cheesy about chicken

Posted on March 23, 2011 by tara

Today I made a real dinner. Not to say that Mac 'n Cheese isn't great, but sometimes it's nice to eat food that didn't come out of a box with a packet of powdered cheese.

My mom gave me a country-style cookbook that she didn't really want, and I was lured in by the Chicken Parmesan recipe. It was an easy way to make chicken irresistible! I also made Michael's mom's family rolls. I haven't quite mastered the aesthetic appeal of them yet, but they do taste good, so I think I win anyway.

While it is nice to have a home-cooked dish, I forgot how long it actually takes to do it! I really admire our moms for investing so much time and effort to feed their families throughout all these years.

Speaking of moms, I got a small taste of what it must be like to be one. On Friday night, Lelia and I were entrusted to keep an eye on the pregnant mares. We were up every couple of hours to check on them, so by the time I'd fall asleep, it was time to get up again. Exhausting, but worth it. We are still waiting on the foals to make their grand entrances!

home[making] improvement

Posted on March 7, 2011 by tara

After many, many attempts at making bread-items, I finally realized that something was amiss: although everything I made tasted as it should, nothing was light and fluffy! Now, I'm not making fun of you if you happen to enjoy dense, heavy-as-a-brick bread. I'm just saying it isn't really my thing.

Not long ago I made some cinnamon-raisin bread… And sadly, it was more like one giant, flat cinnamon roll. The cinnamon at least made it enticing, so it didn't all go to waste. Here you see it before it was baked.

After my sorrowful sobs over my butchered bread, Michael said, "You know, I wonder if you are heating up the water too much."

BOOM.

Everything made sense. I was actually killing my yeast by putting it in near-boiling water. Oops.

Happily, I've definitely remedied the problem. Look for yourself! (you might also want to ~~laugh at~~ reminisce about how my first pizza ever looked).

gingerbread madness

Posted on December 5, 2010 by tara

This weekend was so much fun! On Friday, my buddy Lelia came over! We went to the Christmas Parade, ate homemade pizza, decorated gingerbread cookies and watched "A Christmas Story". How can it get better than that?

Check out our cookies! I'm very happy with the way these turned out, since it was my first time ever doing gingerbreads. They tasted just like my mom's!

Yum.

And I gave Lelia her Christmas present, which was a purse I made (with Michael's mom's guidance I am pretty pleased with how cute it turned out!

Only 9 more days until school is out!

19 days until Christmas!

Corny Sheep Garden

Posted on September 5, 2010 by tara

This weekend was so much fun! We are only a few weeks into the new school year, but I have already been stressed out quite a bit. So, it was great to take a break, spend some time with my sweetie and an awesome friend, too!

On Friday night, Michael and I went on a date to Olive Garden (we had a gift card from our way cool friends, Erik and Erica!) We had a wonderful time just talking about now, and talking about the future. After this year, school will be over for both of us! It is a little scary not knowing exactly what you'll be doing one year from now.

Saturday morning, we went to the local sheep sale! You might think I'm just obsessed with sheep, but I went for the extra credit, really! Anyway, it was lots of fun, and here is a photo of the top-selling animal, a suffolk ram (he's standing right in front)!

After church today, we took a 4-hour nap. Wow. And then I made corn muffins, but the recipe was new and it didn't really make what I was looking for.

(re)starting!

Posted on August 1, 2010 by tara

My sweetheart finally returned home from his 2-month internship! I know, I know, 2 months is really nothing compared to what a lot of other people go through. I respect those wives (especially those with husbands in the military) who have little to no contact with their loved one for an even longer period of time.

While he was gone, I didn't do too much cooking for myself (unless a frozen chicken patty counts?!) so I was pretty excited to make an actual meal today. I even baked him a treat!

We also had an interesting predicament happen yesterday morning. Water is leaking from our A/C vent. The maintenance men came to look at it and weren't too concerned, but it is currently STILL leaking. I guess we'll be calling them again. My nice home is falling apart! Even look for yourself.

Both pigs had a bath tonight. Juni was very offended! I tried to erase their memories with some cilantro.

Nothing like a nice cuddle in your sleeping bag after an awful bath!

cupcake mania

Posted on July 16, 2010 by tara

In the past two weeks I have made quite a lot of cupcakes… and by "a lot", I mean more than I've made in the past year.

This cool (yet inaccurate) flag was for 4th of July.

And these slime green ones were for my Activity Days girls this week. They were gone in probably under 10 minutes.

and… that’s a wrap!

Posted on April 29, 2010 by tara

Nothing extraordinary happened today but I feel like writing a few things anyway…

So tonight we had some homemade chicken wraps for dinner! Yeah yeah, not so fancy, I know. But hey, if you need to make something yummy in a pinch, and you like leftovers for lunch the next day… This is a pretty good idea.

If you make two chicken breasts, you'll get about 6 wraps. I shake-and-bake the chicken for 25 minutes, and once it comes out of the oven, I throw it in the tortilla with some lettuce, parmesan cheese, and some caesar dressing. And ta-da! A non-fancy, but delicious and quick, dinner.

The other little thing I want to write about is my Maggie. If you remember back to almost two months ago, you'll recall how worried I was about my sweet girl when she went into surgery for an abscess on her neck. After a lot of staples, antibiotics, and wound-flushing, she is back to her old self =) I'm really thankful for an amazing vet who did everything in his power to help her. And everything still looks normal!

Today I let Maggie run around on the floor a little while I got their dinner ready. She waited just outside the kitchen while I washed her lettuce, and once I started bringing it over to her cage, she ran after my feet as fast as she could! Maggie's biggest personality trait is surely her love for food.

Waiting patiently:

more baking endeavors

Posted on March 12, 2010 by tara

Last night I re-did that pizza I made a couple days ago. I actually managed to not flood the thing with tomato sauce this time! And the dough was even a little better too.

I also baked the "Amish Friendship Bread" that my friend Alynne gave me a starter for! If you don't know, a "starter" is basically just batter in a ziploc that "spawned" from the previous person's batter. So anyway, you have to wait 10 days after the starter was created to add the final ingredients and bake the bread. All the while, it sits on the counter, fermenting away and well… that doesn't smell too good. But don't worry, you bake it for an hour, so it's completely safe!

Anyway, you have to add a pudding mix to it, and naturally I chose chocolate (duh). I threw in some chocolate chips too, and this bread turned out so so so yummy! I would do it again, it was great. Also, I didn't have loaf pans, so this was my excuse to go buy some =)

(yuuuum!)

Having Maggie and Juni separated has really proven who the "messy roommate" is. Take a look for yourself (the brown towel is supposed to be hidden under the fleece… but *someone* keeps moving it!

roller skating and betty crocker

Posted on January 18, 2010 by tara

On Thursday I had a great idea for a date night. But I didn't tell Michael- it was a surprise!

I remembered going roller skating around here about 3 years ago and thought it would be fun to go back. Of course I was a little nervous because well, I haven't done it in three years and I'm pretty accident prone! Luckily, I still had enough guts to go through with it and when we got there Michael was thrilled! Unbeknownst to me, he absolutely LOVES skating. Go figure.

It took me a little while to get back into it, but Michael was there holding my hand and encouraging me the whole way- which is what made is a fabulous date-night activity. I was worried there wouldn't be enough one on one interaction to really consider it time together, but he looked out for me and we goofed off lots, so it worked out perfectly. By the end of the night, I was practically an Olympic skater. Ok, well, maybe just a pro-skater… er, well, I could go forward!

A couple weeks ago I decided to try my hand at making rolls. The recipe I chose was called "To Die For Crescent Rolls". Let's just say that the title was a little misleading. I'm more than decent at baking, and these rolls just didn't turn out right. The recipe had some flaws, so tonight I turned to my good ol' friend Betty Crocker… most of her recipes work out, but I've been disappointed a couple times. Anyway, the roll recipe turned out fantastic! The dough was easy to work with, and in the end I ended up with fluffy, mouth-watering (well, Michael's mouth was watering) rolls. I'm just glad to say that I now have bread-making under my belt! (and if I keep eating bread, I guess I'll have a few more pounds under my belt as well… ha!)

And, Juni says hello to you!

Turkey day weekend!!

Posted on November 30, 2009 by tara

This Thanksgiving was awesome because we were lucky enough to visit Michael's family from Wednesday evening until Sunday! Michael's hand was glued to a Wii remote… go figure. We did have a few "battles" against each other, but sadly I was not victorious in anything =(

Thanksgiving dinner was yummy! Mmmm mmm. I was exposed to what is probably the best dessert ever: chocolate mint freeze. I love it, and so does the rest of the family- an entire pyrex dish of it was gone in less than 24 hours.

I also got to help Michael's Mom make some candy!! It was a great learning opportunity for me, since I've never done anything like that before. We made peppermint bark and peanut clusters.

And, for the first time ever, in my entire life, I went out on Black Friday! It was definitely crowded and some stores were messy… but hey, I had fun. It's one of those things you should do at least once just to experience it and say you did it. Plus it was just fun spending time with Michael and his mom =) We had to take the ferry over there, so I got to feed the seagulls who fly at the back of the boat. Basically, they were CRAZY!?!

We also went to visit some horses- I met such a handsome dressage horse named Walter… and he loves licking people's hands! It was so fun. I love horses.

Horsey!

Maggie and Juni did really well on the trip. They met a lot of different people on their trip: Michael's mom, grandma, and great-grandma, plus a family that came over for a barbecue. Maggie did really well with everyone but Juni's just as shy as ever! They started bickering on the way home today, so I was glad to get them back into their regular cage (which is about 4 times bigger than the travel one).

I am very very grateful for family and making great memories all together =)