Custom Cupcakes

There is a little girl that will turn 7 tomorrow!  She is very creative and already has her own sense of style.  A regular cupcake just won't do.  Since she has invited her whole class to her party, we need custom cupcakes at grocery store prices!

Your local warehouse store will make plain frosted cupcakes for you!  I ordered some with white buttercream frosting, yum!  My daughter chose candy in the colors of her party at our local Wal-Mart.

I spent about 10 minutes decorating and now have beautiful custom cupcakes for cheap!

Pinterest

Wow!  The kids are off to their first day of school!  Well, I can tell you what I will be doing with a tiny bit of my extra free time…I will be browsing around Pinterest.  It is this new site my good friend Sunny told me about and she warned me.  She said, “It is addicting”.  I didn’t believe her…but then I got hooked…and then I found the app for my iphone…I am totally addicted!

It is a wonderful site to organize all the lovely things we find on the internet.  I mostly love the creativity of it: finding crafts to make, new recipes, and kids art projects!  The best part is that it is totally for the visual learner, that’s me!  You save any ideas you find on “boards” and then you have a pic of each thing you save, no more searching when you forgot the name of the recipe!

So try it out if you like, it is a great way to pick areas to search in and not have to go through endless blog searches!

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New Things and a Recipe

I have 2 new favorite things!  The first one is something I am sure most of you have, but for some reason I have been in the culinary dark ages and have never had one until recently.  My parents gave me a food processor for my birthday!  I had no idea how much I would use it.  I have used it to make salsa, fine crumble sausages for pizza, and make zucchini bread.  The shredding attachment is my favorite and I will never shred the old fashioned way again!

My other favorite thing is a new apron!  I don’t usually use aprons to cook, being an artist I wear them to protect my clothes while painting or teaching art.  I ruined way too many clothes in college and found out that a cheery apron with some style makes me happy while I work.  I found this new one in the clearance section at Marshall’s!  Perfect to use cooking and starting the new school year teaching art in my kid’s classes!

Zucchini Bread

3 eggs

1 ½ cup sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon vanilla

2 cup grated unpeeled zucchini

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spray two 9 “loaf pans with cooking oil. In a large bowl, beat eggs until frothy.  Beat in sugar, oil and vanilla until thick and lemon-colored. Stir in zucchini. Sift dry ingredients and stir into the batter. Fold in the nuts. Pour into prepared pans. Bake 40 minutes or until center springs back when touched. Cool 10 minutes before turning out on to racks. These freeze well.

Trader Joes Easy Pasta

Time for an easy pasta dish!  I love to cook and try new recipes.  Sometimes you stumble upon something so good and easy that it becomes one of your staple recipes.  This pasta dish is a family favorite that I make once a week or at least every two weeks.  I love that the ingredients are easy to locate and that it takes about 20 minutes to make.  Even better is the fact that I can morph the leftover pasta into another meal!

I start with whole wheat pasta from my favorite store, Trader Joes (alright, I have many favorite stores, a hazard of loving to shop, but TJ’s is my favorite food store) then I add their marinara sauce and their frozen meatballs (they have turkey and beef; both are tasty and family approved).

Trader Joes Easy Pasta

1 package whole wheat pasta

1 jar marinara

1 bag frozen meatballs

Cook up your pasta the regular way, while boiling pasta, place meatballs in a glass microwavable dish and cook in micro for 4-5 minutes.  When meatballs are done, pour marinara over meatballs, return to micro and cook for 2-3 minutes.  After draining cooked pasta, dish up pasta and sauce/meatballs.  Easy pasta is complete (I usually add a salad from our garden)!

Since I make a whole package of pasta I usually have leftover plain pasta.  I throw that in a container and put it in the fridge for the next day.

 Day two:

 With a large skillet, add some olive oil, the leftover pasta, seasoning (I love 21 season salute from Trader Joes), and some cut up veggies (my first choice is asparagus).  Sauté for 5-10 minutes, turning to coat and prevent burning. Now you have pasta primavera for lunch!

Batch Cooking

I love to cook!  Not cook like Julia Child or Martha Stewart, I mean who has 10 hours to make a cake. I love to cook in large quantities and really accomplish a bunch of meals in one day.  Some people call it Batch Cooking, others call it Freezer Meals…either way, it is cooking that I love to do.

I may not be able to balance a check book, my husband does that, actually it was part of our marriage agreement.  I said, “Will you balance my check book for the rest of my life?” he said, “No, I will balance it for the rest of MY life” I said, “I do” and the rest is history.  I can’t balance a check book, but I can make 10 dinners in one morning!  I feel a great sense of accomplishment when this is done and I can look in my freezer with a big beautiful smile and a sigh at the glorious packed shelves holding casserole dishes and Ziploc Freezer bags filled with meals!

I will share a recipe that I made today.  It is a family recipe from my mom-in-law.  She is a great cook and always shares recipes with me.  This is great to make because it is easy and you can make 1 or 5 very easily.  When I make it I always make at least 2, one for dinner and one to freeze.

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

2 cups chopped cooked chicken (whatever you have around works)

12 corn tortillas

1 can green chilies diced

1 can cream of chicken soup

½ can milk

Shredded Mexican style cheese

In a large saucepan mix the soup, milk, chilies, and chicken together over medium heat.  Tear the tortillas into pieces and mix into the soup mixture until well blended.  Layer in a 9x9 pan: tortilla mixture, shredded cheese, tortilla mixture, shredded cheese.  Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes uncovered.

This is also a great recipe to make with leftover turkey from Thanksgiving!

Ham and Bean Soup

I love my Crockpot!  You only have to spend 15-20 minutes in the morning and you come home to a house that smells wonderful and a home cooked meal at the end of your day.

I had the leftover remains of a spiral ham from before Christmas in my freezer and needed the space.  So after reading through a handful of recipes I made up my own ham and bean soup recipe.  It actually turned out good (which is suprising my sister, I am notorious for changing ingredients), so good in fact that my husband went back for thirds!

Ham and Bean Soup

2 cups chopped ham from left over spiral

2 cans white beans (undrained)

2 cups chicken broth

2 cups water

½ onion finely chopped (I used my Cuisinart chopper)

8-10 baby carrots finely chopped (also used chopper)

2 tablespoons 21 Season Salute (spice at Trader Joes)

1 bay leaf

Prep all chopping and cutting, dump it all in pot, turn on low for 6-8 hours and wa la, you have a healthy home cooked meal!