Kid's Lunch

The menu was potato pancakes, mac and cheese, tomato soup, and sliced apples with a tiny bit of sugar and cinnamon. Liam does not like mac and cheese so he didn't get any... he also ate a yogurt which I didn't take a picture of. The kids love apples, normally I don't put cinnamon and sugar on them but this was a treat today. Potato pancakes are a big hit. If you've never had them they taste like (to me) what I would imagine fried mashed potatoes to taste like... they have a crispy exterior and a smooth creamy interior... they don't taste like hash browns at all to me, but some people think they do, I guess it depends on how you make hash browns and potato pancakes. I admit, I use a mix.http://www.mrgrocers.com/streits-potato-pancake-latkes-mix-6oz-1853 but I buy mine from the grocery store, not that website... that is the brand I get. My goal is to someday make this meal from scratch... homemade potato pancakes, tomato soup, and mac and cheese. I have made mac and cheese homemade before but since Violet and I are the only ones who eat it, we end up with a lot of leftovers. If someday both Liam likes it, and Drake... then it might be worth the extra effort.

Hair Styling III

Yesterday I tried the following look... I'm not sure what I was going for but it occurred to me later that I was, perhaps subconsciously, trying to do a Gwen Stephani bang puff thing.

I don't think I'll be doing this one again... I just lack the rockstar quality and age to pull this one off :)

Left Overs!

I had left over boneless chicken wings (I prefer on the bone, David likes boneless, so these were actually David's leftovers). They were lemon pepper flavored. I also had left over rice. AND I had fixin's left over from nacho night with my sister Kileen. I heated some corn tortillas to make tacos. I make tacos with left overs, often. The other morning I took the left over steak from nacho night, chopped it up and cooked scrambled eggs to mix with it, put it in a corn tortilla. Delicious.

These tacos are so tasty and the lemon pepper from the boneless wings adds another layer of flavor. I would say just as good, if not better, than any restaurant.

Shrimp and Rice!

I know it may seem like I eat a lot of shrimp... but sometimes I go long stretches without :)

This dish is stir fried asparagus, leeks, mushrooms, garlic, and shrimp with salt and pepper to taste on top of basmati rice. So very good. BTW, sorry if my food pics aren't appealing... I'm not much of a photographer, just trying to add more pictures to my posts.

Hair Stylings, Part II

Yesterday I tried a small bouffant style, sort reminiscent of the 1960's... except that it might be too small to really claim that. But for me, who usually wears it flat, this was plenty high.

Ratting the hair underneath used to scare me off of bouffants, I mean who wants to brush that mess out? But recently I discovered a wonderful magic hairbrush called the Smoobee. Oh how I love this brush. I brush my own hair with it, and my 4 year old daughter's hair. Violet's hair is always soooo tangled and she hates having it brushed, often I find myself cutting out her tangles, and then just cutting her hair short. Now I am not afraid to let her grow it longer, thanks to this brush. Seriously I can get all the tangles out of her hair in about 1 minute.

Bought this off of amazon.com

Shrimp Limone!

Zios is not my favorite restaurant, but it does make one of my favorite dishes. Shrimp Limone, and nobody makes it as good as they do (IMO). In my college days I used to treat myself to Shrimp Limone after I finished a difficult project. It was my reward for getting it done, albeit not always done well, but done. Oh how I LOVE this dish. Since I got married though, we don't go get my favorite dish very often because David's not crazy about Zios. I decided, after I had successfully baked a salmon, to see if I could find a recipe for Shrimp Limone. Well I found this girl's blog who likes the dish as well who has figured out how to make it! So I gave it a go. It was super easy and guess what?! SHE DID IT! This tastes JUST like it. I'm soooo happy. Here's how mine looks. The taste is so creamy, lemony, artichoky, with mushrooms, tomatoes, with my loves shrimp and angel hair pasta. YUM.

Hair stylings

Usually my idea of fixing my hair is washing it, maybe drying it, maybe curling the ends. I decided to try to do my hair in different styles more often. I really like the 1940's hair styles, especially the rockabilly look, so I've been experimenting with that. Not that easy my friends, but hopefully I'll get better at it. This is how I styled it for church today, and surprisingly, I got a lot of compliments and people telling me it reminded them of the 40's style of hair! Success.

Pizza!

I wanted to try to make pizza from scratch so I asked my sister Kileen (who has made it before) for help. We used a recipe for the dough from JOY of Cooking. Kileen showed me the key parts of making the dough but really she did most of the work. SORRY the following pictures are super blurry :( On my phone they looked fine, I wasn't paying close attention to how well the pics turned out.

Dough just risen

Rolled them out

                                                         The professional at work

 

Just adding the sauce 

                                            my mushroom pizza just before I cooked it.

                                             mushroom pizza after I cooked it. *so good*

  

My pepperoni pizza I made for the rest of the family, knowing they 

wouldn't enjoy my mushroom pizza. 

Kileen's small pizza, she also made a larger pepperoni only for her family that I didn't get a picture of.

This is what I worked on while Kileen made the dough. I made bishop's pie for both her family and mine. It's crushed oreos on the bottom, then a layer of cream cheese and whipped cream mixture, then a layer of chocolate pudding, a layer of just whipped cream on top with a few oreo cookie sprinkles. The kids love this... so do I.

The pizza was really good, but David said he could taste the yeast in it... so next time we will try a pizza dough recipe without yeast... Ki says she has a good one.

Salmon!

I would like to eat more fish. Starting with salmon. Yum. I watched this allrecipes video for help and then baked the salmon the way they instructed.

I picked fresh herbs from the garden, basil, rosemary, curly leaf parsley, and pineapple sage.

Chopped up the herbs and rubbed them on one side while the olive oil got hot in the oven.

I didn't show the step where I pull the skin off and season it more before I stick it back in the oven. The skin came off perfectly. This is just cooked, they say to take it out before completely cooked through and it will continue cooking in the pan, it did.

Cooked some Basmati rice and asparagus to go with the fish. This dish was soooo delicious. Will definitely make again.