Never-fail Popovers: The easiest side-dish ever! (sort of)

Microwaving frozen veggies might be easier, but that's boring.  Even my husband, who announces to me, "I like peas," every. time. I. make. them. got a little tired of frozen veggies (isn't he cute?!).  So, when you're having something that, perhaps, already has a serving of veggies in it, or maybe you just aren't in a veggie mood, try these. 

These are especially good with honey butter, and served as a side to a warm and comforting soup.  Another plus to these ridiculously easy little muffin-cousins is that they don't have that much starch in them, relatively speaking anyway.  And, I'm sure that anyone even semi-creative could turn them paleo without a problem.  If I had any paleo flour I'd give it a try, but honestly...I'm a happy carb consumer.

If you come up with a paleo version, please post it in the comments - I'd love to hear how it worked!  It'd be great for those fat days where you want carbs soooo badly but know you ought to lay off for a while.

This recipe is beyond easy, and makes about seven generous popovers. We usually go through six. Don't judge; they're mostly protien...ish. 

So here's what ya do. Get a mid-sized mixing bowl. Crack into said bowl two eggs. 

Dump in a cup of flour. 

 

You can estimate. Exact proportions don't seem to be necessary. 

Add into your bowl a cup of milk, and half a teaspoon of salt. 

Mix it all up, but don't go too crazy. A few lumps are okay. 

Pour into greased muffin tins and place into a cold oven. Turn the oven to 400 degrees for 25 minutes (or 350 for 30, or 450 for 20...depends on how your oven cooks. Just watch them. If they're brown, they're done.)  I add water to the empty tins but I don't know if you have to...my mom always does so I do too. 

When you first take them out, they're big and puffy and delightful!  They'll settle a bit in a few minutes. They'll also last for at least a few days in the fridge.  You're on your own for after that; mine don't last more than a day!

Happy eating! Yum yum! 

For the quick version:

Ingredients: 

2 eggs

1 cup flour

1 cup milk

1/2 tsp salt

Mix all ingredients and pour into greased muffin tins. Put in a cold oven, and bake at 400 for about 25 minutes til puffed and lightly browned. 

Serve warm with honey butter and enjoy! 

My blender does not like me

Just a few quick things for today, as dinner turned into a bit more of a production than I intended!

Here's the pretty carnation that the Knights of Columbus were giving out to the mothers after mass.  Mom gave me hers (she was down visiting - much needed and so great!), so I have it in my cute little Ikea pitcher.  The pitcher is not included in the picture because it looks so gloomy and I don't have time to edit it.  But you can enjoy the flower.  You're welcome!

Since I spent two weeks worth of grocery money last week, partially because I bought $21 of honey, I decided to try to stretch what I had in the cupboard through this week to make up for it.  Oh, the honey was an accident.  It said $8.95 and it was a BIG container, AND it was local!  Turns out it was $8.95......per pound.  Yeeahhh.  

So, what do I do when I am stretching food?  I go Mexican.  Mexican food is cheap and easy.  Enchiladas was on the menu with leftover pot roast meat, but unfortunately I had no enchilada sauce.  Lucky me, I found a recipe, and was just about to blend the sauce together into a delicious smoothness, when...

This was only a corner.  It expanded much further than you can see here, and looked disturbingly like I had projectile you-know-whated all over.  Lovely and appetizing.  Sorry...bathroom humor genes!  

Ouch.  Hard to see there, but that pink spot is a burn from the nasty blender.  Ignore the little hairs - I was cold since I had to take my sweater off since it too was covered in enchilada sauce.

Old Faithful to the rescue.  Love my little Hamilton Beach :)  Easy, quick, and clean!

Time to go microwave some peas for the veggie.  Judge away; at least the microwave is reliable and won't explode on me.

Feel free to share blender stories below and join the club of fun!  And happy belated mothers day to any moms reading!

{pretty, happy, funny, real} Rain, rain, please keep raining!

Linking up again with Like Mother Like Daughter for Thursday's fun.

{Pretty}

See what these are?  No, not the weeds.  They're raindrops!  We actually had a whole day full of drizzles all the way to full rain (not Virginia rain, but pretty good for what I've seen here so far).  Very exciting.  My weeds will be thrilled, and maybe my grass will turn green!  We needed the water, so this was a good thing.  And, really, there's just something special about the sounds and smells of a spring rain.  They are so refreshing and absolving, in a way.  They are definitely one of my favorite smells.

{Happy}

I love my cookbook!

If only they maintained this look of perfection out of the oven...

 Mmmmmmm!

What could be happier than cookies?!  I had some leftover egg whites from earlier in the week which I had the foresight to put in a jar and keep, so last night, we had a lovely dozen or so meringue kisses!  So good.  Technically, you're supposed to bake them at a very low heat and then leave them in the oven for something like five hours until they cool, but since I didn't even get started until 4:30, that wasn't going to happen.  I baked them at a high heat, took them out, baked my biscuits, and then put the cookies back in the turned-off oven to sit while we ate dinner.  Not quite what the recipe called for, and probably the cause of the deflation, but you know what?  They were great!  Crispy on the outside and like marshmallows on the inside.  I actually like them crispier, but the Husband said that if they were just a bit gooier they'd be perfect.  So, accident or not, I guess it was a good thing they came out like they did!  He ate half the batch...I demolished the other half.  There were two left over.  By breakfast they were not left over anymore; after all, it's just egg whites ;)

{Funny} 

This, people, is a miracle.  Don't you see how organized all my salad ingredients are?  Quite a miracle, so much so that I thought it was rather entertaining, and filed it here under "funny."

The funny thing was, after I put together this absolutely restaurant-worthy barbecue salad (perfectly arranged salad, all pretty, with fried chicken tossed in bbq sauce on top), my husband sits down to dinner and looks at it quizzically.  Now, being that he is a born and bred Texan, I kind of assumed that nothing barbecue would be foreign.  Well, wrongo because he poked at the ensemble and said, "What's this? *pause* Am I supposed to eat the chicken with it?"

I thought he was joking, and told him that duh, it's a bbq salad, like at Chilis or any other restaurant in the country.  His head was shaking nooooooooo, and the look said that he considered this to be one of my "exotic" dishes.  I don't cook exotic; no one has ever, ever, accused me of that.  But to him, my cooking is downright exotic.  So, I told him to stop arguing, eat his veggies, and say thank you.  And then I showed him a thing or two by pulling up a google images page full of barbecue salads.  So there - HA!

Why I thought the man would have ventured into restaurant salad menus, however, I'm not sure.

 {Real}

This is my project.  It's been a project for a while.  At some point in the future, it will be a guestroom/sewing room/office.  Mainly a sewing room/office until we have a baby and need the back bedroom, at which point the guest bed will move out here.  Good thing I'm not pregnant yet, because this project is moving slower than molasses in Alaska.  But despite that, it's good to have ongoing projects.  Soothes the soul, in a strange way.

Speaking of the guest bed, my mom is coming to visit us tomorrow, and I still haven't made the bed.  I did, however, clean the bathroom and if we're being honest, that's what counts the most!

Easter menu - from me, to you!

This pic is the last time I made mashed sweet potatoes.  We didn't have marshmallows, so the Husband put peeps on it.  They looked like peep zombies after being in the oven, but they tasted good.  That makes us sound really weird, doesn't it?

We decided on a whim to visit the in-laws for Easter, so I didn't end up needing the menu I was mentally preparing.  So, dear readers, I will be generous and put it out into cyberspace for you!  Enjoy and think of me as you eat it. (I love my in-laws but they don't really celebrate Easter in a very foodie way.)

Morning snack:
Hot Cross Buns - HCBs - check out Leila's amazing-looking recipe!
(optional honey butter - Mix as much as you want in a little bowl of softened butter and honey.  Keep the ratio half and half.)

Appetizer:
Baked Brie   - See "recipes" page for details

Dinner: 

Honey-baked ham - http://allrecipes.com/recipe/honey-glazed-ham/

Green beans, sauteed w/almonds - recipes page

Sweet mashed taters - recipes page

Stuffing (because I love it) - Okay, I don't have a recipe because I was going to cheat and call my mom.  You caught me.

Baby spinach salad w/mozzerlla, walnuts, berries, homemade balsamic - Balsamic is in the recipes page, the rest you can probably figure out :)
Rolls or freshly baked bread - I'd use the beer bread recipe on my recipes page, but that's just me. Bet you'd like it though!  

Easter sugar cookies, decorated - I assume you have a recipe for this but please, if you don't have a good sugar cookie and basic icing recipe, ASK ME because that's an absolute travesty of the worst order.  Sorry.
Apple pie - I don't have a specific recipe here; I usually ad-lib it and adjust based on my mood...or something like that.

Homemade vanilla bean ice cream  - http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2009/02/03/classic-vanilla-ice-cream/  This is soooo good!  Just don't be like me and forget the ice for the churner.  It's better churned.

I'd love to hear your recipes and ideas too please pretty please!  I won't get any of this (sorry mother in law - I promise I love you anyway!) and I will likely make it in a few weeks, maybe for Pentecost to ease my desire for a homemade "fancy" dinner.  Don't you sometimes wish you could click your heels, say "there's no place like home," and beam back to being a kid at a holiday dinner again?  Anyways, enough rambling, hope this helps someone somewhere escape from the clutches of restaurant holidays and learn the delightful, wonderful, experience that is a home-cooked holiday with lots of amaaaazzzzzzzing leftovers. Boy I'm hungry now.

Eclipse, and how to make chores fun

Did you watch the eclipse last night?  I'm ashamed to say that I did not, but for what it's worth, I did think about it.  If you have any pictures or want to give a shout out and tell poor sleep-dependent me what it was like, I'd love to hear it!

I sprayed olive oil Pam all over my laptop yesterday.  It is now streakified in a most unfashionable, greasy way, courtesy of my cleaning attempts.  Anyone know how to de-pam a laptop?

The cornbread looks so pretty though, doesn't it?  We actually liked the recipe on the back of the cornmeal container better (with the addition of 1 egg - my idea - and maybe 3/4c of sour cream per my mother's idea).  But this looked so pretty, I might just start cooking all my cornbread in the cast iron.  So classic, despite being heavy enough that my wrists hurt after each use.  Que sera sera.

These are the sorts of things that happen to me all the time.  I love being a housewife, but I get bored doing housewifely things by myself.  Wait til babies come, you said?  Yes, I know.  End of peace and quiet!  But for now, it is peaceful and quiet, and I need entertainment if I am going to confine myself to ironing (gag), folding clothes (ugh), or unloading the dishwasher (bleh).

The pam got on the laptop because I was trying to watch Nashville while spraying my cast-iron skillet at the same time.  Bad idea, for those wanting to try at home.  Next time, hold the skillet and pam in front of you, turn around (back to the computer), and then stare over your shoulder at the screen while pam-ing in the general direction of the skillet.  Of course it will work - stop nay-saying.

So, yes, I have an addiction to Nashville, and am horrified by what's happening to Scarlett.  Juliette better help her or do something soon because that girl is going down the drain as fast as Juliette is coming back up from said drain.  They're just fictional?  Yes, I know haha you're so funny.  I care about them anyway.

Also Downton Abbey, and I actually really liked the last season, although Bates worries me.  24 is coming back soon too, and I'm excited despite knowing exactly what will happen because they're all the same; if I could just watch Chole be her delightful self, the rest of them can sing disney songs for all I care.

What else...there's this new show coming out called Turn.  Anyone seen it?  Worth watching?

My other sneaky way to make doing chores better is my rosary app.  Yep, I have an app for that.  Being me, I think most of my decades are either 9 Hail Marys or 11.  Rarely 10.  With the app, the nice man-voice and lady-voice lead it, accompanied by pleasant background music, and all I need to do is meditate and say the responses (while clanking dishes/spraying starch/folding).  It's great.  I hate things like this, but I love this app.

It's called Rosary Deluxe, and here's the image in case you, like me, search apps by how they look.

I'm pretty sure it comes in Android too, for all y'all in the dark ages of non-iphones (wink).  This ensures that you can say the rosary while doing whatever it is you do, whether it be chores or wrangling ankle-biters, without losing count, forgetting what set of mysteries to do on what day, or any other trouble.  And you'll feel very proud of yourself after. Promise!

Now, if only I could find a good bible app....anyone?  I like the NAB, I think that's the one anyway; too many editions to keep straight.

So, what are your chore-time activities that rescue YOU from the lap of eternal boredom?  Do tell!  We could all use a few more excuses to waste time.

On the art of frying

I took my life in my hands today and actually fried something!  In hot, spitting, boiling oil!  It was traumatic but it had to be done. One cannot marry a southern man and not know how to fry; just doesn't work like that (so if you have married a southern man and haven't fried anything well...better get cracking! Ha).

Frying, just like Minnie (know the reference?)  Ignore the crooked pics.

 Waffles...mmmm

 Yes, I realize this is uncropped and unedited and a dirty oven; mea culpa.  

This is a one-time thing, I promise-ish.

One more waffle picture, because waffles are wonderful.

In a post or two, I will introduce myself, but for now, suffice it to say I'm a newlywed wife, working part-time, and enjoying all the adventures in life.  I am also attempting to learn recipes that my very southern husband will not term, "exotic" and actually like!

Aside from overcooking the chicken a bit, it came out remarkably well and the gravy looked totally legit. If y'all want the recipes I used just ask and I'll post them but I'd rather see your amazing tried-and-true recipes!  Commence comments.