I've Been Sin Internet All This Time

I missed my blog! :'(
But now I'm back in business baby! :)
You guys would not believe this holiday! First my dad wound up in the hospital and had his toe amputated, but me and LoverBoy drove the kids up to the hospital ponh Christmas and brought all the presents and had a surprise Christmas party in his room :) It was so nice. And I think it made him feel so much better :) And he got to come home that afternoon!
Of course, on Christmas Eve we had been without Mom's cooking and so the Sister and I, who are managing to get along now (I'm just waiting to get back to the dorm and all my stuff be gone), cooked ALOT of food and it all came out wonderful! Downside? Poodle and Bull (that's how I'm going to refer to my "real" mother and her bully husband) showed up and pushed my buttons all day and came back the day after Christmas. I tried to talk to them about something that had happened and I was very calm and polite and they freaked out so I told them off and now they say they won't ever come back. Great. Not that I'm going to miss them, just a couple other people in the family will.
So. Bipolar huh? But it's ok, it will either work out or it won't. Anyway, I need to go update my other blogs too :) When I return to my high-speed internet full campus, I'll be posting more often. I hope your holidays are going well too!

I'm Such a Dirty Liar

Here, it is, finally, LATE as ever, the promised recipe for sweet potato biscuits. But totally worth the wait, I promise!

You will need:
2 Cups of Self-Rising Flour
3 Tablespoons of Brown Sugar
1/4 Teaspoon of Cinnamon *
1/8 Teaspoon of Ground Allspice *
1/4 Cup of Butter
3 Tablespoons Shortening *
1 Cup Mashed Sweet Potatoes
6 Tablespoons of Milk *
2 Tablespoons Melted Butter

*I had to improvise for some ingredients. For example, I added more cinnamon because it's so yummy; I used about a whole teaspoon. I didn't have any ground allspice so I mashed up one whole allspice. I didn't have any shortening so I used two tablespoons of vegetable oil. I also decided to add about three more tablespoons of milk to my mixture because it wasn't wet enough.

Combine first four ingredients in a bowl and cut in the 1/4 cup of butter and shortening/vegetable oil with a pastry blender or fork until crumbly. Add mashed sweet potatoes and milk, stirring until dry ingredients are moistened.

You have two options now:
A. Turn dough out onto floured  surface and knead a few times, roll out to 1/2 inch thickness and cut with a 2'' biscuit or cookie cutter.
OR
B. Roll a teaspoon sized amount of mixture into balls.

Place biscuits on an un-greased baking sheet (I admit it, I greased it anyway) and brush with melted butter. Bake at 400 degrees for twelve minutes (if you used a cookie cutter, they will turn a pretty brown color and if you rolled them into balls, they will be more of a yellowy-white). Drizzle with honey and serve warm. My yield (the teaspoon sized balls) was about 25. I also put them into pretty cupcake papers :)

You can also cut them in half and put a piece of ham in the middle. Freaking yum.

ENJOY!

And I would just like to say that everyone liked them and they were all gone and I had no idea that sweet potatoes were so cheap! BEST. STAPLE. EVER.

Thanksgiving Break

So bad news:
My biological mother showed up for thanksgiving.
She brought her douche bag husband.
My grampa cried.
My back hurts.
The Sister is acting seriously b-i-t-c-h-y again. I can't say it because I decided to take the next several weeks to tone my vocabulary.

GOOD NEWS :)
My biological mother showed up for thanksgiving.
LoverBoy and I put up our first Christmas tree.
He bought Dante a rain coat! HAHAHA
I finally have some food and room in the fridge to put it.
I have pictures!!!
I can't post them right this second though...

Thanksgiving was good. The food was good. The company was (mostly) good. The food was good. I got to see everybody and sleep til 9. The food was really good. And I made some of it. I'll be putting up another recipe later: Sweet potato biscuits. Sound funny. Taste YUMMY.

The Sister has decided that when she moves out, she's taking the fridge. Well I don't care, but you better believe you're walking your tail to housing and checking with them before you do it because I'm not paying for the darn thing just because you took it without them knowing. I really don't like her. And of course, when we got home, she was playing nice with everyone. Then as soon as I get up here this morning, she's being a jerk. I mean she's being something else but like I said, I'm toning my vocabulary. I just really want her to go ahead and get her crap and move out. And if I have to lose the micro-fridge to get rid of her then so be it. All I can say is, I better not have to move out because of her or I will throw down. I mean I'm not the one who broke the agreement, she is. She just happens to be able to pay for a private room. Just because I don't have that kind of money does not mean that I should get booted out of the building with no where to go and even less money than I started out with. This, this right here, is part of the reason I despise her so much.

I'm trying not to be bitter, but every time I think about it, it just leaks out. It sucks. I don't want to be angry and yet I can't seem to keep from it. I just want her to go.

Ok, coming later today, pictures of Dante and a yummy Christmas-time biscuit recipe. :D

Show Me the MONEY!!

So. I've been selected as a bridesmaid. I don't know if I told you that already. I have to find a nice cheap dress for the wedding and help the bride figure out some things, like where she's going to get married. And when. And what is she going to feed people. And those types of things. Exciting. Hard to budget. Good practice for my own wedding though. :) So, I need some money for all this fun stuff. I need a dress and some shoes and a camera (a real camera; I hate having to borrow a semi every time someone asks me to photograph something), an apartment and a dog trainer. Gah.

So my other cooking escapade. Just in case you liked the last two recipes, you'll be amused to discover that my third was a complete failure. It was salsa and queso for crap's sake. I messed up salsa and queso. I have looked EVERYWHERE for a recipe for white queso like they have in the restaurants and I couldn't find anything so I thought "Well, I'll try it and if I get it right then I'll put my own online so other people can find it." It was such a failure that my dog wouldn't even eat it. And you know how he is. He eats everything, chews on everything, tears everything up. But he would not, NOT, eat that "cheese" dip. It was horrific. And I said to myself, "well, at least the salsa is probably good; there's cilantro in it and fresh tomatoes and a jalapeno; it will be great!"
no.
no it was not.

I can invent Alfredo sauce to rival that of Olive Garden, but I can't make cheese dip and salsa. Damn you rotel!! Why do all the people I know only know how to make rotel?!

Yogurt Parfait

So, to go with our spring like entree, I also made a fresh desert: yogurt parfaits. And they were cheap. Only used three ingredients! So here's what I put in:
Vanilla Yogurt
Cereal with your favorite dried fruit (mine had blueberries AND strawberries; SCORE!)
Chocolate Chips

INSERT PICTURE I FORGOT TO TAKE OF THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS HERE

So here's how I did it:

Get a tall container and put a layer of yogurt in the bottom. Add a thick layer of cereal followed by another layer of yogurt and then a thin layer of chocolate chips. Your yogurt layers can be as thin or thick as you like, but I recommend your cereal layers be pretty thick so you get that yummy granola crunch, otherwise, your cornflakes will be mushy. Continue to layer until you get to the top or run out of food. Seal it and put in the freezer for about an hour.

Be sure to rinse out the container and don't dry it. That way the top will get frozen on to the container and you have to interrupt your boyfriend in the middle of his TV show to get him to open it. Twice.

 Scoop it out and enjoy immediately so its cold and your cereal doesn't get mushy as the yogurt thaws! :)

And you can't see my chocolate chips because we had to use white ones (but they were just as good as the milk chocolate ones).

Shrimp Pasta

So LoverBoy gave me some grocery money to buy stuff to cook whatever I like so I decided to make some shrimp pasta. It was nice and fresh and yummy :) So here's what I did.

You will need:

shrimp (or other seafood)

garlic powder/salt

butter

mint

mushrooms

cream cheese

tomatoes

noodles

First, you want to decapitate/de-vein/de-leg and (thaw and) wash your shrimp. 

Mine had to defrost in some water as well; this also keeps them nice and juicy while I'm prepping my skillet.

 To cook your shrimp, you want to set a skillet on medium-high heat and melt about a quarter of a stick of butter in it and add a little garlic powder; for those of you who must measure, I would guestimate about a half a tablespoon.

I've got on black crackle nail polish over green HD by the way ;)

 Now, because shrimp kind of create their own juice to simmer in, you don't really have to worry about them burning. You can move on to your next task: preparing the sauce.

You're going to want to "dice" about five or six mushrooms (yum) annnnnnddddd

This is what happens when you don't own a cutting-board and don't trust your counter-tops: you use the egg carton box.

 .....a few leaves of mint to give it that yummy fresh smell and flavor. Don't over-due it though. Three leaves should be enough.

The mint is on the right (the rosemary on the left was for another project which you'll hear about in a few posts. I got these herbs straight from the yard. Yum.

 At this point, you can start boiling your noodles (don't forget the cooking oil or they will stick to each other!). While that's happening, get that stick of butter back out and use about half of whats left from earlier. Put it in a boiler on medium-high heat and when its melted through about a teaspoon or so of garlic powder in. Then, add a half a box of cream cheese and break it up as it melts. Do not stop stirring for more than a few seconds at a time or it will burn. It makes quite a mess. Slowly add (while stirring) about a cup and a half of milk (adding more the thinner you want the sauce to be). When you add your mushrooms and your chopped mint, it should look smooth and creamy, about like this:

At this point, your noodles are probably done, if not, turn down the heat on the sauce and continue to stir occasionally. When your noodles are done, strain and put in a big bowl, add a tad more cooking oil to ensure there is no clumping. Clumpy noodles are gross :P. Add your shrimp.

Now the skillet you cooked your shrimp in, keep that just like it is and throw in some tomatoes, the kind that are kind of cut in triangular shapes (whatever they call that). Let 'em sizzle for a bit. Stir them around every now and then.

Now, when your tomatoes have that nice "grilled tomatoes from Olive Garden" smell, toss them in with the noodles. Mix it all up, put it in the bowls and go stir your sauce yet again. Ladle the yummy sauce onto the pasta (smell it?!) and enjoy!

Of course, if my presentation were better, it wouldn't be in a Tupperware but whatever. :)

Home-Made Chicken Pizza

Feel very loved, because I could be watching House right now. :)
This is how you make "Poor-People Tuscan Chicken Pizza"

You will need:
Pizza Crust
Chicken (Frozen, Grilled, Whatever)
Ranch Dressing
Cheese
Sauce (to be explained in-recipe)
Other Toppings of Your Choice
Pan, Cooking Spray, Oven (or Grill, I suppose) and all other such things, like oven mitts
OPTIONAL: A Partner to buy the wrong things at the store :)

Ok so here's how you get started. Raid the fridge for anything edible. Nothing? Decide you're going to be creative and make some Tuscan Chicken Pizza because that sounds freaking delicious right now. Call your boyfriend at work and say "Baby, would you be a dear and pick some things up for me on your way home so I can cook us something good to eat?" He'll say "But by the time I get home, it will be 10 PM. Will you really want to eat then?" Politely point out that if God never intended for us to eat at night, there wouldn't be a light in the fridge; he will politely reply that our light doesn't work anyway. You will respond with "Ok sounds great! I'll text you a list! I Love you!" Then hang up and start re-rummaging the fridge for useful items.
I asked him to bring me two red tomatoes, some pesto, some mozzarella, mushrooms, crust, spinach and garlic powder. He came home with mozzarella, mushrooms and crust. Hmmmmm.

At this point, if your chicken isn't cooked (because we use frozen fillets... I know, I know.) cover it in Ranch Dressing (I don't even like ranch dressing but this works!!) and stick in the oven to cook like 90% of the way.

Start on the pizza!

When you discover that you now have no sauce, reach into that little slot in the door of the fridge and pull out all those extra packets of taco sauce from Taco Bell. Spray down the pan with cooking oil and lay in the crust (we used the uncooked kind that pop out of Pillsbury cans :) Drip the taco sauce onto the crust in a "trying to even it out" kind of way. Don't worry, if you don't have any real sauce, trust me, this came out great! (If your boyfriend actually bought you some pesto, put that on as sauce too, but don't use all of it. Pesto is great until you eat a whole jar, it's a bit too much.) Also, if you have tomatoes (woe is me!) slice them into thin round slices and lay them on too! Tomatoes are SO GOOD when they are warn and cooked! (Someone remind me to tell you guys how to make baked "fried" green tomatoes! I know, it sounds horrible, but they are so good! I could eat them all day!)

Lay on the cheese. LOTS of cheese!! Then add as many mushrooms as you can possibly fit onto the pizza. Then add like 10 more. Save a few for omelets in the morning. :) YUM. Next, since the chicken isn't done yet, decide that you need more toppings....hmmmm. Oh I know! Get out that thin turkey sandwich lunch meat and rip it into little pieces and put it all over the place, and some bacon too. Bacon makes everything better!  (We were lucky enough to have some pre-cooked bacon that LoverBoy's roomie had bought, yay! no burnt bacon!). Put about as much bacon as you did mushrooms, if not more. But save some of that for omelets in the morning too!

Get the yummy, ranch drenched chicken out of the oven and cut it into pieces. Sprinkle it over the pizza. Think about how freaking good this would be if you had your darn tomatoes! Then, if you have garlic or garlic powder, sprinkle some of that over the top and some more cheese if you'd like.

Put the oven on about 475 and cook until the edges of the crust turn a nice golden brown (10-15 minutes) and when it comes out, give it a minute or two to cool so it doesn't fall apart when you cut it, then cut it and relish! :) This is an awesome pizza! When I get LoverBoy's camera, I'll put up the picture :)

I have no idea how many calories are in it, and I don't want to.
CAUTION: If you have a three month old blood hound puppy, he will try to kill you to get to this pizza. Please be careful, he likes to eat and he's a devil dog (but I'm sure you love him anyway) :)