Day #29

Basil. Onion. Scrambled eggs. That was today's recipe. Searching the Internet I read a title of basil scrambled eggs. I decided to add some minced onion to the mix. Well today was somewhat a bust. Matt was a good sport and ate them. But I couldn't get myself to eat them. Either combination of not liking the taste or loss of appetite from morning run. Needless to say. My breakfast was toast. They look fancy. But most likely not a repeat.

Day #28 and Pretend Day #27

We had some friends over last night for piano lessons and dinner. I tweaked a previous recipe for spicy corn. Only this time I used the steamer, added some chili powder, homegrown peppers and jalepanos, minced onions, and other spices. Then steamed for 30 minutes and it was good.

Pretend day #28 was the other side we had. We steamed potatoes along with the corn. We dressed them with dill and garlic powder which had parsley in it.

Both dishes turned out great and are definite repeats.

Day #25 Makeup

Yesterday my husband and I spent the day at the temple and it was wonderful. So I didn't get a chance to make something. So here's a makeup.

We've been growing herbs in our garden. When we bought them they each came with a recipe to use them. Today I made Greek oregano chicken. It was yummy! A definite repeat. I did add some chives in it. They are growing like weeds. It was a good recipe and pretty easy

Day #26

Cookies. Best thing ever almost. But they are up there. A made some cookies from the Worldwide Waed Cookbook Secret Recipes. A definite must buy cookbook (you can buy at Deseret Book or amazon) anywho. I left out the coconut(didn't have any) and substituted butter for shortening. But they are delicious. Peanut butter oatmeal and chocolate chips. What gets better than that in a cookie. Nothing.

Day #24

Chocolate and peanut butter. It's like they were meant to be together. Tonight we went simple. Magical recipes from jello and cool whip. Easy as pie to make. Make some pudding chocolate or vanilla. I chose chocolate. One it's good with peanut butter and two. No vanilla in the house. After its made. Mix in some peanut butter. We had chunky open so that's what I used. Adds some texture to the pudding. The eat with a spoonful of cool whip on top. Very good. And lots of pudding to eat. It may be this weekends dessert.

Day #23

Our friends came to visit today on their way moving across the country. I wanted to make something for us to eat instead of going out. I remember moving and eating constantly at fast food. It was a little early for lunch (10:30am) So I decided crepes would be perfect. I made crepes from the Lion House Cookbook and some apple crepe filling to go with. I actually didn't try the apple filling, stuck with strawberries and raspberry jam. But it got eaten, so it must've been good.

Day #22

So I went to make a special bread today but had no buttermilk or molasses. But I was going to substitute Brown sugar for syrup and milk and vinegar for buttermilk. But the only vinegar we had was apple cider vinegar. Not going to cut it. So recipe searching I went.

I decided a little bit ago I wanted to try making homemade crackers. There never seems like there's enough in a box for what you pay for. So I made homemade wheat thins today. They were pretty good. (seeing we ate them all tonight). I'm going to have to try again. Most were too thick and since we ate them so quick after cooking that didn't all the way crunchy cracker like. But I am impressed an excited about them.

Pretend Day #20 and Day #21

Pretend Day #20:  So yesterday... I didn't make anything new, but my husband does. So I'm going to count that.  Of course, he doesn't use recipes. But he made us French toast for dinner. What makes it new is he added cinnamon, salt, vanilla and brown sugar to the mixture. He is a very creative fellow.

Day #21: We have lots of corn. I stocked up on fresh sweet corn and froze it all. Instead of just having normal corn I decided to spice it up a little. So with a little help from Martha Stewart this new creation came out. Of course no tomatoes here and I left out the milk. But still tasted good. And an added bonus... It was made with fresh peppers from our garden. YIPEE!

Day #19

Cornbread. So I've had this desire to make cornbread for awhile. I even bought one of those instant cornbread packets. But yesterday I decided to make them from scratch. They turned out pretty good. A little dry. Matt suggested they may have cooked too long. Well definitely have to try agin. Cornbread is delicious!

Day #18

No responsibilities on Saturday is great! To start off our relaxed weekend I decided to make a good breakfast. Aka not cereal. I went back to my favorite cookbook. Worldwide war cookbook secret recipes. I only did half batch and it was perfect amount. 3 waffles. They were delicious. A definite repeat in the future.

Makeup Day #16 and Day #17

Thursday was 100 days since Matt and I got married. I wanted to celebrate with a nice meal. Well work changed plans and we went out Fhirsday night. So we celebrated Friday night. I made steaks and potatoes. Matt's favorite. I used a new recipe for cooking steaks inside with no grill. And a recipe for garlic mashed potatoes. The potatoes were my favorite part. I may need some more work on the steaks. But it turned out pretty good. Here's to many more days of celebrating marriage.

Day #15

Yogurt fruit dip. It's do easy. Yogurt, powered sugar and lemon juice. Of course I was missing lemon juice. But I learned you can substitute apple cider vinegar for lemon juice. Matt and I ate this as our snack tonight.

Day #14 (x2)

Twice as nice today. Two recipes for the price as of one! Maybe this makes up for missing a day last week. Tonight we went to a BBQ with some friends. I decided to make some potato salad. But in order to make this particular salad I needed a special mustard. So today I made Grandma C's mustard and Grandma Johnson's potato salad. Didnt quite taste like theirs but still pretty good.

Day #13

Tonight we made homemade milkshakes! And I did follow a recipe (minus actually measuring) from our magic bullet except I added some cookies to it. Man it was delicious.

Day #12

So for Sunday dinner there weren't many options. So we decided to have spicy chicken wraps. I made some yummy ranch dip to go with it. It was super easy and reminded me of the dip my mom makes.

Day #11

I know I missed a day. And I wish I had a good excuse but I don't. But today we had yummy French toast. And I followed a recipe. Just some eggs milks cinnamon and love for a wonderful Saturday morning breakfast.

Day #9

So I have come to learn that it's getting harder to find and think of new recipes. But while grocery shopping I was looking at a box of pudding and saw a recipe for pudding pops. So that was tonight's recipe. You mix pudding with 2 cups milk. Put in cups with a stick and freeze. We ate two last night. Not quite frozen but good. I want to try with other flavors.

Day #8

Snack time! So while eating cereal I like to read the boxes. Well on our chex cereal was the recipe for Sweet and Spicy honey nut chex mix. So I ventured and made some. It's good. It's easy too. Microwave :-) it uses spices like red pepper to add the zest and honey for the sweetness. I packed some in an old peanut can so Mart can keep some in his desk drawer. This was a plus!

Day #7

Green beans. Another late post to be updated tomorrow.

Update: Sorry. Didn't get to this last night. But here's the update on the green beans. I have searched high and low for a green bean recipe to use. Finally found one that looked good and I had most of the ingredients.  This one did call for shallots but I used a white sweet onion instead. And I was brave with this recipe. Used it while having some friends over for dinner. Maybe not the smartest idea to use them as guinea pigs. But I did warn them and they said they were good. They didn't cook quite as thoroughly while steaming, but Matt said they were just like restaurant beans.  I'll definitely have to try them again, and maybe use our streamer instead of a pot on the stove. I found the recipe in Kitchen Daily, the Food and Wine section from the Huffington Post. The recipe is below the picture. ENJOY!

Sweet-and-Sour Green Beans

Ingredients

• 3/4 pound(s) green beans
• 2 tablespoon(s) extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium shallot, minced
• 2 tablespoon(s) cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon(s) sugar
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions

• 1. Place the green beans in a steamer basket set over a large saucepan of boiling water. Steam until bright green and crisp-tender, about 5 minutes.
• 2. In a medium skillet, heat the oil. Add the shallot and cook over high heat, stirring, until softened, about 2 minutes. Add the vinegar and sugar; stir to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat and add the beans. Season with salt and pepper, toss well and serve.

Sometimes

Sometimes it seems like the universe is out to get you.  Today seemed to be one of those days. Let me explain. Today I had a job interview WooHoo! (side note: definitely getting sick of looking for a job) Anywho. This was a job I wanted! And today was finally the day I was going to prove to the people I was the girl for the job. Well my morning didn't start out so fantastic. Even wearing my lucky interview clothing it seemed every little thing that could go wrong could.

Here's a few of them

• Run in brand new nylons. Me + Nylons + Interviews don't mix well. One interview last year I went through 2 pairs before the interview started. Ended up going bear legs. 
• Squirted lotion on my clothing while trying to cover up...
• Sunburn peeling. My sunburn from last week decided to peel today EVERYWHERE!
• Dropping my stuff while trying to get out the door
• Forgetting to pack my husbands lunch. Luckily he saw my scatteredness this morning and remembered to grab something for lunch. Thank you leftovers already prepared.

So I vented to my mom before the interview started. I have this habit of showing up extremely early for interviews. So I had plenty of time. Her idea was bad morning = great interview. Well no worries one more thing had to go wrong. I shut my finger in the bathroom stall door. Ya. Not the best morning.  

But interview came and went. Still not feeling great about it. But we can't end on a sad note can we? NOPE! So something I learned while driving home from the interview. 

While driving home in POURING rain and lightening everywhere (Not my favorite at all aka anxiety on the way home) I couldn't see that far in front of me. It made me think of faith. Driving in the rain, not being able to see much of anything except maybe the lights in front of me was like faith. I was trusting the car ahead of me.  Well the storm cleared and soon I was in blue skies with white clouds. I could see the storm behind me. I made it through it.  Now thinking about it later, ya it wasn't fun in the storm, but I survived.  It also brings to my memory President Uchtdorf's talk about when the storm hits you don't speed up you slow down. (to read the talk "Of things that Matter Most" click here) So true. While driving I slowed down while passing through.  I guess it can be a lesson that ya everything seemed to go wrong this morning, but I made it through.  And really it wasn't that bad. It just was one of those days. 

But I've changed the day. I finally started on one of my projects I've been postponing. Painting an old desk I got for free that needed some help. I put the first coat of paint on it and I'm getting more excited to finish it.  It's already looking better! So here's to delighting in getting through the days when the universe is out to get us! Let's challenge one another to find something to delight in, especially days like today!

Day #6

Cookie monster!!! Today I made some cookies and oh man are they delicious. I ate too much dough and cookies when they came out of the oven but they are so good. I also made some ice cream today. The vanilla turned out great. Then I attempted to make mint cookies and cream. I think I learned you can't use the machine two time in a day. The Mint cookies and cream didn't set up right. But hopefully it tastes good. Our good friends just had a baby boy (He's cute) so were taking treats over tonight.

Day #5

Crock pot roast. So since its late I'll update this tomorrow with more details. But we were missing a few ingredients. But looks close to picture. Must've done good.

Okay update. The roast smelled good. Side note on recipe. We forgot to go to the store Saturday night so we didn't have onions or celery in recipe. Also we substitute canned tomatoes for fresh garden tomatoes. Well Matt like the roast. I'm not a huge fan of tomatoes. So I wasn't that impressed with taste of roast. Which means Matt will be taking it for lunch for a few days. Maybe it would taste different with canned tomatoes or having the onion. I'm not ruling this recipe out. Just might need some more tweaking.

Day #4

Rolls. Made them early for Sunday dinner. Hope they go well with tomorrows roast. They sure smelled yummy!!!

Day #3

We have a success! Well so far. Today I made applesauce and so far it looks and tastes good. It's still warm so I'll had to wait til chills. But I'm already looking forward to making more and bigger batches! I did switch one process in the making. After smashing with a potato smasher for a bit I decided I wanted it more store bought applesauce consistency. So I dumped it in the food processor and away I went. It looks good. Smells good. And on first spoonful taste good. I'm was excited to have it cooled down and be able to wait eat it.

Day #2

So I went to store with new recipes in mind. While searching through cookbooks I read a title Dilly Beans. Well the Mr and I have come to love dill on our vegetables so I was excited. I picked up some fresh green beans from the store while out grocery shopping and came home to read the recipe. Well I should've done that before. I'm pretty sure I read ingredients before but not the whole thing. The recipe was for canning dilly beans. And I wanted something for dinner tonight. So searching I went through multiple cookbooks and searching online with no luck. Now I was stuck. What to cook tonight? Well after more searching, I found a recipe.

Jello parfait! It came from the cookbook "Magical Endings from Coolwhip and Jello". Great book my mom got for me. Sadly we only had one flavor of jello at home (minus normal gelatin). So it became one layered jello parfait. Also. I made the bottom layer with homemade yogurt. Well sadly it didn't set up in time (bottom layer) before I needed to add the top. So they were really separated. More like one inside the other. But they tasted good. And I think I'll try them again. More favors and store bought yogurt. Maybe then it will look like the picture in the book.

Day #1

So I remembered today about my idea for cooking something new everyday. Well it was semi hard to come up with something see we don't have any eggs in the house and I didn't want to go to the grocery store. But I finally found something.

Today I made shortbread with a twist. I added cinnamon and oats. They were suggestions in the recipe but I added them together. I didn't have all the ingredients for the spiced shortbread and wanted something more than just oats shortbread. The recipe came from Better Homes and Garden "New Cookbook Bridal Edition." And on first taste I would say they turned out pretty good. When making them again I may leave out oats they somewhat throw me off but still taste good. Or an idea I had is chop them up like I do for cookies so they are not so big.

Recipe a Day

So I've seen the posts on Facebook, Blogs, and Istragram for Photo A Day. I've also seen the movie "Julie and Julia" where a woman cooks her way through Julia Childs cookbook with new recipes everyday. Well I've decided to combine the two. For the month of August I'm going to do A Recipe a Day. We received so many cookbooks as wedding presents and I'm really enjoying cooking I thought this would be a great idea. Every day I'll pick a new recipe from one of our cookbooks and post about it. Hopefully this month I'll expand my recipes and find some great things to share. Also, ill try to put a picture or summary of the recipe and where it came from. Comment if you would like the full recipe. Thanks!

The month of August I'll be delighting in my cookbooks!