What We Ate For Supper This Week

You'll notice a lot of linked recipes this week.  Many of these recipes are part of my 30 Days 30 Recipes series you'll be seeing coming this week!  Stay tuned!

Sunday - Grilled BBQ chicken, hot dogs, pasta salad, chips

Monday - Leftover grilled BBQ chicken, pasta salad, store-bought rolls, corn on the cob, Mandarine Orange Mousse 

Tuesday - Easy Cheese Lasagna, salad

Wednesday - Leftover/refrigerated chicken and cheese quesadillas with salsa and sour cream.  Try sprinkling on some of this seasoning if you want to cook up some fresh chicken to put in your quesadillas.

Thursday - Meatballs, brown gravy, rice, roasted vegetables

Friday - Crockpot Sour Cream and Salsa Chicken, rolls or bread

Saturday - Out to eat at Applebees


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Taco Seasoning

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30 Days 30 Recipes

Image found here.

Somewhere around ten years ago I got this link through email with a list of 100 recipes.  I've seen it floating around the Internet for some time now and I've even tried a couple of the recipes.  I currently do the Weight Watchers retired Flex Points program.  I know it's an oldie, but I like it best of all the programs, (including non-Weight Watchers) that I've tried.  So, I figured, as motivation to cook more at home and stay on plan, I would showcase one new recipe from the list every day for 30 days.  There are 100 recipes, but I think 30 is a good start!

100 Favorite Weight Watchers Recipes

I'll add the links and recipes once I make them so you can click right over and check them out!

1. Mandarine Orange Mousse
2. Baked Oatmeal
3. Easy Cheese Lasagna
4. Low Fat Hummus
5. Meatballs
6. Cocoa Krispy Bars
7. Crockpot Sour Cream and Salsa Chicken
8. Teriyaki Chicken
9. Creamed Corn Pancakes
10. Chocolate Chip Cookies
11. Strawberry Pie
12. Parmesan Chicken Cutlets
13. Easy Mac & Cheese
14. Deep Dish Pizza Casserole
15. Honey Mustard Chicken
16. Cauliflower Medley
17. Roasted Red Pepper Dip
18. Peach Cobbler
19. Crockpot Chicken Stroganoff
20. Pumpkin "Pie"
21. Pumpkin Butter
22. Easy Tuna Casserole
23. Herb-Roasted Green Beans
24. Taco Soup
25. Spaghetti Salad
26. Deli Crab Salad
27. Hamburger Stroganoff
28. Garlic Mashed Potatoes
29. Zucchini Sticks
30. Faux Egg McMuffin

Tune in each day to see how I made out.  I'll be scoring each recipe on taste and ease of preparation.

Here's the scale I'll be using for taste:

1-----------------------------------5--------------------------------10                                                                
disappointed             take it or leave it                          yum


Here's the scale I'll be using for ease of preparation

1----------------------------------5--------------------------------10
really difficult             not too hard                           very easy

Cauliflower Medley

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Strawberry Pie

Check out all my series here!

What We Ate For Supper This Week

I thought it would be fun to share my family's meals as inspiration for your own home cooking.  This week's menu is simple (and not all homemade) as we are still settling in from moving and are under construction in the kitchen!  The next few weeks will probably continue to be simple, but it goes to show that just because you're busy doesn't mean you can't fix up some good home-cooked meals! 

Let me know in the comment section below if you would like to see more menus!

Sunday - Hard and soft tacos, corn - Try my favorite taco seasoning!

Monday - My Birthday!  Fried clams, scallops and fries for me.  Chicken sandwich for the husband and hot dogs for the kids.

Tuesday - Chicken breast tenders seasoned with dill, garlic and onion, brussels sprouts, mixed veggies and sweet potatoes

Wednesday - Breaded honey barbecue chicken breast chunks (not homemade), leftover vegetables, potato chips

Thursday - Pasta, sauce, meatballs (frozen), and salad

Friday - Breaded General Gau chicken breast chunks (not homemade), oven fries, broccoli, quinoa and pea salad

Saturday - Chicken breast baked with BBQ sauce, pasta salad, steamed broccoli

Do you like this sort of post?  Let me know in the comment section below.

Shopkins Birthday Cake

I don't know about your kids, but my daughter loves her Shopkins!  She attended a birthday party at a friend's house earlier in the year with a Shopkins theme and when it came time for her birthday, she just had to have the same!  I was happy to oblige.

My kids were a little late to the Shopkins game, but they've been collecting them for a while now.  I have to admit, the little figurines are quite cute.  When they first started collecting them it was sometimes difficult to find them in stock.  But now, after a year or so my kids have friends giving them their old ones.  Works for me!

Back to the party planning!

Once we had a theme we had to decide on a cake.  It had to reasonably meet my daughter's expectations and be within my skill set.  My daughter and I searched the internet for a while, trying to come up with a good idea.

We saw some simple cakes using the actual toys as decoration.  Not a bad idea.  My daughter wasn't interested in that style.  There were other elaborate cakes with so much detail I was not willing to even try.  Then one night while I was saying goodnight to my daughter, we looked at her Shopkins poster and saw Cheeky Chocolate.  "What about that one?"  I asked her.  She liked it!  The rest is history.

There are some errors in the design, but overall I think it turned out cute and resembles Cheeky Chocolate quite nicely.


Cheeky Chocolate Cake

Ingredients/materials:

Best Buttercream Icing
Wilton gel food color in Sky Blue
Wilton gel food color in Black
Wilton gel food color in Brown (optional)
Cocoa
2 box cake of choice
2 - 9x13 pans
frosting spreader
3-4 piping bags
writing tip(s)

Instructions:

Follow the instructions on your box cake mix and pour each cake into a 9x13 pan.

While the cake is cooking, mix up a batch of the Best Buttercream Icing.  Put 1/3 of the mixed frosting aside in a bowl and leave it white.  Cover.  Place 1/3 in another bowl, put aside and cover.  Leave last third of frosting in the mixer and very slowly add sky blue until you reach your desired color.  Cover and put aside.

To one of your bowls of white frosting, add a few tablespoons of cocoa.  You may need to add a small amount of cream to fix the consistency.  DO NOT mix in any black food coloring yet.  Add brown food color if necessary to get desired color.  Cover.

Once the cake has cooled, check if it is even.  If not, trim as needed.  Place one cake on desired tray then top lightly with white frosting.  Place the second cake on top of the frosting.  No frosting should be oozing out the edges.

Next, you will use the chocolate brown frosting to make the exposed chocolate bar.  Spread the frosting smoothly over the top of the cake where the chocolate bar should be.  Wipe off the frosting knife and gently drag it sideways to make 8 chocolate squares.  Then add some chocolate frosting to a piping bag fitted with a writing tip.  Make small hearts in each chocolate square.

TIP:  To make your frosting smooth, dip a clean frosting spreader in warm water, remove from water and shake off excess.  Use knife to smooth frosting before it hardens.  

Now you will take your blue frosting and spread it over the remainder of the cake.

After the blue is spread smoothly, take some of your white frosting and add it to a clean piping bag equipped with a writing tip.  Outline a white wrapper (look at picture for shape) bordering the brown and blue.  Then take your spreader or a smaller knife and fill the outline with white frosting.

Once the wrapper is complete, find a round template such as a glass and make a light mark where the eyes should go.  Outline the circle in white and fill in with white frosting.  Do the same for the inner brown part of the eye, using a smaller circle template.  The nose and inside of the mouth are also brown.

Now you will make your black frosting.  Take your chocolate frosting and mix in black food coloring until you achieve your desired color.  You will not get a good black without using chocolate frosting.  The amount of food coloring you would need would leave you with a very bitter frosting.  Add the frosting to a clean piping bag equipped with a writing tip and add the last details you see in the picture above.

There you have it!  Cheeky Chocolate.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this cute cake!  Let me know in the comments below if you've ever made a Shopkins cake or if you try this one out.


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Easter Eats

If you're looking for ideas for your Easter feast, look no further!

The first thing we make every year is hard boiled and dyed eggs.  The kids love it.  I'm not sure they'll ever really grow tired of it.  I never have!  As the years go on the designs get more elaborate and the hands stay cleaner, but the tradition remains the same.

Typically we only hide our plastic eggs, so we have a bunch of hard-boiled eggs available for eating on Easter morning.  These make a quick and easy breakfast for everyone!

Here are some eggs we've decorated in the past.  I do recommend rinsing off the sparkles if you use those!

Sparkly Eggs

Along with your hard boiled eggs for protein, you can't go wrong with a cinnamon treat!  This is a recipe for the absolute best homemade cinnamon buns I've had.  Part of the trick is using the bread machine to make the dough.  It kneads it perfectly and lets the dough rise at the ideal temperature.  The result is smooth, fluffy dough that puffs up just right.  You'll want to try these for sure!

Cinnamon Buns for the Bread Machine

Once it's time for lunch, you'll want to use up some more of those hard boiled eggs.  One of our favorite ways to prepare them is deviled eggs.  My husband can down half a dozen without trying!  Check out this cute version I made inspired by a magazine article.  They are adorable, don't you think?

Deviled Chicks

For lunch we traditionally have ham and potatoes.  I love scalloped, but twice-baked and mashed are also great!  I usually try to get a spiral ham if it's on sale, but sometimes I get the whole, unsliced ham and that's is quite delicious as well.  Typically I skip the glaze because I find the ham just right without it.  If I'm making the whole ham I like to top it with pineapple rings and maraschino cherries. If you do this, be sure and save some of the pineapples and cherries for the recipe below!

For dessert, one of my favorites is pineapple upside down cake.  It's an older recipe and my mom used to make it often for Easter when we were kids.  Follow this link to for a most delicious treat!

If you're not in a sugar coma by this point, check out these adorable cupcakes and cake.  They were, like the deviled chicks, inspired by a magazine article.  I found the marshmallow bunnies while I was out shopping and I thought they would be adorable on these grassy green cakes.  I have no separate post or recipe about the cupcakes, I just thought they were too cute not to include!

To make the cake, just bake up your favorite box mix or other favorite cake recipe.  Pour half into an oven-safe bowl and the remaining into a cupcake tin with liners.  Bake as directed.  Frost with any icing you like, then top with  *grass and decorations.   Here's a recipe for icing if you need it.

*To make the grass, empty a bag of coconut into a bowl and squeeze in a few drops of food color.  Mix until color is evenly distributed.  Voila!  Grass.

The jelly beans, by the way, are Starburst jelly beans, my fave!

Do you have any favorite Easter recipes or traditions?  Comment below to share.


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