tasty time.

Haven't posted a new recipe for awhile, here are a couple that I have tried recently that were super good and easy.

Chicken Pasta Salad

(This one Becca made for Sakerra's Wedding)



1 bag cooked bow tie pasta
2-3 cups cooked chicken, shredded or cubed
1 cup mayo
1 cup Miracle Whip or mayo
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup sweet pickle juice
Chopped Celery
Craisins
Grapes or Apples
Unsalted Cashews

Mix together the mayo, salad dressing, sugar and pickle juice. Toss with the pasta and add remaining ingredients.

Flatbread Cheeseburgers

(adapted from Life as a Lofthouse)

1 pound lean ground beef
1/2 cup water
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 pkg dry onion soup
1/2 cup ketchup
1 Tbsp mustard
1 clove garlic, minced (1 tsp preminced garlic)
1 (11 ounce) can refrigerated pizza dough
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Romaine lettuce, chopped


Brown ground beef in a large skillet. Add water, vinegar, onion soup mix, ketchup, mustard and garlic. Stir to combine then simmer over low heat until warmed through and thickened.

Heat another large skillet over medium heat. Divide the pizza dough into 8 parts. Roll each piece as round as possible..

Place one piece of dough onto the warm skillet. Cook on each side for 45  seconds or until puffed and golden. Place each flatbread onto a cookie sheet in a 200 degree warm oven, to keep warm until all flatbreads are made.

Take one flatbread and fill with meat mix, shredded cheese, and lettuce.  Fold in half like a taco.

 

Hunger Games: Activities

For the Hunger Games movie premier party we had various activities that could appeal to a wide range of people and ages.    There was no pressure, people could just participate as they pleased.  May this also be a lesson of Pinterest party planning pros and cons!

I found all of my ideas for this party on pinterest.  Some ideas did not work well at all.

Bows and Arrows: On pinterest there was a link to making little bows and arrows out of fishing line, popsicle sticks, and q-tips.  I soaked my popsicle sticks for hours and hours...still no bending without breaking.  So I wandered the Dollar store looking for anything else an hour before the party we could do.  Found some glow-stick bracelets and with a little bit of hot-glue they made perfect bows!  You just bend the glowstick in a large C shape. Wrap fishing line around one end, securing with hotglue, and then string down to other end.  We wrapped a couple of times.  Then use the q-tips to shoot as arrows.  They actually went pretty far and were quite entertaining.

Capital Couture Nails and Makeup:  We had a bunch of nail polish and brighly colorful/glittery makeup for people to play with.  The Capital is famous for it's outrageous colors and stylings so we had fun trying to look the part.  For the gents we also had a cutout of Senica Crane's beard. We got our nail ideas from Pinterest.

Don't Eat Peeta:  My sister created the board game for this one.  I have posted the rules before in a Don't Eat Peter Pettigrew game we made for Harry Potter. 

Cake Decorating:  I posted about our Peeta Mellark cake decorating contest on the Hunger Games:  Food post.

T-shirt making:  A few of us got together to make Hunger games themed t-shirts with my Silouhette heat-transfer.  The LOVE t-shirt was inspired by a poster found from pinterest. (More info below)

Prize Reaping:  I had various prizes like key-chains, little figurines, and buttons from Hot-topic.  I also had a water-bottle with some survial stuff inside, soundtracks, bags, and movie posters. I wrapped them up in yellow, red, and orange tissue paper to make them look like fire-balls (inspired by these).  I made some bags inspired by painted ones I found here.  I used heat transfer instead.  I downloaded the shopping cart and bread from the Silouhette store.  I made the mocking jay symbol by downloading a picture of it and using the trace tool on the Silouhette Design.  The font is the Hunger Games font from dafont.com.  I created the parachutes for my shirt by welding parts of a parachute man from Silouhette with the bread or a basket.  I also got the "Prep-team" graphics from the silouhette store.

Decorations:  I had seen silver parachute decorations on pinterest but there wasn't any tutorials online so I winged it by covering strofoam bowls with aluminum foil, attatching jute tied around bread (the same bread from Silouhette, cut out of brown cardstock).  I hung them with fishing line.  I printed several of the posters I had found online, and I wrapped the silverware and placed it in a cornucopia as I had seen here. 

Favors:  For party favors I made bookmarks by copying pages of the book and stamping them with this amazing mockingjay stamp I got on Etsy. I bought various magnets, pins from Mud in the Blood on Etsy and Pinbackattack.  I stamped water bottle labels and included fireballs.

Hunger Games: The Food

For my Hunger Games party I wanted to keep it "Authentic" yet simple.  I chose to serve roast chickens, a mixed bread basket with Prim's goat cheese wrapped in basil and berry jam, mashed potatoes, a mixed salad, goat cheese apple honey tarts, Greasey Sae's not-dog soup, and friut cornucopias.  To drink we had berry cooler.

Fruit Cornucopias were inspired by pinterest.  We just cut up a bunch of fruit and mixed it and spooned it into sugar cones.  The only change I will make next time is serving it with some yogurt.  They were a big hit!

My sister made the goat cheese from scratch.  Crazy and amazing!!  If I get a hold of the recipe I will post it.

The Berry punch was just berry 7up with frozen marion berries floating around. Super tasty though.

For the bread bowl we had white chocolate pecan sourdough bread from a local bakery for District 1, some basic french bread from the Capital, some wheat rolls representing District 12, some seaweed bread from District 4, and crescent shaped seed bread from District 11.  The seaweed bread is from the "Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook"  and while salty was very good.  I just used pillsbury crescent dough, brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with black and regular sesame seeds.  There are a lot of good recipes for from scratch district 11 bread online though.

My friend Scott brought the soup and used and Alton Brown recipe.

The tarts were incredible.  We adapted a recipe from the Unofficial Hunger Games Cookbook:

16 frozen puff pastry shells, thawed
1 egg, beaten
5 oz of soft goat cheese
1 1/2 tsp. Lemon Juice
1 Tb. sugar
1 cup honey
1/2 tsp salt
4 medium apples, cut into 1/8in slices
3 Tbsp butter

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly oil 2 8x8 pans.
2. Place 8 of the thawed puff pastry shells on each of the oiled baking sheets. Brush each shell with beaten egg.
3. Bake shells for 10 minutes.
4. While shells are baking, mix cheese, lemon juice, honey, and salt in a bowl. Pour cheese mixture into a ziplock bag. Snip the bottom corner to make a piping bag and squeeze cheese mixture into each pre-baked shell, when cool.
5. Artfully place apple slices atop cheese. Mix butter and 1/2 cup honey in a small bowl; brush over apples and tart. 
6. Bake tarts until apples are tender and pastry is lightly golden, about 15-20 minutes.  Serve warm.

For dessert and an activity we held a Peeta Mellark cake decorating contest.  I got the awesome little pan that bakes 4 mini 3-tiered cakes (one boxed cake mix makes 5 little cakes).  It was an absolute blast to see what people cake up with.  Audrey's cake representing the arena was my favorite:

Rainy Day food

Well we still don't have much snow in Utah but it's been raining a lot.  Rain= warm comfort food.  I had found a recipe for Sweet chili from Real Mom Kitchen cookbook (sorry it's not posted online) but had to adapt a bit to make a smaller serving and because I didn't have some of the ingredients.  Here is my version:

Sweet Chili

2 can Northern White Beans
1 can tomato paste
1 can condensed tomato soup
1/2 lb ground hamburger
1/2 purple onion
2 tsp chili powder
2/3 cup brown sugar

Brown hamburger and onion, until hamburger cooked through.  In a stockpot combine hamburger/onion mix with undrained beans, paste, soup, chili powder, and brown sugar.  Simmer for 30min.-1 hour.  Stir occasionaly to ensure brown sugar mixes and doesn't burn at the bottom.  This is a sweet chili and you can use 1/3 cup sugar instead if too sweet.

Texas Sheet Cake

(this recipe is adapted from Our Best Bites)

1 cup butter

1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

½ c. buttermilk
2 eggs, beaten
2 c. sugar
1 c. water
2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease a 11 x 17 jelly roll pan.

Combine butter, chocolate, and water in a small saucepan. Heat until chocolate is melted.  In a separate small bowl, sift flour and combine flour and baking soda. In a large mixing bowl, combine sugar, buttermilk, eggs, cinnamon, and vanilla. Add chocolate mixture. Add flour mixture and mix well. Pour into pan and bake 20 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean.

Frosting:

6 Tbsp. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
½ c. butter
1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 lb. powdered sugar

Combine milk, chocolate, and butter in a saucepan. Heat until bubbles form around the edge and butter is melted. Remove from heat and add powdered sugar and vanilla and beat until smooth. While icing is still warm, pour over cake.  Allow cake and frosting to cool before cutting and serving.

Buttermilk Recipes

I have rediscovered my love for using buttermilk in recipes.  Here are some good things I have made the past 2 weeks.

Buttermilk Syrup (Butterbeer Syrup for HP fans)

(Adapted from Allrecipes)

1 1/2 cups white sugar

3/4 cup buttermilk

1/2 cup butter

2 tablespoons corn syrup

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a saucepan, stir together the sugar, buttermilk, butter, corn syrup, and baking soda. Stir until sugar melts and then bring to a boil, and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, and stir in the vanilla.               

Truck Stop Buttermilk Pancakes

(Recipe adapted from Allrecipes)

1 egg

1/4 cup milk

1 tablespoon butter, melted

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 teaspoons sugar

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, butter and buttermilk. Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sugar; stir into the wet ingredients just until blended.  Heat a large skillet over medium heat, and coat with cooking spray. Pour 1/4 cupfuls of batter onto the skillet, and cook until bubbles appear on the surface. Flip with a spatula, and cook until browned on the other side. Continue with remaining batter.               

Strawberry Soup

(adapted from Allrecipes)

3 cups strawberries

2 1/2 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup sugar

Puree all ingredients together in a blender.  Serve cold.  Strawberry soup is a great and different appetizer. My family first tried it on a Carribbean Cruise.  This serves 10.

Buttermilk Banana Bread

(adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe)

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup mashed bananas (I use about 3 average sized bananas)
4 tablespoons buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda

Grease and flour 1 large loaf pan (9 1/4 X 5 1/4-inch). In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together. Add eggs, bananas, buttermilk and vanilla until the batter is well mixed. Add in the flour, baking powder, salt and soda. Mix until well combined. Pour batter into greased bread pan and bake at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Buttermilk Cream Cheese Frosting

(adapted from Mel's Kitchen Cafe)

3 cups powdered sugar
4 oz cream cheese, softened
6 tablespoons buttermilk or milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix the softened cream cheese and buttermilk together until smooth. Add the vanilla and mix. Whisk in the confectioner’s sugar.

Celebrate 2012: The Epiphany

The Epiphany, Twelfth Night, or Three Kings Day.  I remember learning about this day in my French class but could only remember that you ate a cake with a trinket or bean in it and whomever got piece was king for the day. 

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Here is what it really comes down too:
-This is the actual 12th day of Christmas and when Orthodox Christians celebrate the 3 Wise men finding Christ and presenting him with gifts.
-Baboushka or La Befana is a little old woman who tried to catch up with the wise men to visit Christ but didn't make it so she still wanders about looking and giving gifts.
- The Cake in France is called Gallette Des Rois and is made of puffed pastry and almond paste.

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So what to do to celebrate?

1. Make a cake of any kind or try your and at the Gallette Des Rois (above is a linked recipe).
2.  Leave some Christmas decorations up until this day and reflect on what it all really means as you take them down.
3.  Watch a Video of the 3 kings.
4.  Give Christ 3 gifts, 3 resolutions about how you will be a better person, get rid of a bad habit, become more like Him, etc...  3 personal Frankincense, Gold, and Myrrh.
5.  Read the story of the Other Wiseman by Henry Van Dyke, full text can be found here.

Why not make the holiday season last a bit longer.  Celebrate Epiphany!

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Celebrate 2012: J.R.R. Tolkien Day

January 3, 2012

To celebrate J.R.R. Tolkien day I made Shire Chicken Noodle Soup and "The One Roll to Rule Them All"...

Shire Chicken Noodle Soup:

1 Tbsp Butter

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped celery

4 (14.5 oz) can Chicken broth

1 (14.5oz) can Vegetable broth

1/2 lb cooked and chopped chicken breast

2 cups skinny egg noodles or 1 1/2 cup wide egg noodles

1 cup sliced carrots

1 tsp basil

1/2 tsp oregano

salt and pepper to taste

In a large stock pot melt butter and sautee celery and onion for 3-5 minutes until tender.  Add chicken and stir.  Pour in broths, carrots, basil, and oregano.  Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for 15-20 minutes.  Salt and Pepper to taste.  Makes approx. 12 cups/12 servings.  Worth 1 Weight Watchers point plus per serving.

The One Roll, is a GIANORMOUS Cinnamon Roll... the recipe with really good instructions is found at Mel's Kitchen Cafe.  I also used her Buttermilk Cream cheese frosting recipe.

For other ideas check this out:  E-How's LOTR Party ideas.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”