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!