that boy can cook

I am a sucker for pretty much any and everything (with the exclusion of wasabi) spicy. I absolutely love love love the taste and feel of my lips burning! Okay, well it's more like a love-hate relationship. You know those things that are so spicy they make your nose run but are just too good to stop eating? Yep, that's the way I like it.

Lucky for me, the mister made some yummolicious chicken wings last night! I don't know what he seasoned them with, but I do know that he cooked them in Red's Buffalo Hot sauce. And they were so good. And I would eat them every day if I didn't care about my pants buttoning or developing a case of cottage cheese legs.

Good job babe. Good job chicken. Good job Red's. Love you all.

you probably never knew

I was browsing the net and stumbled upon this interesting article. The title intrigued me and if you're at all interested in random facts that you probably never knew, you just might like this one!

15 Random Facts

If you have 3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar.

In the average lifetime, a person will walk the equivalent of 5 times around the equator.

DAMN, that was a long run!

Odontophobia is the fear of teeth.

They aren't that scary, are they?

According to suicide statistics, Monday is the favored day for self-destruction.

The first known contraceptive was crocodile dung, used my Egyptians in 2000 B.C.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

The King of Hearts is the only king without a mustache.

Elephants are the only mammals that can't jump.

Maybe not, but I can still kick your ass.

 The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet.

A lion's roar can be heard from 5 miles away.

Did you hear that?

 You burn more calories sleeping than you do watching TV.

The word "nerd" was first coined by Dr. Seuss in "If I Ran The Zoo".

Thanks a lot, Dr. Now look what I've gotta grow up as.

Children grow faster in the Spring time.

The United States has never lost a war in which mules were used.

Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down- hence the term "to get fired".

Thanks Manson... you've made me a rich(er) man.

Thanks to the good ol

' www, anything can be found out!

chocolate chip blondies

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I had some baking to do last night. If you can remember, I participated in a virtual bake sale, in hopes to raise money for the Susan G. Komen foundation for breast cancer. I ended up making a batch of my healthified oatmeal cookies, and will ship them off to the highest bidder!

Because the cookies wouldn't be sticking around for me to eat, I was inspired to continue on my baking for the evening and made a delicious pan of chocolate chip blondies. I've never eaten a blondie, let alone baked them... so this was very experimental to me! Fortunately, they turned out quite fantastic!

Being that I have never had blondies before, I wasn't sure what they were supposed to taste like. To me, they resembled more of a chocolate chip cookie bar. Maybe that's what they are supposed to be like? Either way, they were great!

Chocolate Chip Blondies:
1/2 c. melted butter
1 c. tightly packed brown sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/8 tsp. baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 c. all purpose flour
1/4 c. chocolate chips
1/4 c. Reeses peanut butter chips

Whisk together melted butter and sugar. Add egg and vanilla, and whisk until combined. Mix in the rest of the ingredients and whisk thoroughly. Bake for 25 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool and enjoy.

Please note, these are highly addictive. I immediately ate two (yes, I burned my tongue) and wanted even more. Luckily, I was able to pawn them off onto my parents so I am blondie-free and can still feel good about that 2.5 mile run this morning.

PS- As always, DON'T forget to lick the whisk!

a great weekend

This weekend was perfect. Why? Because the entire thing was spent in the sun, in the pool, playing water volleyball. I'd never played before, but I wont fail to mention that I am quite the ace. Okay, so maybe that should be Raymond's title.. but I'm not half bad myself!

The rest of the weekend looked a little something like:

Complete with bbq and finally watching the movie True Grit (great movie), I'd say this weekend was one of the best in quite some time! Off to finish the work day and then I've got lots of errands to run and cookies to bake for the bidding winner of the Boobie Bake Sale!

sour cream enchiladas

As of late, I have really been trying my hand at cooking... and I'm not so bad at it! Not only does it save us money because Raymond can take leftovers for lunch, but it has started to become something I really enjoy doing.

Ever since I was little, I liked to cook. My mother tells me about the times she'd be in another room, hear me talking to somebody, and come to find out that I was in the kitchen "hosting my cooking show". While back then I was probably giving tutorials on how to spread the peanut butter and jelly on the bread, I can definitely say that my skills have majorly matured and improved! Take last night for example... I made these bomb dot com Sour Cream Enchiladas.

I was doing my usual blog creeping and found the recipe for these here. Of course, my version is slightly modified, to make it much simpler and quicker!

Around our place, time is limited. While I enjoy cooking, I don't have the time to clean, cut, skin, and boil an entire chicken BEFORE I even get started on the actual meal itself. So, to make it easy on myself, I bought a pre-cooked chicken from HEB, a box of chicken broth, I didn't fry the tortillas (saved our bodies from that much more oil), and pre-diced chilies. I'd say I saved myself a good 30 minutes, just the way I like it!

PS- Seeing that I could eat an entire block of cheese for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I'm trying very hard to skim down on my cheese intake, so I definitely didn't use as much as the recipe called for.

Sour Cream Enchiladas
2-½ cups Cooked, Shredded Chicken
2 cups Chicken Broth
1 Tablespoons Canola Oil
10 whole Corn Tortillas
3 whole 4 Oz Cans Whole Green Chilies, Diced
1 teaspoon Paprika
½ cups Heavy Cream
2 Tablespoons Butter
2 Tablespoons Flour
1 cup Sour Cream
2-½ cups Monterey Jack Cheese, Grated
Salt And Pepper, to taste

Heat 1 tablespoon canola oil in skillet over medium heat. Add chicken, half of the green chilies, and 1/2 teaspoon paprika. Stir together. Add 1/2 cup chicken broth and stir. Add cream and stir, allowing mixture to bubble and get hot. Turn off heat and set aside.

In a separate large skillet, melt butter and sprinkle in flour. Whisk together and cook over medium heat for one minute. Pour in 1 1/2 cups chicken broth. Whisk together and cook for another minute or two. Stir in the other half of the chilies. Reduce heat, then stir in sour cream. Add 1 1/2 cups grated cheese and stir to melt. Add 1/2 teaspoon paprika. Check seasoning and add salt and pepper as needed.

To assemble, spoon chicken mixture on top of tortillas, one by one. Top with plenty of cheese and roll up. Place seam side down in a 9 x 13 casserole dish.

Pour sour cream sauce all over the top of the tortillas. Top with extra cheese if you’d like, then bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

These were absolutely, hands down, the best thing I've ever made. Yes, I am a sucker for anything with sour cream, but Raymond is not a fan the stuff and he loved them. So much so, that he is taking the rest of the dish for lunch and I'm stuck with nothin'! I'm extremely jealous, so he's lucky that I love him!

mexican wedding cookies

It's already hump day again? Sheesh... where are these weeks going?? Not that I am complaining or anything...

My week really hasn't been very eventful, so I don't have much for you guys. Luckily, last night I was in the mood to bake so I do have a recipe to share with you!

While we were hangin' out on the ranch over Memorial Day weekend, I tried (for the first time) wedding cookies. I'd never had them before, and upon eating them, I was warned by Raymond and his entire family that these are the greatest cookies ever. Well, they were right. Amazing is just what they were.

I had totally forgot about those yummy devils until last night, while I was recipe-browsing on blogs. I was at one of my go-to sources for sweet treat recipes, Sweet Tooth Sweet Life, and it just so happened that Courtney had a "Mexican Wedding Cookie" recipe. Looks like we've got a winner! I immediately checked to see that I had all ingredients necessary (sure did) and got to baking!

You can view Courtney's recipe here. Mine was slightly modified.

Mexican Wedding Cookies
1 cup salted butter, softened
1/2 cup confectioner's sugar (extra for coating)
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 3/4 cup all-purpose flour (extra for dusting hands)
1 cup finely chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment (wax) paper.

Using an electric mixer, mix butter and sugar at a low speed until smooth, stopping to scrape sides of bowl. Mix in the vanilla. Continuing at a low speed, gradually add the flour until thoroughly mixed. Stir in the walnuts with a spatula.

With floured hands, shape glob of dough into circle or disk form.Continue to dust hands with flour as shaping more cookies. Place cookies onto parchment paper and cook for 40 minutes.

When cool enough to handle, but still warm, roll in additional confectioner's sugar.

ENJOY and don't forget to lick the beater!

These cookies were very simple to make! The prep was easy peasy and as long as I kept flour on my hands, they were so simple to shape into discs. While the cookies melted in your mouth and were really yummy, there was still something that wasn't the same as the ones we ate at the ranch. I'm not sure if it was the substitution of salted butter for unsalted, the walnuts for pecans, or some little secret those amazing Hispanic ladies have. I can't quite pin it, but I'm hoping once I get my Mexican man to try them, he can help me out! 

When I sent Raymond a text letting him know I made these, his exact words were:

"I gotta try one. If it's not the same, I gotta kill you. K?"

No pressure. Right?

buy my cookies

Hello and happy Monday guys! Can you believe the weekend has already flown by? I can't... and I miss it already!

The boy and I spent Saturday with a couple friends by their pool. Seriously, I have never in my life seen a pool so crowded before. It looked like Cancun on Spring Break!

Okay, so maybe it wasn't that packed... but there were a good 100 people there. We spent the day basking in the sun, playing pool pong, and grilling yummy food. 10 pm finally rolled around and after 7 hours of day drinking, we all thought it'd be a good idea to pack up and head upstairs to the apartment where we watched the UFC fights and order some pizza.

Now, usually after such long periods of being in the sun, any kind of food sounds amazing and ends up being "the best thing I've ever eaten", but this time it was for real. Along side our pizza, we ordered a Chocolate Chip dessert pizza... and well... it. was. amazing. I kid you not, if you've never tried it before, and you have a Double Dave's in your area, you need to put this on your bucket list. It's that serious.

The rest of the weekend was spent in lazy recoup. mode and I thoroughly enjoyed each last minute of it.

Although today is Monday, which never excites me, I am thrilled to tell you guys that Cait's Boobie Bake Sale kicked off this morning!

This summer, Cait from Beyond Bananas and 4 of our closest friends will be walking 60 miles in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day for a Cure.  Her team has a fundraising goal of $11,500 and have currently raised $7,226.  Cait has created this bake sale to help fight back against breast cancer.  All proceeds will benefit the Susan G. Komen Foundation - funding community support programs and ongoing breast cancer research!

How the sale will work:

1. Choose an item that you would like.
2. Send an email to BeyondBananas@ymail.com
3. Put the ITEM and the BID amount in the SUBJECT LINE ($15 min)
4. Bid on as many items as you would like... but please make a SEPARATE EMAIL for each.

If you are the high bidder at the end of the sale - you will be contacted VIA email with your next set of instructions (i.e. where to make the donation.. remember 24 hour time limit.. or else it goes to the next person)

I am participating in the sale and am contribution my healthified oatmeal cookies! Remember these babies?

Please make sure to head over to Cait's blog where you can see and bid on all of the amazing goodies available! Let's kick breast cancer's ass!

living up to my name

TGIF! I can't wait for a good night's sleep and a relaxing weekend!

Since I've returned from our mini-vaca last weekend, I have been in a funk, and have not been able to snap out of it. I've noticed that although I'm getting a decent amount of sleep, I'm extra tired. Also, I haven't worked out all week (fail) and have been eating like an 8 year old boy (fail again).

What? Haven't you ever seen real muscles before?

While I've been eating my usual veggies, fruits, and grains, for some reason I thought adding Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies (I could eat my body weight in these things), Honey Buns, and Donut Sticks to my daily meal plan was a good idea. 

You're makin' me fat Lil' Deb!

My prayers have been answered!

Don't forget the Reeses PB M&Ms, the chocolate brownies with cream cheese frosting, and that bag of goldfish that left crumbs all over my sheets. God, I'm attractive.

Who doesn't want a bed made of burger?

Yeah I look this sexy when I eat in bed. You don't?

Yeah... when you try to put on a pair of shorts that fit just fine last week but can barely zip this week... something's not right. Either I gained 14 pounds (yikes!) or shrunk my shorts. I'm gonna go with the latter of the two. ;-)

That's not ok.

With that being said, I had a small epiphany yesterday. I was telling myself that it's okay that I ate a bunch of crap because tomorrow's a new day and I can just fix it then. Well, then I realized that I've been telling myself that all week and nothing's changed. Then I pictured myself about 20 pounds heavier and almost fell into the dumpster I was throwing trash into.

So, as of today I'm back to my normal eating habits and feel better already. There have a been quite a few times in the past year that I have thought about going Paleo, or at least mostly Paleo. With my eating-in-bed days behind me, I think it'd be a good time to attempt this. Now, I say this is a good idea... but we all know how well me and diets mesh together.

What? I don't have a problem. I'm not a closet eater. I like the way I am.

I guess it's time to put away the Cheetos and start living up to my name "Fat Girl at HEART" not "Fat Girl For Real". Whatever I decide to do, as long as I don't look and feel like a cow/pig/shamoo, I'm cool with it.

I think it looks good!

  
What diets/lifestyles work best for you?
Are you good about sticking to your diet or do you steer off the path a lot?

abc's of food

Happy Hump Day! I sure am glad the weekend is only 2 1/2 days away... because lately I'm living for the weekends. Meh.

As I browsing through the blogs I typically read, I saw this super cute survey on Chelsey's blog, and figured I'd give it go. (Yes, also because I don't have anything prepared to talk about today... oops!)

ABC'S OF FOOD

A is for Apple: What's your favorite variety?
I grew up eating Granny Smith apples and always believed they were my favorite. Eventually I tried a Pink Lady and loved that it was less sour than the GS. Then I tried a Gala and fell in love. They are my absolute favie fave!

B is for Bread: Regardless of nutrition, what is your favorite type?
This is one of the most difficult questions ever! I am a bread lover and will eat any kind put in front of me. I don't know how I didn't eat any for an entire week! If I had to choose, I'd say any brand Texas Garlic Toast. SO. DAMN. GOOD.

C is for Cereal: What is your favorite kind currently? (just one!)
I am currently on a cereal combo kick, but if I had to choose, it'd be Cinnamon Burst Cheerios.


D is for Donuts: You might not currently eat them, but what kind do you fancy?
Round Rock Glazed fo sho. Hands down, best donut ever, especially when warm. If you ever plan on visiting Austin, Texas, make SURE you plan a visit to RRD!

E is for Eggs: How would you like yours prepared?
I'm not a huge egg person, unless they're deviled, but if we're talking breakfast, then I prefer sunny side up.


F is for Fat Free: What is your favorite fat free product?
To be honest, I don't purchase anything that is fat free, so I guess it's fruits and veggies!

G is for Groceries: Where do you purchase yours?
For the majority of the time, I buy from HEB. Every now and then I'll stop by Wal-Mart or Sprouts.

H is for Hot Beverages: What is your favorite hot drink?
I don't typically drink hot beverages unless it's winter, and if so, I'll have the occasional coffee or hot chocolate.

I is for Ice Cream: Pick a favorite flavor and add a fun topping.
Ben & Jerry's Peanut Butter Cup. Doesn't even need a topping because it's so good.

J is for Jams or Jellies: Do you eat them? If so, what kind and flavor?
I love jelly! My favorite and what I grew up on is Smucker's Red Plum Jam.

K is for Kashi: Name your favorite Kashi product.
7 Grain Crackers. So yummo.

L is for Lunch: What was yours today?
A large salad with caesar dressing and a Thomas' whole wheat bagel thin topped with almond butter and apple slices.

M is for Microwave: What is your favorite microwaveable meal/snack?
Anything Amy's Brand.

N is for Nutrients: Do you like carbs, fats, or proteins best?
Carbs for sure. Fats are a close second.

O is for Oil: What kind do you like to use?
Olive or Coconut. Pure Soy Bean Oil is good too!

P is for Protein: How do you get yours?
Chicken and fish. I eat a lot of nut butters, too.

Q is for Quaker: How do you like your oats?
Warm, and sweet! A touch of brown sugar or cinnamon! YUM!

R is for Roasting: What is your favorite thing to roast?
Chicken.

S is for Sandwich: What is your favorite kind?
Definitely turkey and avocado!

T is for Travel: How do you handle eating while traveling?
I usually don't freak out about it. I eat what's available. Besides, I don't travel much so it's not big on my list. Sad.

U is for Unique: What is your weirdest food combo?
I'd have to say cheddar cheese and M&Ms. What? Have you ever tried it? Well then shush!

V is for Vitamins: What kind do you take?
I don't always take them, but when I do, I just take a multi-vitamin.

W is for Wasabi: Yay or nay?
Love spicy foods, can't stand the flavor of it though.

X is for X RAY: If we x rayed your belly right now, what would we see?
A big chocolate brownie covered in cream cheese frosting because Mother Nature turns me into a bottomless pit.

Y is for Youth: What food reminds you of your childhood?
Tyson chicken nuggets, vanilla cake with strawberry frosting, Totino's pizza, Gogurt, Fried Okra, Creamed Eggs with sausage and biscuits. Wow, no wonder I was so chunky!

Z is for Zucchini: How do you prepare it?
If I ate like a cow all the time, I'd choose to fry it and dip it in ranch dressing. But instead, I like to cook it into my stuffed spaghetti squash!