Monday, December 21, 2009

Holiday Vacation

I'll be back in the New Year with lots of great ideas...but right now I am too busy making things for Christmas to actually be cooking.  ; )
We are eating cereal, grilled cheese sandwiches, and spaghetti for the whole week!

See you on January 4th!
Have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Christmas Treats...and Christmas pounds!



THIS is why I must go to the gym EVERY day:



What isn't on this popcorn??  Everything yummy (and fattening) that you can think of has been poured on this popcorn!  Caramel, marshmallows, chocolate, white chocolate....SO yummy!




And THESE:



These are peanut butter balls dipped in chocolate...yum.

These two treats were given to me from my gym friends.  I believe it is payback for the mint fudge and apple pie slices I  brought them last week! 

When I picked up my kids at the day care, they of course wanted some popcorn "RIGHT NOW"...so as I'm walking out of the gym, nibbling on my own chunk of popcorn, a guy walks by me (on his way into the gym) and says, "Eating already??"   I assured him that I would be back tomorrow morning at 5 am to work it all off.  And I will be, because after eating both of these today, there is just no other choice!

And not to be left out, my 3rd gym friend gave me this:



She is so hilarious.  She said she HAD to buy it for me...I'm VERY into recycling if you didn't know...actually, my whole family sings this song we learned at the Monterey Bay Aquarium this summer about "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle"...they love it, and I love that my kids are learning to care for the earth.

Hope you are all having a wonderful Christmas season!  I am pretty behind on my projects, so there's going to be some late nights between now and the 25th!!

P.S.   Here's a couple easy and cute projects I've done so far:
Crayon Roll  (I made these for some nephews and my little ones) and
Journal Covers (I made these for my book club--picture is posted here)  I covered composition books which required changing the measurements from the tutorial.  I loved how these turned out...so cute!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Vegetable Tetrazzini

{Meatless Monday}...on Wednesday! ; )

This is a recipe that I got from my sister that was for Chicken Tetrazinni, but I just took out the chicken and added mushrooms.

It's really easy and comes together very quickly.
Here's what you need:




1 small onion, chopped
2-3 small zuchinni, halved and sliced
4-6 large mushrooms, sliced

Saute in skillet with olive oil and salt and pepper until tender

12 oz. spaghetti

2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 cup milk
1/2 c. parmesan cheese
1/2 c. sour cream
1 tsp. seasoned salt
Garlic powder, if desired.

This is the order I do it:
Put the water on to boil.  Slice up vegetables and get them saute-ing in the skillet.  Put in spaghetti noodles to boiling water.  While both of those cook, mix together the sauce.  Here's what you end up with:


When your noodles are done, drain them and then combine with vegetables and sauce (I had to do this in a very large plastic bowl!) and then put in 9X13 and top with a little more parmesan cheese.

Bake at 375* for 25 minutes covered with foil, remove foil and cook for 5 more minutes.  Enjoy!

If you wanted the sauce to be a little more cheesy, you could add 1 cup grated cheddar cheese to the soup mix.

Monday, December 7, 2009

Vegetable Pizza

{Meatless Monday}

This has to be a super quick post...because I still have to finish making 4 more of these composition book covers tonight:

I am up to my earlobes in Christmas projects...so I'm really not cooking very much for my family.  But I thought I would put up the quick and easy recipe I made tonight.
When I am low on time, I just make a vegetable pizza with whatever cheese and veggies I happen to have in my fridge.  Tonight we had cheddar, mozzarella, and parmesan with olives, onions, and green peppers (wish we had mushrooms, too!).  I always just use Ragu spaghetti sauce for my sauce.  I didn't even have time to get a before picture, but this is what it looked like after it came out of the oven:

I use this pizza crust recipe...it is so easy and it always turns out!

So the next time you are running late, just raid your vegetable drawer and see what you come up with!


(I don't know if you can tell in the picture, but I only put the onions and peppers on half...I don't want to mislead anyone into thinking that ALL of my kids eat ALL of the vegetables I cook with! ; )