Chicken with Black Beans and Rice and Triple Layer Mousse Cake

First up, cook some pieces of chicken...
Add tomato juice, frozen corn, spices tomatoes and black beans to a skillet.

Layer everything in a dish...

Done. This was good but reeally spicy. It had cayenne pepper in it and I think I still have an ulcer.

Triple Layer Mousse Cake. Make a graham cracker crust...

Melt some semi-sweet chocolate chips...

Layer in a springform pan and cool...

Make a box of mousse....

Layer and cool.

Top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings....

I still don't know how to keep the sides from sticking to a springform pan. I just ran a butter knife around all the edges....

I made this for Easter and it was delicious!!

Quotes Vol. 23

"You're always trying to break up with me, and we're not even together." ~ Elizabethtown

"Just tell me you love me and get it over with." ~ Elizabethtown

"Hate has a reason for everything. Love is unreasonable." ~ V. Raiuhes Ahaefuthe

"All my life I've wanted to be someone; I guess I should have been more specific." ~ Lily Tomlin

"Do you think, everything, everyone, is going mental, it seems to me that it's spiraling outta contral and it's inevitable." ~ Lily Allen

"I'm sorry if you feel that I'm being kinda mental, but you left me in such a state. But now I'm gonna do what you did to me, I'm gonna reciprocate." ~ Lily Allen

"We have all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the power we choose to act on. That's who we really are." ~ Harry Potter

"I loved you with my last breath." ~ Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"Dreams, dreams of when we had just started things. Dreams of you and me. It seems, it seems that I can't shake those memories. I wonder if you have the same dreams too." ~ Lily Allen

"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within." ~ James Baldwin

"Do you ever stop talking?" ~ Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"Look at me. Look at me! You suck, to me you suck. I kind of hate you. But you do not get unlimited chances to have the things we want. And this I know. Nothing is worse than missing an opportunity that could change your life." ~ Grey's Anatomy

"She's sad because her lover gave her twelve gold coins, but then the wizard cut open the bag of salt, and now the dancing minions have nowhere to put their big maypole...fish thing." ~ Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed." ~ Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"I know I haven't been myself lately, but I'm me again, so I was thinking maybe you should sleep over, because the me that I am is horny for the you that you are." ~ Grey's Anatomy

"Why don't you stay? I'm up off my knees. I'm so tired of being lonely, you can't give me what I need." ~ Sugarland

"That girl needs the stick out of her ass and a dick in her coochie, pronto!" ~ Sex and the City

"I can't even begin to explain to you how much I'm gonna miss you. When I think about not seeing you every day, it makes me not want to go...Okay, so if you think that I didn't say goodbye to you because you don't mean as much to me as everybody else, you're wrong. It's because you mean more to me." ~ Friends

"I'm a cross-dressing homosexual pacifist with a spot on my lung." ~ Across the Universe

"Women are like the police, they could have all the evidence in the world, but they still want the confession."

"I feel like I just found out that my favorite long song was written about a sandwich." ~ 27 Dresses

"Oh yeah, I'm a real good cocker." ~ 27 Dresses

"If you're a whore, what does that make me?" ~ Sex and the City

"My social skills are eerily similar to those of notorious homicidal maniacs."

"There's no excuse not to dream."

"As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot." ~ John Lennon

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." ~ John Lennon

"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination." ~ John Lennon

"Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist." ~ George Carlin

"Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don't have time for all that." ~ George Carlin

"When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat." ~ George Carlin

"Men are like lightbulbs, you keep screwing until one fits." ~ Swingtown

"We're so over, we need a new word for over." ~ Sex and the City

Earth Day plants and things

I took my clients on an outing to a Green Fest at SWIC in mid April. It was pretty small, but they were giving away red pine trees.

Then I took the day off, but still met Mary and our clients in Forest Park for the Earth Day Festival. If you have never been, you need to go! It was crowded of course, but you get lots of free stuff and all the food is organic and delicious!

I did a tree scavenger hunt and got a free pink flower to plant for completing the hunt! The stick in the picture below is a flowering bush that I got too.

Then the next day I started planting stuff at Mike's house. Here I started a lot of seed packets I got.

A plant my mom had at work....

And the three plants I had.

I bought a vase and decided to start keeping fresh flowers in my house since I don't have anywhere to plant any.

Got orange roses of course...

The seedlings popping up a week or so later....

The stick starting to sprout....

Hopefully my mom will decide on a place to permanently plant these after all the rain stops and before they die....

Chicken broccoli and rice, new shoes and Easter eggs

I found some new recipes that called for broccoli because I've had a bunch of frozen broccoli for the longest time, and nothing to do with it. So first you cook some Zatarain's yellow rice...
Cook some chicken...

Cut it up into small pieces....

Layer everything with the broccoli...

I don't even remember what this step was...possibly cream of chicken soup???

Add a bunch of cheddar...

And top with bread crumbs....

Done. It was really good and also reheated well....as have all of the other things I made with broccoli.

I have also been finding a lot of cute spring shoes. I usually hate shoes, but I found these new flats for work.

The blue ones were supposed to go with my Easter dress for church...which never really happened.

I haven't dyed eggs since I was a kid and have never done it by myself. So here is my try at it.

I got a tie dye kit (of course) which required you to wrap the egg in a wet cloth and put it in this plastic case with holes poked in it. Then you use a dropper to add colors inside the holes.

The tie dye thing worked, but the eggs weren't very bright. So I invented a new way to make cool designs. Plus I tried to write names on the eggs with a crayon...and that didn't work either so I don't know what I did wrong.

I stole some of those pantyhose footies from the shoe store (when I was getting the flats), put the egg down in one and tied it off. Then I rolled it around in different colors of dye.

This created a sort of ombre effect with a starburst at the spot where the gathered part of the toe was.

Ravioli Parmesan and Paper Bouquets

Here is a recipe I made for ravioli parmesan. It called for chicken and garlic ravioli....which doesn't exist in any grocery store I have found. So I used pork and beef ravioli. First you make a mixture of ricotta and eggs.
Dip the ravioli in that and some bread crumbs and layer in the dish.

Cover with lots of sauce and cheese.

This was really good, but it didn't re-heat very well. I think it used too much ricotta which kinda made it nasty when you heat it up.

Here is a project I did with my clients before, and we used it again to make a bouquet for my boss when her father died.

You take coffee filters and color them with markers in bright colors. I like to seperate the colors in triangles like a pizza.

Once you're done coloring, get a squirt bottle...or a squirt gun....which I used. Soak the papers and make sure you have a tablecloth or tarp down. This will make the colors run together, which creates a sort of tie-dye effect.

When they dry, pick the circles up by the centers and gather them into a flower. Wrap a pipe cleaner around the center to make a stem.

Then I took them home to create a bouquet which I wrapped with the last of my favorite ribbon...grrrr.

Rainbow cupcakes

Here is probably the coolest thing I have made so far. I found a recipe for rainbow cupcakes that I made for my boss's birthday. First you just make a box of white cake mix...
Then you separate it equally 6 times and start adding food coloring. The instructions called for around 12-14 drops of food coloring per batch to make them really bright. First purple and blue...

Green and yellow....

And orange and red...

Then get your cupcake liners and start layering. Start with purple, then blue on top...

Green on top of blue...

Yellow on top of green...

Orange on top of yellow...

And finally red on top of orange...

The layering process took forever and I would probably only do a couple of colors next time. But, it is totally worth it...

Then I made a batch of simple buttercream and added random food coloring until I came up with a color I liked...periwinkle blue.

And I finally got a chance to use my new Wilton decorating bags and tips!

I used the rosette looking tip to make little flowers all over the cupcakes.

Up close shot...

Last shot before I dig in...

AMAZING!!! The colors even made an arc like a real rainbow. Everyone at work ate them up like crazy and thought they were so cool.