Yummy Pasta!

I'm not a fan of cooking... But I'm working on it!!

I didn't feel like cooking dinner, so thought I'd try a simple pasta recipe I had pinned. It is from the PopSugarFood website--here is the link:  http://www.yumsugar.com/Spaghetti-Garlic-Olive-Oil-Chili-Flakes-21398824/

It looked quick and tasty, and I was pretty hungry. I followed the recipe pretty much exactly (although I will admit-I did not measure anything. Just estimated). It was soooo good!

My younger daughter doesn't like spicy food-or pretty much anything with any flavor. (Unless it is sweet. She loves "sweet" flavors!) So first I mixed everything in except the chili flakes and dished some out for her. Then added the chili flakes for my older daughter and I. We all added shredded parmesan. It was surprisingly tasty!! I say "surprisingly" because it was so simple.

My youngest said hers was kind of bland, so she added a little bit of chili flakes. And liked it! I was impressed!

Here is the recipe:
Pasta with Garlic, Olive Oil, and Chili Flakes
Ingredients:
10 ounces angel hair pasta
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon red chili flakes
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Directions:
1. Cook pasta al dente according to directions on package.
2. Strain pasta and place in serving dish. (I put it back into the pot I cooked it in. No need to get more dishes dirty!!)
3. Add garlic, chili flakes, oil, salt, and pepper. Mix well.
4. Serve. Add shredded paremesan to taste.

Mmmmm!!! COOKIES!!

I have become completely, totally addicted to Reese's Minis the past year. I seriously go through withdrawls when I don't have any to snack on!! Soooo.... time to break my addiction AND test out some of the yummy looking cookies I have pinned!!

Since I am addicted to the peanut butter-chocolate goodness that are minis, I looked for a cookie that had both peanut butter and chocolate. I figured it wouldn't be any help if I included minis in the cookies-there are tons of yummy recipes that include minis or chopped up bits of regular sized reeses. Looking through the hundreds of dessert recipes I have pinned (I almost got sidetracked!! Almost started looking for MORE recipes to pin rather than actually trying one out!!), I decided to try Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies with Sea Salt from Recipe Girl. Here is the link to her recipe: http://www.recipegirl.com/2012/03/12/peanut-butter-chocolate-chip-oatmeal-cookies-with-sea-salt/.

I couldn't follow the recipe exactly...

The is what I did to her recipe...  
PB-CC-PBC Oatmeal Cookies   ;-)

Ingredients:

 1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter flavored Crisco
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated white sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup chopped walnuts
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. I used a pizza stone instead of a cookie sheet-I love how cookies bake on stoneware! I placed the stone in the oven when I turned it on to preheat. I have found that heating up the stone first helps.
2. In medium bowl, mix flours, baking soda, and salt.
3. In large bowl, mix butter, peanut butter, and sugars with an electric mixer on medium. Add eggs one at a time. Then slowly add the dry ingredients from bowl until mixed.
4. Stir in oats. Stir in peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, and walnuts.
5. Drop the cookies by teaspoonful onto cookie sheet. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt.
6. Bake for 13 minutes. Cool for 1 minute, then remove from stone.
(See the note on baking time from the original recipe-13 minutes is what worked for me)

 I wanted to make them a little more nutritious, hence the wheat flour. I was going to add flax seed meal as part of the flour as well, but didn't want to change too much. I used Crisco instead of butter because I had some that needed to be used. I generally prefer butter in baked goods... Also-I only had old fashioned oats on hand-so that's what I used. I was going to use oat flour as well, but since I'd already swapped some of the flour, I didn't want to add oat flour...

I LOVE walnuts in cookies, that's why I added them. I think I should have added more than 1 cup. Also, I wanted to use peanut butter and chocolate chips, so I did one cup of each instead of 12 ounces of chocolate chips.

I sprinkled sea salt on the first two dozen cookies that I made. After that, I skipped the sea salt. I didn't think they were all that great with the sea salt. I thought they were just as good without...

Overall, the cookies were good. I think I was more in the mood for a more traditional oatmeal chocolate chip cookie dough rather than a peanut butter cookie dough. I thought maybe there was too much going on-maybe that was because of all the modifications I made?? My kids didn't find ANY problems with them at all though, lol.

They were yummy, just didn't exactly match my mood!
One batch made approximately 52 cookies.
My son came home from college for a couple of days. Between him, the girls, their friends, and myself, the cookies were gone in about three days!! :-/  I'll take that "proof" as another success.
Maybe tomorrow I'll make some more cookies...
I'm dying for some Reeses right now...

Baked-on Crud

So I've become quite addicted to Pinterest.
I may have mentioned that before...
I find amazing ideas and pin them, and then never try them...

But last night, I actually tried one!!

I baked chicken about two weeks ago (I may have also mentioned I don't cook? tried that night, kinda unsuccessfully). Only one of us in the house eat chicken, and I baked two breasts, so there was a leftover breast in the fridge for about two weeks, in the dish it was roasted in. That alone is quite disgusting. I tossed the chicken and soaked the dish overnight in hot water. The baked-on marinade and chicken stuff did not budge. So I soaked it again, this time in hot soapy water. Again-the baked on crap stayed glued to the dish. I am not one who loves to scrub my arm off, especially with my shoulder/neck issues. So luckily I found a blog with an idea!!!
Here is the link:  http://www.realsimple.com/new-uses-for-old-things/new-uses-cleaning/print-index.html. The baking soda part is about 3/4 down...

Here is a picture of the dish after soaking in hot water for a day and hot soapy water for another day:

All that baked-on goodness was still stuck on there. I sprinkled baking soda all over the dish, as directed in the blog post linked above:

I let the baking soda work for about an hour (even though the directions said five minutes).
After a little scrubbing and rinsing, I saw very little change:

So I POURED the baking soda on. Thought more might help...

I added water, created a paste, and spread it thickly all over the baked-on crud. Then I soaked it overnight. In the morning, I added water, scrubbed lightly with a scrub brush, and this is what I found.

Hardly any crud left!! Yay!! I scrubbed lightly with a scrubber and the rest just fell off.

See?! Now beautiful!!
It took some time, but very little scrubbing and effort on my part. :-)

Hooray for Pinterest!!

Single Dad Laughing article

http://www.danoah.com/2011/04/worthless-teenagers-and-parents-who.html

This is a really great article.
As a mother of teenagers, it is particularly poignant.

I definitely have my bad days. At times, I say or do things that I regret.
But I do try...

It is important to apologize. I do apologize to my kids when I realize I've made a mistake.

I recently arrived at my daughter's volleyball game late. It started at 4. I work not to far away and thought I could make it easily by leaving at 3:40. But by the time I got out of school, it was closer to 3:50. And by the time I parked and arrived at the game, it was 4:25. I seemed to hit every red light, there was tons of traffic, lots of things make the drive take longer than I expected. I felt bad. And frustrated. I went in to the game and said something to my daughter about how long it took me to get there. She said, "you didn't have to come" and went back to her teammates. I totally missed on that conversation. She thought I was complaining about being there, and I had meant to express frustration at being late. And meant to apologize. Totally not what I said or what she heard though. Later I apologized. I wanted to be at the game and I wanted to see her play. I felt bad for being late and I expressed it wrong.
I think it is important for them to know that we make mistakes.

I'm sure there are plenty of mistakes I have made that I have not apologized for. Plenty of mistakes I haven't even noticed.

Hopefully I am not like the parents written about in the above article.
I know I have my moments, but hopefully they are rare. And hopefully the good moments outweigh the bad.

Also, I am new to blogging. I hope I haven't done anything wrong by linking an article. He said to share!! But if I have erred, please let me know nicely. I will delete it or will add whatever I need to add to make it right.

Thanks!