pinterest meal

so march's resolution was to make a meal from pinterest pins ive been collecting. appetizer, main course & dessert. well that sorta happened. :)

so of course i procrastinate on this as much as possible. why wouldnt i? and then to top it off i had a cold the day i decided to do this. great.

originally i was going to make beer can chicken cuz i thought we had a small whole chicken in the freezer. well turns out we had half a chicken and didnt have any beer cans, even though that wouldnt have worked anyways. so i scoured the internet and made a mish-mosh dry rub (i dont even really remember what spices i put in) heres before cooking:

and then i was going to make this delicious looking pull apart cheesy herb bread for an appetizer. http://www.roxanashomebaking.com/pull-apart-cheesy-herb-bread/

yah well that didnt turn out. and i dont really know why. but heres the meal (minus the delicious & super easy green bean casserole we also had)

so that was supper. minus the dessert. cuz really i had nothing left in me to make a dessert. however, the night before i DID make a cinnamon roll cake for the hubs to bring to work. so that counts right? right. and i had even pinned it previously. so that helps out.

so theres march's resolution. with a twist or two. but hey, thats life. right? (at least thats what i keep telling myself)

but in other news, aprils resolution will NOT be at the last minute. so thats exciting. heres to hoping im feeling better by this weekend...

foto friday

happy friday everyone! heres a little project we recently completed. its a pretty easy one. i just have to do some labeling yet. but its already come in super handy. a little measuring cup/spoon organizer. no more searching for the right one.

hope you have a great weekend. while im working this weekend, the hubs will also hopefully be working on his to-do list. or maybe he will play some xbox. who knows.

farmers market

so septembers resolution: farmers market & make a meal. check.

so heres the scoop. we hit up the st paul farmers market in august. and bought eggplant. because some coworkers of mine were talking about it and i had never cooked with it. so we bought some eggplant and made eggplant parmesan. except i forgot to take pictures. whoops! it wasnt too bad. not sure if id go out of my way to go buy some & make it again but who knows. did you know that eggplant seeds can be bitter because they contain nicotinoid alkaloids, which is a relative of tobacco? yah, me neither. until i looked it up on wikipedia. 

so in order to make up for forgetting to take pictures, we hit up our local farmers market instead this weekend. its a lot smaller but a lot closer than the st paul one. so we picked up some zucchini & green beans.

i wanted to make chocolate zucchini bread and the hubs wanted to try baked zucchini. and well we have no creative ideas or recipes for the green beans. so i wont talk about them.

i havent made too many different breads before. so i was a bit nervous. but id vote this one a success. it smelled sooooo good baking in the oven. and tasted pretty good too.

did you know that according to wikipedia, zucchini has folate, potassium, vitamin A & maganese? but more interesting is the fact that "its an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower"? yah me neither. arent you glad this blog is now also educational?!?! <side note: so i was pretty impressed with that fact & went to tell the hubs you know...to impress him. he said thats pretty common and the same is true for apples and oranges. dang. looks like i should paid a bit more attention in some science class...whoops!>

so the hubs decided to make some baked zucchini fries. they werent too shabby.

we also couldnt leave the farmers market without some fresh flowers. fingers crossed my allergies dont get worse.

house update...

we have been a bit busy lately doing some more house projects and this picture pretty much sums it all up. well, sorta i guess.

we finally put the trim/baseboards back up and then put the chair rail back up too. it definitely looks a lot more put together.  dont you think?

and then the doors. we got some used 6 panel, solid core doors from restore. (a store where people can donate used housing items which are then resold with profits going to habitat for humanity) honestly i thought it would be a pretty easy & quick project. however i was proven wrong. which doesnt happen very often. hehe. anyways, it turns out measuring where the hinges go, the door knob and all that stuff was a wee bit more time consuming than i thought. oh well, end of story...after living without doors up for a few weeks, we finally have new ones hung up. and i really really really like em :)

and we can't forget my new favorite part of the house. maybe even more than our bedroom. those newspapers are placeholders for a large gallery/frame wall. we are still adding some last minute frames so ill try post a picture soon. but i really really really like it. the stuff in the frames are just meaningful things to us. pictures of friends, family, artwork and some other things. anyways...if anyone has some suggestions, we have a few empty frames yet...so let us know!

and last but not least...i tried a new recipe. apple cake. cake batter layered with layers of cinnamon sugar apples drizzled with a carmel mixture. delicious. and this is coming from someone who hates fruit. granted, it was surrounded in other unhealthy things (sugar) but still. i forgot to take a pic of the cake with the drizzle, so you are just left with the cake cooling.

stop the presses!

BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG NEWS!

i rode bike to the grocery store today! with the hubs of course. why stop the presses? cuz i typically hate any sort of exercise. so this is definitely newsworthy information.

ok...ok...ill fess up. why bike to the grocery store? i may or may not have had an ulterior motive...you see i reeeeeeeeeeally wanted to try this new recipe. but we were out of 2 of the main ingredients.

you see im a sucker for all things smores related. so i just had to try this new smores cookie bar recipe. and i think it turned out great. and i think the hubs and rhode agree. so i guess the bike ride wasnt too bad. burn off some of the calories from eating a pan of smores. not a bad combination!

lazy but happy...

yes i admit that i am lazy when it comes to certain things. mainly just concerning physical activities. like lifting heavy items. like a garage door. so since the previous owners took their garage door openers leaving us with none, i just parked out in the driveway and complained to dave about every day :) so this past weekend when my parents came up to help, i became a happy girl. because the hubs and my dad installed garage door openers. heres a great action shot of the hubs

my dad even helped us get a good start on putting together the grill...we cant wait to use it...and with the weather we have been having lately, im sure it wont be long. anyone wanna come for a bbq?

and of course i couldnt wait too long to break in the baking here at the house. so as a thank you to the hubs for all the help so far/all my crazy decorating ideas i constantly throw at him i made some toffee bars for him, one of his favorite (thanks for the recipe kelly) and i guess it helps too that i also like them, so a reward for both of us then?!?

remember when...

remember when i finally uploaded all my pictures so i could get the pictures of the bread to post about? and how i came across a bunch i had forgotten about. oh yea. right now. so this will be a random posting.

we went to the holidazzle parade with another couple this year. its a parade here where each float is covered in lights. this years theme was "a fairytale for all". so many fairytale characters & of course santa made an appearance. while we saved spots in the freezing weather, our guys went to find us food. minus the typical winter weather it was a lot of fun. especially hanging out with this girl:

 

after baking a bunch of desserts for the christmas season, i wanted to try my hand at cooking something in january so i tried these:

cream cheese stuffed jalapenos wrapped in bacon. yes, it is heart healthy! haha. surprisingly i really liked these. i probably could have ate a bunch of them...but my hubs definitely beat me to that! i think we will be having these again this weekend for the super bowl.