Breakfast Tacos!

The other night I made the most delightful breakfast for dinner.  I didn't put a lot of thought into it beforehand.  I just had a bunch of avocados and eggs laying around and didn't want them to go bad.  I also wanted to try out a salsa recipe that I found on Pinterest, so I figured I would incorporate all these together into breakfast tacos...definitely a first for me.  Well, it ended up tasting a lot better than planned.  So good, that I ate them three days in a row and decided to blog about them.

Breakfast Tacos

1 avocado, sliced

salsa (follow link above to the recipe I used... so good!)

4 flour tortillas

4 eggs

4 slices of jack or cheddar cheese

Warm tortillas with a slice of cheese on top on a pan over medium heat until cheese starts to melt.  Scramble eggs with a little milk, salt, and pepper.  Top the tortillas and cheese with scrambled eggs, followed by salsa and a couple slices of avocado.  Makes 4 tacos. 

Enjoy!

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Super Easy Chocolate-Almond Clusters

I've been trying to eat healthier foods lately.  Now that I have renewed my membership at Costco where you pretty much have to buy everything in bulk, I'm also having to think ahead for my meal planning so we can wisely use everything we buy. The other day I was browsing around and stumbled upon their giant tub of almonds for $9 something. Almonds make for a healthy snack, but I honestly did not see myself eating that many almonds.  Pretty boring snack, if you ask me.  Unless...

I remembered that I had a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips at home that I hadn't needed to open when I baked cookies last week.  That's when the simplest, yummiest idea came to me.  You know those tubs of chocolate-covered almonds that always cost more money than you want to spend?  I figured that I could make my own at home for so much cheaper.

So I did.

It was so simple, and half healthy. ;)  I just melted one bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips in the microwave, mixed it with 8 ounces of almonds, and voila!

When I was done, I spread them on a greased cookie sheet and left them for a couple of hours so the chocolate could dry.  And the best part... licking the bowl, of course...

:)

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Experimenting with Mosaics

We spent a couple days at my mother-in-law's house this weekend.  She is an art teacher so she always has good project ideas.  She had bought a big bag of glass tiles of all different colors and a couple of wooden frames from an art supply store.  I made this:

I'm way too much of a perfectionist for my own good... I spent about an hour arranging tiles, trying to get the perfect fade from green to blue to purple to pink.  It was like doing one of those puzzles where you have to push the tiles around to put the picture together, except worse, because no matter how long I worked on it, there was never a right answer.  There always seemed to be room for improvement.  And that, my friends, is why I like math.

After I got my tile arrangement perfect-enough, I spray-painted my wooden frame with a few coats of purple.  Once it was dry, I used wood glue to attach the tiles to the frame.

After the glue dried, we mixed the grout with a little purple acrylic paint to color it and I went to town.

Once the project was wiped clean and it dried, I put it in the bathroom to use as a decorative tray to hold perfumes and bottles.

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Valentine's Day at Home

Ahhh... Valentine's Day.  A good day for greeting card and flower sales.  Oh, and also for geeky Star Wars M&M dispenser sales, like this one I got for my husband:

And this is what he got for me:

I'd much prefer to stay home on Valentine's Day than go out, mostly because of the crowds and poor service you are bound to encounter.  But now that we have a baby, it's not like we could go out on a dinner date even if we wanted to.  I spent a lot of time thinking about what I could make that would be comparable to something I'd want to order in a restaurant.  This is what I came up with:

This is actually a similar filet mignon recipe to the one I posted here, with a couple small changes.  1) I added mushrooms to the pan as I was cooking the filets.  2) I substituted half of the balsamic vinegar for red wine vinegar.  Other than that, it is the same.

For the shrimp pasta, I didn't measure anything, but I'll give you my best estimates for how I made it.

Shrimp Pasta with Cream Sauce

Makes 2 small servings (as seen in pictures). Double recipe to make full-sized portions.

Ingredients:

Shrimp, peeled and deveined

1-2 garlic cloves, chopped

about 6 ounces of spaghetti noodles

3 TBSP butter

3 TBSP cream cheese

1/4 cup of shredded parmesan cheese 

1/3-1/2 cup whipping cream

Olive oil to coat pan

Directions:

Cook shrimp and garlic in the olive oil.  Set aside.  Prepare the pasta according to directions on the box.  For the sauce:  Combine butter, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, and cream in a small sauce pan.  Heat on low, and stir frequently until melted and creamy.  Top pasta with shrimp, followed by cream sauce.  Sprinkle with parsley, and a little salt and pepper if desired. 

For the asparagus, I sprinkled it with a little grated parmesan cheese and roasted it for about 15-20 minutes at 400 degrees.

I spent about $25 on the ingredients for this dinner, and that includes the wine (obviously we don't buy expensive wine).  I'll let you figure out how much of a savings that is from what you would pay at a nice restaurant (and an $8 glass of wine at a restaurant is going to be cheap wine also).  If you haven't prepared a fancy dinner at home before, I highly recommend giving it a try.  As fancy and this dinner looks, it was actually really easy to make.  Chris told me that it was probably the best meal, not just that I have ever made, but that he had ever eaten.  And I don't even consider myself that great of a cook.  You should try it for your next date night.  Really.


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Valentine's Day: Not Just for Kids and Lovers

For some reason, this year I'm really into Valentine's day.  And not in a romance and flowers sort of way... more of like a celebration of love and friendship sort of way.  I'm not single, but I'm discovering that Valentine's Day is a lot more fun if it's also shared between friends.  That way, everyone can enjoy it and maybe in future years we can do away with the concept of "Single Awareness Day" altogether.  According to C.S. Lewis, there are four types of love, so why can't they all be celebrated?

Anyway,  I decided to make Valentines for the ladies in my Thursday morning Bible study.  I sort of felt like a kid again.  It was super fun to exercise my creative abilities, and definitely rewarding to bless the other ladies with an unexpected surprise.

I spent some time (& money) at Michaels, and ended up making these fun little Valentine cards:

I tried to make each one unique.  I used a white gel pen and stamps with a white ink pad for the lettering, and then I attached a different scripture to each one.  For the second part of the project, I made white chocolate holiday popcorn.  It is derived from recipe that I found on Pinterest, with a couple of my own changes.  I filled bags full of the yummy treat and attached them to the Valentines with festive ribbon.

...And I packed them in a box and they were ready to go!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!  I challenge you to find a way to bless somebody you love this week.

White Chocolate Holiday Popcorn

Ingredients:

1 12-oz bag of white chocolate chips 

2 bags of popcorn, popped

1 bag of holiday M&M

Directions:

Melt white chocolate chips in the microwave according to the directions on the package.  I heated mine in 20-second increments, stirring in between.  Heat until melted and smooth.  Pour mixture into popcorn.  Add M&Ms and mix the three together until well incorporated.  Spread onto cookie sheets and leave for about an hour, or until the white chocolate has dried.  Store in an airtight container for up to one week.

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Repurposing: Old sweater into boot socks

I have been excited about this project for a while now for a few reasons.  1) It's easy.  2) It's cheap. 3) I have everything I need right here at home.

High socks worn under boots seems to be the trend this winter.  Not being a super trendy person, I have not adopted it... until now.

I turned this:

into this:

Soooo easy!  I almost feel like I'd be offending your intelligence by giving you a detailed tutorial, so I'll just let the pictures do the teaching.

I hemmed it by hand, but of course you can use a sewing machine as well.  Then turn them right side out and slip them on!

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Zuppa Toscana!

I found a recipe on another blog for Zuppa Toscana, my favorite soup at Olive Garden, and perhaps my favorite soup of all time.  When I order their unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks, I can easily inhale three bowls of that stuff.  I had really hoped that this recipe would taste like the real thing, and since the blogger who posted the recipe had never had the soup from Olive Garden, I was a little nervous.  Well, the other night my friend Lisa and I decided to put the recipe to the test and I can now confirm that it does taste very close to the soup from Olive Garden. I ate two giant bowls of it, and then 3 bowls of the leftovers yesterday.  Yum.  




Zuppa Toscana
(I made a couple of my own tiny changes to the recipe)


Ingredients 


1 lb. Italian sausage
3/4 large onion, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
2/3 cup white wine
½ tsp. red pepper flakes (more if you like it spicy)
2 russett potatoes, peeled and cut into ½-inch chunks
2 cups fresh kale, chopped
3 cups chicken broth
2.5 cups water
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper


Directions


Heat a large stockpot over medium heat.  Crumble the sausage into the pan and brown until done.  Remove from pan and set aside on a paper towel.  Add chopped onion to the pan and sauté until tender (5-7 minutes).  Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook for another minute.  Add wine to the pot and stir, scraping the side of the pan to break off any browned bits.  Add the potatoes, kale, chicken broth, and water.  Return sausage to the pot.  Increase the heat to medium high, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer.  Cover and let cook about 20 minutes, or until potatoes are tender.  Stir in heavy cream and season with salt and pepper.  Serve immediately.


Serves 8



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