Breakfast Burrito

Breakfast wasn't anything new or exciting today. made some waffles and a breakfast burrito. Not really much to write about with that.

Waffles were Eggo so they just went in the toaster! Yes I cheated, maybe one day I will get a waffle maker, we shall see. Not like I have the most counter space either. So who knows.

Breakfast Burrito, I scrambled 2 eggs in a bowl and added some shredded cheddar cheese. Then tossed that in a pan, and added some crumbled turkey sausage. Fried that all up and tossed on a burrito wrapper that I put some ketchup in. (Yes I like ketchup on my eggs or bagel sandwiches, if you don't like ketchup just don't add it) Then put the cooked egg mixture into the burrito and wrapped it up. Super simple and super delicious.

Homemade Oatmeal Cookies

Well I finally did it, I have been talking about these forever, And I finally made some Oatmeal cookies from scratch! And boy does the kitchen smell good.

Now the notes on the hand written recipe card read "yields about 2 dozen". Well let me tell you I have about 60 cookies. So I think the math is off somewhere here, unless they made some HUGE cookies!!

So to start I had some shortening, Yes shortening, not butter or margarine. This is what the old recipe calls for and it is what we are using!! And a cup of shortening at that.

Next we add some sugars and mix it all up very well

For the next step we mix in some well beaten eggs and some vanilla extract,

Now mix this up so that the entire mixture is very well combined and soft

Now in a separate bowl we need to combined the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon and mix them up very well









Slowly add this mixture well sifted into the moist mixture and combine.

Now this is when you could add some walnuts, or raisins, or whatever else you may want to add in to the cookie. For this batch I chose to just do simple Oatmeal cookies. So I didn't add anything else at this point. Once you are done adding it when you add your oatmeal in. This should always be the last step you do. I used Quaker Old Fashioned Oats. You could also use the quick oats, but I would never recommend instant. And of course you just toss the oats in, uncooked and mix it all up.

Now you can use either your hands or a spoon to get in onto a cookie sheet for baking. I just use my hands to break it up and form it. Easier for me.

Now I got about 12 cookies on a sheet, they don't spread much so I might have been able to do more, but since i need to bake a pan at a time, I figured since the recipe said it makes 2 dozen I will just have to bake twice. Oh goodness, well 60 cookies later. I am through all of the mixture. That was just too funny. But the house smells like delicious cinnamon, which is an added bonus and these cookies are more delicious than I could have imagined.









Pasta and Breadsticks

Today was quite the lazy day, so I didn't want to put in much effort to cooking but need to eat and still want something delicious. Well I had some bread sticks in a can in the fridge. I know not to creative there, but if you have ever had them before, even if you use all of the garlic spread that comes with it, they are just not up to par by far!! So I rolled them out, used the garlic spread and then added some garlic powder, Italian seasoning, and some fresh shredded Parmesan cheese. Made the world of a difference!!

Now I just made some angel hair pasta, tossed with butter and seasoning and had that for dinner. Simple, easy, and done in 15 minutes for everything! Perfect!



Easy Witch Hats

Well you just can't get any easier than this. To make these witch hats you need Keebler fudge stripe cookies, Hershey Kisses and some frosting. Of course you don't need to have anything name brand. Just the equivalent of those items.

Take the cookie and put it upside down on a plate so that the fully fudge covered bottom is now facing up, take some frosting (Any color will do, I try to use green or orange for Halloween) and dab it around where the hole in the cookie is. Next place an unwrapped Hershey Kiss on the frosting and lightly mush together. Voila! Witch Hats!!! So super easy and great to make with kids since there is nothing hot and nothing sharp!!

Oatmeal Cookies?? Marzipan?? Gelee

Not sure what to make this afternoon once I am home, maybe I will try some Oatmeal cookies from scratch... Any thoughts?????

Rave Reviews on the Cupcakes

So the cupcakes that were made the other day were fabulous!! I of course don't need to have these all at home so I brought a huge tray of them to work for everyone else! Well they certainly were a big hit and they all disappeared!! There is one lady at work who I have always thought of as "The Baker". She would bring in these baked creations that were so fabulous!! Well I think my highest compliment on my cupcakes came from her!!! She told me that my cupcakes melted in her mouth!! I was floored. Then today she told me why didn't I bring in more cupcakes, and why am I not selling my cupcakes and baked goods. SO I was being smart and told her I didn't win the lotto to open up a bakery or restaurant. None the less I am not a real chef. But she said I should start selling my baked goods. She said I should be like Mrs. Fields because Mrs. Fields started by selling her cookies to friends. I am stunned that she liked my cupcakes but then to even think that she feels they were good enough to sell is just out of my realm of understanding. I do this for fun, for enjoyment, to de-stress and to see how people enjoy my cooking. So the cupcakes were a hit and that was just the basic cupcakes, I didn't even bring in the ones that were filled with peanut butter. SO I am a happy camper right now. Very glad that I was able to have others enjoy my baking!!!

10-11-11 Some leftovers and a new dinner!

Well 2 days ago I made piergoies (Geez one day I will learn how to spell that) and some sugar snap peas and there were leftovers which I didn't want yesterday. So today, I decided to make a Chicken cutlet filled with broccoli and cheese, oh they are so yummy!! That takes about 40 minutes to bake so when there was about 10 minutes left I tossed the leftovers in the oven on another pan. (I don't take any chances when there was raw chicken baking on the one pan) Everything was done shortly after served up on a plate and there is dinner with little effort and even used some leftovers. I have a bad tendency oh having plenty of leftovers and never eating them so then they end up in the garbage, so now I try to cook less so I don't end up with a meal of the week or month and this way I can be creative again. Dinner with less work the second time around! Which for tonight was perfect!! Out of work at 5pm and have to be back at work at 5am. Rough night short on time, so this was beyond ideal! I wanted to make some pumpkin bread but I really need to start to wind down and get to bed, so I am thinking I will bake that tomorrow.

10-10-11 Breakfast for Dinner and Breakfast

So Again I had no idea what to make for dinner, what else is new there. I think I might need to start doing my own Julie & Julia project kind of thing and work my way through a cookbook. Then I wont need to come up with new ideas. But then again  what fun would that be. So I was trying to think ahead for once, THIS NEVER HAPPENS!! But I decided to make breakfast burritos for dinner this way if I made two I could wrap one up for breakfast to bring to work in the morning! So that was settled! I got out some eggs, scrambled in a bowl cut up some fresh mozzarella that was braided and seasoned so well!! Added some crumbled turkey sausage and Voila! Perfect! I added some ketchup and wrapped them up. One I had for dinner and the second was wrapped in tin foil and put in the fridge. In the morning I grabbed that and a paper towel and when I was at work I popped it in the microwave for a minute and perfect breakfast!

10-09-11 Dinner

So this post will be kind of short, it is past my bed time lol. Goodness 3am rolls around quickly for that alarm to be going off.

Anyways, I wasn't quite sure what to make for dinner and totally forgot to defrost any meat, apparently I was just on a sugar high from those cupcakes (which are all packaged up to go to work in the morning!!) ((well not all of them, but most)) So i was looking around for something to make and found a bag of frozen pierogies (goodness I can never spell that right but you know what I am talking about!) So instead of boiling them or frying them I decided to bake them. Luckily they came out perfect! See there are no instructions on the bag for baking, just frying or boiling, well or using the microwave. But I set the oven to 350, figured why not.. lol it was a normal setting i thought. baked them for 10 minutes flipped them over baked another 15 and they were PERFECT!!!! while that was baking I cooked up some sugar snap peas. Plated it all together a little butter on top, topped off with some fresh shredded Parmesan and voila! Dinner was served!!! Delicious and not too much!

10-09-11 Breakfast and Baking

Well what a Sunday, Again I had the same issue this morning, what to make for breakfast. I wanted to think of something better than chocolate chip muffins as I am reminded by some that they are more of a dessert than a breakfast food. If only I had left out the chocolate chips. Darn it! Anyways, so for today what shall I make...

Breakfast, I still wanted some muffins, I gave away the left overs from yesterdays muffins and wanted something fresh. So I went ahead and made some banana nut muffins!!!

They turned out great, but while they were baking I knew I would want more than just a muffin. So I figured I could make waffles and sausage again. Then as that was already cooking, I realized I wanted a breakfast burrito. Goodness Gracious. Well it was too late to not have the waffles as they were already done. Oh well, I am on to my burrito, so I  scrambled up two eggs, some fresh braided mozzarella tossed in some crumbled turkey sausage and cooked in the frying pan.

Once that was done, I wrapped it up in a wrap and served with all of the other food! Oh my, that was a ton.

During the afternoon, I decided I was going to make mini cupcakes. Well lets start with the frosting, it is October and the countdown to Halloween begins, so I needed to make some Orange frosting. So Vanilla frosting and then added some food color.

Next on to the cupcakes, I made some German Chocolate cupcake mix, and started making mini cupcakes, some i added in some extra chocolate chips and on the second half of the batch of mix, I started putting peanut butter in the middle of the cupcakes. So I would let half of the cupcakebatter cook in the tin for a minute then add a glop of peanut butter and then top the rest off with more cupcake batter.

Next off to icing, so delicious, YUMMY

Now after icing majority of these little cupcakes, then I finally remembered that i had a decorating bag with tips left. They are single use bags which is great since there is no clean up!! But I can't believe I didn't remember that I had it earlier.

OK so far from being my best decorating job but give me a break it was also the end of the frosting. I had some fabulous holiday sprinkles of ghosts and bats and cats and orange and black jimmies which were fabulous to use. The ghosts were orange and white and slightly larger than the rest of the shapes so I used one for each mini cupcake and stuck it out in the middle. It looks great!! and tastes fabulous. Most of these will go to work in the morning so that I don't eat them myself. LOL Ill give everyone at work the gift of extra weight!! :)

Next time I will make regular cupcakes, not minis so I can use some great Halloween cupcake papers, I might even add some of the orange and black jimmies into some yellow cake mix to make them more festive.

Still not sure what to make for dinner, but I am working on it. Well I am working on the thought of it at this moment at least. :)

10-08-11 Chocolate Chip Kind of Day

You ever have one of those days where you know you want breakfast but you have no idea what to make. I always seem to get confused on the weekends because I have the time to make anything I want. During the week, there is no time in the mornings so it is either a frozen breakfast burrito that I made previously and froze, some cereal and oh doesn't that sound exciting, or a breakfast bar. So when the weekends come I do get excited to start cooking again and enjoying the food. I am going to have to make some changes coming up because with all this cooking I might have gained a pound or two and I need to work on that. Well that probably is more the baking than the cooking lol. Anyways, not something I am too worried about at this point.

So I decided to make some muffins, the next hard decision is what kind of muffin, I wanted something sweet so I made chocolate chip muffins!

They were super yummy!! I made sausage and waffles and had one muffin on the side.

Nothing too exciting there, but the muffins were the great part. Spent the rest of the day not cooking, but i did make some Chocolate chip cookies for dessert!! Apparently it was a chocolate chip kind of day!!

10-07-11 Pepperoni Crescent Rolls

Today was a long day, hours at work changed and blah blah blah blah.... :) There is nothing more relaxing to me than cooking and baking. I wanted to cook up everything but I wasn't sure what I wanted to make. I somehow needed to narrow it down to one choice, and this was getting difficult.

So I grabbed a can of crescent rolls, some shredded mozzarella cheese with Italian blend, pepperoni, fresh shredded Parmesan, butter and some herbs. Simple yet delicious. Oh and did I mention quick. For nights when you are in a rush this  is great!! Maybe 5 minutes to prepare and 11 to bake. 16 minutes start to finish, come on we all can manage that one.
Take the crescents rolls and separate them into the 8 cut outs. Lay pepperoni slices on each one, as many as you like, and then top with some shredded mozzarella. Roll them up as normal making sure to keep everything tightly in.

Once they are all rolled up, brush some melted butter on top add some fresh shredded hard Parmesan and then top with herbs to your taste preference.

Simple yet delicious. Easy dinner or snack, great appetizer for company. Since it doesn't take long to prep and bake you can always serve them hot and fresh. I wouldn't recommend adding sauce into the roll since it will get very messy, but having a fresh warm sauce cup on the side for dipping is perfect. Now I am not a big person for sauce but I have heard it makes a big difference!

Bon Apetit!

10-04-11 Dinner Mixed Up

Not even sure what I was thinking tonight but all of a sudden it was really late and I had not eaten yet. I am great and throwing something together in a matter of minutes, as my company found out over the weekend. So I wanted something fast easy but good. So I cooked some Farfalle pasta, added some peas, and then cooked up some garlic alfredo sauce. Mixed it all together tossed some fresh parmesan cheese on top and served it up! Dinner in less than 15 minutes and delicious, also there are leftovers, so either lunch or dinner tomorrow is already made up for me too!!! Which is great I have a feeling it will be a long day! ((And it was))  I should have made some biscuits, that is the only thing that was missing!!!

Countdown to Halloween Begins!!!!!!

It’s October!!!! Does anyone know what that means??? It is almost Halloween!!! Yes you may think I am crazy but I am super excited!!! I also have all of this wonderful stuff to bake with for Halloween!! Wait till you see what I will be creating throughout the month!

I did take my turn with the Cookie Press again, and still I LOVE this cookie press. I tried a new recipe and well it just didn’t work. The cookies came out tasting fabulous, however look wise they were far from up to par. I tried it in the cookie press and also tried using some great Halloween cookie cutters that I have and well when they were cooking they flattened right out and all of the shapes disappeared.  So apparently the recipe was not good enough for the cookie press or for the cookie cutters. I will keep working on this. I will upload the photo of the cookies later today when I am able to connect my camera.

As you can see some of them almost kept some form, and this last one that almost looks like a drunk Mickey Mouse head, well that was a cat for Halloween and then some cookies were around it that I pressed out from the cookie press. It was just funny, but they tasted really good!!! Now I just need to work on appearance! I will get there!

I had tried sugar cookies this time, where last time I used the cookie press I made a batch of butter cookies. Those stayed formed so I might have to go back to that but figure out how to add some flavor. The wheels are certainly spinning in my head! I will figure this out!

M. I. A.

I know you are probably sitting there thinking where has this girl been? And what has she been cooking? Well I had leftovers during last week, nothing too exciting there, but it is a great perk from cooking all weekend, to not have to worry much about it during the week after work. Then I had company for the weekend and had a million great meals planned and well they didn’t happen either. I did make the Chocolate Strudel Roll again and another batch of Monkey Bread Minis. They were both a hit!! One night I made some angel hair pasta with snap peas. I will add a picture later on today.  I know the picture is a little dark, but  I took it with my cell and there is no flash on there. That's what I get for making dinner well after the sun went down.

One night we had Chicken Cutlets stuffed with Broccoli and Cheese with potatoes on the side. I had diced and roasted potatoes while my guest wanted boiled potatoes so she could smash them. So I made both. Of course I forgot to take a picture of all of this. I was enjoying time with my company and we were working on some projects and when it came time to eat we were hungry and ate!!! And it was always after the plate was empty that I went Oh No I didn’t take a picture!!!! Silly me, but I hope you can all understand the lack of blog and lack of photos for the wonderful weekend I was able to have!