warm weather

So with the warm weather that we have had I wanted to make a special treat for my daughter for after school. So I decided to make somepudding pops!!!! They are super easy and super yummy!!! And they are kid approved my daughter and the neighbor girl both loved them!!
The recipe is as follows: 
1 Pkg instant pudding any flavor (we used chocolate fudge)
1 1/2 cups milk
2 cups cool whip

Dissolve the pudding in the milk and then whip in cool whip when dissolved. After it is mixed spoon the mixture into popsicle forms or 3 oz dixie cups with popsicle sticks ( if you dont have popsicle sticks you can fold a straw in half and use them but they are not as stable!!)

The possibilities for this recipe are endless, such as you can make any flavor pudding. Also I thought about using 1/2 cup peanut butter with 1 1/2 cups coolwhip with a chocolate pudding and see what they taste like!! I will let you know when I try it!! If you make them feel free to share your flavors and combinations!!! :)


 Have a great day and enjoy this beautiful weather!! :)

So I just realized I never posted the recipes for the cupcakes that I made last week. I will post the recipes now and then I will post pics and how I made them my own little creation possibly tonight!! :) The recipes for the cupcakes I used are as follows:
For the apple cupcake I followed this recipe.


http://www.marthastewart.com/341937/apple-cupcakes?czone=food/best-cupcake-recipes/our-best-cupcakes&center=276944&gallery=345330&slide=285830

And for the Peanut Butter filled cupcakes I used the recipe from this site!!
http://dinneranddessert.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/chocolate-peanut-butter-cupcakes/


And the frosting recipe I used was similar to this one!
http://www.marthastewart.com/312921/cream-cheese-frosting

I made 2 dozen of each cupcake recipe so that way we would have some to try and the others I made for a friend! Again my family loved both cupcake recipes! So now I have to new untraditional cupcake recipes!! :)

MY OVEN IS FIXED!!! MY OVEN IS FIXED!!! And just in the nick of time because I needed to make cupcakes and banana bread for a friend!!! :) Today my oven was fixed at about 10:30 or 11 and has been on up until 5 minutes ago (8:50 pm)!! I have been a baking fool!!  I made peanut butter filled chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and reese's pieces on top, banana bread and then I just pulled out apple cupcakes which will get cream cheese frosting on them in the morning!! This momma is tired so I will try and post recipes tomorrow while the kiddo I will be babysitting is napping!! Both cupcakes turned out so yummy and I know this because I had my taste testers try them for me!! My daughter and boyfriend both gave them rave reviews!! Well I see some baking going on in this house tomorrow also because I have the stuff for homemade apple butter poptarts and the stuff for homemade pizza. Yummy. Well have a great night and I will try and post recipes tomorrow because I am off to bed because it will be an early morning!!

So last night we had the teriyaki chicken that was in my last post!! It was delicious!! I have had a sick kiddo in the house so what better way to cook then in the crockpot!! The original recipe that I posted for the teriyaki chicken said to serve over rice but we are not big rice eaters so I just made chicken ramen noodles and drained them and added the seasoning packets and just for something different I scrambled up a few eggs with onions and added them to the noodles. It was really yummy especially when you added the teriyaki chicken on top of it!! :) Well the oven is still broken in my house and it is making me crazy.......I never realized how much I used my oven until now!! The other thing is it of course breaks the week that I am supposed to be making banana bread and cupcakes for a friend!!! :(  The good thing is the parts should be in soon!!! :) Well sorry so short but I have to get back to tending to my sick kiddo!! Have a great day!!

Alright so here is the post about my freezer meals that I have made. Sorry it has taken me so long but on Wed. I started spring cleaning and by the time I was done I was exhausted and yesterday I went and did some shopping and socializing with friends. And now my oven element broke in half so I have had to do all my meals by stovetop!! :( I never realized I used my oven so much till it broke!! So here is how I did my freezer meals and where I got my ideas!! :)


The first thing that I did was just prep work. I cut up all the vegetables that I needed and put them in individual bowls so they were easy to get to when I needed them.


Next I took all the ingredients that I needed for each recipe and set them all together so that I had them all within arms reach.

Next I grabbed the bags I would be placing them in and dated them and wrote what was going in them and then I wrote the cooking directions on the bag so I wouldn't have to look up the recipe later.

Then I looked at the recipes to make sure that I had everything and then I followed all the recipe directions until the point of cooking.


Then I wrapped it or bagged it up and put it in the freezer.


So the first recipe that I made was super easy because there was no cooking involved it was just putting everything into the bag!! :)  It was the Teriyaki Chicken recipe listed below. I followed this recipe the way that it was except in one of the bags I added 3 stalks of celery chopped up!! ;)

Medium – Large bag of carrots
Red Onion into Large Chunks
2 large cans pineapple (undrained)
4 Garlic Cloves
4 Chicken Breasts
1 cup teriyaki sauce
Follow directions above, and split everything into two gallon freezer bags. shake it up, seal, label and put in the freezer. Instructions for Bag: Add 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce to crock pot, Cook on low 8 hours or high 4 hours. Serve over hot rice.

I found this recipe at  http://www.ringaroundtherosies.net/2012/02/freezer-cooking.html
She had alot of different recipes that sounded good but because I was just starting out I wanted to just pick and choose a few recipes that I really wanted to try!! :)




The next recipe that I used was a recipe for Chicken Lasagna Alfredo but I made this recipe my own because I didn't have any lasagna noodles I used rotini instead. I again made this recipe all the way up until it said to put it in the oven. And instead I put it in the freezer. The recipe I used was as follows.


Ingredients

• 1 (16 ounce) package lasagna noodles
• 1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach
• 3 cooked, boneless chicken breast halves, diced
• 32 ounces Creamy Alfredo Sauce
• 4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• 2 pints ricotta cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta and cook for 8 to 10 minutes or until al dente; drain. Cook spinach according to package directions; drain.
2. In a medium bowl, combine chicken and one jar of alfredo sauce, stir together. In a separate bowl, combine ricotta and drained, cooked spinach, and stir.
3. In a 9 x 13 baking dish, place one layer of lasagna noodles, edges overlapping. Pour chicken and alfredo sauce mixture over noodle layer and spread evenly. Sprinkle 1 cup of shredded mozzarella over chicken mixture. Top with another layer of noodles. Spread spinach mixture evenly over noodles. Pour 1/2 of remaining jar of alfredo sauce over spinach mixture, spread evenly. Sprinkle another cup of mozzarella over sauce, lay on the final noodle layer and top with remaining 2 cups of mozzarella and salt and pepper to taste. Bake 50 to 60 minutes, until top is brown and bubbly.               

I found this recipe at http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chicken-Lasagna-Alfredo/Detail.aspx and decided to try and make it into a freezer meal. I have not had a chance to try this yet but it looked so yummy. And now that my oven is broken I now have to wait a bit longer!!! :(

I also found a great deal on fresh green beans so I took them and snapped the ends off and picked out the ones that weren't good and then took them and placed them in a bag with some garlic and onions and stuck them in the freezer so all I will have to do is pull them out and stick them in a pot to cook.

Twice Baked Potatoes

• 20 to 24 potatoes
• sour cream or french onion dip
• cheddar cheese
• milk
• butter
• bacon bits
   

And the last recipe I made was twice baked potatoes!!! They looked and smelled so yummy when I was packaging I almost cooked one up for my lunch!! The way that I made them was first Ipreheated my oven to 350 degrees and then I washed about 22 potatoes and placed them on a cookie sheet. When the oven was preheated I placed the cookie sheet in the oven and cooked the potatoes for an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes flipping the potatoes every 15 mins. Then when they are cooked allow them to sit and cool till you are able to handle them. Then cut them in half but not all the way through and scoop the insides out into a bowl. When you are done scrapping them out you can add whatever filling you would like to add to the potatoes. I added cheddar cheese, french onion dip, a dash of milk, butter and bacon bits to mine. I then mixed it up till they looked like mashed potatoes and then I took a spoon and re stuffed the potatoes enough that I could still close them and then placed 3 to 4 potatoes into a small ziploc baggie and then placed the small ziploc bag into a large freezer bag to help them from getting freezer burn!! :) On the large ziploc bag I wrote the directions for cooking which is place in a 350 degree oven for 15 or 20 mins or until the centers are warm. Again I have not had a chance to try them but I can't wait till I can.

The mixed up filling.

The filling process!!

Filling The Bags!!!

So I hope that these recipes are helpful and are something you can use!! :)

Have a great day and enjoy!!

Lots to post

So the last two days I have cooked alot!! I have made a few meals for the freezer and I made some banana bread and I have also cooked dinner the last two nights!! So after some talk with a few friends I have decided to try freezer meals and see what works and what doesn't for me. I have been doing lots of looking at recipes and many websites that post recipes and blogs and whatever I could find that would help me with my journey of freezer meals!! :) So I am not doing my freezer meals at this time the way that they usually done which is all in one day because I have been babysitting during the week and my weekends have been busy so I have been trying one recipe a day just to get the hang of what I am doing!! My first tip before even starting is to cut all of your veggies how you need them such as dicing all of your onions or slicing mushrooms or carrots whatever all of your recipes calls for and seperate them into seperate bowls and you can add them to all of your recipes when you need them and you don't have to stop and chop them everytime. The recipes that I started with are Teriyaki chicken, Twice Baked Potatoes and Chicken Alfredo Lasagna (Rotini). And I also prepped fresh green beans to put in the freezer.  I plan on posting all of the recipes and pictures tomorrow because I am not babysitting then and will have time to get it all done and not mess it up because I am getting sleepy!! I also made my go to quick and easy supper Monday night which is sliced up smoked sausages and hashbrowns with onions and sometimes I add mushrooms or peppers if i have them. I usually use this recipe on nights that we get home late or we just don't want to make a huge mess because it is a one skillet meal.

The recipe for it is as follows:

• 1 package of smoked sausage links (cut up)
• 1 small onion
• 1/2 package of shredded hashbrowns
• 2 tbsp butter
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup shredded  cheese (optional)

In a large skillet I sautee the smoked sausage until it is browned. I then add the butter, onions and hashbrowns and cook until the onions are soft and the hashbrowns are golden. We then add cheese to the top of ours because we are a cheese loving family but that is optional because it is yummy with or without cheese.



Tonights supper was super easy because we just had breakfast for supper which was pancakes and sausage. But the fun part was that we bought a new little gadget that I absolutely love and that is our pancake pen from William-Sonoma. I just want to clarify that I am not getting anything from William-Sonoma for mentioning this product but I wanted to give my opinion on this gadget. It makes making pancakes fun and it is so easy that my 6 year old could use it. She loved it so I now have a little pancake helper.

My Daughters initials (except the L is backwards in this pic)

My daughter wanted a smiley face!! :)

I will add all of the other recipes tomorrow along with pictures!! :)

So this weekend has been so busy that we haven't been home for meals! So I do not have any new recipes tonight but something that I did for breakfast turned out to be yummy so I will share. I like having yogurt for breakfast with a little bit of granola. But this morning I discovered that I did not have any granola so I started searching around the kitchen for something to add to my yogurt and I found honey nut Cheerios so I added them and it was so good!! :) I also this weekend discovered greek yogurt and the reason why i discovered it was because it was on sale at Hy-vee!! So this last week I ordered a few new gadgets tat I can't wait to receive in the mail; one of the items is a pastry cutter so I can make homemade poptarts and the other thing is mini pie forms!! Tomorrow I think that I might make some banana bread because I have a few super ripe bananas. So I will post the recipe that I use for my bread machine. And hopefully post pics!! :)