In the Kitchen | Marriage Confessions In the Kitchen

Now, if I’ve learned anything about my readers over the years, it’s that you folks are nosy, nosy, nosy. And that comes from a very nosy person myself. I love knowing details about things. Where stuff came from, how much it cost, where the idea started. And I know you all do, too, so this post is all the behind the scene details from Gracie’s party.

I set the food up on our dining room table, and we moved our deck table out into the backyard under a tree in the shade. People fixed their plates inside and then moseyed on outside.

I decided not to go with a theme, and instead settled on colors – pink, yellow, and white. With the cake, cupcakes, and Gracie’s wings, though, butterflies kind of became the unofficial theme.

I found a lot of the decorations at Party City, like the yellow tissue pom poms and the banner handing over the window. But I saw a lot of the same things at Target for cheaper prices after I’d already bought everything.

Most of the food ideas came from Pinterest. One of my favorite, simple ideas were the clear plastic punch cups with ranch dressing in the bottom and then carrot and celery sticks standing up in them. It made it super easy for people to have their veggies and the dip without making a mess. Plus, they were really bright and colorful. I thought this was such a neat idea, and even used it later to give Bean some peanut butter with animal crackers. I think this will become a staple when I entertain from now on. So many options!

Another great Pinterest hit was the funfetti dip (also called the “Dunkaroo Dip” on Pinterest). It was super easy to make. You take a box of Funfetti and mix it with 1/2 a large carton of plain yogurt and 1/2 a container of Cool Whip (I used the fat free). Blend it with a hand mixer until it is combined well and serve with animal crackers or graham crackers. I put out animal crackers for the kiddos and it was a big hit. It tastes like icing!

My last big Pinterest idea was super simple, too. Rainbow fruit skewers. I bought a whole pineapple and cut it into chunks, green and purple grapes, blueberries, and strawberries. You just put them on the skewers in rainbow order. I had enough fruit and long enough skewers to do it twice. I thought they looked really cute, and they were one of the first things eaten.

I didn’t get a picture, but my Grandma made finger sandwiches that I put out on a cake plate. She made cucumber and cream cheese, chicken salad, and egg salad sandwiches. They were delicious! I also had lemonade punch in a punch bowl (a gallon of lemonade, a 2-liter of Sprite, a 1/2 gallon of pineapple juice, with floating lemon slices).

I tried one Pinterest thing that, sadly, didn’t work. But I think it was my mistake that messed it up. The Pinterest link said to fill balloons with water and then freeze them. Then, you put those into your cooler at a party and they act like ice to keep things cold, but they look more festive. Sounds super easy, right? It really was. I messed it up, though, because I didn’t give the balloons long enough to freeze. I did them at 8:00am the morning of the party, but by party time at 2:00pm, they still weren’t frozen. I also messed up because I used water balloons instead of regular balloons, and I discovered that water balloons are water balloons because they are super thin so they pop easily (makes sense, right?). Unfortunately, because the water balloons were so thin, it was really hard to keep them from popping…all over my kitchen! Bean thought it was hysterical every time it happened, and it happened several times! I will definitely be trying it again because I like the idea, but next time I’ll use better balloons and more prep time.

As party favors, I gave out little mason jars with Easter basket green straw in the bottom of them, then with Skittles piled on top of that. I tied a yellow ribbon around the top to tie in the theme. I meant to put a sticker label on the top of the jars that said, “It was SWEET of you to come,” but I just ran out of time. Still, I thought the little jars came out cute.

I used the extra mason jars I had to hold plastic utensils on the food table. Waste not, want not!

It was a pretty laid back party, which was nice. Pinterest definitely came through for me again, but so did my family. It was nice to have help getting everything together, but it was even nicer to be getting things together for our family and friends. Graciekins is a lucky girl to have such great people around her!

7 comments | posted in Around the House, Fun Things, In the Kitchen, Marriage Confessions, Suburbia | tags: birthdays

If you’ve been ’round these parts for any length of time, you know that I am not gifted in the culinary arts. I’m getting better every year, but for the most part, my repertoire is whatever is easy, simple, and cheap, and often that means I make a lot of the same things over and over again.

(knock, knock)

Who’s there?

Oh, is it you, Pinterest?

Pinterest makes me think I can do all sorts of things that I don’t normally do. So far, these things have included gardening, changing my own oil, and making edible Christmas ornaments. All of which were colossal fails. Especially the oil change one. I couldn’t even figure out how to pop the hood on my car.

One thing Pinterest has actually done for me is make me try new things in the kitchen. I am now planning my weekly meals around what I pin, and so far things have been pretty delicious. But this past weekend, I actually got crafty in the kitchen all on my own, without the help of Pinterest! Who knew?!?!

When I went grocery shopping this weekend, I picked up some hummus for a snack this week. But when I got home, I realized that I had forgotten to get pita chips to eat with it. I eat hummus with veggies and pretzels, too, but my favorite are pita chips. But I wasn’t about to haul myself back to the store just for some pita. So, I started poking around my fridge and I found these…

I bought these whole wheat tortillas last week for Bean’s “toothpick sandwiches” (which are really wraps that I put toothpicks in to hold it together – he thinks they are the greatest). But these kind of particular whole wheat tortillas were falling apart when I tried to roll them. They were too brittle. On Sunday, though, I was desperate for something to dip in my the hummus. So, I took out my pizza cutter and I started cutting up the tortillas into triangles.

Then, I threw them on a baking tray and coated them very lightly with cooking spray.

I put a little salt on them and then flipped each triangle over and coated the backside lightly with cooking spray and a dash of salt.

I popped them in a preheated oven on 350 for 12 minutes.

And when they came out, they were DELICIOUS!!!!! Firm and hearty, but still really thin, which I actually liked even more than my regular pita chips.

I made a ton and thought it would last me through the week. But then I ate them.

So, I opened a second package of tortillas and made twice as many. And then, I ate those, too.

They were so good that I’m thinking about quitting my job and opening a tortilla chip store. I’ll call it, “Little Triangles of Love.” You should come eat there. We have homemade tortilla chips and hummus. And maybe water. But if you’re busy and can’t come, then maybe you could just make your own at home. They are super tasty and ridiculously easy.

11 comments | posted in In the Kitchen, Marriage Confessions | tags: recipes

I am not a runner. I don’t like exercise. But a few weekends ago, when my BFF forced me at gunpoint (not really) to run my second 5k with her, we were standing in my driveway with Sarah, her husband, Chris, and my parents the night before the race and I was complaining about running.

“I CAN’T RUN, SARAH!” I moaned, rolling around my driveway. “THERE’S HEART DISEASE IN MY FAMILY! DO YOU WANT ME TO HAVE A HEART ATTACK?!?!”

“No,” Sarah replied. “That’s why you need to be running.”

Everyone laughed and I found my lazy, un-athletic butt squeezed into running shorts at 6:00 the next morning, waiting for Sarah to pick me up.

The truth is that I have been thinking a lot about that comment she made in the past few weeks. It is true. There is heart disease in my family. My dad had his first heart attack in his 40′s and has had multiple since then. Thank God he’s healthy and has had a happy heart for the past six years or so, but that first heart attack of his has been on my mind.

This year in December, I’ll turn 30. Not much about turning 30 bothers me. Honestly, I’ve been living like I’m 30 for the past couple years anyway since we got married and had babies so early. Turning 30 feels like my age is finally catching up with where I am. But, I have noticed a few minor physical changes lately. Namely, these pesky bags under my eyes that used to go away with one good night’s sleep. I’ve also discovered that it is much harder to lose weight now than it was 5 or 10 years ago. But I’m okay with my weight right now. I could certainly do with a redistribution of where that weight falls on my body, but that’s just the mark of motherhood and, though it frustrates me, the distortion of my body shape is really a small price to pay for my two babies.

No, 30 isn’t going to be so bad. But it does make me more aware of my health, especially given the heart disease in my family. All my life, I’ve thought that eating well and exercising was about losing weight. I never really had a whole lot of weight to lose and so except for a few binge diets that always crashed and burned, I’ve just sort of put those two things out of my mind. They didn’t seem to apply to me.

But as 30 approaches and I realize how close I am to the age when my dad had his first heart attack, I’ve started to think more about eating well and exercising for my health. (Look how wise I’m getting in my old age!) I thought today and tomorrow I would share a few changes I’ve made over the past few months. I’ll start today with my diet and tomorrow I’ll get back to that pesky running/exercise/dying-on-the-side-of-the-road thing.

One of my New Years resolutions was to eat better. I’ve been doing pretty good with that, actually. I try to avoid any kind of sweets (though Valentine’s Day set me back on that one… So did Girl Scout season…) and I tried to cut out any unnecessary food that I’d eat when I wasn’t really hungry. Working full-time helps that because I can only eat what I bring with me that day. Generally speaking, here’s what my daily diet looks like:

- For breakfast, I drink two big glasses of water, and usually have either a whole wheat Eggo Waffle with peanut butter on it or a toasted 100 calorie English muffin with peanut butter and a sliced up banana on top.

- I keep a box of Luna Protein bars in my desk and eat one of those for a mid-morning snack.

- For lunch, I pack a Lean Cuisine (I buy that $1.99 ones and use a coupon, so they are only about $1.25 each), a Dannon Light and Fit Yogurt, and a piece of fruit.

- When I get home, I have the hardest time because I cook dinner for the kids, but Chris and I don’t eat until after they go down, which is around 7:30. So, the break between lunch and dinner for me is really long and I get hungry. I was trying to make it through without anything, but that was just causing me to binge on whatever I could find about 20 minutes before dinner. Not good. Now, I’ve started eating a little snack while the kids have their dinner. I try to make it some kind of veggie since I eat more fruit in my day than veggies. Last night, I had celery and carrot sticks with light ranch dressing.

- Dinner is pretty much an anything goes. I do meal plan every week and so I try to plan meals that are healthier these days. We do lots of grilled chicken, brown rice, veggies. But we also have things like lasagna with whole wheat pasta and ground turkey. One of my go-to dinners right now is a whole roasted chicken. Throw it in the crock pot in the morning with some carrots, celery, and onions and you have a giant, tender chicken waiting to do whatever you want with when you get home. We also have a lot of tacos in our house. At least once a week we have taco night with ground turkey, lots of veggies toppings, brown rice, and black beans. Chris likes his in taco shells, but I usually put mine over a bed of lettuce. Just as filling and delicious to me – tastes like Chipotle!

- Throughout the entire day, I try to drink as much water as possible. That might seem obvious, but I have never been a water drinker. It’s too bland for me. Now, every time I go grocery shopping, I buy one lime and one lemon. I slice them up and keep them in a Tupperware container in my fridge. Every morning I fix a giant water cup for me to take to school and I stick a couple lemon and lime slices in there for flavor. Throughout the day, as I add water, the flavor of the lemon and lime keep it tasting fresh. I am drinking three times as much water as I used to simply because of the flavor.

- Oh, lastly, every day after dinner, I limit myself to one serving of Girl Scout cookies. Which, we all know, is one box.

There are lots of things I need to add to my diet, but I’ve spent the past few months cutting things out. Now, I’m ready to start slowly adding what I need. More greens, more veggies, more proteins. But I’m feeling pretty good about my diet lately, and, more importantly, I can tell a difference in how I feel after eating now.

Tomorrow, I’ll be sharing about how I’m slowly killing myself with exercise…

27 comments | posted in Around the House, health, In the Kitchen, Marriage Confessions | tags: health

Yesterday I did something miraculous. I baked. Actually, there was no baking required. Technically, I assembled.

The second most miraculous thing was that what I assembled was a recipe I found on Pinterest. I’ve never seen something online and then turned around and made it before. Isn’t that weird?

The third most miraculous thing I did yesterday was that my cookies ended up looking JUST LIKE this picture from Pinterest.

Three Thanksgiving miracles in one day. So, I figured maybe I should share the recipe.

This is what you’ll need:

A bag of Hershey kisses
A box of mini Nutter Butter sandwich cookies*
A bag of chocolate chips

*The recipe on Pinterest said to get the mini Nutter Butter sandwich cookies, but I couldn’t find them in my grocery store so I bought a box of Ritz sandwich cookies instead. Also, I made a mistake and accidentally bought the Ritz CHOCOLATE sandwich cookies, instead of the peanut butter ones. If I did it again (and I will), I’d use the peanut butter sandwiches instead of the chocolate ones.*

First, put a small pan on low heat. This is for melting the bottoms of your Kisses (and later chocolate chips). Set the Kiss in the pan for about 30 seconds, just enough to make the bottom kind of mushy. Don’t melt it too much, though. It gets messy. You just want it melted enough so that it sticks to the cookie.

Also, speaking from experience, I wouldn’t put more than 3 Kisses in the pan at a time. Otherwise, you can’t get them out quick enough and they melt too much.

Next, sit the Kiss on a sandwich cookie. Press down just a bit to make sure it sticks, but not enough that you mush the Kiss. Again, I speak from experience here.

Let these sit for about 15 or 20 minutes so that the chocolate firms back up again.

When the cookies and chocolate have set, you’re ready for the mini chocolate chips now. Just like with the Kisses, put three into the pan at a time. You might want to turn the heat down even more on these little guys because they melt awfully quick and then you’ll be forced to lick the melted chocolate off the bottom of a hot pan.

Or, so I’ve heard.

Then, stick those little chocolate chips on the other side of the sandwich cookies and – VOILA! – you’ve got acorns!

These are super easy (but a bit messy) and I think they are adorable for Thanksgiving. I put mine in a tin lined in wax paper and am storing it in the fridge until Thanksgiving. If I had more time, I’d run to Target and get a few Mason jars and some orange gingham ribbon. Throw those acorns into the jar and tie a big pretty bow around it. Perfect to take to a Thanksgiving host, a good friend, or your neighbor next door. In fact, I think I might whip up a few more batches of these tomorrow and give them to the kids’ daycare teachers with a note that says, “We are thankful for you!”

Happy baking…er…assembling!

*****

For those who have asked, my Pinterest user name is MarriageConfess.