Sunday Night Dinner

Every Sunday night I try my hardest to make a big dinner. I only partially suceeded yesterday but I wanted to share some of my recipes with you. I'll start with one of the side dishes. Due to my inability to calculate how many carrots it takes to make carrot cake, I have two gigantic bags of carrots in my refrigerator. So Ranch Carrots it is!

Ranch Carrots

1 bag baby carrots or equivalent of regular non-baby carrots
2/3 to 1 stick butter (depending on how big you want your butt to be)
1 package Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing
1 tsp sugar


If you aren't using baby carrots, chop up your carrots into beautiful little orange circles and toss them in a pot.

Add enough water to cover the carrots, bring to a boil. Throw in a pinch or two of salt. Cook until tender.

Drain carrots. Add butter, ranch seasoning, and sugar. Pretty simplistic recipe but also tasty!



Ok now on to the chicken. The hubs truly enjoys grilling anything he can get his hands on, so he often handles the protein for Sunday Dinner. This time I decided chicken would be great, and that I would whip up a tasty little marinade. When I'm making up a recipe I seldom measure things, so you'll have to use your own discretion. Just keep smelling/tasting things till it seems right.

Honey Mustard Grilled Chicken
3-4 chicken breasts

Marinade
at least half a bottle Honey Mustard dressing (I used Ken's)
4 T Creamy Italian dressing
2 T rice vinegar
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp lime juice
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
Plus whatever else you like!
Reserve about a cup for basting.


Combine the ingredients for the marinade, then let the chicken soak it all up for at least an hour.

Now grill that chicken up and enjoy. I loved this chicken, and I'm not a huge grilled chicken fan!

My Cat Knows How To Relax.....

Seriously, this kitty can make herself comfortable anywhere. That's skill.



Disclaimer: ignore all the crap in the background, we had just gotten back from the honeymoon. Okay, so we're slobs all the time, just ignore it anyway.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Of course I'm wearing green. And yes, I am Irish (did the red hair tip you off ?).
Here's a few fun factoids for St. Patrick's Day (blatantly stolen from the History Channel web site).

St. Patrick's Day is celebrated on March 17, his religious feast day and the anniversary of his death in the fifth century. The Irish have observed this day as a religious holiday for thousands of years.

The first St. Patrick's Day parade took place not in Ireland, but in the United States.

It has long been recounted that, during his mission in Ireland, St. Patrick once stood on a hilltop (which is now called Croagh Patrick), and with only a wooden staff by his side, banished all the snakes from Ireland.
In fact, the island nation was never home to any snakes. The "banishing of the snakes" was really a metaphor for the eradication of pagan ideology from Ireland and the triumph of Christianity.

In Celtic folktales, leprechauns were cranky souls, responsible for mending the shoes of the other fairies.

Best. Cookies. Ever.

My family has a certain go-to cookie recipe. It's been changed at will over the years and has finally arrived at a sort-of complete recipe. I absolutely love these cookies....they stay soft, instead of getting all hard and crunchy. I was feeling ambitious last night, so I attempted to take pics throughout the process. There were a few more pics, but Photoshop ate them, honest. It's totally the program's fault, not the user! Anyway, here you go. Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, as reinvented by my family.

Ingredients:
1 c butter/margarine, softened (can be half butter flavored Crisco, if you like)
1 c sugar
1 c brown sugar, packed
1 c peanut butter (preferably Jif)
1 large egg (or 2 smaller ones)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 1/2 to 3 c flour (might need to adjust)
1 bag milk chocolate chips
1/2 bag peanut butter chips

Ok let's get started. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Combine the butter/margarine, sugar, brown sugar, peanut butter, and egg(s) in your mixer.



Cream these ingredients together until well blended. It will look like this.



In a large bowl, mix together the baking powder, baking soda, salt, and flour. I would start with 2 1/2 c flour and go from there. Slowly add the dry mixture into the creamed mixture until it looks like this.



This should be a pretty stiff dough. You will probably need to add extra flour. I usually use around 3 cups. At this time I usually take a teeny bit of dough and make a "test cookie". Of course I stuff a few chocolate chips in, 'cause I'm no dummy. You may need to mash this dough down a little, it is not supposed to melt down like other, crispier cookies. Here's my test cookie.



Adjust your flour content as necessary after eating your test cookie. Add in the chocolate and peanut butter chips. I like to use a small ice cream scoop to scoop out balls of dough, then flatten them with a fork. Or my hands if the fork mysteriously disappears. In this pan I have flattened half of them so you can see how they look.



Cook only until very slightly golden on the bottom. Take them out and let them sit on the pan for a few minutes. They will continue to cook on the pan, I promise! This recipe should make quite a few cookies, I usually get at least 3 dozen out of it. If I'm feeling super spunky I'll add in mini M&M's.

Spring Fever

Yay, the temperature finally got above 50 degrees today! Every year around this time I get anxious to change things around the house. I've already hung new curtains and rearranged the bedroom, now I'm taking on a bigger project.....this headboard from marthastewart.com.

A few years ago I spied an old solid wood door at a garage sale. They let me have it for free, so I woke up the hubs and convinced him to haul it home in his car. He was super happy with me for waking him up early. I've been trying to figure out a way to use it, so this is it! Wish me luck and the loss of zero appendages while attempting to use a saw!

How Did I Get Sucked Into This?

When I realized a few months ago that I wouldn't be taking any classes this semester, I promised myself that I would read lots of trashy brain candy books to reward myself. Oh, and believe me, I have.....



But now it's gotten even worse. My self indulgence might have hit it's limit when I looked at the side of my latest library book and noticed it was tagged as a Young Adult book. Whoops. I read on mtv.com that they were making a movie out of this series, so I figured I'd get the books from the library and read a little. Well, I've gotten myself addicted to this series, despite that fact that I'm 29, not the 14 year old that should be reading them.




Oh well. You'll all be jealous that I was so ahead of the game, right? Ummm......right?

My new chili recipe

For years I've used the same chili recipe, but I've recently been wooed away to a new one. As weird as the ingredients sound, this makes the best chili I've ever tasted. Perfect for the horrible weather we've been having lately.


Kristen's Chili

1 lb ground beef, cooked and drained
1/2 lb sausage, cooked and drained
1 can diced tomatoes
2 small cans tomato paste
1 can tomato sauce
4 tsp cumin
4 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
4 T cocoa powder
2 cans Campbell's French Onion soup
2-3 cans Brooks chili beans
1 can Coca-Cola

Combine all above ingredients, simmer on stovetop or crockpot for at least 1 hour. 30 minutes before serving, add Coca-Cola.

Cooking an Egg in a Time Warp

The other day I opened up my trusty cookbook to figure out something for dinner. I've had this cookbook for almost 10 years now, it was passed down to me from my grandma.

While flipping through, I stopped at the eggs & cheese section and found this little blurb.

Basic Eggs

The man you marry will know the way he likes his eggs. And chances are he'll be fussy about them. So it behooves a good wife to know how to make an egg behave in six basic ways. And here they are, with helpful hints.

Ummm.....seriously? If your significant other cannot keep himself from raging angrily over a damn plate of eggs, maybe it would behoove you to reconsider the whole marriage thing.
Now in defense of my awesome little cookbook, please forgive it, it was printed in 1969. It just doesn't know any better.