I tried a recipe similar to this for Baked Broccoli and Cheese Patties. I can't find the original one I used, but this turned out great. All gone.
I tried this recipe for Honey Cinnamon Chickpeas. Hmm...what can I say? Huge fail comes to mind! Yeah, they went straight in the trash after cooling.
I made these Ham and Cheese Pinwheels. Not so healthy (stupid cresent rolls) although I did use 2% shredded cheese, but simple, easy and delicious. And also devoured.
To stick with the healthy and also the southern new year tradition of eating black eyed peas, I made Redneck Caviar served with tortilla chips. We had this at our wedding and it was a hit. I made a ton of it so we'd have some leftover because Donald loves this stuff.
I despise celery, don't care for peanut butter and really don't eat raisins unless they are baked into something, but I made Ants on a Log. They were also gone. Even though I'm not into them, I get it. The crunchy celery, the smooth (although I used crunchy peanut butter) and salty peanut butter and the sweet raisins. Oh and it's healthy. I'm glad I didn't have to bring any back home.
I had to do something sweet. In sticking with my healthy theme, I decided to do the Pineapple Angel Food Cake that has only those two ingredients. It's wildly popular on Pinterest. It's so easy to make. You literally open the mix and open the can of pineapple, dump it in a bowl, mix and pour into a greased cake pan and bake. It comes out super moist and fluffy. I've made this several times before and can pretty much devour it in one sitting. I wanted to really make it super tasty, so I grabbed a tub of whipped cream. I toasted up some coconut while the cake baked and zested a lime. In the past I've used the Duncan Hines and Aldi brand of angel food cake mix. All I had on hand was the Aldi brand. I'm guessing they must have changed the packaging because it came with two pouches instead of one. Apparently this packaging makes a difference because it did not rise. Ugh, now what to do?!
Thankfully, I had another can of cresent rolls on hand. I decided to whip up a batch of Apple Dumplings. Many of the recipes on Pinterest call for a ton of butter and sugar, but I just think it's unnecessary. So, I tweaked mine a bit. I used a Granny Smith apple, added the zest of an orange as well as nutmeg. And I used Sprite. I also used maybe a 1/4 cup of sugar. I think what the recipe calls for is way too much. These baked up nicely, smelled delicious and once again, a huge hit.
So all of that was for Garden Club-January. I didn't get a chance to take pictures of any of the food. I was really just trying to focus on seeing what I could get done since this was my first month. Stella didn't sleep good over the weekend and Sunday night, I barely got any rest. I may have slept for two hours. I was exhausted all day. Hopefully in the coming months I can get photos of the food and decor to share.
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Both Monday and Tuesday we walked for about an hour. Monday we walked in the late morning. Stella was fussy and I couldn't listen to it. She LOVES the outdoors, so I put her on my back and headed out the door with Bandit. Tuesday, we walked in the late afternoon with a friend who lives a few streets down. She has two adorable kiddies. They got to ride in their wagon and Stella rode in her stroller.
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Wednesday, I had full intentions of taking Stella to story time at the library. It starts at 10 am. We've only been once, before the holidays and she seemed to like it. They took about a month break around the holidays since a lot of people are out of town and it had started back the week prior. This got thrown to the side when I woke up with a huge waffle craving.
I despise celery, don't care for peanut butter and really don't eat raisins unless they are baked into something, but I made Ants on a Log. They were also gone. Even though I'm not into them, I get it. The crunchy celery, the smooth (although I used crunchy peanut butter) and salty peanut butter and the sweet raisins. Oh and it's healthy. I'm glad I didn't have to bring any back home.
I had to do something sweet. In sticking with my healthy theme, I decided to do the Pineapple Angel Food Cake that has only those two ingredients. It's wildly popular on Pinterest. It's so easy to make. You literally open the mix and open the can of pineapple, dump it in a bowl, mix and pour into a greased cake pan and bake. It comes out super moist and fluffy. I've made this several times before and can pretty much devour it in one sitting. I wanted to really make it super tasty, so I grabbed a tub of whipped cream. I toasted up some coconut while the cake baked and zested a lime. In the past I've used the Duncan Hines and Aldi brand of angel food cake mix. All I had on hand was the Aldi brand. I'm guessing they must have changed the packaging because it came with two pouches instead of one. Apparently this packaging makes a difference because it did not rise. Ugh, now what to do?!
Thankfully, I had another can of cresent rolls on hand. I decided to whip up a batch of Apple Dumplings. Many of the recipes on Pinterest call for a ton of butter and sugar, but I just think it's unnecessary. So, I tweaked mine a bit. I used a Granny Smith apple, added the zest of an orange as well as nutmeg. And I used Sprite. I also used maybe a 1/4 cup of sugar. I think what the recipe calls for is way too much. These baked up nicely, smelled delicious and once again, a huge hit.
So all of that was for Garden Club-January. I didn't get a chance to take pictures of any of the food. I was really just trying to focus on seeing what I could get done since this was my first month. Stella didn't sleep good over the weekend and Sunday night, I barely got any rest. I may have slept for two hours. I was exhausted all day. Hopefully in the coming months I can get photos of the food and decor to share.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Both Monday and Tuesday we walked for about an hour. Monday we walked in the late morning. Stella was fussy and I couldn't listen to it. She LOVES the outdoors, so I put her on my back and headed out the door with Bandit. Tuesday, we walked in the late afternoon with a friend who lives a few streets down. She has two adorable kiddies. They got to ride in their wagon and Stella rode in her stroller.
Here she is playing Peek-a-Boo with her hat.
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Wednesday, I had full intentions of taking Stella to story time at the library. It starts at 10 am. We've only been once, before the holidays and she seemed to like it. They took about a month break around the holidays since a lot of people are out of town and it had started back the week prior. This got thrown to the side when I woke up with a huge waffle craving.
So I made waffles and she absolutely LOVED them! She ate HALF of an entire waffle. I couldn't believe it! Yay, happy Mommy!
We left the house at 10:45 to run errands. This is what happened last time I went shopping with her. She started out in here, but then got sleepy and wanted to be held.
I couldn't do what I really needed to do holding her, so I laid her down in the basket.
Unfortunately that didn't last long, so I ended up picking her back up. She immediately fell back asleep and I just walked around aimlessly while she slept.
Since August or September, I've really gotten into baby wearing. In the beginning, Stella didn't care to be worn much and I got a little discouraged. But it was hot this summer, our air was out for about 6 weeks and she had THE hottest little baby body I'd ever felt! I wouldn't want to be wrapped up either if I were her. Now, thanks to the lovely ladies at Babywearers International of Atlanta, I know I have different options. I can find what's best for both of us. Now, I can wear Stella when I'm out and about, busy around the house or when she's fussy/sleepy and wants to be held. Sometimes I wear her up front and other times I wear her on my back. She doesn't care. She's comfy, I'm comfy and she'll fall asleep in either position.
Here she is at my Aunt Katha's cabin on my back. My cute little monkey.
Because it was nap time, I ended up wearing her that morning in K-Mart so she could get in a little nap.
I didn't expect to be away from the house as long as we were and I got hungry. I made the decision to go sit down somewhere and eat with her. I could have just went through a drive-thru, but she's really into eating real food and since we weren't rushed for time, decided to go for it. It was great. We ate at Five Guys. She had a few fries, some of the hamburger meat and a pickle chip. Oh and also some puffs. Then we walked over to Target to finish our errands. I threw her on and continued shopping. Again, it was nap time so she snoozed, I did what I needed to do, then browsed until she woke up.
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After being gone most of the day on Wednesday, I thought it best to stay in all day Thursday. We had no reason to leave. That afternoon, I put a Cran-Apple Ginger crisp in the slow cooker. It was the dessert to our hamburger steak with mushroom gravy, rice and white acre pea dinner. This entire meal was wonderful.
I forgot to take an "after" picture, but it really didn't look much different from this. The only thing I'd change is not adding the granola before cooking. There was no crisp to this crisp. I made this before minus the cranberries and actually made a crisp topping with flour, oats, butter, etc. It actually got somewhat crunchy. This time I used gingerbread flavored granola (yum) and it just got soggy. I'm big into texture and this dessert was big on flavor, but desperately lacking in the texture department. I would recommend adding the granola after spooning it into bowl and topping it with whipped cream.
Stella slept really good Thursday night. Like amazing. How she used to. It was lovely. She passed out at 7:30. We went to bed at 9:30 and she didn't wake me up until 7 am!
Once again, Friday, we stayed at home all day and I made use of my slow cooker by cooking spaghetti sauce in it. I also used a boxed herb foccacia mix to go with our pasta.
I'm so happy I got to make new recipes this week. Making a new recipe each week was a New Years Resolution I had back in 2010. I did it good until the week of St. Patty's Day. Donald and I both came down with a horrible stomach bug. We couldn't eat right for about two weeks. Then my job at the time took a turn for the worse after that. I was miserable, plus we were planning our wedding. I had too much going on. I'm glad to be picking it back up.
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