Michelle Obama’s Cauliflower Mac & Cheese

I had a head of cauliflower that was languishing in my vegetable drawer, but I wasn’t in the mood for roasting it like I usually do. Then I remembered this recipe for mac & cheese — it looked easy, and I had all the ingredients.

I made  a few changes to the recipe to accommodate what was on hand:

• I had 5 oz of Swiss cheese, 8 oz of sharp cheddar, and 3 oz of Gruyere.
• I wanted to make it more “casserole” like, so I added 1/2 a pound of cooked Italian sausage. My husband suggested trying chorizo the next we make it.
• I didn’t have any fresh parsley ( and it was too cold to go out to the store),  so I omitted that, but added some dried parsley to the bread crumbs ( I had panko).

With some steamed broccoli, this made a tasty meal.

Difficulty (1-5): 2  Nothing too complicated here, but a fair number of steps
Result (1-5): 4  Tasty, healthier than normal mac & cheese, and a complete meal w/the addition of a protein.

Jalapeno Popper Dip

 

This was another app that I made for a holiday party. I made this popper dip exactly as the recipe called for, I used a glass pie plate and cooked it at 375 for about 35 minutes. I was afraid that it would be way too spicy for me since I don’t really love spicy stuff but it was very very good and not to hot at all. 

Difficulty (1-5) – 2  Super easy to put it all together

Will Make Again (1-5) – 5 YES YES YES

Black Bean Salad- Sooooo good.

 

Ok I had a holiday party to attend last night and decided all the apps I made would come from Pinterest. This black bean salad was one that I was meh about making but turned out to be my favorite. I made it exactly as the recipe stated except I left out the avocados. I think it’s great without them. I also think you could throw in some grilled chicken and make this a main dish. 

Difficulty- (1-5) 3 only because of all the chopping and finding fresh corn

Make Again – (1-5) 5 DEFINITELY. LOVE 

 

Clean Eating Turkey Meatballs

This pin is definitely not one of the popular pins that 500 million people on pinterest have pinned but it was one of the better recipes I have tried. I know a lot of us are looking to eat better and looking for an easy meal and this was a great one. The recipe for turkey meatballs is also a clean eating recipe so basically it involves only ingredients that are as close to their original form as possible and not highly processed.
I deviated from the recipe just a bit because it made a lot. The recipe called for 3 pounds of ground turkey. I did not want to make so much in case I did not like it. I used 1 pound of ground turkey instead. Because I used so much less turkey I lowered the seasonings. All of the seasonings called for 1 tablespoon, I used a half tablespoon for each seasoning and that works fine except for paprika which called for 2Tbsp, I used 1 Tbsp. The recipe also called for purple onions. I hate red/purple onions with a passion I substituted white onion instead. The recipe suggested fish oil or salt, I bet you can guess what I used. I used salt. One other change that I made was to cook the green peppers, onion, and garlic before putting them in the mix. I just prefer cooked onion and green pepper, personal preference I think.
To actually put all the ingredients together including sauté peppers and onions and garlic it took me less than 10 minutes. I use a muffin tin as directed and the same amount of time. They came out really good, very flavorful. I served it to the boys with spaghetti sauce and whole-wheat spaghetti noodles. I ate them plain with a side of veggies and squash. I will definitely make these again and I think I will start freezing them as well.

Apples in a bag – or a bowl- whatever!

I have been craving some major desserts this afternoon so I decided to try the apples in a bag recipe on Pinterest. This looked pretty good but I have to admit I was skeptical. Upon reading the instructions it suggested putting all the ingredients in a big and microwaving in the plastic bag, yeah, that was not happening. I’m cancer phobic. I used to glass bowl. I put all the ingredients in a glass bowl covered it and shook. I microwaved for the two minutes and just vented the cover. I used the raisins as suggested although that made the calorie count a bit higher. I will definitely be making this again most likely twice a week if not more it’s really good and not much to it.
Difficulty – 1
Results – 5, awesome.

Crayon Drip Pumpkins

Ok, so I didn’t follow the pin instructions at all, but rather used the end product as my inspiration. Here is how she did it: http://swelldesigner.blogspot.com/2012/08/crayon-drip-art-pumpkin-tutorial.html

Here’s what I did:

1. Buy giant white gourds

2. Make a ring with blue painters’ tape, sticky side up

3. Break peeled crayons in half and arrange on tape

4. Using embossing heat tool (gets hotter than blow dryer), melt crayons

Voila!

Difficulty (1-5): 2–pretty easy craft project, just a little messy
Result (1-5): 4–the first one is a little ugly because I didn’t get the tape covered well enough

Sopapilla Cheesecake Pie

You know I love pinterest for quirky things like being able search
“Desserts” and you find a page of amazing things. This past weekend we had a game night Mexican style and I was looking for quick and easy dessert to be served after build your quesadillas. I literally searched Mexican dessert and came up with sopapilla cheesecake pie. I looked at the directions it looked easy considering I had about 10 minutes to make it before people would be coming over I decided these were the way to go. The recipe basically consisted of sugar, cinnamon some butter, cream cheese and refrigerated crescent rolls. I used to reduced fat crescent rolls and fat-free cream cheese and this did not seem to affect the recipe. The baking time was perfect, the only issue I had was that the recipe said to wait until the sopapillas were completely cooled before serving. they looked way too good warm to serve cold. They were a little runny when we served them warm but not bad at all. They tasted really good and it we spent about five minutes trying to figure out what did they specifically taste like, they tasted like something we had all had before. Then we figured out they tasted just like cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting. like exactly. I would make the recipe again because it was very easy and the results were really good.
The one drawback about this recipe is that it did call for a stick of butter for the topping and quite a bit of sugar but this is for dessert so who cares right? I might actually cut back on some of the butter if I were to make this again because the butter on top of the crescent rolls not only looked a bit unappetizing until it settled in, I felt it was a little heavy from all that butter. I might cut it down to 3/4 cup and see how it comes out. I think the crust would be flakier and less dense.
Difficulty -1 this was really easy
Results – 4 it could’ve been prettier but it tasted pretty darn good

Hamburger Soup

I am a sucker for soup on a cold fall day. Well actually I’m a sucker for soup pretty much all of the time. I recently pinned the recipe for hamburger vegetable soup. I almost never keep ground beef in our house so I substituted ground turkey which is a staple for us. I was very pleased by the relative easiness of this recipe and the great results. Besides for the substitution of turkey and leaving out thyme as a seasoning I followed the recipe exactly. The only thing that I would do differently next time is less salt. The recipe told you to use between 1 tablespoon and 2 1/2 tablespoons of salt I think. Knowing our deep love for salt in my family I used 2 tablespoons. I think 2 tablespoons was too much. Next time I think I will use 1 1/2 tablespoons or possibly even just 1. The kids enjoyed this the first time I fed it to them but by the next day I think they figured out how many vegetables were actually in it and both refused to eat it. I will definitely make this recipe again, It was great to bring for lunches at work and my husband enjoyed it a lot too.

Shelf Above Washer

I like

to think of myself as an equal opportunity pinner. I pin D I Y stuff but Ii pin a lot of recipes too. I probably try more recipes then I do DIY stuff but I probably do more pins than most people too.
When I saw on the pin about placing a shelf above your washer and dryer I thought it was pretty much genius. I also knew it was a easy cheap fix for me always laying across our washer and dryer trying to prevent housefires from all the clothes and and miscellaneous crap that falls behind there. The hubs was pretty happy that this project was going to be easy for him too. Frankly, I probably could have done it myself but I do enough already right?! We picked up the laminate board at Menard’s for about four dollars I think and three cheap L brackets that matched for about $.89 each so all in all a very cheap fix. It took the hubs about 10 minutes to install the board which involved measuring, cutting the board and screwing it in. Now we have a nice looking shelf and I have not had to climb on the washer and dryer for about a month Hooray!
Difficulty – 2 there was a level and power tools involved
Results – 5, effective and easy

Pumpkin Cookies with Carmel Cream Cheese Frosting

With all the pumpkin recipes flying around Pinterest I decided Jr and I needed to use up the can of pumpkin I had on my shelf. There seem to be two main recipes out there for pumpkin cookies. One had an entire stick of crisco plus a cup of butter. The other only had one cup of butter so I went with that one.
The cookies were really just okay. The actual recipe was super easy and didn’t have too many ingredients.They turned out cake like. I smooshed them a bit with a fork so they’d be easier to frost later. They just weren’t very flavorful.
I had Carmel cream cheese frosting in the freezer from a previous recipe.. This paired with the cookies turned out amazing. The hubs got home and immediately ate like 5.
Cookies – Difficulty -2, there was sifting involved. Results – on their own – 2, with the frosting – 5.
Frosting – difficulty 5, wow was that a pain in the butt, results – 5.