Christmas presents for a little princess...

Merry Chirstmas everyone. I know I'm a day late, and that I haven't posted in a bit, but I've been very b usy making Christmas presents. I made a few different gifts, and a dress for myself, but most of my time was spent thinking up and sewing dress up clothes for my cousin and god-daughter. She is OBSESSED with dressing up and being a princess, so I used some pieces of fabrics my mom had laying around from the years of making me and my cousin Christmas dresses to make a few fun outfits for my adorable, soon-to-be three year old cousin. (Sorry, this post is pretty image heavy).

I started off making her and her older sister tutus. The pictures really don't do them justice, and they are really way prettier than they look here. I was in a rush to take pictures and get them wrapped, so I didn't have time to get any great ones, but hopefully, when they get back from their vacation, I can get a few pictures of the girls in them.

The tutus are made out of rolls of tulle, and were pretty quick to make. Everything else I made is out of fabric either my mom or I had in our stashes.

This dress was simple, made out of some muslin I had laying around, and a piece of lace from a shirt. I shirred the back so it wouldn't need a zipper or buttons, but apparently I didn't get a picture of it.

This dress was cut from a shirt, so I simply sewed in the sides and cut new straps. The fabric is really stretchy and glittery, so it should slip on easy and sparkle away.

This fabric was my favorite in the stash, but I didn't have much, so I could only make a skirt. It's difficult to tell in the picture, but there is a layer of tulle underneath that peeks out the bottom, and causes the skirt to have just a bit of poof. This is probably my favorite of the pieces I made, but only because it reminds me of the matching dresses my cousin and I had for Christmas when we were little, using this fabric.

Last but not least, I made this cute dress out of some jersey, tulle, and lace. I think I will post a tutorial for it tomorrow. It was pretty quick to throw together, once I figured out exactly what I was doing, but I think it will be worth sharing.

I also made a scarf for my aunt, and a wall decoration for my cousin, but, of course, I forgot to take pictures of them. If I can, I'll have them each snap a pic for me so I can share them.

Merry Christmas and Happy New year to all!

Mexican-insipred Chicken and Rice Casserole

When I was younger, I always thought I didn't like rice. My parents would make white rice in a variety of different forms, and I would never eat it. At one point, in the attempt to make me eat it, my dad started putting cinnamon sugar on my rice, hoping the sweetness would make me enjoy it. I never did.

As the years went on, I started to eat rice in small amounts, as long as it wasn't too mushy and had a lot of flavor. I'll eat rice in my chipotle burritos, and I love fried rice, but I never really made rice for myself. My husband loves rice in pretty much any form, and always wants me to make it, so when I saw this this recipe for creamy chicken and rice casserole over at Pinch of Yum, I figured I would try it, assuming he would love it. I was right, he loved it, and so did I. All I changed was halving the entire recipe, making 4 instead of 8 servings. The brown rice gives the casserole a lot of texture, while the homemade cream sauce has a much better flavor than your typical canned cream of chicken soup.

After making the recipe once, I decided to add my own twist to it, and give it a bit of Mexican flair. I added black beans, bell pepper, and corn, plus some hot sauce and changed up the spices a bit. Overall, the dish turned out great, and I would recommend it, either in its original state, or the way I made it with the Mexican flair. I'm sure it could be customized in many other ways too by simply switching the veggies and spices.

Mexican-inspired Chicken and Rice Casserole
Serves 4

Ingredients:
For cream sauce: 1 1/4 cups chicken broth
3/4 cup milk
3/8 cup flour
1/4 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1 tsp Tapatio*

For casserole:
Cream sauce (see above)
3/4 cup uncooked brown rice, rinsed
1/2 cup water
1/2 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp chili powder
1/8 tsp cumin
1 cup bell pepper, diced
1 cup black beans, rinsed and drained
1 cup corn (frozen or fresh)
2 slices pepper jack cheese*


To make the cream sauce:
1. Combine the chicken broth and 1/4 cup of the milk in a large saucepan. Bring to a low boil.
2. In a small bowl, whisk the flour, seasonings, and hot sauce into the remaining 1/2 cup milk until a smooth, thick mixture forms.
3. Pour the flour/milk mixture into the saucepan over low heat and stir continuously until the mixture is smooth and thick, 5-10 minutes.

To make the casserole:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Grease a 9-inch square baking dish well.
2. Combine the uncooked rice, cream sauce (from above), and water (I actually did this in the saucepan to save a dish). Pour into prepared baking dish.
3. Place boneless chicken breasts on top of the mixture, and sprinkle seasoning.
4. Cover with foil and bake for about 45 minutes.
5. After 45 minutes, remove foil. Carefully remove chicken and set aside. Stir in beans, corn, and pepper. Reposition chicken on top of the mixture, and bake an additional 30 minutes or until rice and chicken are cooked through and top is slightly browned.
6. Remove from oven. Carefully shred chicken, mix together, and put cheese on top. Bake an additional 5-10 minutes, until cheese is melted. Allow to cool for 10 minutes before serving.

*Other hot sauces can be used in place of Tapatio. Shredded cheese would also work, if you do not have sliced pepper jack.

I know the recipe sounds like a lot of work, but it is really quite simple, just a few quick steps, then waiting for it to cook. This made my house smell AMAZING, and the 10 minutes waiting for it to cool were torturous.

Source: Adapted from A Pinch of Yum

Pumpkin Dinner Roll

As I believe I mentioned in a previous post, my sister-in-law is pregnant with her first baby. Since they were not finding out if baby is a boy or a girl, I needed a gender neutral theme for the shower, and decided to go with pumpkins, since I know she loves fall and pumpkins (her wedding was even a fall theme). These little rolls went perfectly with the shower, and it was quite simple to achieve, giving a cute, festive treat.

This isn't really a recipe, more just a way of preparing something. I didn't even make dinner rolls fresh (too many other things to make, especially after the cake fiasco), but instead used frozen rolls which you let defrost and rise for a few hours.

Once the rolls are risen and ready to be put in the oven, you simply press down on the dough ball a bit, and cut slits (about 8) in the rolls, leaving the center uncut. They will look a bit like flowers when they are uncooked. Bake the rolls (follow the directions for your roll recipe), and let them cool a bit. To make my rolls look a bit more orange, I melted some butter and added a bit or orange food coloring to it, and then brushed the rolls with the orange butter.

For stems, I decided to use small pieces of chocolate bars, though other food items would work well (pretzels, pecans, etc). After the rolls begin to cool (but are still slightly warm), you simply press the chocolate bar into the center, pressing down so it sticks (since the roll is still a little warm, the chocolate should melt a bit, allowing it to stay on.

That's it! With just a little extra work, you end up with cute pumpkin shaped rolls, prefect for a fall party or Thanksgiving.

Sweet Potato Pasta Sauce

What do you do when you have some leftover sweet potatoes that really need to get eaten, but you really wanted pasta for dinner? Make sweet potato pasta sauce, of course. After seeing a few recipes where people used butternut squash to make a creamy sauce, I figured, why couldn't you do something similar with sweet potato? This recipe isn't an exact science, and can be adjusted to your liking. We ate it with potato gnocchi, and it was delicious with just a bit of parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.

Sweet potato pasta sauce
1 1/2 cups cooked sweet potatoes
1/2 - 1 cup milk
1/2 Tablespoon butter
1/8 cup diced onion
1 small garlic clove, minced
1/2 - 1 cup pasta water*

1. In a blender, combine sweet potato and about 1/2 cup milk. Blend until smooth, adding more milk if needed to make a thick sauce consistency.
2. In a skillet, melt butter over medium-medium high heat. Add onions and cook until translucent. Add garlic and cook another 1-2 minutes.
3. Add sweet potato mixture to skillet. Slowly add reserved pasta water until sauce if of the desired consistency.

*If you are not cooking pasta, you could just add more milk.

That’s it! An easy, different sauce to go with your pasta and add a few more nutrients(sweet potatoes contain lots of beta-carotene, vitamin C, vitamin B6, manganese and potassium).

A big mess...

Later this week I will have a nice post about the pumpkin theme baby shower we held for my sister-in-law, but for today, I will just share one project from the day. I would like to start off by saying, I have never claimed to be a baker. I have made some basics, and am generally decent at following recipes, but for some reason, I always have a lot of trouble baking. Because of this, I enlisted the help of my cousin. We decided we wanted to make a pumpkin cake, and we saw on pinterest, you could do so by using a Bundt pan. Easy enough, right? Wow were we wrong.

To start off with, we enlisted more help, because high schoolers need to always be with other high schoolers (or my cousins just really like to hang out together). 4 people in a fairly tight kitchen make cake baking a bit tough. After getting our bearings, we got started, separating eggs, sifting flour, and all the other extremely messy parts of baking. 45 minutes later, cake number 1 is in the oven, and all seemed well. The cake came out, looking pretty normal, though a bit cracked, and we assume everything is fine, and move on to cake two.

Cake two was made much quicker, because now we know what we are doing. In the oven within 20 minutes, cooled and ready to put together in a bit over an hour. This is when we realized we had a problem. The cake was way too moist and fluffy, and was just falling to pieces. We made some frosting, and cooled the cake, hoping we could just frost it in place and all would be well. Moral number 1 of the story, frosting does not fix everything. The cake ended up being a huge mess, and just had to get tossed (after we each ate a few spoonfuls, of course).

After we cleaned up disaster, one high schooler left, and we decided to try to make a simple sheet cake, using the same delicious cake recipe. This is when we realized that our error before had not been impatience. As I measured out butter for the cake, a remembered that 3/4 cup of butter is 1 and 1/2 sticks. For the first two cakes, we had used 3 sticks of butter in each, twice the amount we were supposed to use. Moral number 2 of the story, make sure you are measuring your ingredients correctly.

In the end, we ended up with a super cute sheet cake, decorated by my super talented cousin, which I will share a picture of as soon as I upload the shower pictures from my camera. Not only that, but the four of us had tons of fun and have a great story to look back on, and we will never know who messed up in the beginning and said that 3/4 cup of butter was 3 sticks of butter.

Easy Homemade Veggie Broth

I hate wasting money. In fact, I hate spending money AND I hate wasting money. Because of this, I have starting making my own vegetable broth. This broth saves on money, uses things that are usually wasted, and cuts way down on the sodium going into most of my recipes. This isn't so much a recipe, though, but more like guidelines.

How to make vegetable broth on the cheap
1. Save scraps of vegetables from other recipes. I save the peels of onions, the stems of broccoli, the ends of carrots, celery leaves, and the tops of green and red peppers mostly. Put them in a freezer bag and keep them in the freezer until you are ready to make your broth.

2. Before vegetables go bad, freeze batches you won't be able to use. I tend to buy bags of carrots and celery that I don't get all the way through, but the smaller bags are more expensive, so I always buy the big bag, and freeze what I won't get through.

3. I make my broth in the Crockpot because, 1. My Crockpot is bigger than any pots I have, and 2. I can leave it go all day and not worry about it. I simply pour my frozen vegetables in and cover them with water. Sometimes I sort through the vegetables a bit, to keep the ratios in check. For example, this last time I went to make broth, I had a lot of broccoli stems, so I left a few out. I think you can never have too many carrots or celery in your broth.

4. Add spices if you feel so inclined. I usually add a bay leaf or two, but nothing else. I like to leave the salt out, and just add salt into individual recipes instead, but you could add salt and pepper too.

5. If using the stove, simmer for 1-2 hours. In the Crockpot, cook on low for 8-10 hours. Cooking time isn't super important, you just want all the veggies to cook and be very soft, so you know you got all the flavors out of them.

6. Let the broth cool a bit before trying to pour it into containers. The way I found easiest (as you can see in the picture) is to place a colander on top of a small bowl and scoop using a measuring cup. I only do about a cup at a time, and press the veggies firmly against the bottom of the colander to get most of the liquid out. Then simply pour the broth into containers and refrigerate or freeze.

The batch I made this weekend made 10 cups of broth, which would cost $10+ from the store. My batch probably cost me less than $1, considering most of it is just scraps that normally get thrown away.

I'm not dead

I'm trying to get back on track, get back to blogging about, not only food, but other beautiful and fun things too. Lately things have been hectic and I haven't been getting posts up, but I have still been doing plenty. I don't have pictures for everything, but I have a few definate recipe recommendations.

1. Eggplant Focaccia(via the Curvy Carrot). This recipe was delicious and simple. The only thing I did differently from the recipe was using swiss instead of Emmentaler and rolling it round, rather than square. AMAZING. If you don't follow the curvy carrot, I suggest you do so immedinately.

2. Cheesy Spinach Soup(aka Witches' Brew, via Annie's Eats). Again, all I did differently was change the cheese to Cheddar(since that is what I had on hand). This soup was very tasty, and I felt so healthy eating it(since it really is mostly spinach anyway). I could not get it smooth enough using my immersion blender, so I used the regular blender, and it turned out great.



I've also been knitting a bunch recently, and even attempting to crochet a bit(though the project was very simple). I crocheted this simple single chain scarf, and I love it. The picture really doesn't do it justice, and I will try to take a better one later on(it is 80 here today, so not really scarf weather).

I also knitted a simple baby hat and mittens for my soon to be niece or nephew. I went with gray, hoping it could work for a boy or girl.

I'm still a very inexperienced knitter, so I try to do simple projects. Next I'm hoping to do a ridiculously adorable blanket I saw on raverly(I'll share the name once I get all my supplies).

So, I am not dead, and will hopefully be back to posting on a regular basis very soon. I should have lots of pretty things to share from the baby shower I am planning, which is coming up in just 4 short weeks.