, this post will not be as awesome/detailed as my last cooking for two Tuesday, but the food was pretty awesome.  I attempted my first try at making homemade pizza.  I used this recipe for the dough.  I did use all purpose flour instead of bread flour and it was fine.  I used store bought pizza sauce, because one thing at a time right?  It turned out pretty darn good, but the crust/edge part was pretty dry (compared to the greasy take out pizzas we are used to).  Next time, I would put a light coating of butter on the crust area for just a little bit more flavor.

This dinner did take a while to prep since the bread has to rise (the recipe says 30 min, but I usually have to let dough rise in the oven with a pot of hot water and it still takes an hour for me).  All in all it took about half an hour to prepare everything, 1 hour to rise, and 20 minutes to cook. 

We also had salad, FYI, but I was too excited to try the pizza to stop and take a pic of the salad.

Happy Cooking!

Cooking for Two Tuesday

I have decided that it is time.  Time for me to have a little something I will call a weekly feature.  Hopefully it will help me to update my blog at least once a week and add some variety to the creativity going on in my kitchen!

So I am happy to announce Cooking for Two Tuesday.  So this is all wonderful and exciting. This is how it will work: Every Tuesday I am going to post something I made for dinner in the past week (hopefully something different each week).  I am excited about this because I have heard a lot of people say that cooking for two is a waste/pain and I have also heard some people say it is difficult to come up with/make healthy dinners.


Now I am not going to say I am super healthy, because I am not, but I am going to try to post healthy dinners.



And before you even ask/wonder, yes, I really do eat that much broccoli, but I will try not to have broccoli in every dinner I post.

And second of all, I just think you should be aware, one of my main goals in planning/cooking dinners is to use whatever fresh produce is available before it goes bad, so this means I include a lot of produce.  I usually get my produce from bountiful baskets.  Which I posted about once before, remember? When you buy these you get a lot of fruits and veggies and I try really hard to make sure we don't waste it.

So without further ado here is our first featured dinner:

Prepared in 20 minutes from start to finish.

BLT Sandwiches
Steamed Broccoli
Cucumber
Pomegranate

Items needed:

broccoli, half of a cucumber, one tomato, one pomegranate, lettuce, bread, bacon, mayo, and I also used, but did not photograph: butter, salt, & pepper.

The thing that takes the longest in this dinner is steaming broccoli (15 minutes including water heat up) & cooking the bacon, also about 15 minutes. So I begin by cooking those items and then working on washing, preparing, and cutting the rest of the produce while those are cooking.

You might have noticed I added an egg to one of the sandwiches for a little extra protein, so that's another/different option.

If you are wondering how I got that pomegranate into that adorable little bowl just check out this video. Youtube is my secret weapon when it comes to cooking. 


What are you cooking tonight?