Finally ready for October!

I love decorating for any holiday! Last year I was pretty busy with wedding planning (and realistically, no room to bring one more box out of storage) so I didn’t do a whole lot of decorating.

Well – wedding is over, time is all I have (haha) and I got in the decorating spirit!! (which translates to: I have a lot of work to do and this is an awesome way to procrastinate). 

So – here’s some pictures of how we are celebrating this October – fall and Halloween!

Fall wreath! Love it!

Just a little fun 🙂

Porch close up!

front window

kitchen table

kitchen table 2

This picture really isn’t the best – but there’s a surprise Stella!

Anyone else think it’s weird I was able to up-cycle a ton of my wedding decorations as Halloween decorations?? 

 

Finished off the night with some warm soup, beer bread, and a Woodchuck Pumpkin cider. Delicious!

Soup:

Started with a soup mix, then added more!

• Bear Creek Cheddar Potato Soup
• 3 potatoes, diced small
• 1 can white kidney beans
• 1 large white onion
• 1 package bacon bits
• shredded cheddar cheese

Sat in the crockpot for about 7 hours! So easy to manipulate and make yours!

Bread:

Started from this recipe, very easy!

• 3 cups organic all-purpose flour
• 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder (make sure it’s fresh!)
• 1 teaspoon salt – (as I wrote this up, I realized I forgot this – makes a lot of sense…)
• Garlic powder
• Parmesan cheese
• Italian seasoning (no, I didn’t measure any of these)

Bake in oven at 375 for 45 minutes, let cool for 10!

 

Yummy lunch!

It’s no surprise that I will do just about anything to avoid actually doing my work.  I mean, people can’t be productive all day, right???

While perusing the internet, I inspired (and my stomach started grumbling) as soon as I saw the amazing pasta salad posted by the Fitnessista! I love pasta salad in the summer but don’t necessarily think about making it a whole lot when it comes to fall/winter.  But, like typical Indiana – our temperatures have been in the 80s, which I think is hotter than it was all summer.

So, I made my own little delicious lunch! I didn’t follow the Fitnessista’s recipe, but made do with what I had! The best part about pasta salad is that it’s delicious right after it’s made, and it’s even better after it has sat for a day in the fridge!

 

Here’s what I added:

• a mix of noodles to finish off what was already opened…
• 2 roma tomatoes
• half of a GIANT green pepper
• a can of chickpeas (drained and delicious)
• 2 pieces of chicken breast (leftovers)
• 1 T of ranch dressing
• 3 T of italian dressing
• Bragg’s organic sprinkle seasoning (no measurement, spread til I was done)
• Fresh basil off my plant

So easy, delicious, and [relatively] healthy! The unhealthy part is that it’s so delicious I can’t stop eating it. Everything in moderation, right? Ha! 🙂

Have a great rest of your day and weekend! Try out some pasta salad and let me know how it goes!

Lots o’ Blueberries

We went on a shopping trip this weekend…and I just COULD NOT pass this up….

That’s right, 5 pounds of delicious, plump, healthy blueberries. 

Now, let’s be serious. There’s no way I could eat 5 pounds of blueberries before they went bad.  Well, I guess I could, but it just wouldn’t be a good situation.  Soooo I froze the majority of them and kept some fresh.

My goal for this week (and probably next) is to try out some new recipes with all my blueberries! 

I started by making a lovely dessert.

My friend Kim is a dessert expert.  She has her PhD, and it might as well be in baking.

So, of course I asked her for a quick and easy dessert recipe and she sends this one my way.  Because I trust her oh so much, I literately just started reading the recipe and not even looking ahead.  Well, to my surprise (not), we have different definitions of quick and easy.  This recipe had a lot of steps to it, took more ingredients than I had, but ended up being delicious.  So, in the end, Kim really didn’t fail me.  However, I am sure she will be happy to know that I think I measured about 2 things and eyeballed the rest…. Perhaps this is why I am not a really good baker?

Blueberry/Peach/Strawberry Cobbler

Would have been much better if I had some vanilla bean ice cream to serve with it, but the dessert wine will do 🙂 I’m definitely going to post about this wine on Wednesday, so be on the lookout for it!

This recipe was majorly adapted from Clean Eating Mag as I didn’t have almost any of the ingredients.  Additionally, I halved just about everything since it was just the two of use eating….but here’s what I used:

Ingredients: 

• Olive oil
• frozen fruit – peaches, blueberries, strawberries
• 1 tbsp flour
• 2 tbsp honey (okay, I think I used 4 because I ended up putting in at the wrong time, and then the right time)
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1/4 cup of skim milk
• 1/2 tbsp ground flaxseeds
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup flour (use it at a different time from above)
• 1/2 tbsp baking powder (I did measure this one)
• 1/4 tsp of cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp of salt

Steps to make this delicious dish:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and mist the dish you’re gonna cook it in – I used a 6 in round casserole dish
• Combine fruit, the little bit of flour and honey in the baking dish together
• Whisk together the rest of the flour and oats in a food processor (like my amazing, orange Kitchenaid mixer!).  Mix in the baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and milk.
• Add scoops of the batter on top of the fruit (doesn’t have to cover the whole thing)
• Pop that baby in the oven! I cooked for about 45 minutes and then let it cool for a little.

YUM YUM YUM! ((And relatively healthy too!))

 

 

Farmers Market Trip!

I just love the farmer’s market! I love shopping local and being able to support local farmers. I wish that we had more money to be able to spend at the market, but we didn’t go to the ATM before we went, so we had just $3 to spend!

We are lucky enough that we have the town’s farmer’s market just 2 blocks away from our house!

We didn’t have much time to head in on Saturday because I had to work, but I told Mike I wanted to find something different to make with our “special dinner” – yes, we celebrated one month of being married. We’re those people.

So for $3, we got 2 zucchinis and 2 summer squash.

Yummmmm 🙂

I was going to keep it simple and just make chicken breasts and slice up the veggies and bake them.  But, lucky for us, the dogs got up early on Sunday and so I was able to enjoy coffee and Pinterest.  The perfect early Sunday morning, really.

I decided to make halved, scooped, baked zucchini.  I found the recipe on the Kayotic Kitchen and adapted it for what I wanted!

Ingredients needed:

• 2 zucchini (we had one big and one little one)
• 1 onion
• 1 tomato
• 1 tbsp sour cream
• cheese – I used extra sharp cheddar and parmesean
• Parsley (snipped outta my little garden)
• bacon bits (or regular bacon, I was just lazy)
• Ranch seasoning packet
• pinch of salt
• pinch of pepper

I scooped out the zucchini, cut up the guts plus the tomato and onion, and then mixed all the rest of the ingredients together!

I’m showing off this amazing cutting board – we got it for our wedding and it’s THE BEST.  It fits right over the sink and has the strainer attached that I like to use for my little garbage bucket as I’m cooking.  The little things in life are so amazing, aren’t they?

This is what the zucchini looked like after I had scooped, chopped, and filled! Looking back, the only thing that I would have done differently is cut the bottoms of the zucchini so that they laid flat on the tray.  They were slip sliding all over the place. I baked them in the oven for about 35 minutes at 350 degrees.  I added a little extra cheese, some snippets of parsley, and…

voila! DELICIOUS!

I gotta figure out how I am going to cook the summer squash now that I didn’t use it for this meal! Hellloooo Pinterest! 🙂

 

 

 

I’ve got your next tailgating food RIGHT HERE

This might be the best, easiest, and one of the cheapest party recipes EVER. Poor Man’s Caviar. yummmmmmmmm

RECIPE:

• 1 whole green pepper, diced
• 1 whole yellow/red/orange pepper, diced
• 1 whole yellow/red/orange pepper, diced
• 1 red onion, diced (I prefer white onion)
• 1 can black eyed peas
• 1 can garbanzo beans (or chick peas or chichi beans! haha)
• 1 can kidney beans
• 1 can black beans
• 1 can white corn
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1/2 cup sugar

NOTICE: When I made it this last time (as pictured) I didn’t have all the right ingredients, so I added some extra stuff including tomatoes, green beans, yellow corn, chopped basil, and cucumber……

THIS IS THE BEAUTY OF THIS RECIPE!!!!!! You can add almost anything! And it’s delicious and incredibly easy to make!

It’s delicious with Scoops as a dip, forked outta a bowl, and as an addition to salad!

Try it out and let me know what you think!