Happy Independence Day!

New Kitchen Toys

In addition to getting some time off before Christmas to go to Alaska, my office was also closed between Christmas Eve and New Year's, so once we got home from our trip I had an entire week off to run errands, get things done that I had been putting off, and play with some of my new fun kitchen gadgets that I got for Christmas like my new Crockpot and my new Cricut Cake :) I also had a chance to cook up some meals that usually are too time-consuming to make when I get home from work. It was really nice to have that week to spend some time with Sayre and take care of all of those little things that had accumulated on my to-do list.

  

Say Cheese!

For his birthday this year, I asked Sayre what kind of cake he would like for me to make for him. When he happily replied, "CHEEEEEESECAKE!!!" I cringed ever-so-slightly inside. You see, despite having received a spring-form pan over a year ago from Rachael at my Bridal Shower, I had still not made a cheesecake. Somehow I had convinced myself that eating cheesecake was far simpler and way more satisfying than attempting to bake a cheesecake. I just knew that when I pulled the thing out of the oven it would immediately laugh in my face and then collapse. I'm still not sure how I came to this conclusion, but I accepted it as truth and tucked the spring-form pan into my cabinets. I knew, however, that this was Sayre's one real birthday wish - to have a cheesecake all of his own - and I had to step up to the challenge!

The first hurdle I had to jump was finding a good recipe. I know that cheesecake is about as far from being healthy as you can get, but I was determined to find a "guilt-free" recipe. After some extensive research, I found one that used fat-free cream cheese and totaled in only 2 grams of fat and 44 calories per serving! Yesssss! Amazing, huh? Anyway, on the eve of the anniversary of Sayre's birth I set out on the daunting task. I pulled out the spring-form pan from its hiding spot, gave it a good pep-talk, and started mixing up my ingredients. About 45 minutes later, it was done... the timer on the stove was beeping... this was going to be the moment of truth. I carefully walked over to the kitchen, so as not to shake the ground beneath me resulting in cheesecake catastrophe, carefully removed it from the oven, and ever-so-gingerly placed it on the stove top to cool... then I warned Sayre that he better not go clomping near the thing for fear of his life! :) To my great surprise, the cheesecake survived, it was a tasty success, and Sayre was a very happy birthday boy the next day! I just wish I would have let go of my fears and given it a try a long time ago... I have a feeling that the formlery dreaded spring-form pan is about to get a lot of use!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

Sayre will be returning from his voyage on Saturday (yaaaaay!) only to leave again on Monday (boooo). While he's been gone, I've been so very thankful to have my new job to keep me busy... otherwise, who knows what kind of trouble I could have gotten myself into! I'd probably be buried up to my neck in completed crafts by now ;) Heck, even while working full time I've still managed to bake a bit more often than I usually do just to help the time pass by at night. Fortunately, rather than keeping the sweet confections for myself, I've shared them at work. Since tomorrow is St. Patrick's day, I made some chocolate cupcakes with green frosting tonight :) I have a sinking feeling that Sayre will be sad when he hears about all of this... poor thing... normally I try to put a limit on the number of sweets we have around the house (mostly because I will eat it all).

In addition to baking and working, I also kept myself busy this weekend playing around with some other lovely Navy wives whose husbands are also on Sayre's ship. On Saturday, I went to the Town Center here in Jacksonville with Jeanet and her sweet little baby girl Aliea. On Sunday, I met up with them again as well as another wife named Laura who has a precious 7 year old son. Y'all, he is seriously the sweetest and most well-mannered little boy I have ever met in my life! He's awesome! He would run to open the doors for us, was super-eager to push Aliea's stroller, and was so sweet & friendly. I told Laura she should write a book on parenting. Anyway, it was a great weekend. Hanging out with the girls certainly helped to pass the time. As sad as it sounds, by the end of the weekend, I was actually pretty tired. I guess I still need to get used to working full time again and having a social life.

Cookie Monster

 There seems to be an epidimic going on in my apartment. Cookies are disappearing left and right! It's a tragedy, I tell you!! But, fear not... I think I may have just gotten to the root of the problem. You see, there's someone else lurking around here. Someone who has an affinity for all things sweet. Someone who claims that I no longer bake things just for him now that we're married like I once did when we were dating. The married life can be so rough on a guy sometimes. ;)

LOSSSSSST

Just over a year ago, when Sayre and I were visiting Alaska for Christmas in 2008, we were introduced to the world of LOST. In case you've been living under a rock for the past 6 years, it's a widely popular television show about a bunch of people that crashed onto an island... but, really, it's sooooo much more than that. Anyway, during our 2 week visit that Christmas, we watched almost the entire first season. After that, we were hooked and officially became "LOSTies" allowing the show to consume us as we proceeded to watch seasons 1 through 5 within a year in order to prepare ourselves for the final 6th season, which just so happened to begin last night! To celebrate such an exciting occaison, I cooked up a delicious recipe for Cajun Pasta that I found on The Pioneer Woman's website. She made hers with chicken, but I made mine with ground beef instead. Sayre and I both loved this recipe! I also made some little cupcakes for dessert :) I was planning on something much more elaborate and LOST-related; however, since it was just the two of us and we didn't have a LOST party, I decided to just make some simple cupcakes, and then later proceeded to have a photoshoot with them :)

Pepper Spray Sympathy

Today my poor sweet husband got sprayed with OC (military strength pepper spray) as a part of his training. Pretty much everyone has to go through it, but I still felt pretty bad for him. An hour after it happened they let him drive home, but it was very evident that he was still in a lot of pain. When he got home, we tried to look up some home remedies, but unfortunately the concoction we tried seemed to only make matters worse... especially when he had to wash it off. Rinsing water over the affected skin only seems to make it feel worse because the OC is oil based. Fortunately, we eventually figured out that putting a fan on his face and lightly patting it with a wet, cold cloth made things much better.

In the meantime, I knew of only one thing for sure that would eventually make him feel better: sweets! One of my favorite baking blogs called "Bake at 350" featured a caramel brownie recipe today that looked too amazing not to try! You start with a cake batter based brownie recipe, cook half of it for about 6 minutes, spread chocolate chips and melted caramel on top of that, plop the other half of the batter on that, and then bake for another 16 minutes. They aren't the most presentation-friendly brownies because they're ooey & gooey & fall apart, but that's what makes them sooooo amazing :) and they go great with a little scoop of vanilla ice cream or a dollop of whipped cream! Needless to say, this made Sayre feel quite a bit better.

Pumpkin Mousse Pie

My dear sweet husband has a mouth full of sweet teeth (ok... maybe we both do). One of his favorite holiday treats is pumpkin pie, so when I saw a recipe for Pumpkin Mousse Pie on the back of a graham cracker pie label I knew I had to try it! I'm personally not a huge fan of pumpkin pie, so I was hoping that this would be a creamier, lighter alternative. The results were fantastic! Needless to say, the two pies that this recipe yielded were gone in just a matter of days! (Fortunately for our waistline, each piece of pie has only 3.5 grams of fat & no sugar!)


Here's the Recipe from Keebler Ready Crust:
1 1/4 cups Fat-free Milk
1 pkg (4-serving size) Vanilla fat-free sugar free instant pudding
1 tbsp Pumpkin Pie Spice
1 cup Canned Pumpkin
2 tubs (8oz) Fat Free Cool Whip
2 Keebler Graham Cracker Reduced Fat Pie Crusts

Beat milk, pudding mix, & spice for 1 1/2 minutes then whisk in pumpkin.
Fold in Half a tub of whipped topping.
Spread into pie crusts.
(The original recipe claims to only make one pie, but it definitely left me with enough filling for 2, so unless you want an over-flowing pie, I suggest making 2 or cutting the recipe in half!)
Top with whipped topping.

Refrigerate at least 2 hours before serving. It's hard to serve this pie b/c it's very moist & gooey (& yummy!), so I also suggest maybe popping it in the freezer for a few minutes before cutting into it.

LSU Cookies

For the past week or so, I've been dying to make some cutesy sugar cookies after being inspired by a blog called Whimsy Cookie Company. The woman who runs this blog makes absolutely adorable sugar cookies and she had some LSU ones featured so, of course, I decided that I just had to try to make some too! Once again, however, I realized after making them that they are quite a bit more time consuming than they appear to be. Regardless, I still had fun making them :)

Chicken & Stuffing & Brownies... oh my!

Tonight I tried another fun slow cooker recipe. I wasn't too sure how it was going to turn out, but I was thrilled with the results! The recipe called for you to coat some chicken breasts in a mixture of flower and seasoning and then brown it in a skillet before placing it in the slow cooker. Once in the cooker, you cover it with low fat cream of mushroom soup and stuffing and then allow it to cook on high for 3 hours. It sounded great, but I honestly thought it would turn to mush by the time it was done. Fortunately I was wrong! It was sooo good and sooo filling! The chicken was incredibly tender. I made some deviled eggs, a little fruit salad, and some green beans to go along with it.

In the meantime, I finally let Sayre bake us some dessert. He's notorious for having a mouth full of sweet teeth (ok... I admit it... so do I), so he's always trying to sneak into the pantry to bake a cake or two, but usually I cut him off and stop him lol. We've been eating way too many sweets lately... we don't need one every single night! Anyway, I finally let him make something tonight. We have a ton of chocolate cake mixes, but no brownie mixes, which is of course what he wanted. Instead he decided to improvise... He looked up "cake mix brownies" online and the results were fantastic! Seriously, from now on, when we want brownies, I think this is the way to go. The brownies are now like the perfect balance between cakieness and brownieness! Mmmm perfectly moist and chocolately! Instead of following the instructions on the cake box, you just add 2 eggs and 1/2 cup of oil. The dough is very thick, so you then spread it yourself in a pan and bake for 20-25 minutes at 350. Needless to say, we are very well fed tonight. Now it's time to watch the season premier of Bones!

Yummy!

Since getting married, I've had so much fun trying to cook and bake new things. Before, when I lived in an apartment by myself, it never seemed worth it to me to cook big meals or try new recipes because I was only cooking for myself. Left-overs are only good for so long. Now that I have a hungry little hubby to feed (and impress), I'm a lot more inclined to spend some extra time in the kitchen. I've found some great recipes in some handy cookbooks, websites, and from my very experienced and reliable mom :)

So far, some favorites have been: honey bar-b-que ribs (cooked in the slow-cooker) with macaroni and green beans, chicken enchiladas with mexican corn, good old hamburgers, baked bar-b-que chicken, and jambalaya just to name a few. Tonight I decided to try an intriguing dessert recipe that I found on blog called picky-plate.com. They're chocolate chip cookie pies :) and they were goooooood! Basically you just put cookie dough in the middle of little mini pie crusts. She specifically said not to over-stuff the pie crusts because they will ooze out as they bake, but I didn't think that the amount of cookie dough I put in was too much. Apparently I was wrong! As they baked, they started taking on a life of their own and oozed out a bit... it was pretty funny actually lol. BUT once I took them out and put some powdered sugar on them, they looked pretty good... amost like a little cookie dough benigt. Yum!! Don't worry... Sayre and I didn't eat them all in one sitting... Ok, so we each had 2, but at least we didn't eat the whole plate of them! Anyway, this recipe is highly recommended :) And it's pretty easy to make... especially if you buy pre-made pie crust & the mini break & bake cookie dough from Tollhouse.