Dinner time!

Hey everyone! I apologize for my delay in posting. Our goal is 2 posts per week and I completely dropped the ball. Maybe the deliciousness of the recipe below will help you forgive me. Please?

Today's easy recipe requires very few ingredients and is very simple. I will say, though, that unlike other simple recipes we post, this is not one where you can pop it in the oven and forget about it until it's done. So maybe this is more of a medium difficulty recipe versus an easy recipe.  I found it on Martha Stewart's webpage. You can click the link to see her original recipe.

Ingredients:

4 Potatoes
1 lb. Asparagus
1 lb. Chicken (I used about 5 chicken tenderlions. You could also use chicken breast, chicken legs, or multiple parts of a whole chicken!)
Butter
1 Lemon
Thyme (fresh sprigs are preferable but I just used my dried kitchen spices.)
Step 1: Preheat oven to 475. Peel and quarter (cut into 4ths) potatoes, cut ends off of asparagus, slice lemon into wedges, thaw chicken.

Step 2: Layer potatoes and a small slice of butter in pan. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 20-25 minutes (until potatoes are golden brown).

Step 3: Remove pan from oven. Add chicken over potatoes.  Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes (until chicken is golden brown).

Step 4: Remove pan from oven. Add asparagus, lemon wedges, and a small slice of butter over the chicken. Season with thyme. Cook for 5 to 15 minutes, or until asparagus is tender. Serve with butter and lemon juices from pan sprinkled on top.

This was delicious and very easy--my only dislike about this recipe is that it's more difficult to make while multi-tasking, since you have stop every 20 minutes to add the next layer of food.

Enjoy!

Fast, easy breakfast | Smoothie and Sandwich

Happy Monday everyone!

In my last post, I shared a smoothie recipe.  I'm going to share another one today AND share a simple tip that I learned from my mom a long time ago for a quick, easy breakfast sandwich.

The Smoothie:

 Choose your cup, and fill with frozen fruit.  Pour in juice to fill in the spaces between.  Pour this into the blender and add a hand full of ice.  I also added about 1/4 cup of water.  Add honey to taste, blend, and enjoy!  This is a very fresh & fruity smoothie! [I like pineapple juice a lot better but didn't have any.]

 This next part is something probably everyone knows, but I'm not sure I'D know unless my mom had told me.  You can cook an egg in the microwave in 1 minute.  Exciting right?  Just spray a microwave safe bowl with Pam, whisk an egg, pop in the microwave for 60 seconds & BOOM you're done!

 Enjoy in a simple breakfast sandwich!  I've been adding microwave Morningstar "sausage" to mine, and it's super fast and filling.  Enjoy!

Easy No Sew Curtains

Good evening, everyone! Tonight I am going to show you how to create curtains with no sewing. I'd rate this project in a couple of ways:
Skill Level-Easy
Time Needed-Moderate
Price-That depends--do you already have a ton of fabric? If yes, it could be free!

Here's what you need:
Scissors
A straight edge
An iron
A tape measure
A hot glue gun
Lots of hot glue gun sticks
Lots and lots of fabric

About a year ago, before I got married, I was inspired by Nate Berkus to "upholster" my walls. The idea is that if you are renting a home and can't paint the walls, you can always cover the walls with fabric. Liquid starch acts like glue, holding the fabric to the wall. When it's time to move, you just wet the fabric and the starch is neutralized. It's supposed to peel right off! As you can tell by the language of that sentence, I don't know if it peels right off. I never did the project. I did, however, START the project by buying lots and lots of fabric ($$$). When Doug and I got married and moved, the never-used fabric needed a project. I decided to make a curtained wall panel behind our bed, like a faux headboard, with matching curtains.  The main problem is---I can't sew. My sewing machine has been broken for about as long as I've had it.

NO SEW CURTAINS IT IS!

So...I started with a chevron print fabric I purchased online. It was a HUGE roll of some canvas-y type fabric. The roll (and fabric on the roll) is naturally 57 inches wide. I did not cut the sides of the fabric--I maintained the width completely so that I wouldn't have to finish the sides. One panel was plenty wide to cover a whole window.

Step 1: I measured our wall from floor to ceiling and decided that a 7 foot length panel would be plenty long. I added about 6 inches so I could fold the top down to create a loop for the curtain rod.

Here's where we are so far: 57 inch wide panels that are cut to be 7.5 feet long. I didn't know how crowded 1 panel would look on a window, so I cut 5 panels. I figured I could put 3 behind our bed and 2 over the window. We really only needed 1 per window, so I ended up with 1 extra panel. I eventually used the extra to create a "nook" in our hallway--more on that in another post!

Step 2: Lay panel on a flat surface backwards--you should be looking at the side that will be facing the window.  Fold top of panel down about 3-6 inches. I did 6 inches, but it wasn't necessary to have that much room for the curtain rod.

Step 3: Iron a crease into the fabric where you have folded the top of your curtain panel. I did this so that I wouldn't end up gluing the fabric in a crooked line.  If you are really good at eye-balling the measurement, you don't have to do this part!

Step 4: Hot glue the flap you've just folded down to the back of the main panel.

Step 5: If you want a really finished look, repeat this step on the bottom of the panel. I didn't, and the fabric I used hasn't frayed or started coming apart. I suppose the necessity of this part depends on the fabric you choose.

All that's left is to hang and enjoy! All in all this project took me about 3 hours. I'm a very slow measure-er and I'm terrible at cutting straight lines. I moved very slowly to ensure minimal mistakes!

The panels behind our bed.

The curtain covering the window--and bonus! The necklace holder from one of our first tutorials!

Chocolate Banana Smoothie | Healthy, Filling Breakfast

I am a smoothie drinker.  I have a smoothie EVERY morning for breakfast.  I find them much more filling than cereal, and talk about convenient!  I will be experimenting with more smoothies over the next few weeks because I ran out of Body by Vi [which tastes awesome!] and it's just not in my budget to get more right now.  I'm looking into other protein powders like Nature's Bounty, that have lots of calcium, but for now I'm fine with just having smoothies without added nutrients. [That was probably too much information for people who are just looking for recipes, but I digress...]

Chocolate Banana Smoothie

This recipe is definitely for banana lovers.  If you don't like bananas though you can try replacing the 1/2 banana with 1 cup of strawberries. [fresh or frozen]

Place ice and milk in the blender, and then all of the other ingredients and blend.

Note: [I like to use soy and almond milk because of the calcium AND that vanilla flavor adds a little bit of sweetness.  The smoothies also turn out so rich and creamy, but feel free to try whatever milk you usually drink.]

 Next time I might try using frozen bananas or frozen strawberries just to get that "slushy" feeling, but this was definitely ice-cold and smooth!  If you have any easy smoothie recipes feel free to share in the comments!  I'm looking for some quick, easy, and filling breakfast ideas! 

Thanks & enjoy!

P.S.
I should probably mention I'm not a big yogurt smoothie person.  I love eating yogurt, I'm just not a huge fan of drinking it, so my recipes will probably not include yogurt.  [Although things may change as I continue to experiment]

No Fail Chicken Parm

Difficulty level: Super Easy

I was running low on ingredients and energy last week and wanted something easy to cook.  I happened to have all of these ingredients around so I decided to make some chicken Parmesan.

 Ingredients:

-3 Chicken Breasts [butterflied]

- 1 cup bread crumbs

- 2/3 cup shredded parmesan

- 1 tsp dried basil

- 1/4 tsp pepper

- 1 tsp minced garlic

- 2 tbsp olive oil

Set oven to 350.

In a bowl mix the garlic and olive oil.  In another bowl mix the bread crumbs, parmesan, basil, and pepper.  Butter a 9x13 baking dish.  Dip each chicken breast into the oil mixture and then into the bread crumb mixture, coating them completely and placing them in the baking dish after.  Spread the remaining bread crumb mixture over the chicken and cook 30-45 minutes. [or until chicken is cooked through]

I served with steamed veggies [from the bag] and spaghetti.  Enjoy!

Imitation Low Country Boil Recipe

Hello, folks! Today we're bringing you another quick and easy recipe!

Here's what you need to get started:
Shrimp: peeled, deveined, cooked
Sausage: the long tube kind, not the kind that looks like ground beef
Potatoes (as many as you feel like eating. On this occasion I used 4--2 medium and 2 very small.)
Cajun Seasoning
1/2 stick Butter
pinch of Salt and Pepper
1/4 Onion
optional: Corn, Peppers

To prepare:

Chop the onion into desired size pieces. I don't like biting into a huge chunk of onion so I cut mine fairly small.

Slice sausage into disks. I usually aim for disks about half an inch thick.

Peel and chop potatoes. I have several notes about this. 

1. You do not have to peel the potatoes if you like potato skins. I don't prefer it, but if you do--go ahead and leave it on!

2. If you use a less starchy potato, like a red potato, you will not get a mushy product. It will still taste great, it just won't look like the final pictures below!

3. The larger the potato slices, the longer it will take to cook. The size of the potatoes below had to boil about 10 minutes longer than usual because I left them so big.

To cook:

Dump all your cut up ingredients and the shrimp into a pot of water. 

Bring water to a boil.

Wait about 15 minutes.

To check to see if your food is done, pull out a potato wedge. Cut a portion off. If it is extremely soft, it is ready. You can also taste it. It should have the texture of...a potato. What's so great about this recipe is that the only portion that is not cooked is the potato and onion. You really only have to boil the ingredients as long as it takes to soften those two things up. The rest is already cooked--you're just heating it up!

Waiting for the food to boil. 

Once the potatoes are cooked all the way through, drain the pot into a colander.  Put all the food back in the pot. We still have to add butter and seasoning!

Add the half stick of butter and seasoning. I have no exact measurement for the seasoning--it's just to taste. I like to lightly cover the whole thing with a thin layer of seasoning. Then add a pinch of salt and pepper.

Finally, mix it all together, serve, and enjoy!

It's warm and delicious for these cold winter days. My husband hates soup so this is a great alternative for when I'm feeling like cozy foods!

CD Cover DIY

I give lots of CD's away whether for photography or mixed CD's, and sometimes it's nice to have simple, cute packaging for them.

All you need for today's DIY is:

-Scissors
-Glue
-A paper CD cover to trace
-Some decorative paper
[Needs to be at least 12 inches tall]
I use vintage wallpaper, so I have to be really gentle.  I would suggest using a paper that is at least as thick as construction paper. 

1.) First, take apart the paper CD cover that you want to trace.
2.) Trace the CD cover onto the back of your decorative paper.
3.) Cut it out

4.)  Fold the sides and the top
5.) Glue the sides so that you can fold down the edges.

 6.)  Firmly press down the edges.

You're finished!  Now go give someone special those sweet photos or tunes they've been waiting for!