Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Zoo, Beatles, Susan G. Komen and Cookies and Cream Smores

Last month I met my family at the zoo for my now annual tradition of seeing Ticket to the Beatles perform at Jungle Boogie Friday nights. Here is my boyfriend Charlie waiting to meet my family for the first time....
And Ticket to the Beatles...even though I didn't get to see them for very long. grrrr.... Going to another one of their concerts in October next to the river.

We then went to cool down in the stinky penguin house!!!

Then watched these two goofballs mimicking each other...they were hilarious.

And saw the zebras going crazy cause it was apparently mating season and the female wasn't having it...

Then the next day got up early to go to the Susan G. Komen walk. It was stormy when I got up, but there was only 5 minutes of rain during the walk. These are some people who decided to paint their bodies and hope they wouldn't sweat it off.

And there was a tortoise in the walk! He was moving pretty fast too.

And here's the recipe that I thought was going to be full of chocolatey goodness. This is the batter...which there clearly wasn't enough of...which led to the disaster to come.

Crushed up Oreo's....which apparently I was supposed to pulverize...the directions did not imply this at all....

Mixed into the batter...which was supposed to be completely brown because the Oreo's should've been pulverized....

Layer some Hershey bars on top of half of the batter....

Then a layer of marshmellow fluff....

Then you're supposed to spread on the rest of the batter. It's really hard to spread something over marshmellow...especially when there isn't enough of that something....

Right out of the oven you could see the marshmellow bubbling up and exploding through the batter. Which left this hard, cooled lava look. Apparently it tasted fairly decent for looking like a pile of slop. Mary and Charlie ate a little and then I had to throw the rest away because I couldn't handle looking at it anymore.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Peanut Butter Brownies and Taco Pasta Salad

My boss decided to have a last minute bake sale to raise money for the tornado victims in Joplin, MO. So I found an easy recipe for brownies to make really quick.
Batter with peanut butter chips!

Ready to bake...and I don't have a finished product picture for some reason. I guess cause these were so last minute.

Next is the Taco Pasta Salad. Chopped up some tomatoes and lettuce....

Brown some meat and add taco seasoning....

Make rotini noodles....

Then add everything together with some Mexican blend cheese.

Then layer on top of the lettuce. You're supposed to eat it like a dip with chips...which didn't work so well cause the rotini noodles just roll off the chip.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Mile High Strawberry Pie and Pizza Baked Potatoes

First up is the strawberry pie I made for work last month. You start off with making strawberry jello and adding some sherbert to it. My grocery store didn't have strawberry sherbert so I used mixed berry and used the raspberry and orange parts of it.
Then mix in the fresh cut up strawberries...

Mix in 2 tubs of whipped topping and layer it in a baked pie shell.

Then add another tub of whipped topping on that. This was delicious and everyone at work ate it up! I'm sad that I got so full that I only had one piece and the strawberries were still frozen when I ate it. Here is the pie sitting precariously in my over-packed freezer.

Next are the pizza baked potatoes. I mixed some cream cheese with pizza sauce and I believe maybe mozzarella?? Looks lovely doesn't it?

Cut big slits into some already baked potatoes (which were not baked through at all) and layer on mini pepperonis and mozzarella. I have no after baking shot because the majority of these exploded in the oven. They were hard and didn't cook all the way through. Needless to say I went out to eat for lunch that week at work.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Quotes Vol. 24

"Maybe mistakes are what make our fate...without them what would shape our lives? Maybe if we had never veered off course we wouldn't fall in love, have babies, or be who we are. After all, things change, so do cities, people come into your life and they go. But it's comforting to know that the ones you love are always in your heart...and if you're very lucky, a plane ride away." ~ Sex and the City

"Are there some women put in the world just to make you feel bad about yourself?" ~ Sex and the City

"I love you, but I love myself more." ~ Sex and the City

"My Zen teacher also said: the only way to true happiness is to live in the moment and not worry about the future. Of course, he died penniless and single." ~ Sex and the City

"I'm looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't live without each other love." ~ Sex and the City

"An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged; no harm can be done." ~ Jane Austen

"Change; we don't like it, we fear it, but we can't stop it from coming. We either adapt to change or we get left behind. And it hurts to grow, anybody who tells you it doesn't is lying. But here's the truth: the more things change, the more they stay the same. And sometimes, oh, sometimes change is good. Oh, sometimes change is everything." ~ Grey's Anatomy

"It goes away. The feeling. That feeling that you have right now...today...that feeling like you can do anything. That clarity...it goes away. And you go right back to being the coward who can't tell the person you love how you feel." ~ Grey's Anatomy

"It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before." ~ Jane Austen

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony." ~ Jane Austen

"The more I know of the world, the more I am convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love." ~ Jane Austen

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid." ~ Jane Austen

"There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves." ~ Jane Austen

"The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait until the other is ready." ~ Henry David Thoreau

"I had a ticket. I had my passport. And he had cold feet. I might have known fairy tales don't come true." ~ Dawn McKenna

"The predatory Peter Pan, who preyed on a woman until she fell in love with him before he mad-dashed-it back to his pack of Lost Boys." ~ Cara Wilson

"Love is a friendship that has caught fire."

"You didn't love her! You just didn't want to be alone. Or maybe, maybe she was good for your ego. Or, or maybe she made you feel better about your miserable life, but you didn't love her, because you don't destroy the person that you love!" ~ Grey's Anatomy

"Forgive and forget. That's what they say. It's good advice, but it's not very practical. When someone hurts us, we want to hurt them back. When someone wrongs us, we want to be right. Without forgiveness old scores never settle. Old wounds never heal, and the most we can hope for is that someday we'll be lucky enough to forget." ~ Grey's Anatomy

"No more words. Hear only the voice within." ~ Rumi

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning." ~ Louis L'Amour

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart...Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." ~ Carl Jung

"You knew what you wanted. You sticked to your guns. You proved that if you want something bad enough, if you're determined enough, if you're patient enough, eventually it will happen. And that gives me hope. So thanks for that." ~ Grey's Anatomy

"It's good to be scared. It means you still have something to lose." ~ Grey's Anatomy

"People are constantly asking you to tell them how you're doing. How the hell are you supposed to know." ~ Grey's Anatomy

"Your life is defined by its opportunities...even the ones you miss." ~ The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Potato Broccoli Bake and Cream Puffs

Here's my last broccoli recipe for awhile...finally got rid of all of the broccoli in my freezer. First you make a mixture of cream of mushroom soup, cheddar and Worcestershire sauce. I'm not sure what else went into this mix....
Spread it all with a bag of tater tots and steamed broccoli....

Cover with cheddar and bake. This is really good, especially since I love broccoli and potatoes.

Next up were cream puffs...I can't remember any of the ingredients...which is probably a good thing.

Whatever they were, they made some dough.

Which I then got to squeeze through my pastry bag!

Bake them and cut a slit in the sides...very tricky.

Fill with whipped up whipping cream...didn't really like that filling at all.

Then top with some bittersweet melted chocolate. That process was a pain in the butt and left me with a burnt hand. These cream puffs are only edible if eaten immediately. So when I took them to work the next day...lets just say a lot of them ended up in the trash...pretty tasteless.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Breakfast For Dinner and Flowering Things

So I finally found a good recipe for breakfast casserole. First layer dish with a bag of hash browns.
Cook up a pound of sausage...

Mix up some eggs and I believe there was another ingredient in this one....

Layer everything with cheddar....

Layer the sausage....

And more cheddar.

It was delicious and reheated very well.

This is the bouganvillea plant I got my mom for mother's day.

It blooms orange of course, but has since been destroyed by all of the tornado activity recently. Not sure if it will survive.

And here are the flowers my mom sent to my office for my birthday.

And I saw these little chicks in Walnut last month, so Bob had them shipped down for me! They kinda hang out on my kitchen table...not sure what I should do with them exactly. They're made out of little paper flowers.

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

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!!