Cooking Fool

Today was a holly homemaker kind of day. I made two different kinds of bread. One for loaf bread and one for dinners. And for treats peanut butter granola bars and cranberry, almond, & white chocolate granola bars.
Pictures and recipes to come.

What really going on, take 1

So this is what really goes on behind the scenes for me when we are taking pictures.  I'm sure I'm not the only one. 

  This has turned into my new hobby, mainly for my kiddos.  I would love to take family pictures one day but I know I'm no where near that point yet.  So in my planning ahead brain of mine; I knew that once we had Layla there would be little to no chance of me affording pictures.  So from the little work I did throughout the year I saved and bought my first DSLR camera and Photoshop.  And now that I'm an official stay at home mama I'm soo glad I did.  Now I can take all the pictures I want and do with them what I want. 
  I'm still undecided if I want to keep posting to my photography blog or not.  It's been neglected for the past few months and I don't know if I want to start it again.  Or just make something for here and leave well enough alone.  For now that sounds so much easier, since it is my hobby :)

  Now that I've got that out of my system here are my first "What really goes on, take 1"  

 

*None of these are edited yet.  I haven't gotten that far :)

 *Sisters head in the shot.

*Brother laughing at the mess and craziness of it all.

 *Sisters fingers in the cake.

 *And it was G.O.O.D.....good!

 *So long head band.

 *Sister stole unwanted headband.

 *And the whole party!  Cake & Balloons...who cares about the pictures :)

Happy Birthday Layla

12 Month Stats
31 inches (90-95th%)
24.6 lbs (90th%)
48 cm head (off the charts in the 95th %)

You made it!  One whole year old.  Where oh Where did the time go?  Sometimes you still snuggle and it gives me a tiny glimpse of when you were small.  I really  miss those times, but I love your little-big personality you've got going on now.  You are definitely NOT the little sister.  You keep your brother and sister (and us for that matter) on our toes.

Words you know (or repeat back)
Boom
Thank you
Wow
Yeah
What
Ow
Ew

We are working on peak-a-boo.  Right now you cover your ear and say it.  Or if there is blanket handy you like to cover your head up with that and play that way.

Favorite foods
Cheese
goldfish, saltine, ritz crackers
graham crackers
raisins, dried cherries
blueberries, strawberries
melons
bananas
squash
peas
beans
oatmeal
turkey
ham
hot dogs
anything pasta
pb&j
Probably more that I can't think of right now. 

These are from your cake smash on your birthday :)

And this is from your birthday party Sunday August 12, 2012 .

 
Lots more pictures to come later!

#30 Applesauce Cake and Vanilla Frosting

Dangerously Good / Pretty much gone
Easy to make / Takes a little time

*Without frosting above.  Partially with frosting below :)  This is what happened when my babies got a hold of it before I got a picture of it.

Applesauce Cake

1 box of yellow cake mix
1 2/3 cup of applesauce
1/4 cup sugar
2 tsp of cinnamon
3 eggs

Blend sugar and cinnamon. Grease tube pan. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon sugar, and cinnamon into pan. Beat eggs, cake mix, and applesauce. Pour batter in pan except 1 1/2 cups. Sprinkle with cinnamon, sugar mixture, then add the rest of batter. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 45 minutes.

Or I just did it like this: Mix, spray pan w/ Pam, pour, and bake.  What ever cake pan you use just fill it half way.   Easy right :)

You can have it with or without frosting / icing.  It's really moist and perfect as it.  But for a little extra goodness use the Vanilla Frosting (butter frosting) below.

Vanilla Frosting (really called Butter Frosting from my BH&G Cookbook)

1/3 cup butter
4 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
1/4 cup of milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
Food Coloring (opt)

Mix butter till fluffy and then gradually add 2 cups of powdered sugar, beating well.  Slowly add milk and vanilla.
Slowly add the rest of the powdered sugar.
Add more milk if needed.
Mix in food coloring if wanted.

Wow

This is what happens when the girls play nice for an hour. At least it should only take me 10 minutes to clean.

Mess + quiet = fun for all

Gabrielle 2.5 years old

*Just a few months late.

  I can't believe how much  you know, how fast your learning, and how silly you are.  It makes me happy and sad at the same time.  My first baby girl is growing up on me.  You know your ABC's by sight and sound.  You can count to 10 and 20 with help.  You know most of your colors, and are learning your shapes. 
  You just seem to absorb everything that is around you.  I know most kids do but for being stuck with me everyday you are just amazing me.  You are a very determined little one too!  You will let EVERYONE know when you want something and when you don't.  As with just about everything right now, it's when you want to do something.  We've started time outs and trying to talk things out.  Sometimes it works and sometimes not.  But you are getting the hang of it. 
  You are getting the hang of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  For a while everything was lunch.  And if you are in a mood every meal is still lunch and you will yell at anyone who says different.  You like all of the typical kid foods and say "Eeewww" to the stuff you don't like if we are lucky enough to get you to taste it.  You are now getting better at eating sandwiches and hamburgers with out taking them all apart first.
  Even with your crazy long hair, you've already had about 3-4 hair cuts.  You have a bad habit of chewing  your hair and your nails.
  You are still LOUD and shriek and yell and squeal with laughter.  Layla is your partner in crime.  You two copy everything the other does.  She frustrates you because she isn't quite big enough to do everything you do.  But just be patient it's coming.  Poor Ethan catches the short end of the stick.  You tattle on him already.  His name sounds like Oy'than when you say it.  But he is your big brother and you love him dearly and won't let him get an inch!
  The last few months your new sayings have been "I don't want it", "No", "Wow, that's beautiful", "Go away", "Let go", "Don't touch"....needless to say you are very vocal on what you want.  Your speech is getting more clear.  We still pick words out of what you are saying and can mostly figure out what you mean.   
  But each day you are growing and learning and doing.  I just love you so so much!

*Here are a few snapshots of the past few months.

#29 Ranch Dressing

Dangerously Good / Umm It's gone it was so good / Super Easy 

  I found this one through pinterest and the name doesn't lie.  The name is  The Best Homemade Ranch Recipe.  If you go to the link you will see step by step pictures.

  This was better than I thought it would be and so much better than the bottle kind.  It will be forever a staple in our house.  Although I didn't follow the recipe to the T I did use the same spices and 1/2 cup of each sour cream, buttermilk, and mayo.  

  A tip from another ranch recipe was to check your labels on your sour cream to make sure it contains milk.  I did this at the store and you'd be surprised at how much extra stuff they add when there isn't a need to do so.

  So from the few blogs I've found recipes on it seems to be a pretty standard list of ingredients give or take a few things.  The one below makes a lot of the spice mix so you just add to the liquids when you want.  Just to test it out I scaled down the amounts and we were happy with it.  It's thick enough to use as a dip and you can thin it out with more buttermilk to use as a creamy dressing.  I used it for salad and dip and liked it as it was.

 

 The Best Homemade Ranch Recipe

Ranch is a staple in my house.  In fact it gets it's own spot on the food triangle.  But we are also ranch snobs, which means we spend a lot of money on that white creamy goodness because we want the good stuff.  I have always preferred the homemade ranch to store bought but have bought plenty of bottles in my day.

Last week I came across a BYU Creamery Ranch Dressing recipe from "One Good Thing" by Jillee.  While I have lived in Utah for almost 10 years I have never had BYU's ranch.  But it looked good enough I decided to give it a try.  And I must say this ranch is AMAZING and has quickly became our new favorite.  We even used LITE buttermilk, LITE sour cream and LITE mayo and it was so good.  Didn't taste at all like the lite version in the stores.  So much yummy ranch flavor!

Ingredients:

Black Pepper ¼ C
Parsley Flakes 1 1/2 C
Garlic Salt ½ C
Kosher Salt 2 T
Granulated Garlic ¼ C
Granulated Onion 3/4 C
Dill Weed 2 T

Procedure:
1. Combine all ingredients, store in an airtight container. Makes about 3 ½ cups of dry mix
2. To Make Dressing, whisk together 2 T of mix with 2 Cups each of mayonnaise and buttermilk 1 ½ Cups sour cream, & 1 t Lemon Juice. Refrigerate for 2 hours. Makes 1 ¾ Quarts

We bought all of the spices in the bulk section at WinCo (love that store) and spent about $2.50, THAT'S IT!

So I started by putting all the dry ingredients into a bowl

Happy Birthday My Laya

I'm still working on her 12 month pictures, but these are the first few I finished.  I love my little angel baby.  She is the sweetest spunkiest little thing and she just melts my heart.

Waffle Iron

What can you make in a waffle iron...most anything I'm finding out.  I haven't tried a lot of them yet but apparently you can make brownies, cake, cinnamon rolls, and hash browns. 

I tried the hash browns, and they came out pretty good.  It was quick and easy. 

Jared's thoughts were that it was an easy way to get fat faster!  I say if it's easy do it :)

#28 Buffalo Chicken Soft Tacos

Dangerously Good / Jared LOVED
Easy to make / Takes a little time

  I found this idea on Pinterest...of course (as Ethan would say).  I kind of modified this to what we like and it was a total hit.  Jared wanted seconds the following night so that is really saying something.

1 Chicken breast for every two people eating
Soft Taco Tortillas
Buffalo Sauce
Ranch
Cheese
Tomato, Lettuce, Avocado

  This particular night we were being bad so I sliced the chicken (width wise) into 1/2" size chunks.  I did the traditional fry method; season salt on the chunks, add season salt to a small bowl of flour, dredge the chicken in egg and then in the flour and put in hot olive oil to fry. 

If you want to be good then slice and spice the same way and grill them.  Or grill whole and slice after.

I mixed about 2 tablespoons of Buffalo Sauce into a 1/2 cup of Ranch (It's up to how spicy or ranchy you want it, so taste as you go). 

Warmed the tortillas on the stove, sliced the tomato, lettuce, and avocado. 

Then it was taco making time.  I was able to put  2-3 pieces of chicken on each tortilla drizzled the Buffalo Ranch on the chicken and put the cheese and veggies on and stuck a toothpick in the thing to hold all my goodies in place.


  This was a super good, super easy dinner and you can mix it up how ever your family likes.  Chicken BLT style sounds good too!  Or chicken and honey mustard, or use corn tortillas....endless possibilities!

# 27 Vanilla Scones

Dangerously Good / They never last long around here 

Easy to make / Takes a little time

  I found this recipe on one of my go to websites CDKitchen.  I love this site for many reasons but what brought me to it in the first place was they have a pretty good listing of copy cats from restaurants we like.  This one happens to be a copy cat of Starbucks Mini Vanilla Scones. 

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces (The colder pieces make for a fluffier scone)
1 cup regular full-fat sour cream (I use FF Greek Vanilla Yogurt instead)
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar (I mix a tiny amount of vanilla extract to the water for a vanilla-y glaze)
water, as needed

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Sift together dry ingredients in a medium bowl.

Using any method you prefer, cut the cold butter into the dry ingredients until flour resembles coarse meal, or use the following tip: The "grate" method: grate a block of cold butter against the large holes of a box grater. Toss the butter ribbons with the flour mixture, and then use two knives to cut the flour-coated ribbons into 1/4-inch pieces.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the sour cream, egg yolk and vanilla extract until blended. Add this to the flour-butter mixture and stir with a fork until dough forms a cohesive ball. Use a spatula to get the dry bits fully incorporated. (It may not seem to have enough liquid at first, but the dough will eventually come together.).

Place the sticky dough onto a parchment-lined (or ungreased) baking sheet and pat into a disk about 1-inch in height. Cut the dough into wedges but do not separate. Or scoop dough into a mini scone pan if available. (Yield will vary depending on how big you slice the wedges.).

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown on top.

Prepare glaze while scones are baking.

GLAZE: Place powdered sugar in a medium bowl, and add water one teaspoon at a time, mixing vigorously until smooth and runny.

Use a pastry brush to apply a thin layer of glaze over the hot scones. Brushing rather than drizzling gives a smoother appearance and requires less glaze.

Serve immediately. Store cooled scones in an airtight container.

Update...Sisters Forever!

  After testing the nap thing out and succeeding, I moved Layla's crib in there last Thursday.  I am SUPER.D.DUPER excited to say....they are fully adjusted and loving it.  They wake up smiling in the morning and although Gabrielle doesn't like the nap thing, she is a lot happier now that I've got her back onto a nap schedule.  Not to mention I get about 2 hours to myself in the afternoon.

Can I get a Whoot-Whoot!!

Sisters forever

Now it's official. After napping for three days in the same room. Tonight will be the first night of them sleeping at night and sharing a room forever.

Wish us luck!