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My mom has a variation on this recipe - I think it's called "Oriental" instead of "Asian" and has a totally different taste. Love them both! Here's the one I just tried out of Kraft Foods magazine -

Asian Chicken Noodle Salad

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Avalanche Bars - yummy!

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Made this over the weekend and thought it was yummy. I used chopped shrimp instead of crab meat and lemon juice mostly instead of lime juice (because that's what I had), but same idea :)

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Some (good) recipes I've recently tried -

Tex-Mex Spicy Meatballs (Family Circle)

Steak Fajitas (Farm Girl Recipes)

Bean Dip (Farmer Family)

Rotel Dip (Farm Girl Recipes - this was awesome)

Frozen Coconut Limeade (She Wears Many Hats - I made ours with Lemonade)

Orange Chicken (Farm Girl Recipes)

And last, but not least, "hamburger" cookies! (Come Together Kids) I even took a picture :)

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I had several reasons (excuses) for making these chocolate chip cookie dough truffles:

• my boss is celebrating her 20th anniversary with MetLife tomorrow
• my dad is spending the weekend with us
• Monday is Valentine's Day

If you like cookie dough (but not the danger of eating raw eggs), they are great and easy!

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These might be the best pancakes I've ever had. Note: I'm not a big fan of syrup - I didn't make the special syrup in this recipe - and these are great by themselves if you love cinnamon.
The boys loved them too!

(Took this picture so I can include it in their "recipe books")


Cinnamon Bun Pancakes - found at How Does She
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
3 T. white sugar
1/2 t. salt
4 t. baking powder
1 T. Cinnamon
2 eggs, beaten
1 C. of milk
2 T. corn syrup
1/4 C. butter, melted
1 T. vanilla
Maple Icing Syrup
1 C. powdered sugar
1/4 C. butter, melted
2 t. Maple flavoring
1/4 C. milk

1. Mix flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and cinnamon in medium bowl. In another medium bowl beat together eggs, milk,corn syrup, butter, and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix well.

2. Drop the batter by about 1/3 cup fulls onto the pre-heated/greased griddle and cook until the tiny bubbles start appearing on top, flip over. These only take a couple of minutes to cook on each side. Keep cooked ones on a oven safe plate in the oven at 250 degrees to keep warm.

3. In a small saucepan on the stove, over medium heat, combine all the syrup ingredients. Whisk until completely combined. When heated through, serve with your yummy pancakes!

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I tried 2 new fall recipes today and thought I'd share.

And yes, Ed and my friend Sarah both told me that you can buy caramel popcorn at the store :), but I wanted to try "homemade" because it sounded so good with nuts in it. And I'm blaming it on the way the original recipe was written, because I totally burnt the caramel the first round (you know how bad burnt popcorn smells right? Well, black burnt caramel poured over popcorn smells much worse. especially at 8:30 am. ugh)

Anyway, we went to church and I came home and tried it again. Much better results!

Caramel Corn -
12 c. popped popcorn
1 1/2 c. Beer nuts or shelled salted peanuts (I used regular peanuts)
1 stick plus 2 T butter
1 1/4 c. packed brown sugar
1/3 c. light corn syrup
1/4 t. baking soda

Preheat oven to 250. Place popcorn and nuts in large bowl. Melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in sugar, corn syrup, and 1/2 t. salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until sugar dissolves. Raise heat to high; bring to boil without stirring. Cool until mixture reaches 248 and immediately remove. Stir in baking soda. Add to popcorn/nuts and stir to coat. Transfer mix to rimmed backing sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with 1 t. salt. Let cool and break into clusters.

My mom brought me the Lebo Methodist Church's cookbook this afternoon and I was excited to see a recipe I could use with my "extra" bag of apples. I love to see what everyone submitted (they list names under each recipe) -this one came from Marilyn Combes, a good family friend. And I will be making it A LOT this fall/winter - great to eat alone, on top of pancakes, etc. I love these!

Country Store Apples -
5-6 c. apples (I peeled them)
1/3 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
1 t. cinammon
1/4 t. nutmeg-5
4 T. cornstarch
1/2 c. cider or apple juice

Cut apples in chunks. Place apples, sugar, cinammon, nutmeg in crock pot. Dissolve cornstarch in apple juice and blend well; pour over apples and stir to blend. Cover and cook on low 4-5 hours. Stir halfway through cooking.

Yum!

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Candy corn bark is my new favorite Halloween party treat. I took it to the Jones' kids barn party and am making it now for Brett's Halloween party tomorrow. So yummy and easy! Much better than making (decorating) the 24 cupcakes I was supposed to make for tomorrow :)


Picture from The Idea Room

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I (with the help of my master chef, Brett) made this last night. It was a really good "dip" for corn chips and the boys ate it well. Good and fast!

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I was a little apprehensive about making fish tacos (#4 on the page), but they turned out pretty darn good. I loved the salad/avocado/lime juice topping.

However, when the boys and Ed came into the house after I had cooked the fish, they couldn't believe how bad it smelled.
Brett: "What is that SMELL??"
Brady: "It smells like dog poop."

Nice. Thanks boys.


Photo taken from Woman's Day.

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We took Apple Pie Bars to Brady's class today (they are learning about apples). They eat lunch super early, so have heard that many of the kids are HUNGRY by the end of the day. I was happy to contribute a snack! Although don't be fooled - these aren't a quick and easy treat to make with your kiddos (at least after a long day's work on a Wednesday night :).

As always, Little britches was excited to help. He might just be a master chef some day!

Half is pretty, half is ugly. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

Labor Weekend

We spent Labor Day weekend around the house (laboring :) - doing some projects that have been on our list for awhile. Ed took care of the biggest project which was cleaning up the brush and cutting down a pretty big tree in the pasture behind our house.

The big brush pile has been back there the entire 8 years we've lived here and although we've (and our neighbors) have asked the city to make the property owner clean it up (and get rid of the poison ivy) nothing has ever happened. (Ed sprayed "the forest" about a month ago and killed everything, so it looks much better than it really was - now it was just sticks/wood)cleanup.

I didn't get a final picture, but it looks SO good now. (Thanks honey!!)

And now we are set for wood! Which is good, because we are loving our new fire pit (and just spending more time in our backyard).

(Bonus: I got these glow-stick swords on the Target dollar aisle and the boys LOVED them.)

OH, and we tried out this margarita recipe (but we used raspberries instead of blackberries) - quite tasty! Southern Living has the best recipes . . .

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My mom brought up some Colorado peaches Saturday and we used some to make Frozen Strawberry-Peach Pops from this cookbook.



They were really good, but would have worked better if I had used little Dixie cups instead of the bigger size. Brady suggested just freezing them for a little while to make a slush so that's what we'll do next time!



And tonight, we're going to use the rest of them to make one last batch of peach ice-cream. It is so good!

On another note: My process for putting recipes in my recipe box is - I have to have tried the recipe and liked it before it goes in. So I have piles of new recipes to test . . . .and most of them don't make the cut unfortunately (why do magazines include so many bad ones?!). I think for the good ones - I'm going to try to take some pictures and make the boys a family cookbook that they can have when they are older. I think it would be fun to see pictures of them growing up (eating the food) with the recipes. :)

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BBQ Meatballs - I was hungry and I thought they might get us through the week (until we road trip!!). The sauce on top was really good and they were very fast (except for the cook time) and easy - plus the boys liked them!

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Feta Black Bean Dip - it's wonderful

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Saturday night I tried some new recipes. . . . .

Bacon Cheeseburger pie - it was good and easy and made itself a permanent place in my recipe box. I will definitely add some things to it next time though - cut up dill pickles, maybe more ketchup. You could also do a pizza version and add pepperoni/green peppper and use pizza sauce instead of ketchup. Yum!

We went to the farmer's market Saturday morning and got some peaches to make Peach ice cream. They were Georgia peaches - I didn't know what I was buying until I got home and cut up the extra peaches to make fruit salad. HEAVEN. Seriously, I was trying to divide them up equally for everyone. On the way home from church Sunday Brady asked when we were going to the farmer's market again to get peaches and decided he should confess that after dinner Saturday he went into the kitchen and ate the rest of the cut up peaches. Too funny. Making the ice cream mix was kind of funny too because the boys were napping so I went outside to use the food chopper and mixer and it started pouring on me, but we got it done! Brett was pretty proud that we made homemade ice cream.

And we made some of these to go along with it - it was obviously not a healthy eating day. :) These were not as good as my favorite chocolate chip cookies - and we definitely didn't need a pan of brownies, along with the cookies! - but they were still pretty tasty.

Rainbow Pudding Pops

We made these over the weekend and they were a hit! I even messed up and got "cook and serve" pudding instead of instant, but it didn't matter (just made it and let it cool for a minute before we added food coloring).

Brady's testimonial - "We are TOTALLY making these again!"

Pioneer Woman's Mexican Lasagna

Tuesday night I made this. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. The recipe says 8 servings. . . . . . I keep looking at the pan in my fridge and thinking its at least 25 servings. Seriously, Ed had some last night and when he was holding the pan said it had to weigh 25-30 lbs. . . .and he wasn't kidding.

But the good thing is, it's pretty tasty. The bad thing is its pretty spicy so the kids won't be eating it. Which means most of it will be put into the freezer. Sure hope it freezes well!

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We had family over Saturday and Sunday so I busted out a couple new recipes and thought I'd share.



I'd never made REAL lemonade before, but it was really good (not too sweet or sour like most of the fake kinds). I don't know where this recipe came from, but from the looks of the torn out magazine page - probably Martha.

Lemonade - Makes 3 quarts

2 1/2 c. sugar
6 1/2 c. water
3 c. freshly squeezed lemon juice (15-20 lemons)
4 c. ice

In small saucepan, combine sugar and 2 1/2. c water. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat, let cool.
In punch bowl/lg. container, combine lemon juice, sugar syrup, remaining 4 c. water and ice. Stir well and serve.



My coworker brought this to a picnic and I had to have the recipe.

Texas Caviar

1 can shoepeg corn ( drained)
1 can black beans (drained)
1 chopped green pepper
2 chopped tomatoes
2 chopped green onions
1/2 cup chopped red onion
1 can chopped green chilies drained or
1 chopped jalapeno
4 T chopped cilantro
1/2 c. Wishbone Zesty Italian Dressing
1/2 c. Wishbone Sweet and Spicy French Dressing
Mix and marinate overnite.
(If you double it, you don't need to double the dressing)



And these were pretty good too. My mom said she would have added garlic powder, and I agree.
Oven-fried Ranch Drumsticks

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Ever since I saw this recipe in Coastal Living, I've been looking forward to making it - Shrimp and Crab Nachos. They were really good . . . .