Stop the Presses He Likes A Salad

Now normally Andrew only likes taco salad. Preferably from Fresh Express's kit which they've discontinued and I now get the pleasure of recreating. :(

But I made a salad the other day that he actually liked!

• Lettuce
• Onion
• Tomatoes
• Bacon
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic Powder
• Green Goddess dressing

I was SHOCKED and surprised that he liked it. He's not really a salad guy at all and when he does do salads it's not with all of these different things going on. I'm happy!

Rell Cakes!

So in the past couple of months I've been experimenting with cupcakes. I love cake on any given day and cake mixes are a great way to have a little fun for a great price.

I have a friend Sherill and....she's down home fantastic. She's warm, kind, sassy, generous....just a really great person. And she mentioned dulce de leche one day and I put together a cupcake around that incidentally reminded me of her.

 So here we have all the ingredients. Spice Cake mix, Pumpkin Spice pudding mix, whipped cream cheese icing.

 Yummy yummy batter. Seriously. SOOOOOO good.

 Some of them I piped the caramel in and then some of them I cut out the top and put a bit of the caramel in there.

 

My favorite placement of the dulce de leche was with the tops cut out and then placed back on. 

A Nice Weekday Meal

So I tried the cheeseburger casserole Recipe Here tonight.

It was good. Could be better but good. I'll make it again and continue to tweak it. Here are the mods that I made this time:

Tater tots are the bane of my existence so I used the crescent roll top. (I got the seamless sheet made for recipes.) I used sharp cheddar and it was REALLY strong so I probably would use mild cheddar or the american it calls for. Also it seemed REALLY ketchup-y to me. Basically I'd add some ketchup and taste the mixture with cheese and play it by ear. If you like it with the whole 1/2 cup go for it. I have pics in my food album and you can see how thin the whole dish was because of how big my casserole dish was. If you want it deeper use a smaller dish. Oh and I cheated and used dill relish instead of chopping pickles.

Honestly I think it was too much ketchup for the sharp cheddar. So that relationship needs to be played with.

This recipe got my brain running. I might wanna try to make my own casserole recipes up now.

Thanksgiving!!

I came. I saw. I conquered. I got stood up and therefore didn't take pics.


Everything was absolutely delicious though. I'm very proud and as I recreate the sides or the desserts I'll share them.

Macaroons Motherfucker!

Ok so I wanted something sweet and I don't have butter or shortening. So I made some macaroons.

It's a good start but there's definitely room for improvement. I want to make sure I dry them out more, maybe use a little less sugar than the recipe called for.....flavor them a bit.

Tell me a little bit about your experience with macaroons! I wanna hear! 

Pot Roast #3 pics

The third pic is a better presentation. It was good but it wasn't GOOD. I forgot something to cut the acidity of the tomato sauce. Drew said it was too complicated but that's to be expected.


However....the other day I tried again and I do believe I got it right!!! I'm stoked!!!!!!

Pot Roast

So I've made pot roast three different times now. The third time is actually in the Crock Pot now. This is one of Andrew's favorite meals so it's nice to have the Crock Pot and be able to make it but I'm experimenting with the flavor. I got all fancy (seared it, used a bone in chuck roast, wine, onion, simmered it all day) and he put ketchup on it. So now I'm tweaking it and keeping it simpler. For the last 2 times I've used a boneless beef sirloin tri tip roast and it's been succulent.

Recipe this time:

• 32 oz of water in the bottom of the crock pot; generous amount of salt and pepper
• 1 lb bag of baby carrots in there and then garlic powder, onion powder, celery seed, thyme, and a dash of ground cloves
• Roast on top of that. This one was about 2.65 lbs. Small Yukon Gold potatoes quartered on top of that.
• 6 oz can of tomato paste stirred in 20 oz of water; pour that over everything. Sprinkle on more garlic, salt and pepper. Also sprinkle on parsley and basil. 

It smells really really good.  I'll be along with some pics.