Cheater Pants Gluten Free Banana Fosters Muffins

Jeez could that name get any longer? ha! :) This is why it's "cheater pants"

I added oatmeal and banana (not pictured here...obviously). 

I also substituted the rum flavor for the vanilla and added some cinnamon. 

My hubby is amazing and wrote it all down for me as I did it. Why can't he cook with me more often?! So much easier than wiping my hands off a billion times while i wing it...

Pop 'em into the oven for 10 min at 350 degrees

DEVOUR!!!

Recipe

• 1 box Gluten Free Cake Mix (Betty Crocker)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup oats
• 2 bananas
• 2 tsp rum flavor
• 1/3 c. water
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 c. butter
• Follow instructions on box for baking in muffin tin :) 

Vegetarian Mango Chili

So you say you just got out of church (so its noon) and invited to a potluck (its at 6pm) and you have your cousins graduation party (from 2-5) so you can't really cook without giving yourself a nervous breakdown? Wow, me too!! Luckily, I have a crockpot.

I SWEAR I tried to go by the book this time. I knew I could pull off a chili because I knew I had a lot of the stuff needed in the pantry. No shopping, easy peasy. I pulled out a crockpot cookbook, found a recipe and everything....but... the can of diced tomatoes smelled like vinegar. Hmmm. I had one big tomato to work with. However, we did just get our produce basket the day before so I had 5 mangos staring at me just waiting to be used.

Can you even use mango in a chili? Turns out you can! Yay for the interwebs! I googled but I was running out of precious prep time. I was going to have to do what i could with what I had, cross my fingers and hope for the best! I am happy to report that it turned out really good :) there wouldn't be a blog if it hadn't though so that should have been the first clue LOL Here's what I did:

Vegetarian Mango Chili
2 cans kidney beans
1 can black beans
1 can olives
1 16 oz can crushed pineapple
2 mangos
1 medium onion
1 large tomato
2 tomatillos
1 c. water
 1 tsp chili powder
1 1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1 can enchilada sauce (about 12 oz)
1 small can green chilis

Dump in all the canned stuff. Cut up the mangos, onion, tomatillos & tomato throw it in the blender with the cup of water (because you don't have time to dice! at least i didn't. You can dice if you want.) use the chop setting just long enough to get it somewhere between liquid and chunky. It was literally only a few seconds for me. Dump that in to the pot, put in your seasonings, stir it all around and cook on low for 5-6 hours.

It went over very well with the BBQ chicken, even the hubby liked it and he's the traditionalist :) Enjoy!

The Drunken Mermaid Special: Why You Just Never Know

So here's how it happened: My grandma is catholic and still practices eating fish on Fridays. I am still getting a little used to it, but it's getting better (not because I don't like fish but because I always seem to be frantically making some fish dish at 11:30 hoping it will be done in time for her lunch lol i'm not used to the schedule part.) SO...scrambling to come up with something. We have fish sticks but....meh. I know... I do it to myself :) i know. But this is how wonderful recipes are born!

I want to make a soup, she loves soup. Aunt Linda does Clam Chowder, we id that last week, so i want to do tomato based something or other. I look through about 10-20 recipes and see nothing that i have everything for, so i already know i have to wing it, it's just a matter of getting the ratios right. I open up a few cookbooks, find a Mediterranean style fish soup and LOVE the idea. I can't use any kind of meat broth though and we don't seem to have vegetable (note to self...) but that's ok because you can use wine to sub and Grandma likes it. Usually, with fish you use white. I have red. While I know it will be ok, i see that I am making a lot of changes and i am not sure at all how it's going to taste at this point.

So I am going along, throwing things in, very much in a hurry because it needs to boil for 45 min, it's 11:45 and my cousin is taking me to coffee at 12:30. I grab the first measuring cup in the drawer, a small one because they're stacked. A quick glance tells me it's a 1/8 c. I want to put in a cup of wine so I pour in 8 of those, all the while thinking it looked awfully large for a 1/8 c. container.

I use the cup again to measure in some lemon juice a little later... this time I see it. It's not an 8, it's a 3.

Which means I used 2 2/3 c. of Pinot in this soup.

Did you know soup gets foamy when you do that? I do now. It also turns the white fish an interesting maroon color...

Well...waste not want not! I plow ahead. As I was posting about this on FB, I got the idea for the recipe, should it succeed. I love mermaids. It smells amazing and you know what, Grandma LOVED it. She laughed at my story but she said it was in improvement on the soup :) So here it is (mainly for my mom,  who taught me how to cook like this, hehe!)

The Drunken Mermaid Special

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 dice tomato

3 large potatoes, or 9 small, chopped

1/2  large onion or 1 smaller

1  8 oz. can pitted black olives

1 4 oz can of mushrooms

1/3 c. green olives

2 TB capers

1 TB Sea Salt (I have this fish specific one from Hawaii, oh and i wouldn't use this much if using broth since broth tends to be salty but i wasn't)

4 c. water

3 bay leaves

2 2/3 c. red wine

2/3 c. lemon juice

1 TB whole pepper corns

1 tsp basil

1 tsp fennel seeds
3/4 stick butter

3 fillets white fish

1 c. shrimp

Place everything but the seafood in the big ol' pot and get it boiling. Boil for about 25 min and then add the seafood for another 20 min or so, until it is fully cooked, stirring occasionally. Consume the awesomeness.

Wine and Fig Reduction Recipe

I wish I had taken pictures, but I honestly thought I was going to follow a really simple recipe (about 4 ingredients) and call it good. We didn't have the stuff to make what I made before, but I was really craving it. Anyway, I tried this out but it didn't smell right, so I winged it and it came out amazing. It was soooooooo good! I used it in the slow cooker over some pork ribs from grandma's freezer. Then I made some blue cheese mashed potatoes and some not-so-fancy green beans to complete the meal.

Wine and Fig Reduction
1 can beef broth
1/2 cup red wine (I used what we had: pinot noir, if you use a port you probably won't need as much sugar to sweeten it up)
1 package of dried figs (mine had 12)
1 TB dried rosemary
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/8 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp cumin

Bring the broth, wine, figs and rosemary to a boil in a small sauce pan. Boil for about 7-10 min. Turn off the flame. Stir in remaining ingredients until sugars have dissolved. Use immersion blender or pour into a blender to liquefy into a sauce. You should have about three cups worth.

Like I said, I then poured it over the frozen ribs in the crock pot and cooked on high for four hours. Amazingness. And the remaining sauce made a great gravy. It's naturally pretty thick so i didn't need to use a thickener. It goes perfectly with blue cheese or goat cheese. to. die. for. ugh, now i want more! bu-bye :)

Desk Organizer: Trash to Treasure (with unexpected success)

So I set out to make a desk organizer for my new crafting corner (YAY! crafting! You know, it's the first time I have had all of my arts and crafts stuff in one place before? it's a very exciting moment). So I gathered together some tin cans. They were too uniform in size so I decided to mix in some glass jars. There was too much roundness going on so I took some old stacking blocks and turned them upside-down. Eventually, I got this snazzy configuration:

Now, one thing I would change about what I did next: paint first, then glue. Buuuuuut, in my defense, I was in a hurry. The downstairs has been a disaster for a week longer than I wanted and it's freaking me out. So I was not interested, initially in prettiness. I wanted function and by golly I wanted it now. 

Thus, I glued these pieces to the cardboard, waited for it to dry and then took it out to garage and painted them.

sorry it's dark, the shop has poor lighting.

It looked....better. But not amazing. I wasn't supposed to care though! I wasn't going for amazing! I was going for functional! BUT BUT BUT....it COULD be pretty! Right? How long could it take?

/sigh

Yeah...the internal battle began. My need to have things be pretty started fighting with my need to have immediate usefulness. As I stared at the uniform hammered steel colored organizer, contemplating, the need for pretty...won.

I started to pick at it, put one color here, another there. Decoupaged old pages and fun words. There had been no original vision, so I wasn't expecting much. And...yeah...it's not the best thing I've ever made, but it was unexpectedly cute! I was so excited by this turn of events that I really loved it by the end. 

Isn't it cute?? :) It got a bit of steampunk influence. See, the reason I had to do hammered steel paint is because my white paint up and died! It's a full can, you can feel it, it's not clogged, it just doesn't let the paint out! anyway, since I was in a hurry to make this happen I just grabbed the next best neutral I had. When I started adding color, all we really had was left over paint from our steam punk costumes. It works though :) My living room is burnt orange and neutrals, I like to think it ties it all together. 

I cut the cardboard off the edges to finish it off. And added a penny to the flower :) I just love it, I do!

The Bra Purse: A Humorous Christmas Story

First, I have to say, my poor husband was definitely dealing with an estrogen explosion this night. Lucky for him the Wii was there to help him survive it.

Our friend and current roomie needed a gag gift for her company party gift exchange, and she needed it asap since her original idea rather fell apart. Twizzlers and hot glue don't mix so well I guess.  Lucky for her, there were about six females total in the room! Give us 10 seconds and we have a creative idea you can make in about as long as it took to think it up! Inside reports say that significant embarrassment was induced.

Step One: You need a Bra, the flashier the better, although if you have enough craft supplies flashiness is easily achieved through alternate routes.

Step Two: Align the two cups together, make sure the straps aren't all wonky and tucking the material that goes around the rib cage into the cups. Glue the cups together along the edges. We used hot glue but a good fabric glue would be just fine.

Step Three: Once the glue has dried, align the material you tucked into the cups (which are now, for all intents and purposes, the exterior of the purse) and glue together to make a handy pocket.

Step Four: Embellish with glitter or rhinestones. or feathers. or any other flamboyantly appropriate item. tassels maybe.  this is not a time to hold back your creativity! have at it!

Step Five: Have your lovely assistant pose for documentation of the fun.

Step Seven: Fill the purse with other embarrassing items, such as fake breast enhancement pills (take a medicine bottle, change the label, fill with MnM's for the "pills") or a breast enhancement cream (pretty much the same idea, just with lotion).

Mushroom-Brie Soup ala Me

So its snowing like crazy outside, and after shoveling, having a snow fight, playing snow-baseball, building a snowman... I thought it was time for some soup! Back home, a deli near my parents had this Mushroom Brie cream soup. It was AMAZING. So I made one up after looking over a few other versions. This is a random compilation all my own! Yay!

1 1/2 c. dry sherry
6 c. chicken stock
2 T butter
1/3 c. diced ham
4 strips turkey bacon, diced
10 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 T cornstarch
12 oz Brie cheese - rind removed, room temperature
1/3 c. white onion (shallots would probably taste better but i didn't have any on hand)
12 oz Brie cheese, trimmed and cubed
1 c. heavy cream
1/2 tsp pepper

Boil sherry to reduce by half; set aside. In large saucepan melt butter, stir in mushrooms, shallots, ham and bacon. Cook over medium high heat, 4 minutes. Stir occasionally. Stir in cornstarch, add stock and sherry. Bring to boil then simmer 15 mintues. Add brie, stir to melt. Add 1/2 and 1/2 and pepper. Simmer 5 more minutes. Remove from heat and either serve as is (which is what I did because the peoples were hungry) OR puree in batches (OR try an immersion blender) and serve it creamy.

 The Verdict: Tasty goodness, the masses enjoyed it :)I think it would work great minus the meat too, but it was the whole dinner so i needed some protein in there.

Scrappy Scarf

I know, third blog of the day can you tell I have no job?! :) It's ok, I'm still productive. In fact, I have evidence of this! Despite my craft stuff all being in storage, I still managed to make something. Just goes to show you can't keep a good crafter down.

You see this? This is a bunch of scraps from a friends No Sew Blanket project. The kit she bought was wonky, one blanket was much larger than the other, and so she had to do a lot of clipping to get it to work properly. Hence, extra fluffy flannel material! I couldn't just...get rid of it. Its against a code or something, isn't it? I am sure I read this somewhere. All the pieces were about and inch wide and anywhere from an 1 1/2 to 3 inches long so I just did what you do with the blanket kit they came from: I tied them in knots. I worked from the middle, so that it came out equal on both sides and just kind of went until it was long enough to be called a scarf. It was kind of like two knot chains that joined together in the middle on occasion so it could be one big chain. I should have done a video. or taken more pictures. Still learning this whole "tutorial" thing...but it was a pretty easy concept! Anyways, once it was done it looked like this:

Cute huh!? Ok, so it was a lot cuter than I expected it to be, but i wore it today and got compliments on it. By my grandma. And you know you better not say my grandma is wrong! Yeah...you heard me.... :)

Winging It: Two meals made with...love and randomness?

The hubster and I are living small at the moment, until we hear from a couple of people about jobs. In the mean time we are spending as little money as possible, which means I am buying a lot of things in cans. As much as I love organic etc. its kinda expensive so we are taking a sabbatical and just trying to eat as healthy as canned goods allow.

Hence the Meatloaf and the Chorizo Quiche.

Last week, we were living off taco salad so my husband got a four pound discount thing of ground beef. We didn't use it all so I was looking at using up about two pounds fast. Why not make a dish I have never made before?! Sure, sounds great. Oh and lets go to store without looking at a recipe first! Totally the right thing to do.

So yeah, I called my mom, she lists off some usual ingredients for a meatloaf and I ask for some general quantities and we go from there. In other words, I winged it. Turns out we don't have a loaf pan at home either (we are staying with my parents for a month so i am totally reliant on mom's kitchen things). So i used a nine inch round cake pan. Turned out fine! Looks like a meat bundt cake....but it's edible! The only thing is, I dunno if it's "good" as far at meatloaf goes. I wasn't really raised on it, it gave both my parents heart burn, i guess. Tastes fine to me! Needs ketchup though... but that's normal right?

In that same shopping trip I bought some breakfast stuff, the Man of the House (MOTH? hmmm i need a nickname for him.... MOTH is....well it's weird) had asked for Chorizo. Another thing I have never made ever. Seemed pretty easy though! Which is why I decided to make it complicated:

• Right side of my Brain: You can make quiche in the oven too, right?
• Left side of my Brain: Well yeah but you don't even know what goes in quiche, its been like six years since you made it last. 
• Right side of my Brain: Whats your point? I'm sure it will be fine, just buy a whole lot of eggs, what could go wrong?
• Left side of my Brain: Can't we look up a recipe? 
• Right side of my Brain: Sure! (looks up about four recipes) Ok, I think i have the general idea, lets do this!

That's about how most of my cooking projects go actually....Anyway, I winged it. I put a whole thing of chorizo, six eggs, some cheese and some beans all mixed together and then poured it into the other cake pan. I didn't use a crust because I don't generally do gluten. The only thing that went wrong was the chorizo got greasy and dripped so the oven got a little smokey towards the end. Other than that, looks great. The plan is to take that mixture, heat it up and put it into some corn crunchy taco shells. TA DA! Breakfast Tacos. nom :)