Excuses, excuses. . .

I just finished prepping 30 photos for the upcoming posts! Yay! I'm back in the game again. Here's some of what I've been doing the last two weeks while I've been MIA. Between Christmas decorating, party planning, a job change, and attending all the required social functions the holidays bring I have:

Coaxed a timid little donkey into the Christmas Pageant

Planned and hosted a fabulous 3 year-old birthday bash for this little cutie

Ran 13.1 miles in the Dallas Half-Marathon, completion time 2:15

Before the race

After. Blurry. A little like how I felt.

Made this cute little gift. . . can't show the finished product yet, but look for it to be featured soon. Sometime after 12-21-12. . .

Sneak peek of step two. . .

Nursed this cute little sickie back to full strength. Amazing what a little macaroni and cheese and an ice cream sundae can do for your spirits.

 

I've also been working on a few Christmas presents you'll start seeing pop up on here. I'm back on the blog. Thanks for sticking around. Lizzy

Slowing down. . .

Where are all the posts???

While I haven't been posting much lately, I have still been working! While getting all my holiday shopping done and gifts put together, I have yet to figure out how to post about them without revealing some of the gifts!! So some of my projects will have to wait. . . for now.

I'll post soon. Thanks for hanging in there.

lizzy

Pin 164

Original pin:

http://makingmemorieswithyourkids.blogspot.com/2010/12/white-chocolate-peppermint-fudge-week.html

White chocolate peppermint fudge--my second dessert for my red & white shindig this week. 

I "practiced" this recipe the week of Thanksgiving. I thought I would try it out before serving it to people. I was cooking right along, a little concerned with how thick the concoction was. I could barely stir it! But I just kept plugging along. . . it was really yellow looking. I wasn't sure if I wanted to serve yellow colored white chocolate fudge. Pressed it into the pan, formed it. It was so thick. This doesn't seem right. Gave the spoon a little lick. Ew. It was gritty and just tasted like sugar. Well, guess I'll clean up while it cools. . .

Wha?  What's this??

My opened can of evaporated milk!! I never added it! Doh!  So there was no fudge for Thanksgiving. But there was for my party this week, and boy, oh boy, was it good. 

The mint chips were a little difficult for me to find.  I found the green and white ones everywhere but I had to make four stops before finally finding the red ones (at W-mart).  The second batch went much more smoothly and I ended up with a delicious (red and white) treat.

It is so rich and smooth. It is a little on the soft side, I can cut it but it can be a little crumbly.  I can easily squish it back together though.  I am totally addicted to it. My party was Monday night. I have been eating it around the clock since then. Someone stop me! I am defenseless against the White Chocolate Peppermint Fudge!!!

Total cost: $6.50 per batch.

Total time: 20 minutes

Final verdict: I am going to have to make this again--but not until next year. It is NOT conducive to my weight loss goals. How can I possibly fuel my marathon training on fudge?? Sounds good in principle, but in reality, that's not working out too well. This may become an annual tradition--just make it when you have lots of people to eat it with you.

Pin 163

Original pin:

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/cookies/white-chocolate-cherry-shortbread/

White chocolate cherry shortbread cookies. These looked so good! I had pinned them with a bad link and I wanted these so I hunted them down and repinned them with the corrected link at Better Homes and Gardens.

I had a holiday party (the first of many) that needed a few desserts. Our theme was red and white so I thought these would be perfect. So many red & white desserts are peppermint. I was looking for one that was specifically NOT peppermint.

I have to admit, these were very, very easy. Almost too easy. I guess I just had in my head that these would be complicated, but they were not. The recipe made says the yield is 60 cookies. I thought I measured appropriately, I used my little cookie scooper and everything. I yielded about 30. That is still a LOT of cookies!

I couldn't find just red and white sprinkles. However, I used so many that I could have just bought a bottle of each and mixed them together. How smart would that have been? I started out with the white, red, and green nonpareils and when those ran out switched to the green sugar ones.

Total cost: The white baking chocolate was a little pricey. The day I was shopping I could only find a rather luxurious brand of chocolate. Seems like you could probably save a little dough and substitute white chocolate chips here instead.  It would also eliminate the step of chopping the chocolate. However, I only had to buy chocolate, cherries, and sprinkles.  The rest was pantry staples. All together I spent around $14.

Total time: Including all baking time and dipping it took around 2 1/2 hours total. Prep time was only about 20 minutes of all of that.

Final verdict: These were a nice twist on the holiday treat. I don't think of cherry things around the holidays so I was pleasantly surprised. I don't love maraschino cherries. The cherry flavor is subtle without overwhelming the shortbread.  My kids love them--although I'm not sure if its because of the sprinkles or because the cookie is actually good. They looked cute for my red & white party. Now I've got to find someone who needs cookies to eat all the leftovers before I do!

Last of the Halloween candy

Last week I realized we STILL had some Halloween candy lying around. I have been secretly dumping a handful a day for a few weeks and the bowl was almost empty. I wanted to give my kiddos one last hurrah with the candy before I trashed the rest of it. My favorite way to win the battle of mom vs. kid in the candy department is to find something healthy and stick enough candy/sprinkles/whipped cream on top so that it feels special and indulgent.

Here is how the Halloween candy went out:

2 single serving no-added sugar applesauce cups
1 fun size pack of Skittles
2 small shakes of the rainbow sprinkles

I split the Skittles pack between the two--each child got 8 skittles and gave each a little shake of the rainbow sprinkles. Voila! Super special applesauce for dessert. Everyone wins!

 

And look at these happy faces!

And if you stir it up a little the colors will streak and make rainbow applesauce. . . until you over stir it and then its just that ugly brownish color.

Anyhoo, if you want to be the coolest mom tonight, throw some sprinkles on fruit and call it a treat!

Here are a few of my other special desserts:

Toast with peanut butter and use chocolate chips to make a happy face

Any kind of canned fruit with a squirt of whipped cream

Peel a banana and stick little surprises in it--pretzel sticks, candy bits, chocolate chips

Peel a banana and drizzle with chocolate syrup. Top with a squirt of whipped cream and a cherry--like a sundae without the ice cream.

Yogurt with graham cracker squares stuck in the top for dipping/scooping

Yogurt with a shake of sprinkles

Yogurt "milkshake." I have made these for my kids since they were babies. This is especially good if you need to get yogurt in them for medical reasons (aka, too many antibiotics :) ) Fill a lidded cup halfway with yogurt. Make sure it doesn't have fruit chunks in it. It should be smooth. Fill remainder of the cup with milk. Place the lid on top and shake vigorously until combined. I'm not sure that my kids yet know that milkshakes are actually made with ice cream.

Get creative. My kids will pretty much eat anything if I put a little shake of sprinkles (or anything I call sprinkles. . . hello Parmesan cheese! or Sea salt!) on top. One shake goes a long way so it doesn't take much. 

Pin 162

Whew, blogging during the holidays is HARD!! Between party planning and holiday shopping and going to work to pay for it all. . .

Original pin:

http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/salads/crunchy-apple-grape-salad/

The next Thanksgiving installment: As previously promised. . .

 Crunchy apple grape salad.  This was easy enough to prepare--the most labor intensive part was peeling and cutting everything. I actually put this one together the night before as well. I just put all the cut fruit in a storage bag and poured the dressing in. Then I sealed it and gently turned it around to coat everything and popped it into the fridge. There is just enough lemon juice in it to prevent the apples and pears from browning on the edges.  Just before serving I stirred in the almonds and walnuts.

It was soooo good! I loved it. The kids ate it. It was a nice, cool, refreshing side dish. I was so hot from all the cooking (and cooks) in the kitchen by the time the Thanksgiving meal rolled around, I needed a dish like this. And it kept well too. Here it is two days after I made it:

Just a teensy bit brown on the edges but still crunchy and delicious. The nuts were still crunchy too so you don't need to wait to stir them in like I did.

Total cost:  Around $10. The recipe filled a gallon-sized storage bag.

Total time: How fast can you chop fruit? It took me around twenty minutes all together.

Final verdict: Delicious. I will be making this again. My mother is already planning when she is going to make it. It would be great as a brunch dish or at a shower. Yum yum. This one is for the books.

Pin 161

Here is the first of three Thanksgiving posts!

Original pin:

http://www.marthastewart.com/314369/no-knead-dinner-rolls?autonomy_kw

Martha Stewart shared a recipe for some no-knead dinner rolls. I felt she was trustworthy enough to take this to Thanksgiving dinner without a test batch first.

I mixed these up the evening before Thanksgiving. We always "run" (or something not at all like running) the Fort Worth Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. I didn't want to be rushing to put something together that day so I let these sit in the fridge overnight. When I was preparing them, they were rising so fast I thought they might be up and out of the pan by the morning. Luckily, they were not.

I took these out of the fridge about one hour or so before I was ready to bake them. They didn't need to cook quite as long as the recipe stated. I took them out a little early because they were getting too brown. Here they are straight out of the oven:

They were not smooth on top like I expected dinner rolls to be. They had a good flavor but they were very dense. Not dense in the way they would be if they had not risen, they rose and had lots of air pockets and such. I just think the lack of kneading contributed to their density.  They were more what I would describe as biscuits.  Because of their density they were very, very filling. I made two batches to feed 17 people. The second pan was not even touched until Thanksgiving round 2 hours later. 

Trying to show their density here. . .

 Total cost: These used a lot of flour and I had to send hubs out for more before it was too late since I was making two batches.  He doesn't report back on prices. I'm guessing it was a few bucks for some flour. Everything else I had on hand.

Total time: The prep on these wasn't bad at all. Since you don't knead it most of the time is spent in the rising. Hands on was probably around 30 minutes for the two batches together--mostly spent shaping the rolls.

Final verdict: Like I said before, these were pretty biscuit-y so I won't make them again when I am looking for a dinner roll. (When I think of a dinner yeast roll I think of soft and airy.) I already have a biscuit recipe that I am absolutely, positively, undeniably in love with so I wouldn't make these when I am wanting biscuits.  They did make pretty good leftover ham sandwiches.  They were sturdy enough to hold together for that. Easy enough to make for a crowd and made 18-22 per batch.  There is a good chance I won't make these again.

 

 

And here is a sneak peek at the next pin. . .