Pork Chops

so, I bought these pork chops on sale at cub last weekend and I finally decided to do something with them. :) I found a weight watchers reciepe called spice-rubbed pork chops.

1 1/2 tbsp chili powder

1 tbsp unpacked brown sugar

2 tsp cumin

1 tsp garlic powder

2 tbsp worcestershire sauce

mix together into a paste. Rub down the chops on both sides and put on a greased broiler pan and cook in broiler for 4 minutes on sides.

They were really yummy! and soo quick and easy!!!

Feeling icky

the cold bug finally caught up with me :( So I haven't really been in the mood for trying new stuff. We had pizza on friday, steak at kirsten's on saturday, ham & beans on sunday and mexican rice last night.

I did get some pork chops on sale this weekend at cub thought, so look for some pork chop reciepes in the near future. I saw some interesting recipes using the crock pot. I might try hauling that thing out again, if chris lets me.. ;) he's not a fan of leaving something cooking all day with no one home. I keep telling him that women have been doing it for decades... ;) I think maybe I'll just break down and do it. start it in the morning after he leaves and he won't even know about it till he gets home for the day.. ;)

later
~Ky

no recipes

hey. so tonights dinner was pretty much made up. of course, I'm a dummy and forgot to take pics, but I made pizza cresent roll ups and baked fries. for the pizza roll ups I used cresent rolls, with pizza sauce, pepperoni and mozz cheese. and the baked fries, I cut up some potato wedges and coated them with salt, pepper, seasoned salt and soul seasonings. I have to say it was a pretty darn good meal. :)

not sure how many w/w points it was. still have to figure that out, but I'm not too worried. I had 12 points to use for dinner and all of my weekly "extra" points left.. :)

I think we might be getting pizza tommorow night. we got a coupon in the mail from Happy Joe's.

later
~Ky

yikes!

bad me... I've been slacking.. :(

ok, lets see if I can get caught up. First things first is I started weight watchers on monday. I signed up for their free week trial and am getting all the info and recipes I can. also bessy is going to send me some info and an extra points calculator, so that I can continue, but not have to pay the montly fee, which I really can't afford right now.

so lets see,

Monday we had ham & beans. as always it was spectacular. :) On Tuesday we had garlic & parm cheese breaded chicken with canned new potato's and green beans. very healthy balanced meal. :) the chicken was FAB! :) last night we had baked potato soup. (a w/w recipe) it was ok, but not something I want to try again for a while...

so that's the catch up. I'll try and remember to do better from now on.. :)

later
~Ky

one of my old favorites

tonight we had one of my old favorites. :) Sloppy Joe supreme! it's so simple, but soo yummy!! it's another one of my original bettycrocker bisquick meals.

yesterday I wanted to finish the book I was reading so we just had left over burrito's. Oh and I made a coffee cake tonight to bring over to kirsten's this weekend. I'm interested to see how it turns out! I used a box cake mix, and 2 box's of pudding. I'll let you know how it turns out. :)

Sloppy Joe Supreme

more mexican

I've figured out since I've been cooking that I really like taco seasoning. :) I use it constantly! in way more ways than I ever thought you could! :) So tonight I didn't have any meat thawed so I thought I'd make Mexican rice. we had to go to walmart, so while we were there we grabbed some "fajita beef" and some burrito shells and we had burritos. As usual, yummy!! :):)

chris's request

I asked chris if he wanted something specific for dinner this week and he requested "impossibly easy taco pie" it's an "old favorite" ;) by old I mean I first made it back in september when I was just starting to cook. It's a super yummy bisquick meal.

yummy dinner!

Dinner tonight was great! Chris took one bite and gave me a thumbs up and wanted to take the left overs to work tommorow! :) It was Bacon Cheeseburger rice.

2 new recipes today

last night we went to golden corral with kirsten, tom, abby and tom's dad. it was so crazy busy, but yummy. :) today I went crusing around allrecipes.com and found a couple interesting new recipes to try. The first was a "butterless, milkless and eggless cake" that was popular during the depression. It was pretty good. It had nutmeg, cinnamon and alittle bit of allspice in it and I put cinnamon sugar on top when it came out of the oven.

and the 2nd recipe I tried today was corn dog muffins. They were good! I'd definitely make them again! I wanted to try them to see how they'd come out because I thought it would be something kirsten & tom could make for abby, cuz she loves corn dogs, but I think these would be alittle cheaper than buying a box of frozen ones. plus you actually know what ingredients your getting.

interesting

tonights dinner was pretty good. I had ground turkey thawed, but no milk and little cheese, so I did a search on allrecipes.com and came up with something called ground beef curly noodles. basically it was a pound of ground beef, ramen noodles w/seasoning, diced tomatoes, & corn, simmered together. I put some onion & garlic powder in with the ground turkey while I was browning it, used 2 packages of chicken flavored ramen and about a cup of frozen corn & some frozen pea's cuz I didn't have any canned, and the diced tomatoes. it wasn't spectacular, but definitely something I would try again.

Meatballs again!

hey, so this weekend's food wasn't anything special, so I skipped the posts. but tonight's dinner was pretty yummy. :) I had made pasta last night and we had some left overs so I made meatballs to eat with the left overs. I changed it up a bit this time. I ran out of parsley so I ended up using half parsley and half italian seasonings, and I added probably about 1/2 a cup of bread crumbs. They were pretty yummy! :) alittle dry, but nothing some tomatoe sauce could'nt help.. :)

until tommorow..

lumpy pizza

I tried the lumpy pizza again tonight. I changed it up a bit though. I tore up the biscuits in small pieces and cooked them in a 9x13 pan on 370 for about 25 minutes or so. the biscuits were definitely done, maybe a little over done, and alittle dry because it was more spread out, but chris enjoyed it alot more, and I have to say, not worrying about eating raw dough was nice.. ;) I also made a brownie torte tonight for melissa's b-day. triple chocolate brownies, cut in half with a layer of icing in the middle and the top. should be YUMMY!! (I hope..)

~Later~

Ham & Beans

we had ham & beans again tonight. :) I just LOVE that!!! I found some ham chunks at sullivan's tonight, although I actually used the tiny diced ham. it wasn't bad. chris said he actually preferred the smaller pieces of ham. I didn't take a picture tonight since I already have a picture of the ham & beans.. :) OH but guess what! I posted my picture on allrecipes.com for the ham & beans and they actually used MY picture as the main picture for the recipe! now everybody who see's or prints that recipe is going to see MY picture!! how cool is that! :)

ok, well that's about all for tonight. :)
~Later~

oops

I missed yesterday's post. :( and I forgot to take pictures last night and tonight, but I do have left overs I'll try to remember to take pictures of. :) Last night we had impossibly easy Italian sausage pie. It's a betty crocker.com bisquick meal. Pretty yummy. very easy. :) and tonight we had lumpy pizza. It's another betty crocker recipe. It's sooo easy! flaky biscuits, sliced into pieces tossed with pizza sauce and cheese, topped with pepperoni and more cheese. Just have to be careful about the cooking time. I need to play around with that a bit because by the time the cheese is melted, and almost browning the middle of the dish is still gooey dough. I might try different things with the biscuits. maybe making little biscuit pizza's instead. we'll see.. :) I got some more great northern beans tonight to make ham & beans again, but walmart didn't have any of those ham chunks. so far the only place I've been able to find them is at cub.

well, that's all for tonight. ~Later~ Ky

The party

Ok, so that was a FREAKING AWESOME party!! OMG, we had soo much fun!! I'm just thrilled to death that my very first party was a success! :):) It ended up being me, Kirsten, Autumn, Amy, Sarah, Amanda and Mary. the food was great, the conversation hilarious and just the girly time was fantastic! :) I'll definitely have another one! maybe in the late spring or early summer. and the next time we'll have more of a theme. I would definitely recommend everybody have a recipe swap party!! or at least a girls night! :) Until tomorrow...

~Ky

getting ready for the party

I just had eggs tonight. I had a bunch of eggs that were going to go bad soon, and I didn't want to put alot of effort into dinner tonight cuz I had to clean up for the party tommorow. I'm soo excited!! I'll let you know how it goes. Kirsten's gonna sleep over tommorow night, so I probably won't post tommorow, but I'll give you an update on sunday. :)

~Later~

Yummy Chicken!

tonights dinner was YUMMY! Salsa chicken & Mexican rice! so I coated the chicken in taco seasoning, poured some salsa over top and cooked for 25 minutes. threw some cheese on top when it was done, let it melt. the mexican rice was just brown rice, tomato sauce & the rest of the taco seasoning. here's the recipe for the Salsa chicken

Chris thought the the rice should maybe not have been tomatoe based, thought there was alittle too much tomatoe. I thought it was PERFECT & Yummy!! :):)

left overs

tonight's been kinda a blah night. we just had left over spaghetti..



but the good news is I finally finished the blanket I was working on!

I'm getting excited for my recipe swap party on saturday! I hope alot of people come! I'll be spending friday night and saturday morning cleaning up a storm.. ;) later

~Ky

Pizza

hey! so tonight I decided we should treat ourselves. :) we've been so good with all the budgeting and hardly EVER eat out. So we decided to go to Happy Joe's Pizza. We've never been there, so I wanted to try it out. It was really good! they had a large w/unlimited toppings including soda for about $15. Nummy Yummy piiizzzaaaa. hehe.

have a great day!
~Ky

quick & easy

I had a really busy day at work today, so I just went with spaghetti tonight. I did use whole wheat pasta. You really can't tell the difference. they say it's way better for you than regular pasta, but I can't really tell a huge difference when comparing the nutritional value's on the box. It is alittle better, but only by a couple percents..

I didn't take a picture tonight. It's just spaghetti.. ;)

In other news, Chris got switched to first shift! I finally get to see my husband during the week again! :) He's working 6:30am to 3pm, monday through friday.

~later~
p.s. thanks for being a follower woowy! ;)

Yummy!

I made white beans and ham tonight. It was really good! Great northern beans, cubed ham, chili powder, parsley, 2 tablespoons of brown sugar, half an onion and water. simmered for about 45 minutes and it was YUUMMY! :) Chris added a bit of hot sauce to his and he said that made it just perfect. :)

not so fantastic today

so I wasn't thrilled with the food I made today. for dinner we had black beans and rice. the recipe called for stewed tomatoes, brown rice, black beans, oregano, garlic powder and an onion. I used diced tomatoes, brown rice, black beans, about half an onion, oregano, a teaspoon of jarred minced garlic, and the garlic powder. I didn't really like it at all. Chris thought it was ok, so it wasn't a total bust, but I won't be trying that recipe again..

then I was in the mood for cookies tonight but I didn't want to wait for butter to soften so I looked for cookie recipes that didn't use butter and found cake mix cookies. I had a box of yellow cake mix just sitting in my pantry forever, so I figured why not. the recipe called for the cake mix, 2 eggs, 1/3 cup oil and 2 cups of chocolate chips. I used applesauce instead of the oil and only about a cup of chips. I had to add a few tablespoons of water too cuz it was very thick. They didn't turn out fantastic. the first batch was too puffy. they pretty much stayed the same shape they were when I put them on the sheet. the 2nd & 3rd batches got squished down and cooked alittle longer and turned out alittle better. all in all not a bad quick little low fat snack. I'll try different flavor combinations again.

Dinner

It's Aaron's b-day! I just called him, but he wasn't there. hope he's doing something fun, and not still at work! :)

So tonight we're having meatball sandwiches. I made up some turkey meatballs using a recipe I found on kraftfoods.com for Parmesan meatballs. It's kinda funny cuz I'm using pretty much most of the ingredients I used for the chicken last night! Parmesan, garlic, parsley and italian seasoning. I hope they turn out well! I could'nt find any good and inexpensive hogi rolls, so we're going to make due with hot dog buns...I'll try and remember to take a picture. Wish me luck! :)


here's the reciepe


These were yummy!!! I threw alittle extra garlic powder in there and sprinkled some italian seasoning on top before I threw them in the oven. I also took the hot dog buns and put them in the broiler for a few minutes and got them crispy. Very yummy meal! And I remembered to take the picture again! ;)

Dinner-January 22, 2009

I finally got some frozen chicken breasts last night. Cub had them on sale for $5.09, which is FANTASTIC cuz usually they're $7 to $8! The thing I like about the frozen chicken breasts is they're easy to thaw! I can take out a few breasts when I get home, put them in plastic baggies and put them in a bath of cold water. Sit down, relax for a bit and then about 45 minutes later or so we're ready to cook! :) So for tonight I went onto allrecipes.com and printed out a recipe called Garlic Lover's chicken. It's a variation of breaded & baked chicken. Looks good. I'll let you know how it comes out. :) I think we'll have mashed potatoes as a side. I had mashed up and frozen a bunch a few weeks ago when I left a bag of potatoes in my trunk for a few days and then they got all mushy when they were thawing out. So instead of throwing them all away I quickly boiled and mashed them and shoved them in the freezer at like 10pm at night.. ;) Ok, so that's it for now. I'll update you later tonight. Hopefully I'll remember the camera! ;)



update: Ok, that was soooo freaking good!!! here's the recipe Seriously, this is one of my best meals I think! when it was cooking, it smelled devine! :) And I remembered to take a picture! Till tommorow, Good Eating! :)

beginning

Hey there! Well I just wanted a place to chronicle my journey as a cook. I just started cooking real meals in August 2008. Oh, I made hamburger and tuna helpers, spaghetti, that sort of thing, but my meals always started out with a box. :) I decided I wanted to start cooking, so I went onto bettycrocker.com, printed out some recipes, went to the store and started building my pantry. It's been pretty fun. I still do alot of bisquick stuff and haven't really moved too much past ground beef (or turkey) and chicken breasts, but that's about all I can afford right now. I keep meaning to take pictures of my dishes when they're done, but I keep forgetting, so maybe having the blog will intice me to remember. :) In my next post I'll post what we're having for dinner tonight. :)