OUT of town....

I need this break and hoping the weather will allow it! See ya on the flip side!

2/21/11

Biscuits and Gravy!! Like I said I just LOVE breakfast. We have it often when I lack creativity! Being such a busy weekend, and with Presidents Day we all skipped out for the day to Cour d' lene! I did manage to take out some organic beef sausage that I was SO excited to use. I bought it from a local farmer here in town. http://www.localharvest.org/its-the-lords-farm-M41224

When I opened my package of sausage I was a little shocked! The meat was so bright red! I couldn't believe how it tasted as well! So fresh! Highly recommend this farm!! GREAT meat!

2/20/11 Engagement party!

Today I made a carrot cake, chocolate cake, 2 kinds of biscotti and hummus! Had a house FULL of people and it was SO much fun!!!

2/19/11

Friends for dinner after I did a photo shoot for their engagement! So I had the privilege of Chris making dinner! Ok so I helped a little....but not much! We made one of our favorite dishes, Ginger Peanut Chicken. So easy and so delicious! It was quite fun to make dinner together and I am pretty sure soon as school gets out I will spend less time in the kitchen!! He is seriously an amazing cook!

I thought you would like to see some pictures of what I did all day too!

Hamburger Rolls 2/18/11

One of our family favorite recipes is a bit of an embarrassment. They are Hamburger Rolls and they are just as they sounds. Rolls filled with hamburger meat and cheese. I brown up hamburger and onion and garlic. Then I make the dough from Betty Crocker Recipe book circa 1950's-60's for Easy Refrigerator Rolls and fill them with the meat and cheese! Then we bake them at 400 for 20 min! Tonight I served with a side salad and corn!

Boring but a family favorite none the less! Also easy when we have extra kids around and the funny thing is that the kids all love them and want THEIR moms to make them.

Cookies 2/17/11

I love just LOVE the big bag of chocolate chips at Costco. They never last long around here. The cookie recipe on the back is one of the best Chocolate chip recipes I have ever tried!

2/16/11

I love to make home made bread.  Its one of my favorite things to make. I am perfecting French Bread. This recipe is the best I have seen yet and very detailed info too...not a great site but great info!!!!


http://whatscookingamerica.net/Bread/FrenchBread.htm

 Ok I am just going to tell you....I have baked bread for YEARS. I came across this loaf pan at The Kitchen Engine and for $8.00 thought if I didn't like it I wouldn't be out much money. I LOVE this pan! I will be going to get more. It makes the best bread. They say to use them for rising the dough but I use it for baking as well and WOW! It makes my bread amazing!

Oops!

I forgot to tell you that I was blessed by my sweetie!!!!!  There were 2 dozen roses and chocolate delivered to my door on Valentines!!!

Blasted back!

There will be no picture for today, I was cleaning my shower and I put my back out! Would LOVE to tell you that I had danced the evening away last night and tweaked my back. That would be much more romantic, but no, I was cleaning the shower. Some people say cleaning will kill you and after today, I may have to agree. I do however have the most wonderful chiropractor who put me on VERY limited physical activity and gave me a back brace. I am hoping to be up and round next week! We had left overs tonight so scroll through the last few days pics and you will get the idea!

Valentines Dinner

I always try to make this day special for our whole family. Seems silly to leave the kids at home with a box of mac n cheese and then go out to eat. That's what Anniversary's are for! Today I aspired to make very special. While walking in Costco with my Love yesterday he mentioned Beef Stroganoff for dinner last night. Unfortunately I didn't have any meat defrosted thus we ended up with Ravioli. However, I did make sure to take the meat out early this morning so I could surprise him!

Lets be honest here, DESSERT is what this day is all about right??? OF COURSE right!! So lets start with the good stuff! I made Brownies! Now if you remember from my last post about Brownies, that my last try was an EPIC failure and I was on a mission to find a recipe for a good dense brownie....well, I DID! Here is the recipe!

Brownies
Multipurpose flour – 2 cups
Dark chocolate – 8 ounces
Soft Butter - 1 cup
Eggs – 5
Sugar – 2½ cups
Vanilla Extract - 1 tablespoon
Milk – 1 tablespoon
Pinch of salt
Roasted and chopped walnuts (optional) – 2½ cups
Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease a 9 x 13 pan.

Melt chocolate & butter over low heat until they make a smooth liquid and remove from heat. With mixer, blend eggs, sugar, & vanilla until thoroughly mixed. Add milk, flour and salt, and chocolate mix to egg/sugar mixture (slow w/ chocolate so eggs don't scramble). After it is thoroughly mixed, add walnuts if desired. Pour into greased pan. Bake for about 40 minutes @ 375.

THEN I made home made chocolate syrup!

http://smallnotebook.org/2009/07/10/homemade-chocolate-syrup/


SO easy and tastes better than...ahem.....Hershy's!

Next I chose to make home made noodles to go with my Beef Stroganoff! 

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1627,133186-249194,00.html

Last I made the Stroganoff and oh my! Well, my family knows they are loved! I felt very fulfilled in the kitchen today!!!! The dinner was a hit and dessert will live on in infamy in my world! I can rest now that I have found a recipe I like, OF COURSE you know I will be tweaking it as that's what I do best!

2/13/11

So I went to Costco and did the unthinkable! Yup~I bought a bag of pre~made Ravioli. Then I made a Spinach Alfredo sauce to go with it. It was actually delightful. I may just do that again!

Love TRUE love!!!!

You may ask what true love is and I will tell you. True love is making the special dinner for your husband that you can't even stomach. Last night I showed true love to my True Love. He has had a particularly unsettled week, so I decided to bless him and make....ahem....gag.....Meat Loaf. Honestly I can not think of a food I can"t stand more than meat loaf. I have tried my share in my day but just cant stomach the idea of it let alone the smell or taste. I usually make this when I am going to be out but last night I made it and ate rice and salad! So to honor Valentine's day and my sweet husband I give you Meat Loaf. (I am getting BIG points for this!!) 

My Salad!

2/11/11

Breakfast! It's what's for dinner! Honestly breakfast happens to be my favorite meal of the day. Often I will make it for dinner. I chose to make a vegetable and ham and cheese frittata and biscuits and quinoa as well. The frittata was easy to make but took much longer to become firm because I used well over 20 eggs. You may think that is insane amount but remember I have 3 men to feed! The quinoa was not as big of a hit to the family as I thought it to be. Thats ok. We will try it again!

2/10/11

Some days I am more creative than others. I sense the end of January and beginning of February to be rather dull days. I lack motivation and inspiration. Therefor you will see another baked pasta dish here. I long for the days of summer when I can grill and make salads and spend time out of doors.

This pasta dish however was tasty to me because of the swirly noodles I used. I also made the entire meal organic with the exception of the cheese. I find that to be pretty impressive considering its a casserole and has multiple ingredients!

Tea Time

Let's talk tea! If only my teacup could talk, I'm sure it would have a wonderful story! I would love to hear the story of who it belonged to until it came to me! I bought this one at a garage sale. I just LOVE tea! I have pretty much switched over from coffee to tea and really enjoy it. I am drinking gallons of green tea a day and its supposedly better for you. I am not sure about that, but I know I feel much better when I drink tea rather than coffee. Today I just needed to sip out of one of my nice tea cups! Sometimes life is crazy, or lonely, or sad and somehow drinking tea out of a regular cup just isn't the same. A real tea cup makes life just a little bit more calm, just that much more pretty!

2/8/11

Muffins are another of my favorite foods to make! I have found a recipe that I love to use! The reason I like it is because the top of the muffin is crispy crunch with out too much crunch and the inside is so moist and almost flaky! The I add berries or just use orange zest and flax seed or sometimes I even use nuts! Another reason I love this one is because the paper muffin cup NEVER and I do mean NEVER sticks to the muffin! I just do not like to eat those with my morning muffin! Today I made muffins for my books study girls! It was quick and easy and well....tasty! These ones I made with lemon zest and flax!

Duckhorn Wine Dinner

We had the wonderful opportunity to go to a wine dinner last night and I must say the food at Luna was wonderful!

The first course was Appetizers and Decoy Chardonnay~didn't get any pics of those but they were wonderful.
The first course they served was Lobster Risotto and OH MY! The lobster was fantastic. The risotto was a little undercooked but WHO CARES when you have succulent LOBSTER in your mouth!

Next we were privileged to experience the second course which was my personal favorite. It was Duck Breast with Butternut Squash puree and my mouth was in heaven!

After this treat we were then able to have Kobe Short Ribs that were the most tender meat I have personally ever eaten! They served it with tiny pieces of peppered bacon that were so flavorful!

Then we of course had to have dessert and being the dessert connoisseur  that I am was very pleasantly surprised with the Apple Tart-let and mascarpone cheese! I wont lie by telling you it was their best. Its NOT! They make a coconut cake there that is in my opinion the best dessert in all of Spokane County and beyond!! If they had served that cake I may still be there eating it! It was a wonderful night!

SuperBowl

Superbowl was fun! My sweet husbands team lost but there was FOOD! Lots of wonderful food! If you notice the lack of pictures on this post its true! I forgot again! So bummed I didn't snap off a pic of my favorites! I can still tell you what I made though. I made a Sweet Cheese~ball, Lemon Bars (they didn't turn out so well) and my all time favorite Artichoke Dip! We had a great time even if Pittsburgh lost!

Lemon Poppy~seed Scones

I LOVE to make scones. They are my go to food for easy convenient food when one has a guest coming in short notice! My friend came over yesterday and I made up a batch for her. Today our international student from Japan came by and wanted to spend the morning with us, I made another batch today. I made Lemon Poppy~seed. Love this picture how you can see the lemon zest springing out of the scone!

2/4/11 TREATED AGAIN!!!

We have a rotating dish duty in our home, where he who does the dishes, gets to sleep with our 4 lb Chihuahua Inka!  HOWEVER we also have a rule that if you make dinner you don't have to do the dinner dishes. So therefor after Kyla didn't have to do dishes Katie wanted to make dinner as well. Although she usually is the one who loves to cook, I think the no dishes was an extra motivator! So she made the most delicious pasta bake!!! I am so delighted my kids are learning to cook and loving it too! I think my son will be next to want to make dinner! Its been fun to watch them grow and learn and be creative!

2/3/11 memories!

Tapioca pudding on this night! I needed to make a dessert for small group but didn't have my oven available so I made Tapioca in my crock pot! It turned out lovely and it was super easy to do it too!  I enjoy this pudding as it has warm memories from my child hood! My Grandma used to make it almost weekly for us. I must admit I can not make it as good as hers. I will have to look in her recipes I inherited to see if I can find hers!!!

Kyla's Mac N Cheese

Kyla wanted to make us dinner tonight and what a treat! It was gourmet Mac N Cheese. She used Gruyere and Fontina Cheese with Sharp cheddar! It rocked our world! What a blessing to be able to have my kids cook for me and with me!

FEBRUARY!

The thought occured to me today as I was snapping up pictures of todays food that I should have planned better and made something Chocolaty each day until the 14th. THEN I remembered that I am eating less sugar and that wasn't such a good idea. I am excited for this month as there is less days in it and it will then be MARCH and that is almost spring!


You will notice a theme of Lemons or Lemony food because I bought the COSTCO sized bag and need to use them before they are all gone! Good thing I love lemon so much!!!

This recipe comes from Cooks Magazine and I just LOVE the Lemon Pound Cake recipe, though I did alter it a bit....WHO wants a low fat pound cake recipe?? NOT me! This is delicious and is wonderful served with Tea or Coffee!

Here is the link! I used oil for the shortening and regular sour cream! 
http://www.cookscountry.com/pwlogin.asp?did=4992&area=recipe&iseason=

Lemon Chicken

I know what you are thinking.....Kyrsi I thought you said you were going to take pics of something you made. Now in case you think that I am delusional, which from time to time I am, I assure you, no I did not make this lemon you see here!  I wasn't able to snap off a picture before we ate Kyla's Orange Chicken all gone!




1/31/11