Pinspired Food {part 3}

This is the one post where I will rave about every recipe.  Yummmmmy!


Check out part 1 and part 2 for some other yummy (and not-so-yummy) ideas.


Oreo Cheesecake Cookies

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These cookies were super delish. My one suggestion would be to make sure to do ample scoops and be sure not to smoosh them down.  A lot of mine were too crispy and eve though I usually like my cookies that way, it didn't work as well for these since they are supposed to be cheesecakey.  I added some of the cream cheese frosting from the next recipe to some of the cookies and that was a GOOD idea!

Cookies & Cream Cupcakes

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YUM-O.  These cupcakes were every bit as scrumptious as the picture leads you to believe.  Between the cookie at the bottom and the cream cheese frosting, these were pretty much to-die-for.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

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These cupcakes were also to-die-for.  I pinned the recipe from a girl who adapted the original and that is the picture you see above since Annie's Eats does not allow people to save images.  Anywho, it was my first time putting a filling in a cupcake and it won't be my last!  The filling was sooooooo good!  Then the crumbles on top...yeah, I need to make these again. Stat.

Pinspired Food {part 2}

It's part 2 of of my Pinspired food adventures! If you missed part one, you can check it out here.

Let me just take a minute to give you a little insight into me and my relationship with cooking and baking.  I have a little plaque in my kitchen that a friend gave me that says, "If God wanted me to cook, why did He invent restaurants?" and that pretty much sums it up.  It is not that I don't love home-cooked food, I really really do (who doesn't??).  It's just that I don't love the act of cooking.  My mom was not much of a cook, either.  I mean, she cooked very well...when she cooked.  She was a work-outside-of-the-home mama so her time in the kitchen was limited and she was similar to me in that she didn't love the act of cooking. I can probably count on both of my hands the number of different dishes my mom made throughout my childhood and I can count on just one of my hands the number of times my mom baked something.  Literally.  Now baking, on the other hand, is something that I do enjoy. The problem is that I have a tendency to only make things that really appeal to me and then I want to eat it all.  Maybe that plays into why I had to shed almost 30 lbs last year? Probably.

Here's the thing.  I don't want to be that mom.  The mom who is too busy to cook.  The kind of mom that doesn't ever cook for her family because it doesn't suit her.  I want to be the mom who's kids die for her food.  So I really need to to work on this, because Josie is growing like a weed and I have more kiddos on the brain.  I am hoping that this latest obsession with recipes found on Pinterest, really does inspire me to work on this.

Without further ado...

Tex Mex Queso Pasta

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This one was really disappointing for me!  I stayed true to the recipe, even keeping in the jalapenos, but I think where I went wrong was using whole grain noodles.  We always buy whole grain pasta around here but we find that some are better than others and when I made this recipe I used a new brand.  I *think* it was Mueller's new whole grain pasta line, but don't hold me to it - I didn't have blogging on the mind when I made it so I didn't keep tabs.  But the noodles were just a little too whole-grainy if you know what I mean.  I feel like the pasta should just be a vehicle for all the yumminess you put on it but in this pasta a huge part of what I was tasting was the noodles.  Anyway, the hubs liked it but was not in love with it. He did say that it was better as leftovers.  I love when that happens and it doesn't happen enough, in my opinion.

Roasted Chick Peas

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To be blunt, these were disgusting.  The hubs didn't even eat any after the initial bite I gave him and that is unprecedented for him because he hates to not give the 'ole college try to anything I make as to make sure he doesn't hurt my feelings. They look so delish in the pic, right? I used a garlic salt mix for the "spice blend mix" that the recipe calls for and it was not the right choice.  But honestly, I really don't know if any spice mix would taste good.  They were kind of mushy and I guess I was hoping for more of a crunchy, savory snack (like the author described...) but these completely fell flat.

On a side note...I am learning that I am not so good at this food description stuff because I am having a really hard time explaining why I didn't like stuff...

Reese's Cheesecake Brownies

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O. M. G. These brownies are just seriously sinful.  And soooo good.  This is the kind of dessert that you can only handle small portions of because it is almost too much.  Next time around the only thing I think I would change is the Reese's Pieces in the cheesecake mixture - was just unnecessary. You already have peanut butter in the frosting and Reese's cups on top and that is good enough for me. Also, either I am having an oven temperature issue (which is entirely possible) or the 40 minutes was not long enough for this dish to fully bake.  The brownie layer was pretty much almost-baked batter in the middle.  I was actually okay with that but I planned on taking these brownies with me somewhere and I could only take from the outer edge because I couldn't cut brownies out of the middle without just coming out with a big pile of sweetness.  But overall, I totally suggest making these for a party - you will be getting oohs and ahhs all over the place!

Can you believe I have made enough stuff found on Pinterest over the last month or so to fill two more posts??

Pinspired Food {part 1}

What's that you say?  My behind is larger this month than last month? Thanks for noticing and let's go ahead and thank Pinterest for that.  Now I am broke from all the extra grocery trips and you think I look fat.  Great.  

Some of these recipes were well worth it, though. Welcome to part 1 of what is going to be a 4 part series detailing my adventures in recreating recipes I have discovered on Pinterest.

Double Chocolate Loaf with Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

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This was soooooooo good!  I used Ghirardelli cocoa, which I think helped make it so delish. But the real beauty of this is the frosting.  I may or may not have been taking swipes of it from the container at every opportunity. Peanut butter, cream cheese and confectionary sugar is a combo directly from heaven. I love when people make a recipe and then give ideas for what they would change so I am going to do that with these posts, however, there is NOTHING I would change about this one!  Follow the recipe and you will be in love.

Want to read a funny story, though?  A raccoon was the recipient of most of it's calories. We took the loaf camping and on the 2nd morning we began a half-hearted searching for it.  Then the desire for this wonderful loaf of awesomeness took a turn for the desperate and we amped up the search (I mean, how many places could it be on a campsite??).  After discovering that this thing was nowhere to be found (and many silent accusations of who might have been the one to get up in the middle of the night and mow the whole thing and was sitting there acting like they had no idea where it was) the hubs discovered an empty, ripped up plastic bag maybe 50 feet from our campsite with only a sad few remaining crumbs of chocolate loaf.  I could seriously punch that raccoon.  We had only eaten less than half of it and IT WAS IN A SEALED PLASTIC BIN.  Wtf? Not cool.

Chocolate Chip Sour Cream Muffins

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These were pretty good.  Nothing super special but they were moist and yummy.  I used a combo of milk chocolate chips and peanut butter chips instead but that was all I did differently (and I would suggest it, too). 


But the weekend that I made these must have not been my weekend. I also took these camping and we discovered that some of them had this weird slight soapy taste.  I have no idea what I did, but somewhere along the way I got a little bit of soap in there.  Thankfully it did not ruin ALL of them.  


By the way, if you do not own silicone baking cups, you should.  They are so much better than paper cups. They practically fall off the muffin so no pulling off paper cups and trying to not have the crumbs fall everywhere and bonus - no garbage!


Pizza Puffs

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These bad boys are one of the more disappointing things I have made.  They were just alright.  Not bad at all, just alright - and I guess I was expecting them to be utterly delicious and to-die-for and so I was sad when they were not.  I am not much of a cook so I really have no idea what you could do to make them better but let me know if you do!

Stay tuned for part 2 next week!

Pinspired?

Remember this post?  Well, just want to let you know that I am still completely enamored with Pinterest.  In the last month or so I have pinned 241 things!  I have been in love with Google Reader for a long time now - maybe 2 years - and not too long ago I discovered the ability to "star" posts.  That is probably completely old news to anyone who uses GR, but I was way excited about it because up until then I would just keep good posts unread until I printed them out or did whatever it was that I wanted to do from them.  So for someone like me who is OCD and did not enjoying having unread items in her feed when they were in fact very read, this was not cool.  Well, Pinterest is essentially the same thing as starring, except the whole world is opened up to you.  I think the site should actually be called Pinspire because it inspires me every.single.day. I cannot get over how many wonderfully creative people are in the world.  It just seriously makes my heart so happy.


I thought it would be fun to do a little recap of all the pins that I have actually accomplished, so here goes.  Oh.  Admittedly I am a huge lame-o because I haven't taken pictures of hardly any of the things I have done, so all you get are the pics from Pinterest.  So sorry.

Under the sink organization.  I bought two metal mesh ones from Ikea for $6.99 and it fit all of our plastic wrap, foil and plastic bags.  It is such a small thing but a really great organizational improvement for us!  I HATED sorting through all those boxes just laying in the cabinet.

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I lied. I do have one picture example but it is actually something that I posted in my last blog.  I saw this picture on Pinterest, but for some reason I did not repin it so I am very sorry but I cannot give the originator credit:

As soon as I saw it, I had to do it for my Goddaughter and also for my Josie.  I whipped these up on Picnik in just a few minutes.

(Did I ever share these photo shoots with you?  I was pretty proud of both of them. And did I share how I made Josie's tutu??  SUPER easy.)

Adorable jacket pattern for a baby girl.  I am not much of a sewer (it really weirds me out that that is the right word, btw) so I commissioned one of my best pal's best pal to make it for me!  I bought the pattern, now I just need to buy the fabric and send it to her.

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Just realized that I lied again.  I have another picture!  Check out this sweet idea for a baby boy photo:

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It was my smart hubby's idea to use felt instead of construction paper, in order to eliminate any potential glare.  Here are some of the pics we got last weekend when I took my ridiculously ADORABLE nephew's 6-month pics:

Unfortunately, I didn't get as many good ones from this as I had hoped.  #1 The tape was not sticking well to the felt or the binky - I wish I would have given that a little more thought and tested it out beforehand and #2 The hubs made them for me and didn't really take into account the size of the baby's face so they were a little large and his nose was covered too much in most of the pics. He also cut out a fu-man-chu, but due to the problems I just listed, it just didn't work.  Case in point:

Fortunately, they plan on having a Duggar-sized fam so I am sure we will have another little to give it a go on.

As it turns out, this post is getting pretty long and I haven't even covered half of it!  I will be back to finish up later - hope you enjoyed!

Sooo...

So I was blogging all the time for a little while there.  And then suddenly I wasn't.  Did anyone notice?

Summer took a hold of me, I stopped taking so many pictures and I went this whole crazy anxiety-ridden new job thing.  I start my new job on Wednesday and I am starting to feel like myself again.  But I am still really enjoying summer and not making any promises to this computer...

Now I just want to take a minute and talk about Pinterest.  Holy CRAP.  The first time I went on I was like, yeah, this is cool but whatever, it's not that great.  And then, out of nowhere (having four days off in a row and staying up for many, many hours after the babe has went down, maybe?), I logged on and I got it.  I got what all the fuss is about.  This site is mind-blowing.  It inspires me soooooo much.  Unfortunately, all it inspired me to do last night and tonight was to stare at this computer screen with my mouth gaped open, periodically pushing up my jaw back up as to stop the drool from falling.  Hmmm...hopefully the inspiration is more fruitful from now on.  

Anyway, here are some of my fave pins from the past few nights.  Oh yeah, and let me know if you need an invite!

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