Peanut Butter Pie

 

PIE!

It's been awhile since I've posted a yummy recipe that I love, so today's the day for a new one!

Today's recipe comes from my amazing grandmother! This recipe is one of the ones that I can already taste in my mouth at the mere mention of it - trust me it's that good. Another plus side of this recipe is it's really easy to make! I have only made on slight variation to this recipe, which I'll explain in a sec.

Using the ingredients pictured above (as you can see I like to use the Fred Meyer brand products because on top of making yummy things I like to save myself some money :-) ) The first thing you'll want to do is make the crust, and this is my variation. My grandmother's version calls for a graham cracker crust, but I decided to alter that and do an Oreo (or Kidd-o crust if you shop at Fred's) because it my opinion there is no better combination that chocolate and peanute butter! Making the crust is really very simple whether you use the crackers or the cookies - you crush them up (if doing the coookies no need to scrape the cream filling out) then you melt some butter or margarine and mix the crushed ingredient with the melted butter until you have a thick paste texture. Once you have the right consistency you simply place into the pie pan, you have to use your hands!!!! Next you take the rest of the ingredients and mix together, but you don't want to use all the whipped topping because you'll want to save that to serve on top of the pie! After everything is mixed together you put it in the pie pan and then let chill for a few hours so it sets!

As you can tell from my pictures I has my favorite assistant chef helping me!

Marriage

Marriage........according to wikipedia it's a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship. Sounds so formal right? The truth is marriage can mean many different thingss to many different people. Individuals even get married for different reasons, but here in the US the most common reason is of course love.
Love, that is the reason I wanted to get married, it took me some time to find the right man to spend the rest of my life with, but once I found him he was worth the wait. I know that I got lucky with Sean, that may sound corny to you, but believe me it's the truth.
In relationships past I had found myself changing who I was and even having differing opinions just because of the person I was with, I don't have to do that with Sean. He loves me for who I am and I don't have to change a thing about myself to be with him and that's so important. I've seen this happen to some of my friends and it really just breaks my heart why should we have to change who we are as a person just to find love, I honestly feel that if someone loves you you shouldn't have to change who you are as the relationship progresses.
Now love and acceptance is all good and fine but it takes more than that to make a marriage work. Couples have to decide what works for them and balance all the aspects of their lives. Comprimise is VERY important when it comes to a partnership. People of all ages can give you advice until they are blue in the face and sometimes it's good and sometimes it sounds insane, but at the end of the day it's what works best for you.
It has taken Sean & I a little longer than most newly married couples, but that was because he was gone just about our entire second year of marriage being a brave soldier! Once he returned home we were all in for some serious adjustment because we had all gotten used to doing our own thing. I would foget to tell him about plans we had made, and he would forget to tell me something important simply because for the previous year we really hadn't had to do that.
None of our close friends had really experienced this, and as a result they don't fully understand how hard it was not only to spend the time apart, but also to reconnect and live life together again. Sure they were sympathetic while Sean was gone and checked in with me to see how Lilly & I were holding up, but once he was home it was assumed that all was fine. I didn't talk about a lot of this to my friends because quite a few of them were going through their own things and my issues seemed pretty insignificant in comparision. Looking back maybe I should have, maybe now they would understand and not pass judgement on things they don't understand.
We spend time doing different things now than when before he left, Lilly's older now so we do different activities and with different people. I wish that the people who we don't see anymore or as much as we would like to could simply take a minute to see past the initial perception and grasp what is really going on because what you see isn't what you get and if you're not around you don't know all that is going on and all that has happened.
Presently Sean & I have re-adjusted to life as a married couple under the same roof. We each have our responsibilites and our jobs and it works out well. Even though Sean got laid off he still has a "job" he does his job hunting everyday and I still take care of all the fun stuff on the home front. Our life is a happy one and in the long run that is what matters.

Crafty Strikes Again

It's spring here in WA and that means a lot of rain, and sometimes as it turn outs snow!

Spring also marks the return of baseball, softball, and T-ball! While Spring & Ball go hand-in-hand the rain that accompanies the spring does nothing in preserving clothes worn to T-ball practice :-)

While strolling through Joann Fabrics the other day I noticed the solid T-shirts (in kid sizes) were on sale 3 shirts for $9.00 - SWEET!

Most people might stop there thinking 3 plain T-shirts for practice is peachy, but not me! In the same aisle as the T-shirts was a new product by Color Artz - A fabric airbrusher for only $28.00 (less 40% because I had a coupon).

Instantly the wheels started turning. Since Lilly's T-ball team is named after a pro-team (The Mets) I could find a design and use the airbrush on the shirts and she'd have some super cute shirts.

So I grabbed 3 shrits (royal blue, orange, & grey), the airbrush (which coincidentally came with royal blue & orange paint), and an package of silver paint and headed to the check-out.

My first task upon my return home was to find a logo or design I liked. I settled on the 2-tone written Mets logo.

Next was cutting out my stencils, I made 2, one for the actual words and the second for the shadowing. This was a little time consuming, but I wanted to make sure it looked right.

My shirts, stencils, and I were then ready to head out to the garage for some airbrushing. There was a real learning curve associated with this because the excess spray of the airbrusher went a lot farther than I thought it would so the first 2 shirts ended up with some rouge spray (which I then covered up by giving the shirts an all over tye-dyed look.

Once I got the hang of the airbrusher it was awesome! I can't wait to find more stuff to decorate with it!!!

Channeling my Grandma

And no I'm not sitting here drinking a martini and partaking in cocktail hour (although I should be)!

In keeping with my goal of learning how to cook/preparing something new every week last night's task was preparing a roast beef. This is one I was a little nervous about seeing as how I spent a decent chunk of change on a nearly 4 lb. piece of meat and didn't want to screw it up!!!

Now, what does this have to do with my grandmother you ask?

Besides being the Queen of cocktail hour and delicious appetizers she could rock an AMAZING roast beef!

Under the guidance of my Mom my task began, and I'll be honest literally this is was of the easiest meals I have prepared!

To give the beef itself a little something extra I found a rub which I coated the meat in after I spread some margarine all over it.

I placed the meat in the oven and let it go for an hour, checked the temp (I knew it wouldn't be done yet) before I set it off to cook some more I melted a little butter and mixed some of the rub into it, brushed it over the meat then placed in back into the oven for another 45 minutes.

At this point the meat was at the perfect temp, so I brushed some more of the margaine/rub mix on top and we covered it with a dish towel for a few minutes until we were ready to eat.

When it came time to carve it up I'm happy to report it was PERFECT!

Not only did it make a delicious dinner last night it also made very yummy sandwiches for lunch today!!!

So I know that last night my grandmother was looking down and raising her martini glass to me :-)

Mexican Lasagna

It occured to me today that I forgot to share this creation, and trust me it literally is a creation because I pretty much made it up as I went along.

My family LOVES tacos, and that is actually an understatement it's one of our favorite meals.

I decided why not take taco ingredients and serve them in a different form.

The ingredient list is really anything you like to put in tacos, so it could be shells, meat, tomatoes, onions, cheese, peppers, tater tots.....you get the idea.

The first thing I did was fry up the taco shells in oil to get them nice and crispy.

Next I browned up some meat, with the meat I put in garlic & cillantro for some additional flavor.

To get a mexi-nugget flavor in some tator tots I fried them up with some taco seasoning and then broke them up so it was essentially little cubes of pototes.

Next came time to layer in the pan, I started with the taco shells in the bottom, then cheese, then meat, then veggies, more cheese, another layer of taco shells, cheese, potatoes, cheese, taco shells - I repeated the layering until the pan was full. You could also put salsa or pica de gallo in the layers, but not everyone in my house likes the same salsa spiciness or pico de gallo so those were added on as a topping when people got their servings.

I'm happy to say it was DELICIOUS!!!

St. Patty's Day (a week late)

Ok Ok so I know this was a week ago, but I've been busy....

I love St. Patty's Day everyone (even those of you who aren't actually Irish like St. Patrick himself) have a chance to sport some green and and celebrate this fun day!

Here is America we love this day, it's a chance to go out and have fun and wear a bright color! Take Chicago who has been dying the river green since 1962 - I can't even imagine in my head how much dye that take, but what a fun thing to do!! Many cities have parades with rainbows, fake gold and of course a leprechan or 2!

The past few years on St. Patty's day I've spent the night with some great friends and we've had a blast out together, however this year with the day being on a weekday staying out late was not on the agenda for a few people! My most awesome friend Brad had actually never been out on St. Patty's day - I was SHOCKED to learn this! So Sean & I made plans with Brad MONTHS ago because he needed to go out and experience the awesomeness that is going to a pub on March 17th!

Our evening actually started with dinner at my parent's house, however instead of your typical Irish faire we had New York style pizza, oh well we had a multi-cultural night :-) Our plans did not include making the trek downtown to go to Kell's because really we didn't want to drive that far, and pay for parking, not to mention how packed it gets there! Luckily there is a great Irish Pub/Restaurant about 5 minutes from my house which is where we decided we'd try our luck for the night!

They had a HUGE tent set up in their front parking lot with a live band in it, as well as a live band inside! We opted for the tent because you can be rowdier a tent, not to mention the fact that there was ZERO room inside! We met up with some folks that Brad knew (however most of them left on the early side - NO FUN!) The band was GREAT we had a good time rockin' out to them!!!

As we were outside with our beers having fun I was reminded of many many many college parties. Just the overall feeling of loud music, lots of beer, and everyone in a really good mood it was great! Everyone is all smiles and nobody has a care in the world - what fun!!

We went inside around midnight for another beer and some delicious food and yet more band music, we were lucky enough to find an empty table!

It was such a fun night with my 2 favorite guys!

Pulled Pork

 Greetings from the chef!

So this week's "make something I've never made before" task was Pulled Pork (I think you probably could have guessed that from the title of this blog!)

So once again to start I searched my favorite recipe sites, and my good old trusty friend google. A recipe I saw mentioned caught my attention was one that called for Jack Daniels whiskey (anything with good whiskey can't be bad right?) Well it took some digging but I did find a good recipe (one that I will include in the blog)

Never having made pulled pork I had no idea what to expect. I made sure I had all my listed ingredients, then I had to finda good pork shoulder - which I did! Thank goodness Top Foods was having an awesome meat sale!

Since this was something completely new to me I wanted to follow the recipe exactly (alterations can always be made at a later date, however this recipe was so good I probably won't need to). I had lot of fun making this for some reason. Another plus with this recipe the whole time it's in the slow cooker the house smells AWESOME!!! I had everyone's mouths watering all day (including the dogs)!!!!!

Here's the recipe:

1 Onion (chopped fine)

2 TBSP Garlic (chopped fine)

1 TBSP Tomato Paste

2 TBSP Dijion Mustard

1/4 Cup White Vinegar

1 TSP Paprika

1/3 Cup Ketchup

2 TSP Worcestershire Sauce

1/2 Cup Jack Daniels Whiskey

1/4 Cup Light Brown Sugar

1 TSP ground black pepper

1 Bay Leaf

3 LBS Pork Shoulder Roast

First thing you do is combine ALL ingredients (except the meat) into the slow cooker

Once they are all mixed you drop the meat in

Cover the meat with water

Place the lid on the slow cooker

Bring to a boil

After it boils reduce to a simmer

Let simmer for 2 hours (I actually let it simmer for almost 4)

Take meat out

Take roughly 1/3 of the liquid out

Pull meat apart and place back in slow cooker

*I actually did vary from the recipe on this part*

The recipe said to let it stay in for an hour, then serve, I however added a some Jack Daniels BBQ sauce and let it sit for the rest of the afternoon (another 3 hours) then all day the next day before we had it for dinner that night. Added a little bit of BBQ sauce every once inawhile for some flavor.