My favorite things 1

So I have a few things that I just love, love love! I thought I should share those with you!

I love avocados, they are one of my favorite things! I like them simple, just a little lemon juice and salt, that's it!

Eat it just like that, it's my favorite way to eat avocado.

But that's not what the post is about! The post is about my favorite sandwich!

Let's get started!

Start with good bread. Not like just plain old bread from bunny or whatever. Good bread, like out of the bakery. It's not expensive and it lasts a while and you can slice it how you like it.

I love hummus on a sandwich. It's so much better for you than mayo and so much more flavorful! I picked jalepeno, cilantro hummus. If you haven't jumped on the hummus bandwagon, do come...join the darkside, it's nice here!

Add some avocado and sprouts. There are lots of different kinds, I like alfalfa! They add some great, great flavor!

Add a little provolone and some tomato! If you wanted to you could add a little bacon or turkey or both!

This is a go to meatless sandwich for me. I LOVE it!

Add your own twist!

 

I heart Clarksville

during the Spring and Summer because they have an over abundance of Avocados and they are cheap cheap! (Last year they also had mangoes for super cheap and they go together so beautifully!)

Do you love avocado as much as I do?? If you are unfamiliar with these lovely green creamy bits of deliciousness, stick around!

There are all kinds of nifty little tools in all shapes and sizes to help you deal with an avocado, but I like to just stick with a knife and spoon.

OK, here's how to pick an avocado. Squeeze it, if you're going to use it right away, you want it to give just a little bit when you squeeze. Not enough to leave an indent, just enough that you felt it move. If you're going to sit it around for a day or so you can get the hard ones and leave them on the counter and they will ripen. Another great way to tell is if the tiny stem at the top is still there! If it's not there but it's still green where it's supposed to be, you're good if not, leave it!!

Rachel has taught me some great things about avocados, including how to store and freeze them and the ever delicious Eggvocado (I happen to love it with a teeny bit of coarse sea salt and Greek seasoning)

So, let's get you slicing and dicing the avocado.

See the little tan stem, you want that!

You need a rather large knife. My avocado is pretty small, but they get larger. You want a large knife so that you can go all the way around the avocado without losing your knife in there. Push the knife in, you will hit the large seed, slice around it. Slice the long way, all the way around in one smooth motion so that you have two whole pieces.

With a half in each hand, gently twist in opposite directions, and then pull apart.

You now have two halves, one has a large brown seed and the other has a seed shaped hole!

Sort of stab the seed with your knife. It should go right in. Twist and remove the seed.

Depending on what you're using the avocado for will determine how you'll slice it. I'm using it on a sandwich, so I'm just going to slice it. You can take the whole thing out, or dice it! If you're slicing and dicing you're going to take your knife and cut into the flesh but not through the outer skin.

Now with your spoon, just scoop it out!

Use it how you see fit!

The next post will show you my favorite sandwich!

 

These are a few of my favorite things!

So my good buddy Rachel over at The Traveling Spoon gave me a blog award! Like bringing my sweet stuff straight to my door wasn't super sweet enough!

I'm so excited to be a  winner!

But what I'm even more excited about is getting to give the award away to five other people! This has been pretty fun for me, because I LOVE LOVE LOVE bloggers. I love that they just put it all out there and let us see the good, the bad, and the poopy :)

I hope that you'll take the time to check out my buddies and join them on their journey's!

1. The Tasty Life is run by a super sweet girl named Emily! I met her in my wild and crazy former life as a librarian. She's got a fanastically southern sense of humor and is not afraid to try something new in the kitchen. She is primarily gluten-free and loves her veggies, pizza and steaks. I LOVE that her and her Big Guy cook together all the time. She's getting married soon and as a result has started "Wedding Wednesday." I suppose I should hold a grudge against her because she started my very serious obsession with Pinterest, but I don't...

2. Semper Feisty is a blog that I found on a very trying day. You see Allie is also going through the fertility struggle right now and she was the very first blog that I found since starting this journey. I feel like we're in this together. She is *obviously* also a military wife and it's good to see you're not the only one. She has an awesome business that you should check out now! She's an awesome example of praising Him in the storm and I look forward to her posts!

3. Our Family Front Porch is the musings of Kelly. I heart them, they are (no matter what the powers that be may say) Archangels! I am proud to be able to stand along side them. I trust Duane with keeping my husband safe and I trust Kelly for always having all the answers to all my questions. They have two fantastic little girls and make a most beautiful family. I just found out today (while cyber stalking) that Kelly has been blogging for quite a while. She is passionate about alot of things that is able to show you her side without being crazy about it.

4. I Just Have to Say This is written by Yvette. I have known her for quite a while but I don't feel like I really got to know her until I moved away. Let me tell you why I love her! We are completely different people. She has totally different life experiences than I do. I used to think that people had to see things exactly the same to understand each other, otherwise there would just be arguments. On paper, Yvette and I should have nothing in common. We should very quickly run out of topics, but that is not the case. She is able to state her case on her religion, opinions on politics and other hot button things without shouting. What's also amazing is that she can state her case and leave it at that. She doesn't feel the need to harp on things, she states her peace and that's that.

5. My Temporary Home is my sister at heart, Allison. We have gone on many journey's together. She is able to ground the whole world for me. She gets right to the heart of what's at hand here and lays it all out. She is not afraid of laying her heart out there in the blogging world for all to see and I always learn something from her when I'm done reading.

These ladies are so great. They make me proud to stand by them as a blogger!

So here's the deal with the award! Each of the ladies gets to give this award to 5 other bloggers and here are the rules:

1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog
2. Link back to the blogger that presented the award to you
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog
4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 more blogs with 200 followers or less who you feel deserve to be noticed
5. Let them know they've be chosen by e-mailing them and commenting on their blog.

Have fun!

Little Bit o' honey

SO I heard recently that if you eat local honey then you'll have less problems when pollen season comes around, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. Let's whirl the honey on an apple and brie sandwich shall we??

Here's what you'll need:

Whole Wheat English Muffin

ounce (or so) of brie

an apple of your choice in slices

2 tbsp of honey

Preheat to 350

Put your english muffins on your well loved pizza stone!

'

I love brie. It's soooo good to put on a crusty piece of bread along side some veggies and hummus for lunch...mmmm. Anywho, if you are unfamiliar with brie it's a very soft cheese. It spreads really easily! It comes with this white rind on it. If I'm just spreading some, I'll take the rind off (just slices right off). But, if I'm melting it for any reason I'll leave the rind on. Just slice the brie and put it on your english muffin. Then slice up your apple.



Put your brie and apple slices all pretty like on your english muffin. Bake for about 8-10 minutes. Just until the cheese is all melty and delicious!

See the pretty shine? We don't want bubbly and gooey, it's gooey all on it's on. Just warm it up so that when you touch the cheese it leaves an indent.

Drizzle a tbsp of honey on each half. Eat immediately!

This is so good to me! Just the right amount of sweet. I love it with granny smith apples for that little bite of tart flavor. This is such a quick and healthy breakfast or lunch!

How YOU doin?!

Hey guys!
I am super sorry about being totally absent. I've been feeling a bit down and have not been in the kitchen at all. But I'm feeling a bit better now and being in the kitchen makes me feel better so I'm just feeding (tehehe) off of it all today.
Anywho, I've been trying to exercise and eat better lately so I have a few recipes that are low cal and maybe you can also replace your snacks with something more filling but with less calories.

I've already confessed my love for all things pinterest and this one is all over the place there.

Here's what you'll need for some kale chips:

bunch of kale

evoo

s&p

whatever flavoring you like* I used cheese, you can use any kind really. Or maybe you're feeling a bit sea worthy you could do old bay or maybe some italian or really anything. Your imagination's the limit.

Preheat to 350

I happen to love kale. It's so robust and filling. It has a great flavor and takes to alot of things. I love it in soup it does a great job of adding some substance to it

*Let me explain this picture. I was by myself but I wanted to be able to show you how to rip the kale off. It didn't work out too well for me.*

Despite the terrible picture, you hold the stalk. Start at the bottom of the leaves and pull upwards. The kale just pulls away from the stalk super easily, it's quick work. I then tore the pieces into bite sized/finger food sized pieces.

On a greased baking sheet drizzle the kale with a bit of EVOO. Just enough to lightly coat. Add your topping of choice. I had some outrageously delicious Jalepeno and Habanero Cheese. It is so great but it's insanely hot (obviously) so I can only eat about a rice sized piece at a time. I thought that maybe doing this could infuse that great flavor but ease off on the heat. Add your s&p. I choose coarse sea salt and I'm glad I did. You don't need a ton of it but it imparts great flavor.

Bake for 12-14 minutes.

The kale will be super crispy and light.

These are so good. You just pick at it like popcorn. The flavor is so fresh! I'm so glad that I picked that 8th dimension of hell cheese because it added just enough of everything to make it over the top. At 43 calories for a cup, you can eat this stuff all day long for about 97 calories. It satifies my salty craving!

I'm stealing this!

So, I totally stole this from Rachel. So I must give her the credit. It looked so delicious that I had to make it and show you! Rachel has a printable recipe on her page, so you can hop over there and print this out. *I'm still working on having a "Printable Recipe" page.

We're making Ginger Pork Potstickers a la Guy Fieri! I love his Diners, Drive-ins and Dives but this is my first Guy recipe.

Here's what you need:

1 lb ground pork

1/4 cup onion, finely diced

2 tbsp minced ginger

1 tbsp minced garlic (I use about 2 cloves)

1 tsp soy sauce

1/4 tsp sesame oil

wonton wrappers

Do all your chop choppin! I love to chop, I could chop all day. Alot of folks love those little gadgets that make the chopping faster and some even make it possible to chop something without ever touching it. I'm not a gadget girl, I personally love eau de gahhhlic :)

Brown everything to a lovely brown color :)

You could very easily sub ground turkey or beef or chicken here. The hubs is not a fan of pork so next time I'll probably go with turkey.

Remove from heat and add in your soy sauce, sesame oil and S&P. Sit aside to cool.

OK, get some water to boiling for later. I used a deep sauce pan. But you could use one of those lovely oval pasta pans too.

Now the hubs was starving so I was in a hurry *plus he offered to help* didn't wait as long as I probably should have for the filling to cool BUT I didn't have any problems at all.

You need a small bowl of water and a pastry brush. If you don't have a pastry brush just use your fingers.

You are going to brush the outside 1/2 inch of two perpendicular sides of your wrapper.

Fill your wrapper! I used a tsp and just messed around with how much I could use. Don't overfill!

Fold over and roughly line up the edges. It doesn't have to be perfect.

*The hubs did an excellent job of photo documenting this. You could flip through them and see me moving...lol. As a result you're getting a very thorough wonton wrapper tutorial*

 

Make sure you squeeze the edges together REALLY good. It's pretty easy for these little boogers to come apart in the boiling water. It really doesn't take long to do this. It seems more in depth than it really is. I set the cutting board up with four at a time and did them like that. *This next part is alot easier with two people. It runs smoother like that. I did the wonton's and the hubs did the boiling. (Yvette, I bet BJ would be an excellent wonton wrapper guy!)

Heat up a small pan with a little of that sesame oil you have. If not, EVOO or canola is fine.

Drop them (a few at a time) into boiling water. You want them to be able to move around so don't over fill your pot. But don't worry because they only stay in the water for one minute then you fish them out. So the process doesn't take long at all. *Remember how the hubs was starving and I was in a hurry? Well I skipped the next step.* You are supposed to let them sit on a cooling rack for a while to dry off a bit. I just let them drain a few seconds and them put them in the pan (I missed the photo!).

Drop them into the hot pan with the sesame oil and let them get a delicious browned color.

Serve with some soy sauce for dipping and you're in business!

I happen to think that if it involves ginger and soy sauce it could be a shoe and I'd love it. BUT, this was really great. The hubs would have liked it better if it wasn't pork but I'm a pork fan. This is pretty versatile too so you could add in some carrots or something and sneak it past the kids. PLUS, who doesn't like to eat with chopsticks?!?! And if you don't have chopsticks, who doesn't like to eat with their fingers?!?!

They are also good even if they aren't steaming hot so it would be a great recipe to take to a party. They warm up better than you would thing, but you could also just save (or freeze) the filling to use for later. This makes a ton of wonton's so ask a friend to come over too.

It was about time

for me to get a cold, so I have one...uggg.

This whole week has been a bit of a blur of congested ugginess. I've been so slack and I apologize!

This past weekend I did some serious cooking. It had been a while and I needed it. Maybe I'll feel more like it this weekend too.

I heart Pinterest. I hope you are on it because it's fantastic. If you are, find me!! I'm asb0521.

So I found this recipe on Pinterest and it's definately added to the plus pile. We're making Vegetable Tian!

Here's what you need:

1 yellow onion, sliced or chopped

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 potatoes of your choice

1-2 zuchinni

1 yellow squash

3 tomatoes

1/2 cup grated cheese of choice

2 tbsp EVOO

Thyme

S&P to taste

Preheat to 375

Saute your onions with your EVOO until they are translucent then toss in your garlic and cook together for about 2 minutes.

So in your casserole dish put a layer of your onions. I choose a smaller dish and I should have put a bit less onions.

Slice all your veggies so that they are all about the same size.

Layer them all pretty like around the dish. I love love love the way this looks!

I did about 3 sprigs of Thyme, It's up to you really!

Drizzle about a tbsp or so of EVOO then top with your thyme and S&P to taste, then cover and cook for 35 minutes.

I added a few bread crumbs, optional little crunch. Sprinkle on the cheese, I picked Mozz.

Leave uncovered and put back in the oven for about 25 minutes.

It looks so great that the hubs couldn't keep his fingers off it!

I served Pot Stickers with it from over at The Traveling Spoon.

It was fantastic! All the flavors melted all together so great. The potatoes were my favorite!

The hubs loved this and it warms up really great. The thing I like most about this recipe is that you can really taste all the deliciousness that the veggies have to offer. Just going with a light seasoning makes all the flavors just do their thing.

This is so easy that it's silly but it tastes so great!

Outside the box

The hubs loves pop tarts. He doesn't care what flavor, he loves them all. I've never been able to eat them, the pop tarts and I don't get along.

He likes to take them in his cute little spider man very manly lunchbox for breakfast. I found some a while back on pinterest and ask him did he want me to try to make them, he resisted!

A week or so ago he came up with the idea all on his on remembered and asked if I'd try the homemade pop tarts. They were so good that I'm perturbed with him for resisting.

He decided he wanted the filling to be sweet potato so I just made a Sweet Potato Souffle to use for the filling. Just make it just like the recipe.

Now, let's make the dough. This dough is outrageous. It is so good and without a doubt the easiest dough that I've ever worked with. It's super pliable and does exactly what you tell it to.

Here's what you need:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 tbsp sugar

1tsp salt

1 cup butter, cut into pea(ish) size

1 egg

2 tbsp milk

Preheat to 350

Ok, normally I use the mixer for dough. That was until I got a processor. The food processor makes dough so much easier. Anywho, the flour

Sugar and salt. Get those combined well and then add your

butter. Mix well. The butter should make it look like a wee bit lumpy.

Beat the eggs and milk together just until mixed and then add to the flour mixture.

Then let the mixer or food processor do the work for you until you have a dough as beautiful as this

I'm telling you it's like working with something as easy as play-doh.

Take a little baseball(ish) size ball and roll it until it's flat. Not like rolled out like you would pastry, just enough to get it through the roller!

*Quick, very quick pasta roller tut*

Pass the dough through on level 1.

Fold it over itself

and pass back through on level 1. Do this several times until it goes through easily. The dough completely changes consistency. You'll be able to tell when it's ready to go up to level 2

Repeat the process of folding over and passing back through the machine on level 2. For this level 2 is as high as I went, then back to the cutting board.

I just did a tiny bit of rolling with the rolling pin to make it a bit wider.

Figure out the size you want and cut out your squares. Put a layer of your filling down leaving about a 1/4 to 1/2 inch empty around all four edges.

Lay a dough blanket

Cut the extra and press down the edges.

Using a fork go around the edges to seal it all in nice and tidy.

Bake for 15 minutes.

  

The glaze that I used (and am still working on) is a Marshmellow Creme Glaze. It's delicious. This is my first experience with Marshmellow Creme.

1/3 cup sugar + 3 tbsp of water in the microwave for about a minute (until it boils). Add in 2 tbsp of Marshmellow Creme and stir until it's all melty and delightful.

Add your glaze *and sprinkles if you see fit*

If you are eating these right away add your glaze and have at it.

If however you are going to be taking these in your spidey lunchbox we have another method.

You can put the glaze on before you bake them and it will bake into the poptart and be a little more travel friendly, or, if you are my hubs...you break out the kitchen torch!

*Sorry, I was in charge of this picture!*

It puts a lovely carmelization on the glaze and makes it less sticky than just leaving it.

Either way you get this

I really cannot explain to you how great this is. The dough is outstanding. Just a little sweet, it is substantial enough to be a one-hander. It has just a little crunch. The sweet potato was a great idea and I'm currently in love with marshmellow creme.

It's not too sweet, it stands on it's on and it blows those boxed pop tarts out of the water.

My plan is to make these and freeze the one's that he won't eat this week and take them out as needed!