Easter Treats and Peeps

I am well known among my peeps to be a junk lover.  I'm not denying that.  I have memories of fighting my mom because I didn't want her to throw away the toilet paper rolls.  I thought I could make something out of them (and most of the time I did, thank you very much).  So I think this may be one of the roots of that habit of mine. 

I remember making these with my grandma around Easter time.  How?  Use an old egg carton (see!  good for something), cut the bottom in half, and decorate it like a caterpillar.  Use pipe cleaners, glitter, feathers, markers, whatever!  Doesn't matter!  The point is that your kids are creating something and their wheels are turning. Collette and her friend Kristen made these ones.  Nice huh?

I also remember (like the rest of the world) making these rice krispies nest.  It's pretty self-explanatory from the picture but I'll give you the recipe for rice krispy treats in case you don't have it.

Rice Krispy Treats

• 3 Tablespoons butter
• 4 c. mini marshmallows (or about 40 big ones)
• 6 c. rice krispies

1. Melt butter in saucepan over the stove.  Add marshmallows and melt completely.  
2. Add rice krispies and thoroughly coat.
3. Press into a (greased?) pan....if you don't eat it all out of the saucepan.......

To make the nests though, just spray your hands with cooking spray, and mold it into little nests.  Sprinkle coconut flakes (colored green with food coloring) inside for grass. Use jelly beans or other egg-like candy, and then put yourself a birdy in that nest!  

Spice Cake and I love my KitchenAid

My mom and dad had spice cake at their wedding.  Isn't there an ancient proverb that says something about if you serve good food at your wedding you receive good karma?  Well, apparently that's true because Mom and Dad are going on 25 years strong (see this post).  

Look at them, all happy and in love......

And here's Mom with her dad, Grandpa Anderson

I've always loved spice cake, but it's one of those that's about 100 times better with the frosting.  Not just any frosting; it has to be THIS frosting.  That being said, the real recipe for this post is the frosting, but I'll also give you my secret recipe for the cake part too.  It looks like this:

Yup.  Straight from the box.  I haven't ever manipulated the box recipe to make it tastier because lets be honest, I'm only here for the frosting anyway!  So, step 1 is to make the cake according to the directions on the box and let it cool completely.

Peneuche Frosting Recipe

(p.s. peneuche?  What the?)

•  1/2 c. butter
• 1 c. brown sugar
• 1/4 c. milk
• 3 c. powdered sugar

1. Melt butter in sauce pan.
2. Stir in brown sugar and cook until bubbly.
3. Remove from heat, add milk, and beat vigorously until smooth.
4. Beat in powdered sugar.
5. Spread on top of cooled cake.
6. Pour an enormous glass of milk because it will compliment your huge piece of cake in all the right ways :)

P.S. I love my KitchenAid

For some reason, I cherish the things I have that are old.  (Ok, not like the clothes I've been wearing since high school; I mean old old.  Cool old)  For example, I've been using my grandma's old old Bernina sewing machine which I now love as my child.  Also, my blankie.  Alright, not cool to anyone else, but still a love of my life.  And last but not least, my KitchenAid.  

I'm not really sure but I think at one point it was the awesome avocado color that made it's mark in many-a-70's-kitchen.  I think it was Grandma's, and then it was Mom's, but now that they've both "upgraded" to newer versions, it's mine now.  I LOVE IT.  It has so much character, it makes my life so much easier in the kitchen . And I'd never be able to afford the new shiny kind, so avocado KitchenAid and I have become great friends.  To use a phrase from Katelin's dictionary, it's the bomb dot com.  (is that how you write it out?  I can't be hip.)

Freezer Meals

Yes, I've been combing through my blog lists figuring out who has yet to post on the blog.  To my surprise, Courtney, who has lived under the same roof as me for the past year, is on that list.  It seems like she doesn't have to spend her life in the kitchen because she gets a head start with her freezer stock.    So when she asked for one of my recipes last week I held it ransom until she agreed to post about her freezer meals.  Obviously, she agreed.  

.....

I've been assigned to blog about my freezing techniques.  I am a huge fan of cooking more food less often.  A couple years ago, my mother-in-law bought a Reynolds Handi Vac for me and my sister-in-law.

We loved them!  One day we had a freezer meal day and made about 25 meals.  Just to get your ideas rolling we made chicken alfredo sauce, bacon & cream cheese wrapped chicken, funeral potatoes, and pizza rolls.  It was AWESOME to have all these meals on hand!  Ever since then I've been kind of a freezer nut.  Tyson jokes about eating the leftovers I scraped off his plate 6 months later.  I don't think I'm that bad:)  All I know is, it saves me money and time so I'm all for it!

They recently stopped making the Reynolds Handi Vac so we tried out the Ziploc pump.  I think I like this even more!  You pump out the air by hand rather than the battery operated sucker, but I actually think it's easier.

Yesterday I made Kelsey's navajo taco recipe (sorry, we're not sure where it's from). 

1 can kidney beans

1 can black beans

1 can pinto beans

1 can chili

1 package fajita mix

1 small can tomato sauce

1T brown sugar

2 lbs hamburger

Here's the thing...I rarely follow recipes.  I generally use whatever I have on hand and try to double or triple the recipe.  It *usually* works out.  So for this recipe, I used...

1 can white kidney beans

2 cans black beans

2 cans pinto beans

2 cans chili

1/2 package taco mix

2T brown sugar

1 huge can of whole tomatoes, blended

1 can tomato soup

2 lbs hamburger

some ketchup

Haha.  I know, it's a miracle things turn out.  But Tyson said these were some of the best navajo tacos he's ever had.  We ate this meal for two nights with Rhodes roll scones and I was able to freeze three more meals of it.  For this meal, I used the quart sized Ziploc vacuum bags.  You just fill them up and use the "mini bike pump" to suck out the air.  So easy.

I've also used these bags for things like cream cheese/chicken filling to go in chicken roll ups, and soups such as the white chicken chili Kelsey posted last week.

For casserole type meals, we use the aluminum square cake pans that fit into the gallon sized bags.  The ones you can find at the dollar store fit great and are definitely the best buy (I think they're 3/dollar).  I've used this for funeral potatoes, chicken enchilada casserole, poppyseed chicken, pizza rolls, chicken cordon bleu, etc...  My mother-in-law has done chili rellenos and even cake!

Ziploc containers work great too.  If I make a whole turkey I freeze the leftovers in these containers.  I also recently made a ton of this sauce from the World Wide Ward Cookbook.

Don's Authentic Creamy Italian Tomato Sauce

saute:

2T olive oil

1T butter

1 tsp basil

dash crushed chili pepper (if you have it)

3 medium onions (or shake in some minced)

1 clove garlic, crushed (or again, some minced)

dash of salt

add 3 - 29oz cans of tomato sauce and cook at least 20 minutes.  Stir in 7oz Gouda cheese until melted.  Add 1 pint heavy cream and remove from heat.

I serve this over mini penne pasta with grilled chicken strips and parmesan cheese on top.  I doubled the recipe and made 10 of these containers full.  Our family uses one container with left-overs.

Anyway, that's about it.  Cheap and easy.  That's what I'm all about.