Menu Planning

So since we've sort of got ourselves into a nice work routine, I have been so lazy about getting a menu together for the week. This is so helpful because it'll eliminate spontaneous trips to the grocery store and I'm certain it'll help cut some of that spontaneous spending as well.

Before I got this job I was just too tired to put one together, and it was more of a "Do I feel like cooking today?" type of thing. Have any of you gone through that kind of rut?

But now, since we've got a good flow going - it's time to get on the ball and get organized!

I currently only have plenty of ground beef and chicken thighs to work with, as well as a ton of frozen veggies. I feel like I've already exhausted the usual go to meals with these proteins and honestly, the last 3-4 weeks were jam packed. So I'm gonna start checking out some newer recipes from all different kinds of sources and then get to sharing them on here. 

Wishlist

Look at me! 2 posts in 1 day! :D

Ever since I learned how to cook, I was accustomed to cooking enough for 4-6 people and then some!

Now that most days it's just Danny and myself, I still can't figure the measurements out. I know it's silly because it's simple math, but I have yet to master cooking just enough for us 2.

So once I finally got over my cold, guess who gets sick?!

Yep, that's right - the husband.

LOL, And since I'm all better now I was finally able to cook! I made "caldo de res", which is just beef and veggie soup.

Here's what the stove looked like while the soup was simmering:

I used all of my pots! The big pot had 3 steaks in there with a lot of the veggies, the medium pot had one steak and some veggies, and the tiny pot had some vegetables that couldn't fit in the other 2 pots.

This always happens to me when I cook!

 I had seriously considered only cooking enough for the night, but then reconsidered and thought about what Danny could eat if he was still feeling sick and so on ....

All in all - I used 4 shank steaks, 3 baking potatoes, about 6 small-medium carrots [one of Danny's least liked vegetables], 2 medium sized sweet yellow onions and a small head of cabbage [another of Danny's least liked vegetables] complete with a side of spanish rice .. served with limes and corn tortillas.

Oh yeah the point of this post! (ref. the title) HAHA - I need a tall stock pot!

Something like this:

LINK

Something with a 10-12 quart capacity would be perfect!

But until then, this is what I'll be dealing with.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Now I generally make it a point not to bake anything from a box or a bag. Not because I believe it's evil, or think it's lazy - but because I like to challenge myself to make it from scratch.

I had this little guy hanging out in my pantry for a few months, good thing it's expiration date was not until later this year :)

***Bad picture lighting warning! I don't know why, but my pictures always come out with a yellow-ish tint in them :(

My Aunt had given it to me for Christmas

I think it was maybe last week that Danny mentioned to me that I should clean out our pantry since I'm weird and I like to do things like that. He saw this package and asked me if I was ever going to bake these. He was ready to go right on and throw it away.

I love cream cheese frosting on almost anything so that was the decision maker for me right there, I was going to bake them!

I finally remembered to buy some cream cheese, it was the only thing I didn't have! Shocker! I know. lol.

So away we went!

Here they are fresh out of the oven :) They smelled amazing!

The package said the yield was 12 cupcakes, but being since I'm me - I only have jumbo cupcake pans, haha. So I only ended up with 9

Here they are in their cream cheese frosting awesomeness:

The verdict?

Delicious!! Now I just have to figure out how to replicate the homemade version!

This is why ...

... I can't lose weight.

Well not that I can't. But it definitely doesn't make it any easier.

By the way - this cake was absolutely delicious!

Dont' judge.

Recipe clipping!

So remember, I'm a professional bum! More on that later.

All I've really been up to besides sleeping in, watching tv, cooking and eating ... is clipping recipes. I have this stack of "Food & Family" magazines that I brought from my dads house. They were just sitting in the cupboards collecting dust, begging to be packed and included in the move :) lol. Well I brought them, and I didn't even count, but there's gotta be at least 40+.

So I'm going through them and clipping all the recipes that have a chance of being cooked and tried out. And I'm going to be honest here, I'm pretty sure the ratio is 75% Desserts and 25% food. lol. Ok, ok maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit. But really, I've found so many delicious dessert recipes to try out! I'm so excited!!

Right now, I'm not even half-way through the stack and I just realized that I'm going to have to go back through them and organize them to throw them into my binder of print out recipes. Yes, even with the 6+ cookbooks I have, I also have a binder.

I don't know what else to say, I love food!

Just thinking about finishing up through the rest of the stack is making me hungry!

Here's to Happy Clipping! :)

Friday & Saturday!

Friday Danny and I were invited to a BBQ with his dad Dan and his fiance Elva. It was mostly for Dan's side of the family to meet Elva's son Danny and his wife Marlen. LOL - I thought my name was common, but we had 3 Danny's there that night. My Danny, Dan [Danny's dad] and Elva's son Danny.

So we were in charge of dessert! Yay! :) But becuase I work 8-5 everyday I had to bake the desserts the night before on Thursday! Which happened to be the same night as the Grey's Anatomy season finale! The 2 hour season finale! So there I was in the kitchen getting all my ingredients together on the counter while watching the finale. Needless to say, I didn't really get much done throughout those 2 hours! My eyes were glued to the tv screen! I stayed up pretty late that night, but I got to see the finale so it was worth it!

I made a yellow cake with a chocolate fudgy frosting and I also made a batch of oatmeal rasisin cookies :-)

The cake came out ok, but when it came to make the chocolate buttercream frosting - it ended up a little thick. The flavor was great, but the texture was a little heavy. But I left it and went ahead and used it to frost the cake. I know a couple of things I'll want to do to change it up and make it better. The texture of the cake was also a little heavy and not light and fluffy like I wanted it to be.

Overall the night was great! We ended the night making a pit stop at Starbucks on the way to Becky & Rigo's house to watch a movie before heading home.

Saturday we had a small list of errands to run that took hours to complete! We started out going to the banks to deposit/transfer money. I still have my old account open, but once we get our new checks for our joint account I'll close the old one.

Then we were off to the Sprint store to check if Danny's old phone could be replaced. The lighting on his screen is all kinked and sometimes it just goes out and you can't see a thing. Luckily it was available for an upgrade and we went ahead and looked into getting our own account since Danny's phone was still under his dad's account. So because my AT&T contract ends this August, I'm going to wait awhile before I make the switch to Sprint. I'm going to miss my iPhone! It's going to be a sad parting of ways. But it won't go far, my sister's gonna keep it and get the new upgrade when the iPhone 4g comes out this summer. Danny got the charcoal Samsung Reclaim.

After the Sprint store we went to go and see about canceling his gym membership at Gold's gym. It's about 25 minutes away from where we live right now and he hasn't been getting much use out of it. But now their policy is different and he has to call a 1-800 # so we'll have to take care of it during the week.

We continued to do a couple more errands and grab some lunch at Ci-Ci's. And one of the last things we did was go to Bed, Bath and Beyond to use some coupons we had. Luckily we still had some gift cards available to use! After about 30 minutes of walking around the store and finding things we liked and wanted and somehow talked ourselves out of - we ended up buying this:

For dinner my dad grilled shrimp and beef kabobs - they were delicious! And we ended the night watching Edge of Darkness. Finally! lol. We've had that movie for about 2 weeks already and didn't get around to watching it until last night.

Tonight is just another lazy Sunday. Danny's at work and I'm taking care of the laundry like a good wife. Ok well maybe I'll get to it. Soonish. I'm also making my Chicken Parmesean for dinner tonight! I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Austin: Mini-Vacay; Thursday (05/06/10)!

I count this as a mini-vacation only because I missed out on days at work :) Not that I'm upset about that - maybe just in the sense that I didn't get compensated for those days . . . but other than not, nope!

So here's the breakdown:
Destination: Austin, TX
Duration: 2 days :(
Objective: See my BFF, Danny Saldana perform his senior recital at UT
Accomplices: Danny [the hubby] and Audrey [my sister]
Limitations: NONE!

We arrived with good time, approximately 10:50PM - considering we left Edinburg around 5:45PM and stopped for at least 30 min. to eat at the Sonic in George West. Hey we were starved! lol. Ok not really, but we were hungry and I don't think we would've made it to Austin ... maybe San Antonio ...

So the 1st thing we do is call my cousin, who was so generously going to house us for the 2 nights we'd be there. We needed to find her apartment and find a free available parking spot on the street near her apartment. She lives in "West Campus", like that means anything significant to me! lol. Give me street names, buildings anything! Annie then texts us the address to get the exact directions off the map on my iPhone. So we follow. And we find it. The apartment complex. Only it doesn't look like it! We'd been there once before to pick her up a couple of months ago and were so sure it wasn't the building. But we continue to circle the building. Lots of times.

Then I call Annie. I tell her we're circling her building. I tell her what it says on the front of the building. Because we followed the address she gave us. A couple of minutes later she sends us a text saying that she meant to type a 6 instead of a 3 - 26th street instead of 23rd street!  Yep! That would do it! We were 3 blocks down of where we should've been!

Luckily we found a street spot right away! :) Free parking for us!

We didn't stay up too late that night. We had a full day planned out for the next morning so we called it a night around 2am. I think.

Thursday morning we went to Kerbey Lane for breakfast. Upon referral and the hubby's burning desire to eat at as many diners as he could find. He's a big fan of Triple D on the Food Network.

And although Kerbey Lane wasn't on Triple D, it came highly recommended.

The Mr. and I

The waiting turned into awhile, so we started to read the local papers.

So somewhere among the hustle and bustle of the mid-morning rush, our waiter "forgot" to put our order in and forgot to come and check on us to see how we were doing. It didn't seem that long to us, we didn't notice any. But then the manager came out and retook our order and said she'd give us free drinks for the screw up.

Finally! My sisters plate: The Denver Omlette with sourdough toast and fruit.

My plate! The Portobello Omlette with an English muffin and some fruit.

Danny's Plate! The California Omlette and his side:

Lemon Poppyseed Pancakes with a lemon glaze! DELICIOUS!

We were stuffed! It was so good :) We got up to see what the deal was with the bill so we could pay and be on our way. The manager came out again and told us not to worry about it. She didn't put the reorder in either, but it was ok - not to worry about it. FREE BREAKFAST! Heck yeh!

Next we headed to Mount Bonnel! We had to walk off that huge breakfast!

It seemed like a million steps to get to the top!

Danny and I

My sister Audrey and I

Then we headed dowtown to do a couple of errands. I'd just gotten paid [lucky me!] and needed to deposit my check/get cash. So off we went!

Cool guitar statue outside the Wells Fargo on Congress St. in Downtown Austin

Here's Audrey acting like a tourist! lol.

Next we headed to the shops on South Congress!

We had to show Danny the Candy Shoppe!

Here I am picking my chocolate! :)

By that time we knew it, we were hungry again! So we decided to eat lunch at Magnolia Cafe - they were featured on Triple D's. Danny was excited about that, although not too hungry seeing as he munched down his dark chocolate covered raisins pretty soon after we'd bought them!

I munched on a cup of their soup of the day: Lentil Vegetable Soup. It was pretty good.

My entree: Alfredo Pasta Spinach fettuccine with fresh basil, mushrooms and garlic topped, alfredo parmesan sauce with grilled chicken..

Audrey's Plate: Magnolia Stir Fry

Danny's Plate: Portobello Quesadillas!

The food was again, delicious! And extremely plentiful :)

We changed into what we thought was proper church/recital clothes and made our way to the location of Danny's recital!

Danny's Program:

He's so awesome! Playing the bassoon standing up and all! He did amazing! I'm so glad we were able to go and see him perform!

I think this post is long enough, lol. I'll type about Friday in another post! I will probably post it later tomorrow.

Easter Day!

I am well past that age where I need to make/crack Easter Eggs on Easter Day. My cousins are all grown up now. So if we were to do anything it would've been a BBQ and maybe a board game and a movie. Nothing big, just some good 'ol family quality time. But my Tio Pete [a.k.a. my boss] was still sick. Don't know what it is, but it's gotta be a serious bug. So no family visit today.

Nope.

Instead I spent my day putting wedding favors together! lol. Nearly all day.

Ok, ok. This morning/early afternoon I made homemade biscuits and gravy. Remember how I said I sucked taking pictures while cooking - yeh, well that still holds up. Danny got a few in, but 2 out of 3 were of the dogs lying down all over the kitchen floor so those don't count.

Now normally, I avoid the white gravy if I can. I much prefer brown gravy on the plates that typically are served with the white gravy. But this was pretty good.

The day continued with me finishing up the wedding favors.

And then concluded with me making homemade Chicken Parmesean. This is relatively easy to make. I do an egg wash bath on the split chicken breasts or tenders and then lay them in a bread crumb/parmesean cheese/salt-pepper mixture. Then fry them in some EVOO until golden brown on each side. Served on top of spaghetti pasta, then coated in spaghetti sauce and topped with shredded mozzarella cheese.

Delicious!

It was an all around good day filled with some immediate family quailty time and some good food.

Chicken Tortilla Soup!

So my job is pretty boring and my office is pretty blah! LOL. I take my fiance's old laptop and watch movies while I eat my lunch. This isn't entirely a bad thing, because I can watch and appreciate old DVD's that we may have forgotten about.

This week one of the movies I was watching was Tortilla Soup.

Every time I watch it I forget how much I really like this movie and am easily reminded! I love food. I love trying new food. Now if the plate has a particular ingredient that I'm not fond of, that may require some swaying and persuasion. LOL.

The ingredient of the day was chicken. My dad suggested BBQ chicken on the grill. Now nothing against my dad's BBQ. It's always delicious! Unless they're steaks that had been taking residence in the freezer for a few weeks, then it's not so good [another story for later though.] But when he BBQ's something like chicken, he ALWAYS grills way to much for the 3 of us.

So being inspired from the movie, I opted for Chicken Tortilla Soup and found a recipe online that I'd like to try. My dad was confused and thought I was going to make a chicken tortilla casserole that my mom butchered attemtped one time.  I won. LOL.

So I found the recipe here and because I suck at taking pictures while I cook, here is an after picture:

It was delicious. Even the leftovers were delicious! I will definitely keep this as one of my go-to recipes.

A very, very unbirthday!

So my little sisters birthday is tomorrow. Not today. lol

But because it's on a weekday we decided to celebrate today. And what she wanted to eat: hamburgers.

Homemade hamburgers.

So it was my job to prepare the meat. I used 80/20 ground beef and added an egg, some ketchup, some bread crumbs, a packet of onion soup mix [HCF brand-nothing wrong with generic, besides HEB brand] and a secret ingredient. I can't share. Sorry! lol.

Here they are in all their glory! The patties I mean.

There are 3 more patties underneath those pictured :)

And because they were 80/20 they didn't shrink much at all once cooked on the grill. The burgers were huge!

This was my serving. I could only eat half! I shared with my Danny.

This is what my dad's looked like. I don't think the picture does it justice to show how ginormous it was in reality! I don't know how he finished it all! Or where it goes, lol. He's super skinny!

I also baked my sister a cake, because I love her that much.

Strawberry Swirl cake.

It was delicious! There is just about 1/3 of it left! And I just baked it this afternoon! lol.

These are the presents Audrey got today:

Bouquet of flowers from Mom.

And the above pictured from everyone. We all contributed!