Some big excitement happened for me today…I finally got new dishes!

I’ve been patiently waiting to buy new dishes forever it seems.  I HATED our old ones, but I could never justify the expense.  I have been working some extra hours this spring doing some tutoring and that is about over, so this is my reward for some of the extra money that this brought us!  I’m so excited…the store was out of two of the colors that I wanted, so they are being shipped to me this week!

Dinner tonight was served on new dishes, of course!

I planned to make some chicken and veggie skewers for dinner tonight and they turned out great!

I made Honey-Soy Chicken Skewers for dinner and they were tasty!  I got a little lazy though and just put meat on their own skewers  and veggies on their own.

I served this with  a salad and some cheese bread.  A perfect summertime meal!  Now if only the weather would cooperate with my summertime wishes!  Was the weather nice where you live today? It was cloudy and cool here….I need some sunshine soon!

I hope you had a wonderful Sunday!  I’m off to watch Chopped All Stars and write some lesson plans!

I decided that I wanted to make pizza crust out of it.   I mean, come on, combining my favorite bread with pizza with homemade sauce?!?  How can you go wrong!?!  So, I altered the recipe a little bit and came up with this!

Focaccia Bread Pizza Crust

-1 pkg. active dry yeast

-1 cup warm water

-2 Tablespoons olive oil, divided

-1 1/2 teaspoon salt

-1 teaspoon sugar

-1 teaspoon garlic powder

-dash of pepper

-2 to 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

-pizza sauce

-pizza toppings

-cheese

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water.  Add 1 Tbsp. oil, salt, sugar, garlic powder, herbs, pepper and 1 1/2 cups flour.  Beat until smooth.  Stir in remaining flour to form a soft dough (this will be sticky).

For the mixing part, I used the regular beater on my mixer.  Then after the dough was formed, I changed the attachment to the dough hook and let the mixer do the work for me and knead the bread until it was smooth.  You can also do this part by hand…it will take you 6-8 minutes.  Place in a greased bowl, turning once so all sides are greased.  Cover and let rise for 1 hour.

After an hour, punch dough down and let rest for 10 minutes.  After ten minutes, spread dough out on your pizza pan or pizza stone.  Cover and let rise for another 30 minutes.

Bake at 400 degrees for 12 minutes.

Take dough out and top with sauce, toppings, and cheese.

Place back into the oven and cook for an additional 12-15 minutes.

Delish!  This turned out to be a crispy and delicious crust!  It was a nice change from a regular pizza crust!  We topped with homemade pizza sauce, ground pork, pepperocinis, and mozzarella as it was what was in the house and we are on operation clean out the freezer and pantry!  Next time I will be using pepperoni and jalapenos!  :)

How is the week going?  Mine started a little rough yesterday, but I am glad to say that Tuesday was much better than Monday!

Thankfully today was a beautiful day and we were able to play outside a bit after work.

I love this early spring/summer weather!  Our ten day forecast is AWESOME!!!  I wore sandals for the first time today…my feet were so happy to be free!  :)

I hope you had a fabulous Tuesday!

Hi everyone!

So sorry to have stopped writing so abruptly!  Life just kind of blew up.  I started working a few more hours, the girls schedules have been a bit busier, we found a new house and have been getting ready to move into it.  We made a trip back to Iowa.  We’ve had a few weeks where we haven’t been home until late every night.  It’s just been crazy!  Things are finally settling down a little bit though.  We are slowly sorting through things and packing for our move in a few weeks.  I’m so excited to move!  The girls will have their own rooms and I will have a bigger kitchen!  Check it out!

It’s going to be so nice to get out of the galley kitchen that I have right now!

I’ll post pics of course when we get moved in!

Today I have a recipe for you that combines brownies and cake…two of my favorites!

Brownie and Cake Cupcakes (recipe taken from here)

-1 box brownie mix mixed according to directions on package

-1 box cake mix mixed according to directions on package

-cupcake liners

-frosting

Fill up the cupcake 1/3 of the  way with brownie mix.  Add the cake mix on top of it until 2/3 of the liner is full.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.  Let cool and then frost.

These were so good!  And the flavor combinations are limitless!  I’m thinking of using funfetti cake mix next time with a fun colored frosting!  I think that would be so fun!

I hope things are going well with you!  I’m going to try to get caught up with everyone as soon as I can!

Have a wonderful weekend…I’m hoping that this nice weather is here to stay!  I’m ready for winter to be over!

They thought that tye-die cupcakes were soooo cool!  I love making these for the kiddos and they really aren’t that hard to make either!

You need…

-white cake mix that has been mixed to the directions on the box

-food coloring (4-5 colors)

Divide your cake batter into four or five bowls.  Add a different color of food coloring to each bowl of batter and mix.  Add spoonfuls of each color of batter to cupcake liners until you have each color added.  Bake for 18-20 minutes according to the directions on the box of cake!

You end up with pretty cupcakes like this!

And they just make the little ones so darn happy!

I hope you have had a wonderful start to your week!

I’m off to go and drink green tea, take some vitamin C, and relax….I’m not feeling too hot today.  I need to get better because I have a very busy end of the week this week!  Yikes!

Have a wonderful night!

I was excited to come home from work today because I was breaking this baby out.

I got this dutch oven from my mother-in-law for Christmas and have been waiting to use it!  I love kitchen gadgets as gifts!  So fun!

I have been planning a chicken chili for a while and finally decided that I had my ingredients correct, so I figured it was time to make it!

Chicken Chili

-1 Tablespoon olive oil

-1/2 onion diced

-2 pieces celery diced

-2 teaspoons cumin

-2 teaspoons chili powder

-1 teaspoon garlic powder

-1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne (you decide how spicy you want it!)

-1 can Ro-Tel

-4 chicken boullion cubes

-4 cups water

-1 can tomato sauce

-4 cans of beans of your choice (I used pinto, black, and kidney)

-3 cups shredded, cooked chicken

Heat the olive oil in dutch oven or soup pan.  Saute onion and celery until translucent.  Add cumin, chili powder, cayenne pepper, and garlic powder.  Then add boullion cubes and water.  Stir until spices are combined.  Add tomato sauce, Ro-Tel, beans and chicken.  Bring soup to a boil.  When boiling, reduce heat to simmer.  Simmer for 45 minutes!

Enjoy!

We topped with shredded cheese and plain greek yogurt!

This soup had a great taste and the perfect amount of spiciness!   I was so glad that it turned out!

EDIT—The Good Eats Guy just told me that I need to tell you that “We grilled the chicken which gave the chili an extra dimension that made the chili even better.”

I’m off to go and read The Book Thief.

(source)

Has anyone read this?  I’ve heard great things, and hopefully I won’t be disappointed!

As we were watching the movie, the hubby got a message from a friend containing this picture.

This is a picture from a wedding a few years ago and we were striking our prom photo pose. We got a good laugh out of it!

Tonight’s dinner was something that I’ve been dreaming up for a while, we just haven’t gotten around to make them.  I love all things with buffalo sauce and I love most things with shrimp, so I thought that I’d marry the two things together in a taco shell.

Buffalo Shrimp Tacos 

-1 lb. shrimp, peeled and deveined

-1/2 teaspoon Old Bay

-1/2 teaspoon chili powder

-1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

-1/4 cup buffalo wing sauce

-tortillas

-lettuce

-celery

-carrots

Mix Old Bay, chili powder, and garlic powder together.  Season shrimp with mixture.

Place olive oil in a pan and allow to warm.  Add shrimp to the pan.  Cook until shrimp curl up and get pink.  This will take about 1.5 minutes per side for the shrimp to get cooked.

Remove shrimp from pan and toss in buffalo sauce.

Add to tortillas with lettuce, carrots, celery, and ranch!

Devour!

These were awesome!  This is one of those meals where you need to have everything chopped and prepared before you put the shrimp in the pan to cook because they don’t take very long to cook at all!

I could eat these every day.  I served these with Trader Joe’s refried black beans with jalapenos.  There just is no way to make them pretty as they sit along side of my tacos!

I hope you had a great weekend!  We spent the day lounging and preparing a few things for the week.  I also whipped up a few different things in the kitchen that I will share with you this week!  I also decided that this was the week that I am going to try planning out all of my outfits for the week in an effort to save me some time this week.  We’ll see how it works.

Do you pre-plan your outfits?

I am off to watch the finale of Guy Vs. Rachel Celebrity Cook-Off!

Anyone else watching this?

I was so sad when Cheech Marin got kicked off!  I hope that Lou Diamond Philips wins though!  He’s awesome in the kitchen!

Have a wonderful night!

I’m so glad that I did because these cookies seriously rock.

Blueberry Muffin Top Cookies Slightly adapted from Iowa Girl Eats 

You’ll Need….

-2 cups flour

-2 teaspoons baking powder

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1/2 cup salted butter, softened

-1 cup sugar

-1 egg

-1/3 cup milk

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-zest of one lemon

-1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries, rinsed

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl, set aside.

In the bowl of your mixer, cream together butter and sugar until well combined. Add in egg and beat until combined. Add milk, almond extract and lemon zest then beat until combined.

Slowly add dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and mix until combined. Gently fold in blueberries. This will seem kind of tough, but keep folding until the blueberries are in the dough!

Refrigerate the dough for at least one hour, then shape into large balls. Bake for about 15 minutes and let cool on a wire rack.

These were awesome!  And they were kid approved!

I sent the extras to work with my hubby this week and my four year old was sad that she didn’t get to eat any more of them.  I’m going to have to make another batch this weekend….I’m wondering how they would taste with strawberries and blueberries?!?!  We’ll see what creation I am able to come up with this weekend!

We got the movie The Change Up tonight.

(source)

Has anyone seen it?  Is it any good??

I hope you have a fabulous weekend!

My boots were as tall as her legs are long.  She only fell over a few times before giving up on wearing the boots.  She did, however, stand still long enough for me to snap a picture!

All the time she was doing this, she was asking for the granola that we had for breakfast as a snack tonight.  Since this recipe is kid approved, I figured that you guys should be the recipients of it!  I love finding recipes that my kiddos love!

Granola

-3 cups oats

-1 teaspoon cinnamon

-1/4 cup brown sugar

-3 Tablespoons vegetable oil (or canola oil)

-3 Tablespoons Agave nectar (or honey or maple syrup)

-1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix oats and cinnamon in a bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix brown sugar,  oil, agave nectar, and vanilla until combined.

Add the wet ingredients to the white ingredients.  Make sure that your oats get coated with the mixture.

Spread out on a parchment lined cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes.  Rotate pan halfway through cooking.

Remove from oven and put in a bowl to let finish cooling.

What you are left with is some really, really, really good granola.  This was like eating an oatmeal cookie.  SO good.  I can hardly keep my hands out of it!

And the best part is that if you want to add things to this, you can totally do that.  Add in nuts, raisins, dried fruit, chocolate chips..whatever your heart decides.

This stuff is just full of clusters of goodness!

And it’s kid approved!

Do you make your own granola?  What is your favorite granola add in??

I hope you had a great Monday!  Today was a busy day, but was a great day!  I had one of those days that flew by and when it was over I was in a great mood!

We have had a pretty low key weekend so far.  We went to lunch yesterday at Old Chicago where I ordered the Chicago Beef sandwich with fries!!!

Very tasty!

We ran errands and got groceries after lunch and then we headed home to relax in front of the fire and catch up with our DVR for the evening!

It has been so nice to not have to rush around like crazy people all weekend long!

What did you do this weekend?

This morning it was time to make baked eggs for breakfast!

I have never made these before, but I was ready for something different besides just omelets, scrambled eggs, or over easy eggs.

Baked Eggs

-ramekins

-eggs

-spinach

-green peppers

-olive oil

-cheese

-hot sauce

-whatever other veggies, meats, etc. that you would like to add!

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

While the oven is preheating, add peppers and a small amount of olive oil to a small frying pan and saute until cooked through.

Chop spinach into small pieces and add to ramekin.

Add other veggies and cheese on top of spinach base.

I then added a few splashes of Frank’s hot sauce on top of this.

Crack eggs on top of this mixture.

Break the yolks with something sharp.  I just used a small knife.

Bake for 15 minutes.

And then you have baked eggs!

These were delicious!  I will definitely be adding these into our weekend breakfast rotation.  And I’ll be adding some bacon to them.  :)  We didn’t have any, so I couldn’t do it today!

Have you ever made baked eggs?

The little people in our house decided they wanted to have cereal, toast and yogurt smoothies for breakfast.

As you can see they are having a very relaxing breakfast sitting around in their robes and being waited on by their parents as they kept asking for additions to their breakfast!

Today is all about writing lesson plans, doing laundry, baking, and mopping the floors.  I’m looking forward to the lesson plans and baking, but am not excited about the laundry and mopping.  Yuck!

What is the chore that you dislike the most?

Mopping and laundry are two of my least favorite things to have to do around the house.  I’d rather clean the bathrooms.  :)

I hope you have a wonderful Sunday!

After all of the cauliflower pizza crust we have made, we had some riced cauliflower left over, so I figured I needed to do something with it to use it up!

I decided that I was going to make fried rice out of my riced cauliflower!

Chicken Fried ‘Rice’

-2 chicken breasts cubed

-1 bag frozen broccoli florets (I screwed up and just bought cut broccoli.  I’m not a fan of the stems.:()

-1 cup carrots, chopped up

-2-3 cloves diced garlic

-4 eggs

-2 cups riced cauliflower

-1 Tablespoon olive oil

-2 teaspoons rice vinegar

-low sodium soy sauce

Set stove burner to medium heat.  Heat olive oil in a pan and add chicken chunks.  Cook until chicken is cooked through.  Take chicken out of pan and set aside.  Add broccoli, carrots, and garlic to pan with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Cook until vegetables are cooked through.  While veggies are cooking in the pan, crack your eggs in a bowl and mix up well.

When vegetables are done, add riced cauliflower to the pan.  Add chicken back to the pan and stir.

Add rice vinegar and soy sauce to pan.  Use enough soy sauce to make you happy.  I tend to add more soy sauce than people like to dishes because I LOVE the stuff. Start with two tablespoons and add more as you like.

After everything is added, you have your eggs left.  Make a well in the middle of your pan.  Dump eggs into the well.  Wait a minute or until they start bubbling and then mix them into everything that is sitting in the pan.  Your ingredients will end up covered in egg!  Cook until there is no runniness to your eggs anymore!

Eat!

This was good.  Like, really good.  I’ll be making this again soon.

The reason I really liked this dish is because I got the great flavors of fried rice, but I didn’t have the heavy feeling afterwards!  We’ll be making this quick, easy meal again soon!

Now, I’ll hop off of my cauliflower rant.

In other news….I have finally created a facebook page for Good Eats Girl!

Click here and like Good Eats Girl and you’ll be able to see new recipes pop up in your facebook feed!

I hope you had a wonderful Wednesday!  What’s on tv tonight???