M&M Chocolate Chip Cookies

These cookies don't need much of a description. All you really need to know is that they are delicious. I've never made M&M cookies before and I used a recipe which called for vanilla pudding so I wasn't sure how they were going to turn out. But, they were amazing. I made them when my husband was out of town which was a bad idea. I ate way too many by myself and I had no one else in the house to blame it on. I did give some away which makes me feel a little better but I think I'm going to make these again soon. I got the recipe from Picky Palate.

Ingredients:

• 1 stick/1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 3 tablespoons instant vanilla pudding mix
  
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips- I used regular
• 1 or 1-1/2 cups mini M&M's

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a large mixing bowl cream your butter and sugars until well combined. Add your egg and vanilla mixing to combine. Add your flour, pudding mix, baking soda and salt, stirring to combine. Add chips and M&M’s stirring to combine.

 3. With a medium cookie scoop, place dough 1 inch apart from each other. Bake for 10-12 minutes until cooked through. Let cool on cookie sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to cooling rack. Enjoy!

I ate one...

Makes 2 dozen cookies

Italian Sloppy Joes

I had leftover sloppy joe sauce in my fridge and I was trying to figure out what to do with it. I came across this idea from The Pioneer Woman. This worked perfectly to use up our leftovers but I think next time I'll use homemade spaghetti sauce instead.

I used white homemade garlic bread as the base which made it taste amazing. I just put some butter and garlic salt on the bread and put it under the broiler for a few minutes. Then, I topped with the meaty sloppy joe sauce and sprinkled some mozzarella cheese on top. Then I put it back under the broiler for a couple of minutes to let the cheese melt. It was a really quick meal. I think I'm going to work on freezing some homemade spaghetti sauce this week. My husband has been asking me to do it for months and it's just one of those things I haven't gotten around to. Maybe I'll do it over the holiday weekend since he'll be leaving me for a boys trip.

5 Minute Salsa

I have bought the ingredients for this salsa probably 5 times now and I always end up the using the ingredients for something else before I end up making it. This time, after I got home from the store I whipped it right up. It was quick and it tasted delicious. I found this recipe from Damn Delicious. You will need a blender.

I have just a small, cheap, two setting blender and when I dumped all the ingredients in there, it filled it to the very top. I was glad I could still get the lid on. If it doesn't all fit you can always blend it in batches and then return it all to the blender at the end and just pulse it for a second to mix it all together. One thing that scared me is that after I blended it, it looked more pink than red as you can see in the picture above. But, after about an hour in the fridge, it all soaked in and settled and it looked normal like the picture below.

 Ingredients:
2- 10oz cans diced tomatoes I used 5-6 medium tomatoes
 1 clove garlic
 1 small red onion, roughly chopped
 1 jalapeño, seeded and roughly chopped
1/2 cup fresh cilantro leaves
 1 lime, juiced
1 teaspoon sugar
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Tortilla chips, for serving

 Directions:

• Combine diced tomatoes, garlic, onion, jalapeño, cilantro, lime juice, salt and pepper, to taste, in blender until smooth.
• Serve with tortilla chips.

Chicken Enchilada Quinoa Bake

I have been wanting to cook with quinoa for a while but it's just so expensive that I've been leaving it on my grocery list every time I go to the store. Finally I just gave in and bought it. This was the first thing I made. I saw it on Pinterest and it made my mouth water. When I'm hungry I should not be allowed to look at recipes, especially dessert recipes! Anyway, this recipe was delicious. I wish I had an awesome Mexican dish like the Pinterest picture though. I will say, it was delicious right out of the oven but it tasted even bettter as leftovers because all the juices soaked into the quinoa. So yummy!

The recipe came from Tablespoon.com

Chicken Enchilada Quinoa Bake

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 1/2 cups cooked quinoa (white or red)

1 1/2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast

1 can (15 oz) black beans

1 can (4.5 oz) chopped green chiles

1 tablespoon chili powder

2 cups enchilada sauce (from 19-oz can)

1/2 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese (2 oz)

1 cup shredded pepper Jack cheese (4 oz)

Sour cream or plain Greek yogurt

Sliced avocado

Fresh cilantro

Crumbled cotija (white Mexican) cheese, if desire 

 

 

 

Directions: 

• Heat oven to 350°F. Spray 13x9-inch (3-quart) ceramic or broiler-proof baking dish with cooking spray.
• Heat 10- or 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil and onion; cook 5 minutes or until onion is soft.
• Reduce heat to low. Add quinoa, chicken, black beans, green chiles, chili powder and 2 cups of the enchilada sauce; stir to combine. Remove from heat.
• Stir in Cheddar cheese. Transfer quinoa mixture to baking dish. Top evenly with pepper Jack cheese.
• Bake 10 to 15 minutes.
• Turn oven control to broil. Place baking dish about 5 inches from broiler; broil 1 to 2 minutes or until cheese is golden and bubbly. Remove from broiler. Top with sour cream, avocado, cilantro and cotija cheese. Serve immediately.

 

*This recipe is another easy one to prepare ahead and leave in the fridge until you are ready to bake it. It was great for a busy evening.  

My Birthday

The past couple of months I have been getting scuba diving certified. It has been really fun, for the  most part.... Tyrone has been scuba diving for a while and he has been wanting me to get into it but I was a little bit afraid. I am a pretty fearless person. I want to ride the craziest, fastest roller coasters and go sky diving but I don't want to breathe underwater. Maybe it was the water part that scared me the most. I don't know. But, since we live in the perfect place right now, I finally decided to do it. I went to the two classroom sessions and the five pool sessions as well as the four open water dives that are required to get certified. On the first open water dive I felt a little bit nauseous out in the water but when we went down to the bottom I felt better and it ended up being fun. The second open water dive, I was nauseous before we even went to the bottom. I puked before we even went down. Then, once I got to the bottom, I felt really sick again so I had to go to the top where I continued to puke the entire swim into shore. It was awful. I was underwater for maybe 5 minutes. For the last dive I was prepared with the Dramamine. I took it the night before, the  morning of, and in between the two dives we did. It was a blast.

For my birthday Tyrone and I bought all the gear I needed to go scuba diving. We bought some off Craigslist and some stuff from friends. My husband joked about wrapping it but I said that was silly. When I woke up on my birthday Tyrone had created a scuba woman in our living room with a birthday card on it. It was really cute. I loved the scuba woman. I had to enjoy her before the baby woke up though because once he woke up he was crawling all over everything.

To celebrate my birthday we went to Benihana for dinner. It was so delicious. I forgot how amazing that place is. Not only was the food to die for but the entertainment was awesome.

Jackson was a little piglet and he ate almost an entire plate of noodles. He also learned how to drink out of a straw for the first time. Wahoo! I love the little things. 

We did forget his pacifier though and by the end of the night he was quite cranky. The chef scared one of the teenage girls sitting at our table with a rubber chicken and she jumped while the rest of the table laughed. Jackson on the other hand started screaming on the top of his lungs. Luckily he calmed down pretty quick. He was just so exhausted and I think the noise of everyone laughing startled him.

Then, the next night Tyrone and I went out scuba diving. We went out to the same place I got certified. It was so fun. We saw some sheep crab that reminded us of Jackson. Tyrone stuck his go-pro in the crabs face and the crab would move forward and bump into the camera. Then he would back up and proceed to bump into the camera again. He did this a handful of times and I just kept thinking about Jackson. It was the perfect date night. We followed our scuba dive with a Papa Johns Pizza. I love the garlic butter sauce. Tyrone always complains that I don't share. But, it was my birthday.

Happy Birthday Bunting Flag Banner

My fun sister-in-law Erin had told me that she wanted a Happy Birthday banner to hang above her fireplace. I decided that for her birthday I would get her one. I looked on Pinterest and Etsy but I just couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. So, I decided to make one myself. I was really happy with how it turned out and I have actually made a few more since then. I posted them for sale on Etsy and I've made a few custom made ones as well. Here is the link to buy them. If you would like a custom one let me know. I would love to do it. Here is a custom one I made for someone. It turned out really cute. Sorry for the dark pictures. I wanted to get a picture before I shipped it but the lighting in our apartment was terrible.

To start, I used this template from Sweetly Scrapped Art. Then, I used a bold, size 300 font with the letters spelling "Happy Birthday."

The letters become the stencils. I first traced the letters onto the fabric I wanted and cut them out.


Then I sewed the letters onto the center of the triangles.

After I sewed the letters on, I cut two strings of jute. The "Happy banner should be on about 104" of jute. I folded each triangle over the jute and sewed underneath the jute. This makes each flag lay perfectly in place but still  movable on the string. The "Birthday" banner will be longer than the "Happy" banner by about  10-15." I forgot to take an exact measurement.  I then Tied a knot in the top of the two strings to hang them by. I leave an extra foot on each end to hang down because I think it looks cute. You could make your strings shorter and leave that part off. It depends on the look you are going for.

This is the one I  made for my sister in law. I figured it would work for my nieces and nephews birthdays.

Anyway, I hope this is pretty simple for you guys. Let me know if you have any questions. I hope this tutorial was simple enough.  I'd love to see the banners you make. 

Spinach Strawberry Vinaigrettte Salad

I love gardening. I get so excited to see things grow. Since Tyrone and I have lived in an apartment since we've been married it has been hard to grow stuff. We were able to grow a few things at our old apartment but not much. Luckily when we moved to our new place in December we now have a small patio area. We've had multiple tomatoes that we've eaten off our tomato plant. I personally don't like tomatoes but my husband and the little one have loved them. Our little guy ate one of the tomatoes like an apple. It was really cute.

 I also planted cilantro and basil, both of which taste and smell delicious. I just recently bought a strawberry Topsy Turvy since our patio has hooks overhead to hang plants. We got our first ripe strawberry and I shared it with our little guy. It was delicious.

We ate it directly off the plant. It tastes better that way.

 Hopefully we get some more! He LOVES any kind of berries. Another plant that I've loved having is lettuce. It is really fun to go outside and get some lettuce for a salad. It feels so healthy and fresh! Recently I came across this salad dressing recipe and I have made this salad 4 times now. I originally found this dressing recipe because I was looking for a recipe that didn't have sugar in it. I had invited or friends over for dinner one night and they were on the whole 30 diet so I wanted to make sure that they could eat everything we were having. I found the recipe at Food.com

Ingredients:

2/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup red wine vinegar
1 clove garlic (crushed)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

 

I like to put all of the ingredients into a mason jar. Then, I put the lid on and shake it up. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

I usually make this salad with spinach and strawberries but I didn't have any spinach tonight so I made it with the lettuce from my garden. It's yummy both ways but I like it best with spinach.