All Because I Fell in Love ... With a Fruit

It all started with me finding the fruit I discussed in the yesterday's blog. After scouring the internet, it seemed the main use for it was salsa. However, I decided that since it tasted like pineapple, and I've had apple and pineapple pie before, I would use it to make a pie!

So I channeled my inner Martha Stewart and began to gather my ingredients:

First, I had to peel the apples. I don't have a peeler, and have never peeled an apple before. So this became an adventure. 

The easiest part was putting the refrigerated pie crust in the pan. Sure, I could have made one from scratch, but it took so long for me to peel the apples, this was my way to save on time. 

After peeling and cutting the apples, I mixed them with my ground cherries and coated all the fruit in cinnamon and flour. 

Then, I mixed quick oats, brown sugar, flour, and melted butter ...

... then sprinkled that on top of my fruit. 

After baking in the oven at 375 for 40 minutes, I had this beautiful guy!

Topped with some ice cream, this pie is becoming the reason that I'm hitting the gym double time starting tomorrow. 

Cooking Oops!

My mother and I were discussing what we could have for dinner tomorrow night. My folks and kiddo will probably be getting to the apartment after me, so it would have to be something quick. I was trying to save the quick things I bought for the nights I have games this week, so it would be something easy for my mom to fix.

As I was grocery shopping this morning, a lightbulb went off. Why not make the crockpot recipe I had wanted to do tomorrow, and then just reheat it when I get home from work?

BRILLIANT!

Since I have a mandatory day off today (gotta use up that comp time), I came home and set out to make this crockpot spaghetti and meatballs recipe from the cookbook I bought at kiddo's book fair.

Seems simple enough, right? 

I was on the phone with my mom while I was putting all of the ingredients in, and I learned that I should never be talking on the phone to my mother when attempting a recipe, no matter how simple it seems. 

See, while I was on the phone with my mom, I put ALL of the ingredients in. Starting with the spaghetti. 

Oops. 

It wasn't until I got ready to turn the crockpot on, that I realized the spaghetti was supposed to go in last, after the rest of it had been hearing for 6-8 hours. 

Again, oops. 

I then spent more time than necessary picking out all of the pieces of spaghetti that I could get to. 

Always read the recipe completely before beginning!

I've got the meatballs and sauce doing their thing, and here's to hoping it doesn't turn out completely horribly. 

And if it does, there's always delivery pizza. 

Cheesecake Nutella Twists...With a Twist!

I've been seeing this recipe pop up everywhere: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, you name a social media outlet, I've seen this recipe on it.

Click above to get the full/real recipe

I love Nutella, and I had some to finish off. Who doesn't love cream cheese and crescent rolls? All signs screamed GO! so I set out to make these for breakfast before church on Sunday. 

Until I realized I was missing one key ingredient. 

Hungry Girl's Nacho-rific Stuffed Chicken

I love Hungry Girl! 

When I moved out on my own and decided that I wanted to make healthier meals for myself, she was my introduction to cooking. Her meals aren't THAT difficult, and if they seem to difficult for my beginner skill level, I shy away from them. 

I haven't made a HG meal in a while, and was flipping through one of her cookbooks and landed on her Nacho-rific Stuffed Chicken. 

It sounded great, and since I had pretty much all of the ingredients, it got the green light. 

Click on the book to check out the Hungry Girl website. 

Read more about my cooking adventure below!

Blogilates Mug Muffin

Today's adventure in cooking really does involve a microwave. 

I've made breakfast in a mug plenty of times. I love mug egg scrambles (shoutout to Hungry Girl!) and made mug desserts, so I figured the Blogilates mug muffin would be super easy. 

After reading some of the comments on the blog about other people's attempts at the muffin, I felt like I was ready for the challenge. 

Blogilates Banana Pancakes

Today on the Blogilates Beginners Calendar, even though it's an active rest day, there was still something to take on. "Try the 2 ingredient banana pancakes on blogilates.com." 

2 ingredients. Simple enough, right? After the slutty brownie failure of last night, I'm not believing anything is simple until I try it. 

The video makes it look so easy though!

Really, if I can't make this then I have no business in the kitchen. (And my dishes that I'm known for are crawfish ravioli and jambalaya, so I should be able to do this, right?) 

First things first, let's get out the ingredients. 

Step one is complete. I had originally arranged the eggs and banana in a smiley face, but I felt that would be getting ahead of ourselves. 

I blended them to a batter like texture just fine, but I had some issues when it came to actually making the pancakes. 

No matter how much I sprayed that pan down, they would stick. But I'm not deterred so easily. Just because my presentation may be poor, doesn't mean it's still not going to taste amazing. (Besides, I'm only serving these to myself, so it doesn't REALLY matter what they look like.) 

Viola! My finished product. They look more like mushy hashbrowns than pancakes, but they were REALLY good. I would definitely make these again. I paired them with some turkey bacon (I like my bacon super crunchy, so practically burnt), a couple of cuties, and a nice cup of coffee. 

This is a recipe that I will be recommending to people when they want something a little different, but don't want to spend a whole lot of time preparing an elaborate breakfast. 

Food Porn Fail

I'll never make it in the food porn business.

Today, I tried to create the food porn that seems to have taken over all of my social media feeds. It even brags about how easy it is. It seemed like it was the ultimate slut in the food porn world, so much so that it touted itself as such.

Slutty Brownies. 

We're hitting Epic Meal Time proportions of food porn on this one. Brownies, Oreos, chocolate chip cookies.

All you have to do, is put down the cookie dough. Top the cookie dough with Oreos. Spread the brownie mix on top. Bake as instructed and VOILA! You have food porn.

Unless you're me.


It all started out innocently enough. I bought my supplies and came home to get my hands dirty.

I followed those rules perfectly. Layered my cookie dough (the best I could), topped it with Oreos, and then covered with my brownie mix.

I tried to cover it with my brownie mix anyway. I placed it in the oven for the longest amount of time the box told me to. The brownies still weren't cooked, so back in it went. Then it came out a few more times before my knife came out clean. 

I'm not winning any awards for presentation, but they appear to be edible.

However, once I dived into the slutty goodness...I was met with surprise. Some parts of the brownie mix didn't cook all the way through. Some parts of the brownie mix were burnt.

Being a baked good pimp was supposed to be easy. These were supposed to be the classiest escorts on any dessert table.

And yet...I failed.

I think my career as a slutty baked good pimp ended when I couldn't find the tubs of cookie dough in my grocery store. I thought they were frozen, clearly they are not. (My mother corrected me on them being in the refrigerated area.) I purchased the frozen cookie dough.

While the cookie dough isn't what caused me problems, I'm still going to blame it. Why blame it? BECAUSE I WILL NOT FAIL AT MAKING SUPER EASY RECIPES!

There will be another attempt at these in the future, and next time, those slutty brownies will fall right in line.

I Heart Pizza

Pizza is my absolute favorite food. I eat pizza every week. I guess you could say that I'm slightly addicted to pizza. (I feel an intervention coming soon since I just admitted it.) However, pizza and fitting into a bridesmaid dress don't exactly go well together. 

The reason that I cannot eat as much pizza as I would like to. :( 

I've been working out, of course, but I saw Cassey from Pop Pilates posted a "Cheap Clean Eats" segment on a flourless pizza and I was intrigued. I decided that I HAD to try it and see if this healthy pizza tasted just as good as a real one. (Cassey said it did, but I don't really trust people on pizza.) This began one crazy adventure in cooking! 

Ingredients

Chopping up the cauliflower

Yes, I did buy a food processor for this recipe. 

I'm not that great at making a circle. 

I can measure out ingredients like a boss, though!

Don't be fooled! This does NOT taste like real pizza!

Ok, so it wasn't an epic fail in the kitchen. The pizza wasn't THAT bad. When you are a pizza addict though, it doesn't take the place of the real thing. So I had a second pizza adventure. I used Money Saving Mom's homemade pizza dough recipe and tried again. 

Ingredient round up

Is this what the yeast is supposed to look like? 

Time to knead some dough! How do I know when I'm finished? 

Is it just me, or am I about to cook Australia? 

After google verification, I did cook Australia and it tasted amazing!

Second pizza attempt was a success! Some things to note: (1) I did not attempt to make the dough look like Australia. I really suck at forming a circle and once I realized my pizza looked like Australia, I decided to keep it like that. (2) I wasn't sure if the yeast was actually working, so we also ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut in case this was a total bust. It was a good thing we did because we were all so hungry that both pizzas were completely gone!

  

Resolution Recap

Hello Summer! 

It's officially the end of the craziness that is work, at least for 2 months. While part of what I love about my job is the fact that once the seasons start there isn't much downtime, it's still nice to get a few months to recharge before the crazy hits the fan again in August. So what exactly does the summer have planned for us? I'm going to enjoy being able to hang with the kiddo more often, but we've decided to keep with her regularly scheduled weekend trips to Bebe and Daddad's house. This way she still gets to see her peeps in Louisiana and gives her some sort of routine. This is how the weekends in the month of June are going to play out for Mommy since the kiddo will be spending hers in Louisiana:

Weekend 1 will be spent reading, straightening the apartment up, watching some NCAA baseball regional action as well as my Texas Rangers, catching up on the blog, and spending some time in the sun at the pool. It's too gorgeous to NOT go outside, so I'm actually typing this blog post from my makeshift "porch" in front of the apartment.

Weekend 2 will be spent helping a good friend get rid of all of the crap that her ex felt the need to leave in her apartment, a possible date for me, the Belmont Stakes, some grocery shopping (since there will be money in the bank account again) and more reading.

Weekend 3 will be spent at Bebe and Daddad's celebrating Father's Day.

Weekend 4 will be spent at my best friend's wedding shower! I'm so excited. I have the PERFECT gift for her and really just hope it comes in before the shower. If not, I guess I'll have to do a massive box with the picture of the gift. :)

Weekend 5 will be spent either roadtripping to a Rangers game, or spending the weekend with the kiddo. The roadtrip is dependent upon whether there are free tickets involved and if we have money for gas by that point in the month.

Adventures in Cooking

I have been on a massive baking kick lately. I've become addicted to this: 

I seem to baking it on a weekly basis. I add in chocolate chips and it is to DIE for! Try this; you won't regret it. 

I also found this recipe for Skinny Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies. I HAD to try these when I saw that I had all but one ingredient to make them. I almost regret doing so because I'm obsessed. I couldn't found my brownie pan, so I made muffins out of them and they are AMAZING! I had to stop myself from eating the entire batch in one sitting. 

#MOTY Playlist

This is the playlist that helped bring you this blog post, and a few others you will be seeing over the weekend. 

Bad Romance - Artists v. Poets (Punk Goes Pop)

Over Again - One Direction

Let Me Go - 3 Doors Down

Jukebox Hero - Foreigner

No Surprise - Daughtry

Southern Comfort Zone - Brad Paisley

Ms. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkel

Angel - Aerosmith

Honeybee - Blake Shelton

Begin Again - Dropkick Murphys

Cruise - Florida Georgia Line

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend - Miranda Lambert

Right Here Waiting - Richard Marx

I Don't Need a Man - Pussycat Dolls

Crawling - Linkin Park

December 1963 - Frankie Valli

Takin' Off This Pain - Ashton Shepard

Maybe I'm Amazed - Paul McCartney

Give Me Everything - Pitbull

RESOLUTION RECAP 

(1) Cook one meal a month. Big fat fail! I've been too busy to even THINK of things to pull out of the fridge to heat up, much less a meal to cook. 

(2) Read one book a month. Surprisingly, I do really well with this one. Taking Chances; The Dark Heroine; Reflected in You; and Barred to You. 

(3) Donate to charity each month. The TRF (Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation) is my standard charity of choice for the month of May since it's the start of the Triple Crown races. 

(4) Place $500 in savings. Thanks to my tax refund this one is accomplished, now the goal is to keep the majority of it in there. 

(5) Visit William. I seriously need to call him back. I'm a bad friend sometimes. :( 

(6) Exercise/Drop Weight. Consistent. I need to shake things up a bit, and I think June is a GREAT month to do that. 

Happy Mardi Gras!

It's one of my favorite holidays, Mardi Gras! Growing up in Louisiana, Mardi Gras was always a holiday from work and since it isn't a holiday in Texas, I made it one. So how does a single mom with an adorable kiddo at home spend her Mardi Gras? Baking, cooking, hanging out and general housework, that's what!
Here's some of the decorations to get you festive:

Adventures In Cooking - OVERDRIVE
Today involved multiple adventures in cooking, so let's get to it. I started my morning off by making King Cake Bars. I thought about doing mini-king cakes, but my mom and I aren't overly big fans of cinnamon rolls, so I figured these would go over better and boy was I right!

         Yea, I've got my work cut out for me.                              Busted out my mom's new stand mixer

                    The crust...                                                      ...the filling...

                  ...the glaze...                                                         ... YUMMY!

Adventures in Cooking - ROUND 2
After making those amazing King Cake Bars, my mom called while the folks were on their way with the kiddo to ask about lunch. She had e-mailed me a pizza log recipe a few days ago and I mentioned that I had all of the stuff to make that, so I did...

 

Third Time's a Charm...

 I made energy bites - my fav snack. 

Adventures in Cooking - Slight Cheat 

Since I spent so much time on the King Cake Bars, I did a slight cooking cheat with dinner and made some jambalaya with the help of Zatarain's, left over Red Lobster biscuits, frozen corn and prepared salad. Still yummy!

CUTE KIDDO MOMENT
I just had to share this cute picture of my kiddo and her "dodo" (dinosaur)

Yes, the shirt says "Mardi Gras Princess" 

This post sponsored by the letters MG and this amazing coffee from Community Coffee: