Redeeming myself

Since I've made a complete mockery of my cooking skills I must show that I really can bake! So for redemption's sake here are my Valentine's cookies:
I haven't made these in years but thanks to my mom I had a dream about them last night so I just had to get up and make them this morning! It was a new recipe that I've never tried before (miracle of miracles I didn't smoke up the kitchen!) and Mark rates them a 7 out of 10 and he's an honest, tough critic! I purposely made them violet because I thought red or pink icing would be overkill. Anyways, I am happy with the outcome, o.k, it's safe to drool now, redemption accomplished.

Make Lemonade????

After last night's disaster I was very concerned about the smell in our house. We had windows and fans on last night for a while but when I woke up I could still smell it. Today as I made my way to clean the kitchen I decided if life gives you lemons make lemonade! Since the house was already somewhat smoky smelling I decided to turn the oven cleaner on! Genius, right? Then when I finished all the dishes I started cleaning the front of the cupboards which somehow had gotten so dirty without me noticing until I was on the floor investigating (the added sun shining through helped illuminate any spots on the windows too). I also didn't want the smoke to settle in to the walls so I started scrubbing them and the floors! So now I have a really clean kitchen, stove, walls, floors, cupboards, windows - nevermind that I was freezing all day with all the windows in the house open, with fans, and occasionally the front door! But at least the smell is nearly gone and won't settle. If spring isn't going to come early at least the cleaning has started early! Now I think I need to go make some lemonade because it's starting to sound really yummy...

Disaster dinner

So I said I was going to try something new tonight. It looked fairly simple, here's the recipe:

1/4 cup maple syrup

1/4 cup dijon mustard

1/4 tsp chili powder

bacon

chicken breast cut in half

So I mixed the first 3 and I didn't realize the reason why you're supposed to split the sauce until after I had put the chicken in the oven. I spread the sauce on the chicken and then wrapped it in bacon, therefore the sauce was destroyed because of the raw chicken! Mistake #1. Then you are supposed to broil it, 4 minutes on each side. After a couple minutes the pan warped because of uneven heat and it started spitting bacon grease everywhere. I took it out to turn it over and when I took it out my potholder caught fire when it touched the broiler! Mistake #2.

Then when I put it back in after turning it there was smoke galore, major smoke! I had to call Mark down for some help at this point! Mistake #3.

So I just took it out and since the chicken wasn't cooked I just let them bake for 20 min. Besides all of those mistakes, it actually turned out pretty good and next time I will definitely know better! Who knew I could make so many mistakes with such a simple entree?! I am telling you guys, no joke - I am not a very good cook!! Learn from my mistakes, that's my goal in life, especially in the kitchen.

Can you see the warped pan? It looks pretty bad but tasted good!

Good recipe Bad cook

I will admit that cooking does not come that easily to me, baking on the other hand I can rock at, but cooking - not so much. So when we first got married you could imagine my stress and it seemed that there wasn't very many cookbooks and recipes that were easy. By easy I mean not very many ingredients and no fancy ingredients that I would ever have in the house! So over the years I have found some that are easy for me (and I mean like an 8 yr old could make them!) and here is one that I copied from sister in law Karrie who is the best cook! I made it last night and there is a funny story behind our first time ever eating these. A couple Christmas's ago the power at our apt went out for a full week before we were leaving town for the holidays. We were miserable to say the least and starving for a hot shower and a hot homemade dinner. Our first stop for the holidays was at Karrie's house and she made these chicken tacos that were the best things we'd eaten in our entire lives! I probably make them a little different but here is what you'll need:It's not rocket science, anything you think would taste good in a taco. I usually use mexican rice but the spanish was on sale and we ended up liking it better. I also had no lettuce but that would've been good. For the chicken I prefer breast but we used breast strips. Just dump them in the crockpot and pour some taco seasoning on them and let them go for a long, long time so that they are cooked enough to shred easily. That's it. Let's review:

Shredded Chicken Taco's
Tortilla's (I've never bought corn hard shells but next time I will try that)
corn
black beans
spanish rice
shredded seasoned chicken
shredded cheese
lettuce
whatever else you have around that you think would taste good!

There you have it, they make great leftovers too which Mark appreciates for his lunches. I know most of you are veteran chefs (and rolling your eyes at my new found ability to make tacos) but if there are any out there who are slightly challenged with the stove like me I know you'll appreciate this post! I'm going to try something new tonight and if it's good I'll post it too!

WINNERS!

This was SO hard, I am glad that I had two giveaways because it breaks me up inside to not let everyone win, seriously. I totally NEVER win anything so I feel your pain losers! So keep coming back for more and keep signing up for my giveaways and I promise I will keep on doing them until you win something!! But on a super happy note here are the winners:

Prize #1 Hawaii is...

MY MOM ELIZABETH - GOOD JOB!! WAY TO GO!!

Prize #2 Valentine's winner is...

My sister in law Karrie!! YA!!!!

And by the way girls...I blame myself for not realizing sooner that chocolate would be the most popular giveaway yet, so stay tuned my fellow chocoholics another one will be coming soon...

Mark's bday!

We celebrated his bday this weekend in true Mark fashion: watched Chuck in 3D, went out to eat at Olive Garden, went golfing, had some DQ ice cream cake and watched movies. It was fun, and relaxing and he had a decent round of golf considering he hadn't played in a while (you know what that means, he'll be going back for more!) So HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARK!!

I have this habit of taking pics at the beginning of anything fun because I just got all dolled up and I'm excited for wherever we're going and it just feels like a picture should be taken, and it's usually in the car before we leave!

We forgot to bring the camera in the resteraunt but if you look closely you can see the Olive Garden sign in the back!
Watching Chuck, I love that we can record shows and watch them on the weekends with no commercials!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!