Italian Sausage Mix

This week I've gotten into recreating left overs to make different things. I mixed the left over bell peppers and mixed them with italian sausage and sauteed onions. For the first day I stuffed crescent rolls with the mix and Monterrey jack cheese and baked for 10 minutes at 350, and let me say, this was soooo good. It's perfect for the cold weather.

The next day I put the mix in a quesadilla, and that was super good too! This time I used the leftover pepper jack cheese from the pizza. After all of that, I STILL have some of the sausage/onion/bell pepper mix left. Next I think I might mix it with the leftover corn and stewed tomatoes from making taco soup earlier this week.

I tried some other crafts and things I've found on pinterest. First, I tried washing my cookie sheets using a mix from this website. It mixes peroxide and baking soda, but it didn't work. Another website i found said to use vinegar and baking soda, but that didn't work either. So cleaning the baking sheets failed.


Second I tried making a candle out of an orange, and this worked! It was really cool! You cut around the middle of the orange, but just enough to cut the peel. Then pull the peel off the top. You sort of have to invert the peel to do this. For the top half, pull the peel off completely. For the bottom half, pull the strings through the middle keeping them attached to the peel. This part will be the wick. Fill the wick end with olive oil leaving enough of the "wick" sticking up so you can light it. Cut a hole in the top half and set it on top of the lit bottom!

Cool Right? I thought so!

Mexican Chicken Pizza

I found this recipe on pinterest, and I'm in love with it now! I didn't exactly follow the recipe because I was just throwing the ingredients together really fast to try and eat between meeting and Pigskin practice. It's very simple. I used store bough pizza dough and unrolled it on a greased pan. I used salsa where the pizza sauce would normally go then grated some pepper jack cheese over the whole pizza. I then sprinkled the shredded grilled chicken and the red and yellow peppers over the pizza and added another layer of cheese. I cooked it for about 12 minutes.

According to the recipe it's technically supposed to have onions in it too, and you're supposed to saute the onions and peppers, but I didn't have time to cut the onion and saute everything so I just skipped that part. The onions would make it a lot better, but it was still absolutely delicious how it was! Sorry, I didn't get a picture of it before I had eaten it! Here's the recipe:

Spicy Chicken and Pepper Jack Pizza

Yield: Serves 3 to 4

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp. canola or olive oil
1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
3 cups diced fresh red, yellow and green bell peppers
1 (13.8 oz.) tube refrigerated pizza dough
1/2 cup salsa
2 cups (8 oz.) Sargento® ChefStyle Shredded Pepper Jack Cheese
Chopped cilantro or dried oregano (optional)
1 ½ cups cooked and shredded chicken

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion; sauté 2 minutes. Add bell peppers; sauté 5 minutes or until crisp-tender.
2. Meanwhile, unroll pizza dough onto a 15 x 10-inch jelly roll pan coated with cooking spray; press dough evenly to all edges of pan. Bake in preheated 425°F 8 minutes. 3. Stir salsa into cooked vegetables; spread over partially baked crust. Top with chicken and cheese.
3. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until crust is deep golden brown. Cut into squares; garnish with cilantro or oregano if desired.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Gooey Goodstuff

Sunday funday means baking day! Today I made this awesomely good easy thing. It's technically called "Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars", but I have another recipe similar to that so I'm just calling this Chocolate Peanut Butter Gooey Goodstuff! It's just a mix of yellow cake, eggs, butter, peanut butter, chocolate chips, and sweetened condensed milk! YUMMM

Here's the recipe:
Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars
by Greta White

1 (18.25) package plain yellow cake mix

1/2 cup butter, melted

1 cup creamy peanut butter

2 eggs

1 (12 oz) package semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
2 Tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup coconut (optional...my sister did not like the texture of it in there)

Directions:
1) Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2) Combine cake mix, melted butter, peanut butter, and eggs in a large bowl using a mixer or spoon. Press this into a 9X13 pan reserving 1 1/2 cup of the mixture to crumble on top.

3) In a small pot, melt chocolate chips, sweetened condensed milk, and butter. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla and coconut.
4) Spread chocolate mixture over the mixture pressed in the pan and then crumble the 1 1/2 cups of reserved cake mixture on top evenly.
5) Bake for 20-25 minutes. Cool completely before cutting into bars. 

Also, I've decided to start a challenge to see how many recipes I can come up with using crescent rolls. My goal is 30! The first one I'll share with you is a good breakfast option or late night snack! You take an unbaked unrolled crescent roll and spread peanut butter on it then sprinkle chocolate chips. Roll it up and bake for 10-12 minutes at 350. It's another yummy gooey chocolate peanut butter thing! 

Well now I'm off to make this cool thing out of toilet paper rolls. Which by the way I'm collecting toilet paper and paper towel rolls, like the cardboard part. So PLEASE send yours my way!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Balls

I'm back! After a long time of being away from the blog world, I finally found some new inspiration to get me blogging again. Pinterest. I have found so many recipes and crafts on this website that I want to try its not even funny. I'll have something new to make/bake for the next year.

The lucky recipe that gets a blog post this time is chocolate chip cookie dough balls. These wonderful things are made with eggless cookie dough so they're completely safe to consume raw. The idea is to make the dough, refrigerate it for an hour, roll it into balls, and cover the balls in chocolate. Basically the same thing as cake balls but with cookie dough!

My cookie dough did not exactly make it to the chocolate covered ball stage. It kind of got stuck in the bowl in the fridge where I've been eating it by the spoonful! I simply decided that adding the extra chocolate layer was 1) not worth the trip to the grocery store to buy the chocolate and 2) not worth the time to do so. But, maybe if I were making these for a party or something I would do that. I also had to half the recipe because I didn't have enough flour and it still made plenty.

Here's the recipe!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles

Makes approx. 3-4 dozen. Recipe from Love and Olive Oil.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup milk or soy milk
1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
14 oz dark chocolate candy coating

Directions:

Beat butter and sugars in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add milk and vanilla. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt and mix on low speed (or stir by hand) until incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips.
Cover and chill dough for 1 hour.
When dough is firm enough to handle, form dough into 1″ balls and arrange on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper. Place sheets in freezer and let chill for 30 minutes.
Melt chocolate candy coating in microwave according to package directions. Using toothpicks as a dipping tool, dip cookie balls into candy coating to cover. Tap on side of pan to remove any excess coating, and return to waxed paper-lined baking sheets. Chill until set. Store, chilled, in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Deep-Dish Fail

I didn't make many creative things this week because I was trying to use up all the food I had that was about to expire. I had:

• half a loaf of bread
• 2 eggs
• a little turkey
• leftover sausage
• queso
• chips
• cheese

I used this to make another turkey panini one day. The next day I made an egg-in-a-hole and mixed the sausage with the queso. (I know, super healthy meal right?) And the third day I made another egg-in-a-hole! At this point it was time to go to the grocery store!

Wednesday night I decided to try a recipe I found for deep dish pizza. I bought refrigerated pizza dough and filled a round 9" pan with it. Then put a layer of sliced tomato on that and covered it with mozerella cheese and the rest of the left over sausage! It's supposed to cook for 30-35 minutes, but when I checked on mine after 20 minutes it was already burnt. So I recommend cooking for about 15 minutes at 350 or following the directions on the dough can.

The next night I made spaghetti with butter sauce and grilled chicken to use up some of those things. I also planned on having a baked potato with it, but I forgot about the potato! So I just had the spaghetti and some garlic cheese bread we had bought a while ago.

The pizza made a ton. I've had it for 2 meals and still have more for one more meal. Which  means it's a fairly cheap recipe! I also have leftovers from olive garden last night, so I won't be cooking for a while again! Bad news is that's less to blog about. Good news is my grocery bill is way cheaper!

Leftover Schmeftovers

I finally had to freeze the last half of the Johnny Mazumi, so I can use the loaf of bread I bought before it goes stale. In keeping with my health streak, I had strawberries and spinach. For the spinach, I put some vegetable oil in small sauce pan then added a handful of spinach and heated/stirred it until it shriveled up. I also added some salt, and after it shriveled I two more handfuls. (Three handfuls of raw spinach shrivels into that tiny pile of cooked spinach!) I mainly did this because I couldn't take a meal that looked like rabbit food one more time.

For the sandwich, I made a panini! I had some turkey and mozerella cheese to use up so I dipped one of the pieces of bread in the vegetable oil (before I added the spinach and salt) then pressed the oil side of the bread to the other slice of bread. On the non-oil sides I put miracle whip, mozerella cheese, and turkey. Then, I grilled it on my George Foreman for about 3 minutes (miraculously the exact same time it took to cook the spinach!).

It was quite a delicious meal for just throwing together some about-to-expire stuff from the fridge.

Insert Funny Title Here

At our Sunday dinner this week, we decided to start a chore chart to split up who does what. Mainly because I can never remember if it's mine turn to take out the trash or wash the dishes and so on.  So, we are using a white board (for now at least) and moving magnets around for whose turn it is to do what chore!

It's my turn to run the dishwasher nextttt. And I have less right now just because I did a bunch of my chores tonight!

In other news: we seem to have a cricket infestation. We have been attacked by about 5 already. One flew into my face when I was sitting on my bed. Nbd. Except that this is totally unacceptable. It took us about 20 minutes to get rid of the first one, and we have progressively become faster at getting rid of them. That really means that I've gotten better at screaming loud enough that my roommate acts faster on killing them because crunching big bugs is so not my thing. Spiders and small bugs I can do, but anything with an audible crunch or visible guts does not work for me.

Johnnyy Mazumi

I made dinner! It was johnny mazumi! Apparently I still haven't learned my lesson about getting out all the ingredients before beginning to cook because I forgot to get sour cream this time. Thank goodness for Hillary being at the grocery store when I realized and buying me some. It turned out super good! It's a mix of sour cream, cottage cheese, green onions, tomato sauce, and ground beef. It just ends up being a half-creamy/half-tomato saucey spaghetti. Yum!

Since that was short I'll give you a list of all the kitchen misshaps I've experienced so far:

1. I spilt half a pot of boiling water on me - I was moving a pot of spaghetti to drain and didn't have a good hold on one half of the pot and ended up dropping it. Don't worry, it didn't hurt!
2. Had to make an emergency ghetto HEB trip to get baking soda
3. Set off the smoke detector - twice - but this is because the smoke detector is right above the oven and I think it overheats easily
4. Today I almost cut off my finger while chopping the green onions, but just cut my fingernail instead. No worries!
5. I thought I had a lot more than this, but I'll keep you updated on new ones!

That's all for now! 

There's Baking Soda In Caramel

Lot's of cooking happened yesterday! First, it was my turn to cook Sunday dinner for the apartment which meant finding a vegetarian recipe because my other roommate is a vegetarian. After a long time on google, I finally decided on breakfast burritos! So, I scrambled eggs, cooked sausage, heated up queso and toritillas, and got some shredded cheese then served it buffet style. This way me and Hillary could get sausage, but Abby didn't have to touch it!

Next, I finally made the caramel popcorn that I've been wanting to make. I learned to always get out the ingredients needed for a recipe before starting it (I'll tell you why in a few minutes). To start out you pop corn in a pan by pouring enough vegetable oil to line the bottom of it then enough kernels to line the bottom and heat on medium-high heat covered until they pop! Let me say the popping corn was one of the funnest things I've ever watched. I'm making my popcorn like this from now on!

 Then fill 2 shallow pans with the popcorn. I started out with them on cookie sheets but remembered later that you have to stir the popcorn. So, I moved them to some pyrex pans.

Now comes the fun part: making the caramel. First you melt 2 sticks of butter in a pan. I recommend using a bigger one than I did because I almost had a few overflows. Add brown sugar and salt. Stir continuoulsy while boiling for 5 minutes. Then add baking soda and vanilla gradually. Here's the problem. We reached this point, and I went to get the baking soda to find that I only had baking powder... Not the same thing. Keep in mind that I have 5 minutes of needing to continuously stir the caramel while I solve this dilemma. First we went and knocked on our neighbors doors to ask to borrow some... no answer. Then we thought we found a recipe that didn't use baking soda. Nope it still used it; just didn't list it in the ingredient list. So I had to run to the ghetto HEB while Hills stirred for me. Thank goodness there was no line and baking soda only costs 40 cents.

 After adding the baking soda (not powder) and vanilla, you pour the caramel mix over the popcorn then bake at 250 for an hour and stir every 15 minutes.

While the 1 hour wait was horribly long, we decided it was worth it! The popcorn is AMAZINGGG. I highly recommend it if you're bored, and need a long project to do.