I also can not melt chocolate. I can't. I just cannot melt chocolate at all. I've tried every tip, trick, direction in the book. So save your ideas and suggestions, because I can promise...I've tried it and I still managed to screw it up. To be fair...my Mother can't melt chocolate either, but my Grandma could!
I can make cakes and decorate them quite nicely I mean I'm no where near a professional cake maker/decorator but my kids never complain, and my versions never look TOO far off from the Pinterest versions, so thankfully I don't have too many cake fails from Pinterest *whew*.
I don't usually get a chance to be creative with foods. Of a morning it's all rush, rush, rush. Have a bowl of cereal kids, and out the door you go to the sitters (My Mother in law who doesn't cook much either). SOMETIMES if they are lucky, during the week they will get oat meal and I will toss in some dried fruit or chocolate chips or peanut butter or something.
Lunch is usually just something packed up the night before for them to eat at Grandma's. Last night my daughter asked if she could make their lunch this morning and I was all like SURE! Go for it!
So she made bologna sandwiches (blech!), banana chips, cheese stick, black olives for herself as they are her favorite, apple slices for her brothers, and a big dill pickle for each of her brothers. I figured, eh it'll do, it could be worse. They had dairy, fruits (and veggies), and meat, and grain. All the food groups were there, so I didn't say a word and she was so proud of herself.
She has been very active in helping me in the kitchen lately. This past Thanksgiving she made the home made noodles all by herself for the first time. She did really good! I remember when my Grandma taught me how to make the noodles and getting to pass it on to my daughter was absolutely AWESOME!
Some nights things are chaotic and I'm tired after work and I'm just like NO, I don't want to cook. Kids...make whatever you want. Usually they go for cereal, or PB&J. IF we have corn dogs they ask for one of those. Some nights it's hot dogs and chips.
Yep. Sometimes suppers are lazy around here.
Some nights, I actually work hard on supper! I feel proud of my accomplishments, mostly. Of course my least favorite part is the clean up! Right now I have a mess in the kitchen to clean up but I don't want to. *sigh* Alas, my kitchen does not clean itself.
I've felt motivated to cook lately so here's a few things I've cooked recently! Besides, when you work somewhere, where the kitchen is full of men, and they all brag about how well they can COOK. You get tired of hearing about it, so you may or may not...try to show them up a little bit. Cook a fun meal take a pic go to work and be like "BAM" how's that for an awesome meal? Sometimes, it shuts them up for a LITTLE while. Until they find something ELSE to go on about.
Above and Below: BBQ boned pork ribs. With home made mac and cheese and baked beans. I was feeling BBQ-ey, but the weather outside wasn't cooperating! Too much rain! I'm generally more of a "country rib" kind of gal, I don't like bones in my meat when I cook, but these weren't too bad.
Above and Below: Thick cut sliced pork loin, breaded with white cheddar Cheez-Its that I sent through my food processor and mixed various seasonings into. Dipped the pork loin into milk/egg mixture and coated in the crackers. Baked in the oven. I used a box of Annie's Homegrown Organic Mac and Cheese that my kids absolutely LOVE and so do I. I prefer to make my mac and cheese home made, but if I DO use a boxed variety, Annie's is the kind I go for! Also served with a side salad and avocado slices (I looove avocado's and when I find a good deal on them I buy a bunch and have them with nearly every meal!)
Above: A yummy dessert I've made for quite awhile, but this is a slightly different variation. I sliced up some apples (we have a surplus of apples at the moment). I sliced up about three of them and baked them in the oven with some butter, brown sugar, a little bit of regular sugar, and some cinnamon. When they were tender I placed them on top of vanilla ice cream and drizzled with some of the sauce in the pan from baking them, and I sprinkled dried cranberries over it (You can put pecans or walnuts or other fruits on top too). I didn't have any vanilla ice cream in the fridge tonight, but I DID have a couple of vanilla ice cream sandwiches, sooo I peeled the graham cracker part off (NOT as easy as you might think FYI) and used those in our dessert. I really SHOULD make sure I have all of my ingredients before I decide to cook something! Good thing I don't mind improvising!
ABOVE AND BELOW: This was supper tonight. I buy a couple bags of frozen five cheese ravioli when I go shopping, it isn't expensive and one bag can feed our family of five. One of my sons loves the beef ravioli so once in awhile we'll get that one, but the rest of us prefer the 5 cheese one. I used veggie spaghetti sauce, as meat sauce isn't a fave around here. Some times if I have time I'll make my own spaghetti sauce, but I rarely have time to do that. Sometimes when I'm feeling energetic I'll make home garlic bread (after digging out the instructions to the bread machine!) but I didn't feel up to that and didn't have time. Nor did I feel like digging out a frozen French bread loaf that I buy on sale and freeze to use for garlic bread or bread pudding later on. So tonight I just used regular wheat bread and made my own garlic butter and toasted the bread in the oven on a cookie sheet. It worked. The asparagus I bought fresh at the store and roasted in the oven, it didn't come out quite as good as usual, I had the oven up too high and I burnt the tips and slightly over cooked them, bummed because I LOVE asparagus and so do my kids. My daughter requested cottage cheese so we had that on the side as well. I had planned on a side salad, but forgot we ran out of lettuce! (We go through a lot of lettuce around here!
Above: Meatloaf is something my daughter could eat EVERY single night. None of my meat loafs are ever the same, and they are usually always pretty good. I wasn't too happy with this particular meat loaf, and the kids agreed, the texture and taste were off. I used white cheddar Cheeze It's in there this time instead of oatmeal like I usually use. It messed with the texture and flavor and we weren't that fond of it, but it wasn't awful. Everyone went back for seconds anyway! Served with freshly prepared turnips (mmm!! They were a first for my kids and they loved them!), cottage cheese, and garden fresh tomatoes, and sliced avocados, and home made pasta salad.
ABOVE and BELOW: I LOVE summer time and all of the fresh foods you can find at the stores, and farmer markets and the over abundance of stuff people have in their gardens that they gift to you. I'm always accepting of garden over flowage! HA! My OWN gardens never work out sadly! These fresh green beans came from the store though as did the baby potatoes. We snapped them ourselves and put them on to boil. I also made home made Salisbury steaks to go with the meal, unfortunately I had to rush back to work and work a double shift so I didn't get to get a pic of the Salisbury steaks because they were still in the oven when I had to run to work. But I did steal myself a bowl of beans and potatoes before dashing off to work! Later my husband and sweet kids surprised me at work, they brought me dinner all boxed up for me! It took me awhile to get a chance to eat it, but it was super good.
Below: Country fried steak and mashed potatoes with white gravy (husband doesn't like home made white gravy so he requested the packaged gravy), (and the potatoes were REAL ones not the instant variety my husband *TRIES* to sneak in once in awhile, ew). And green beans (Tried a different kind of green bean, it was in a pouch. Normally I get fresh or frozen I do not like the taste of green beans from a can, they taste like the can no matter what you do to them). I have to say though I still wasn't that fond of the green beans from the pouch either so I was a little bummed. Actually made this meal the beginning of last week, it was really good!
The above picture also is of my old kitchen plates! Which over the years...we have officially THREE of these plates left. I figured it was time to retire these old plates! (That I loved because no matter how my kitchen was decorated...they still matched!) However it was time for these plates to go. I'm a proud shopper of the Dollar Tree store, and I had been eye balling some pretty cute plates in there for awhile. So I decided it was now or never so I went in and purchased a set of plates. They all match. They are all there, and I love them, the green place mats are new too. I love my little kitchen table, it's so cozy (to us anyway)!
The glass vases serve as our 'fruit basket' on the table. Filled with real apples and clementine's. The kids love being able to pull out a fruit anytime they want. The glass vases I found on sale at Wal Mart after Valentines Day and I LOVE glass vases! The little owl, my kids found for me at a yard sale and they know how much I love collecting owl stuff so they bought it for me, for a quarter, and now it proudly sits on the kitchen table (it matches the plates and the apples and oranges, what's not to love?)
MOM CIRCUS
