Run Dont Walk

& go buy yourself a bag....or 10 of these babies! Officially my new favorite Christmas candy ahhh heaven!

Easter Dinner

So Easter Sunday is coming up this weekend and I received a phone call from one of my good friends from my husband's unit inviting us for Easter dinner on Sunday. I of course said we would be there and it sounds like it's going to be loads of fun with good friends and even the Easter Bunny which is really my 9 months pregnant friend C in a bunny suit! Her little 4 year old just gets a big kick out of it every year!

We were asked to bring a dessert and some drinks. So I want your opinions what would be a good dessert to bring for Easter dinner? What is your favorite dessert? I want something lemony possibly because lemon just reminds me of spring and Easter is all about spring!

Leave your suggestions below!

Baked Spaghetti With Chicken and Mushrooms

I made this recipe last night as I was only just going to make simple spaghetti with some sauce and mushrooms in it and some bread sticks to use up some leftover pasta sauce I had sitting around before it went bad. But then I remembered the other day my friend Jess telling me that she baked her spaghetti. So I was like why the heck not! Then it went from that to the husband asking for some meat in the meal because well he doesn't like meals without meat. So I scrounged around in the kitchen and found I had one frozen chicken breast left over and this is the meal that resulted from it. It's really good simple and makes a lot! So we're having it for left overs tonight. I didn't get this recipe from any where I just flew by the seat of my pants and it turned out well! You could do this with any type of meat such as ground beef or turkey and it would turn out just as well.

Now on to the recipe....

Baked Spaghetti with Chicken and Mushrooms

Ingredients:
1 package of angel hair pasta (or spaghetti)
1 jar of pasta sauce
1 small can of mushrooms
1 frozen (large) chicken breast
Parmesan Cheese (the powder stuff)

Directions:
1. Cook the frozen chicken breast as directed on the package
2. Boil the pasta until tender and drain
3. Put pasta in a 13x9 inch pan and pour in the pasta sauce and mix well
4. Shred the chicken and pour in the mushrooms and chicken mixture into the pan and mix well
5. Put a generous amount of parmesan cheese on top
6. Bake in the oven on 375 for 10-15 minutes
7. Enjoy!

Serving suggestions: Bread sticks, a green veggie such as broccoli or green beans, and sweet tea to drink.

Sorry no pictures of this one. I forgot to take one! I might take one and post it when I make my lunch.

Easy Shepherd's Pie

I got this recipe from KraftFoods.com and decided to give it a try. I've never made (or had) shepherd's pie before but it looked good so I gave it a whirl.

This was really simple and easy and VERY tasty the guys loved it and we had enough for left overs which is always great!

Ingredients:
1 lb. of hamburger meat
2 cups of hot mashed potatoes (I made homemade mashed potatoes)
4 oz. of cream cheese
1 cup of cheddar cheese, divided
4 cups of frozen mixed veggies, thawed
1 cup of beef gravy
2 cloves of garlic, minced

Directions:
1. Brown the beef in a large skillet until no longer pink, drain
2. Mix potatoes, garlic, cream cheese and half a cup of cheddar cheese, put aside
3. Mix thawed mixed veggies, meat and gravy together, put in a 13x9 pan
4. Spread potato mixture on top of meat/veggie mixture and sprinkle with remaining half cup of cheddar cheese.
5. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes on 375

See now how easy was that?!

Meal Planning part Deux

In my pursuit to plan perfect meals for 2-4 people (myself included) every week I work hard on my meal plan every Sunday morning, while trying to at least make one new recipe per week to "broaden my horizons".

Usually I write it down on some little random piece of notebook paper that I find somewhere or a piece of printer paper that I messed up the print on just to "conserve" (like my green effort there?) Most of the time I write both my meal plan and my grocery list down on one piece of paper (once again going with the conserving method) but by the end of my shopping trip the list is all bent torn and marked all over and not something pretty that I want to display on my refridgerator!

So, thanks to Kimberly Michelle I have found the ultimate meal planning/grocery shopping sheet! How awesome is this handy dandy little piece of paper?


Courtesy of Russell & Hazel

Not only does it have a slot for every day of the week, but a slot for every meal of every day! Very nice! Also, my favorite part is the "detachable" grocery list that is seperated into categories. Oh my organizational mind is going bananas over this little beauty!

A German Feast (the easy & quick way)

Now as I've said before I am a novice cook but I'm learning. Meaning I do not make everything from scratch if hardly at all. I use what I like to call "shortcuts" that being things like frozen veggies and some pre-made things like pasta sauce.

Anyways J. loves German food and now I will admit to me this isn't authentically German but he likes it and says its good so I guess I should be happy he likes it.

Ingrediants:
1-2 Polska keilbasa sausages
1-2 cans of saurkraut
2 teaspoons of oil
1-2 bags of stir-fry veggies
2 small cans of mushrooms
4 baby potatos

Directions:
1. Slice potatoes into thin rounds (wash them first silly!)and begin to fry them
2. Slice keilbasa into 1 inch thick pieces
3. Once the potatos are done put them somewhere to keep them warm and toss in the veggies and fry them up
4. After the veggies are done throw in the mushrooms and heat them up until warm
5. Take a sauce pan and put the saurkraut in and heat it up because the sausage doesnt take long to cook.
6. Toss the sausage pieces into the frying pan and fry until golden brown.

Serving:
I like to eat it all seperately but the boys love to take it and mix it all together so I'll put how they do it (since it's probably the correct way anyway)

1. Put down a nice "bed" of saurkraut down on your plate
2. Add veggies (stirfry, mushrooms and potatos)
3. Add a generous amount of sausage (I always have to get my plate first so I have some sausage for myself because they take it all!)
4. Add seasonings to your taste
5. Enjoy!

I hope you try this it's pretty good, easy and quick; which I like since I dont like to spend a lot of time cooking.

Betty Crocker I am not...

But a beginners cook I am!

I have never cooked a fancy-fied meal in my life! I have just recently began to learn how to do things from semi-scratch. I have gone from a pizza out of the box into the oven girl to a take something out of the box mix it together with something and it becomes a meal. One of these days I really do look forward to being able to make things from scratch like my STB Mother-in-law and my grandmothers have both done.

So I give you my first recipe! Insanely easy Quesadillas!



Chicken & Cheese Quesadillas
Ingrediants:
8-10 large burrito sized soft flour tortillas
1-2 cans of canned chicken (shredded)
1 tomato diced
1 bag of mexican style cheese mix (I perfer Kraft)

Dippings (if perfered):
Sour Cream ( I perfer this)
or
Salsa (the boys perfer this)

Instructions:
1. Heat up a large skillet to about medium high heat
2. Lay out one tortilla at a time and sprinkle cheese on one half of the tortilla along with chicken and some tomatos.
3. Fold over the other half of the tortilla to make a sandwich like effect
4. Toss into heated skillet
5. Leave in until golden brown
6. Flip to other side
7. Repeat number 5
8. Do directions 1-7 again until you have your dresired amount of quesadillas
9. With a chefs knife cut into quarters
10. Serve and enjoy!

Now see how easy that was!

A word about the pictures: You will never (most likely) see my own pictures displayed with my recipes because well the one time I did take a picture of something I made my FI laughed at me and still makes fun of me for it to this day so the only way I'll ever get pictures of my own food is 1. If he'll stop making fun of me or 2. I can do it in secret which right now is't possible!

Morning Pick-me-up

I used to hate coffee (loved the smell hated the taste) until I was a freshman in college and we had Starbucks on every stinking corner of the campus. So I thought to myself if there are this many of these places on ONE college campus then it must be good, so I walked in one day after a VERY cold walk to the classroom building and bought a white chocolate mocha cappucino. It was the first time I actually drank an entire cup of coffee (it could have had to deal with the fact that it was below 30 degrees outside also and the thing cost me $3).

After I moved on from the big university campus to the community college campus (which did not have Starbucks) and moved into my own house (well fiance's house) I decided I needed to find a cheaper alternative than stopping at the starbucks on the way to school every Tuesday and Thursday mornings. So on my quest for some good cappucino that didn't cost an arm and a leg I found several good options. The first I tried was something from walmart in a french vanilla flavored. It started out good but as we kept on buying the stuff it began to take on a funny taste so we had to move on to something new...

That's when I found this...
Folgers cappuccino mix in french vanilla. I thought well it is from Folgers and from what I know they make pretty good coffee so I gave it a try. It is the best I've had yet and I suggest it to anyone who likes cappuccino. You can have it in the morning or at night, you can have it hot or cold (it has a recipe for both hot and cold drinks on the back). It has a light flavor that isn't too sweet and at $2 a can it can't be beat!

Well ok I lied the only thing that could beat that is if someone bought me a cappuccino machine and all the flavorings for a white chocolate mocha....but this will do.

I give it a Yumminess Factor Rating of 4 (5 being the best)

Meal Planning

I've recently been trying out meal planning after reading that it will help you stick to a budget and a list while grocery shopping because I will be the first to admit that I am not one that likes to go to the grocery store and buy whats on the list I see things I pick them up and put them in the cart which ultimately leads me to spending way more than I should have. So I've been giving this a try, it seems to help me stick to the list but it's still not cheap.

You see we get $192 per month in BAS (Basic Allowance for Subsistance aka Food) so we add $8 to make it an even $200 for the month so we break that down by 4 weeks because we shop on Sundays every week and it comes to $50 per week. But most of the time our bill comes out to $70-80 per week which is frusterating. Plus our commissary on base has a surcharge which you never know how much it is going to be we've had it anywhere between $3-$6 it just varies which is frusterating because 1. it's higher than taxes and 2. it always makes our bill higher and makes it worse when we go over and 3. you can't tell how much it is going to be there is no way to tell.

But anyway...here is my menu for the week

Sunday- Tuna Casserole with veggie
Monday- Salmon with pesto and veggies
Tuesday- Fried Steaks with baby potatos and veggie
Wednesday- Chicken and cheese quesedillas with beef rice and corn
Thursday- Baked chicken wild rice and veggie
Friday- Eat out or order in Pizza
Saturday- German keilbasa with stir fry veggies and saurkraut

It's probably because of all the meat we eat that we go over....