Seriously I have not posted in almost a month and a half?! This is crazy! I am such a slacker sometimes, but I have also been very busy. July was full of camping and lots of family fun! I also participated in a bike ride for Parkinson's Disease. It was just very busy. Now we are into August and we getting ready to send back the kiddie to school. They start next Wednesday, I can't wait! Oh and the kids are excited to.

We started a neew adventure this past week that has worked out pretty good so far. We got a cat! Not a kitten, but a cat. He is older which is nice, as well as declawed and fixed. He doesn't seem to like the kids much and will just hide all day, but he comes out at night and will be with me and Mike, although Mike seems to not like cats at all. Oh well.

So for young women's last week we wanted to do something with the girls that they could make but not have to turn on the oven. So I decided on waffle iron cookies, homemade ice cream and hot fudge sauce. It turned out great and they were very yummy. So here is the recipe for waffle iron cookies:

Waffle Iron Cookies

2 eggs beaten
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 tsp. Vanilla
1 cup flour
3 TBS cocoa

Mix sugar and melted butter with beaten eggs. Add vanilla. Stir in flour and cocoa. Pour in waffle iron 1 cup at a time. Cook 2-3 minutes. These are so yummy but very sweet, so you might want add a little salt so they aren't quite so sweet. But enjoy they are one of my favorites and very easy to make!

Pineapple cherry delight

As you know I love to make up and try new things. I was wanting to make something fun for father's day and wanted jello but it was much to late to make it. I decided to try to make a jello dish my aunt makes and it turned out pretty good. Try it for yourself.

Pineapple cherry delight

16 oz fat free cottage cheese
Small tub fat free cool whip
Large box sugar free cherry jello
1 can crushed pineapple, drained

Mix together, serve immediately or refrigerate.

The cherry jello and pineapple are just yummy together. Hope you enjoy it. Half of my family did, but most of them don't like cottage cheese.

Cream Cheese Bars

One of my favorite treats that I don't make very often is Cream Cheese Bars. I love making bars because you just put it all in one pan and bake instead of making each individual cookie. These are super yummy and you can't eat just one. The last time I made these I sprinkled butterscotch chips on with the filling and we loved it!

Cream Cheese Bars

crust:
1 yellow cake mix
1 egg
1/3 cup oil

filling:
8 oz cream cheese
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350. Mix together cake mix, eggs and oil until crumbly. Set aside 1 cup of crust mix for topping. Pat rest of dough lightly into a greased 9 X 13 pan. Bake  for 15 minutes. In a separate bowl, beat together cream cheese, sugar, lemon juice and egg until smooth. Spread evenly over baked layer. Sprinkle with reserved crust mix. Bake for 15 minutes loner. Cool and cut into bars.

Yummy Curry

So in learning some new ethnic recipes, I have learned a few new tidbits as well. I got a recipe from a friend of my hubby's who served a mission somewhere where they serve Thai food, not sure where. So he makes Thai food often. I finally made it to a restaurant to have some Thai food, it was delicious! I have loved curry since the first time I had some with a family friend of Mike's when we were dating, and we make it every now and then, but we have just used the curry bars that you buy in the store. I wanted some authentic curry, so when I was back with my brother-in-law's family my sister-in-law made some curry from coconut milk, Tahi peanut sauce, chicken and curry powder from Bah-Rain (sp). I loved it and so wanted to try some for myself, here is the recipe that I came up with and it is very close to the yellow curry I had at the resaurant, Mike said he even liked mine better. Yay for me!

Curry

4 chicken breasts chopped
2 cans coconut milk
1 bottle Thai peanut sauce
3 TBS curry powder
1 bag of oriental veggies

cook chicken with olive oil, add frozen veggies to thaw. Meanwhile, mix coconut milk, peanut sauce and curry powder in a bowl. Add to other mixture when veggies have softened. Serve warm over rice.

Something I learned was about the difference between curry powder and curry paste. Most recipes call for curry paste, which gives it the truer Thai flavor, whereas curry powder gives you more of the Indian flavor. I also learned that it depends on where you get your curry powder, or what brand you use, makes a difference as well. I had some McCormick curry powder and some that I bought in bulk at Winco. Even just smelling them, there is a huge difference!! I opted to use the one I bought at Winco because it had the stronger curry smell as apposed to a sweeter turmeric smell that the other had. Like I said, it was very yummy, with a little spice to it as well. The only thing I would do different is to add some chopped potatoes to it as well, that is how the restaurants serve it, with them in the sauce. Also this makes A LOT of curry sauce, more than enough to feed 6 of us, with seconds for Mike and I, so I think it will serve at least 8 - 10 people! So adjust the recipe as you need, or just serve it for your next big family get together!

Tis the Season for summer fun and GRILLING!

I went shopping last night to get some much needed milk, cheese, eggs and essentials. I started at Smith's hoping to get the Kandoos flushable wipes refill packs free, but they were out, but I did find some milk on mark down because they expire this weekend, plus Yoplait yogurt are .44, good price, and hamburger buns, bananas and cucumbers. Then I went to Winco to get the FREE things that they sent out coupons for (ketchup, hamburger, hamburger helper, pork and beans, and soda), I also got ground turkey, cheese, eggs, blueberry muffin mix, and my favorite find: Bar-S hotdogs! They were marked at .68 each, used the $1/2 coupon from the RP 5/22 and paid .36 for both, really good price! And we use these for grilling all the time, they are pretty good. Also watch for condiments and grilling items to go on sale soon, since it is that time of year and you can score some pretty sweet deals on the necessities for summer!

Well, I am finally home and back to my normal life. My vacation was so much fun and very relaxing. The time difference was hard to adjust to and Addie kept waking up at 6 o'clock there, which is 4 o'clock here, so I didn't know if she would adjust back very well, but so far it has been much better. Virginia is such a beautiful place. I'm glad I decided to go in May instead of later. The humidity was about 60% which wasn't to bad, but I could tell a difference. It was very warm and nice, even when it was raining. We were able to go to the beach on the Naval base and see the ocean. We even got to play with a few sand crabs, which totally freaked me out. They would move every time a stepped and scare me. Addie has been kind of shy around people, but she volunarily went to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law.

If you ever get a chance to go back there, take it, it is worth it.
Enjoy the pictures.

I am very excited for this week! I am going to be leaving town this week all by myself, well, me and Addie! I am going to be flying to Virginia to visit Mike's brother and his family. It will be a lot of fun! I am nervous to fly by myself, or rather with a one year old, but it will be ok. So in the meantime I am finishing up some shopping, since it will be a couple weeks before I make it out to shop again. I went to Smith's this morning to pick up some things that they didn't have Friday and was able to get a few things, but they have been out of Reach toothbrushes and that is something that I was really needing to buy. But I bought 10 boxes of pasta and a crest kids toothpaste and they paid me 18 cents after my coupons, love it!

My Rite Aid shopping was a lot of fun today too. They have Buy One Get One Free sales all over the store this week, plus some other great shopping deals! I only paid about $6 for everything pictured! I did have $12 in +UP rewards from last week that helped to pay for this so the $6 was what I paid after all coupons and +UP rewards. This is the bonus to buying things there!

Rite Aid shopping trip: 2 pkgs. napkins, 2 boxes Kleenex, 2 Viactiv, 2 Got2B stylers, 3 Similac ready formula, 5 Tylenol precise heat patches, 24 chocolate bars, 4 Starburst and 2 packs of gum!