Roasted Chickpeas

So, I'm trying this on my phone today because our computer is up at the office! I cannot get enough of these sweet and salty chickpeas!! They are easy to make, and a great idea for a snack at home or you could double/triple the recipe to take to a party! Lets get started!

Ingredients:
I can of chickpeas
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoon brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon of salt

To start out you're going to drain the can of chickpeas and then scatter them out on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. Bake at 450 degrees for 30 minutes. The last can I made I had to bake for about 32-35 (the chickpeas around the edges might get burned, just remove them and pop the sheet back in.) You are looking for them to have a crunch! Once they have roasted let them cool and put them in a small bowl. Add the olive oil, cinnamon, brown sugar, and salt and stir together. Serve and enjoy!! I about took down a whole can by myself the first time I made these! I originally came across this recipe at cupcakeproject.com! If you check out her recipes you will quickly find she puts together things that might seem out of the ordinary, but end up being satisfying and delicious! Stay tuned for more great recipes this week!! Until then...

Happy Eating

Taco Salad

Taco salad is an easy dinner and absolutely delicious! I can remember eating this when I was a little girl! I never seem to remember it when I'm stuck for something to make for dinner, but I remembered last night and I couldn't be happier I did! It's fairly easy to put together and will leave you happy and coming back for seconds! Let's get started...

Ingredients

1 lb. ground beef

1 onion

2 small tomatoes

2 cloves of garlic

1 pkg. (or pre-made) taco seasoning

Corn Tortillas

Canola oil

Shredded Cheese-I used the Mexican blend 

Shredded Lettuce-

(I didn't have this on hand last night but I normally always put it on there)

Catalina Dressing

You're going to want to brown the meat in a large skillet, and add about half of the onion (chopped), garlic cloves and one small tomato (diced). Once your meat is cooked through you're going to add the taco seasoning and water. Keep the meat on warm, and add a little canola oil to a small skillet. Heat the oil until it's smoking and add one tortilla at a time for about 10-15 seconds per side. All you're trying to do is give the tortilla a crispy crunch!! Place tortillas out on a paper towel to soak up any remaining oil. Dice the remainder of the onion and the second tomato and add to a plate! Here are the steps to putting these together...

1) Place tortilla on a plate

2) Add meat

3) Top with onion, tomato, and lettuce

4) Add shredded cheese

5) Top it off with the Catalina Dressing

6) ENJOY!!

Meat mixture in the skillet staying warm!

This is the size of the onion I used! 

Step 1) Add crispy corn tortilla to your plate! (You need to use corn, the flour tortillas don't get crispy like these do)! 

Finished Taco Salad! YUM! 

Stay tuned for a chickpea snack tomorrow! 

Until then...

Photo Challenge Update 3/17/2013

Happy St. Patrick's Day folks!! Hope everyone is wearing green! This is not typically a holiday I do much for, so I added some shamrocks, and I'm sitting here typing this out in a green shirt...for what it's worth this is the extent of my "celebration" lol! 

Here were my photo prompts for this week:

My Favorite Accessory

Tree

Flower

Colorful

Sunglasses

Fork

My Name

This is my favorite accessory! Dee Jay bought it for me a little over a year ago! It's an infinity necklace that says "I love you...I love you more"! He just melts my heart!! 

This is my tree picture! Love seeing all the shades of an Oklahoma sky! The sun was setting, and it almost looks like nighttime right above us, and daylight out on the horizon! 

This is my flower! These delicate buds, are seen all over the place in the Spring! We have two trees right outside that are covered in them! We have been watching them, waiting for the blooms to know that Spring is really on it's way! 

My colorful picture is of a T-shirt I own! I love all the bright colors!! Hurry up Summer!!

Here is a snapshot of my sunglasses! (Of course the day after I take pictures of sunglasses shirt, I need to take a picture of sunglasses lol)! I don't know about you guys, but I am really rough on my sunglasses IF I can actually keep a hold of them! This pair has lasted me one Summer so far! I always like to buy them cheap, because I know they will probably be ruined or lost in a short amount of time!

Well, this picture is pretty self explanatory! Here is a fork! A what? A fork! A what? A fork! OH, a fork!! (If you have never played that game with a large group of people, your brain has truly never been scrambled haha!)

We have three different pictures that a couple cute little munchkins have drawn for us! What you can't see in the picture is my "portrait"! Dee Jay has one too, and we then we have one with the two of us! I LOVE watching kids learn to write and draw!! They are so cute when they are all focused on something like a name, and it comes out PERFECT like this! I have millions of these stashed away from over the years, because I can't bring myself to toss them! When we have children of our own someday and they start coloring and writing, I have a feeling I'm going to run out of room on the fridge and walls! And yes, I will frame their first coloring experience, because everyone starts somewhere!! 

So there you have it! I've been slacking on the blog this week, but you guys have been back day after day checking out past recipes and that makes me happy! I promise I will do much better this week! Have a great Sunday, and until next time...

Ham and Squash Soup

I guess it's time to play catch up on all the recipes I did make last week! This ham and squash soup is a gem we found on Pinterest! Paula Deen's recipes make me so happy!! You can find her original recipe on her site PaulaDeen.com! It's easy to put together and I love all the different textures and flavors in the soup itself! Let's get cookin'!

Ingredients

2 pounds yellow squash-sliced into rounds 

(Note: I quartered my slices)

6 TB butter

1 large onion-chopped

4 carrots, sliced

1 can evaporated milk

1/2 c sour cream

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 c white cheddar cheese-grated

1 1/2 c vegetable stock

2 c cooked ham

To start out you're going to melt the butter (buttah-Paul Deen lol) in a soup pot on the stove! Add the onions, carrots, squash, and a dash of salt and pepper. Saute all this together for about 20 minutes. 

Add the evaporated milk and sour cream to the vegetable mixture, and stir well! Simmer this mixture until you start to see bubbles, and then stir in the nutmeg, cheese, ham and vegetable stock! 

Warm the entire mixture through, and serve! 

I couldn't get enough of this soup, it was so delicious! I was worried about the leftovers and the squash getting to soggy, but to my surprise it held up well to finish off the next day! 

Stay tuned for a very enticing snack that I can't make enough of!! 

Until next time...

Photo Challenge Update for March

I have been completely slacking off in the cooking department! Dee Jay has had a crazy busy week and his schedule hasn't left any time for us to sit down and eat, so I've been lazy! At least I have the photo challenge to give me an update this week, before I get back to the kitchen! So here we go...

Illuminate

Color Purple

Soft

Eat

Sparkle

Drink

Something Orange

Black & White

Fruit

My illuminate picture is of our lamp in the living room! I love the soft glow you get at night instead of bright overhead lighting! 

My color purple photo is of an earring of mine with purple beads! This is one of my favorite pairs of earrings because I love adding purple back into the wardrobe in the Spring and Summer! 

These are my very soft, comfy house shoes! It kind of feels like you're walking on a pillow because the cushion inside is very soft and plump! 

My "eat" photo, is of my grapefruit! I LOVE grapefruits for a snack or an easy breakfast! Sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top, and you're in business! All the grapefruits I've been getting lately are so delicious, sweet and juicy I just want to go buy all of them! Doesn't hurt that you can squeeze the leftover juice from them once you're done eating and have a tiny little glass of fresh grapefruit juice! YUM!

My picture of sparkles is of my nail polish! I adore Sinful Colors ($1.99 at Walgreens), and I probably have about every color that they put out there! It's a bad habit, but it's so fun!

I am trying to cut back on my caffeine consumption! These are caffeine free and so delicious! 

Seeing that I was raised in an OU lovin' family, it was REALLY hard to find something orange in our house! Besides the orange crush drinks which I used the day before, I had to do some searching when I realized what I was needing to take a photo of! This is DJ's "scent free hunting spray" carrier! I found it after doing some major searching! So there's the orange in our house :)

My black and white photo is of one of my craft supply boxes!! My crafts are over-flowing and my to-do list today is getting everything a bit more organized! 

My final photo for the beginning of March was of fruit! Oh dear strawberries, how I love you! When I was little, we used to eat strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar! I can still take down a whole carton of these sweet little treats with that dip!! 

Stay tuned for some yummy recipes this week!!

Until then...

Sour Cream Enchiladas = Scrumptious

Thanks to the Pioneer Woman, and her wonderful recipes, we had a positively wonderful dinner with her sour cream enchiladas, and some chipotle pasta! You can find her recipe here, on her website! These were a little more work, and very messy (at least for me, but then again when am I not messy) but completely worth the effort! Let's get started!

Ingredients

12 Corn tortillas

Canola oil, for frying

1 can (20 oz) Enchilada Sauce

2 c Sour cream

3 c Cheddar cheese

1 c Green onion

1/2 tsp. Ground cumin

1/4 tsp Cayenne pepper

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. 

In a bowl, you're going to to want to mix together the green onion, sour cream, 1 1/2 c cheddar cheese (THIS IS ONLY HALF OF WHAT THE RECIPE CALLS FOR), cumin and cayenne pepper! 

Heat canola oil over medium heat in a small skillet until it's beginning to smoke! In a larger skillet, pour the enchilada into another pan and heat over low/medium heat. 

Using tongs, fry the tortillas one at a time for about 5-10 seconds per side! Remove the tortilla from the oil, and place in the enchilada sauce and coat each side!

Okay, here is where it can get a bit messy. So I'll give you my step by step, which seemed to bring down the mess from 10 to a 3! 

I removed the tortilla from the sauce with the tongs and placed it on a plate. Spoon the sour cream mixture into the middle of the tortilla and roll the tortilla and place it face down in a 9x13 baking pan. 

At this point, I stopped and rinsed my hands and the tongs and dried them off on a dish towel. The first couple of times I did not rinse, I found the enchilada sauce made the oil pop in the skillet, which caused a lot of dodging of the flying hot grease! If everything is rinsed, you don't have that problem! I know it seems like a lot of work for 12 tortillas, but trust me, it's worth it! 

Once you have all 12 tortillas rolled, and face down in the pan, add the remaining 1 1/2 cups of cheddar cheese to the top of the enchiladas and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly and golden brown! Remove from oven, top with salsa or whatever your heart desires and enjoy!! We absolutely loved this, and will for sure make it again! Plus with it just being the two of us, we had plenty of leftovers! 

Stay tuned for some great new recipes!

Until then...

Mom Tested & Kid Approved Smoothie

A good friend of mine sent me some pictures and directions to a smoothie she made the other day! 

I honestly can't wait to try this out simply because I've never thought of adding grapes to my smoothies! I LOVE grapes! I think my favorite thing to do is to freeze them then take them with me as a cold snack on hot summer days! YUM! So let's see how to put this smoothie together!

Ingredients

1 frozen pineapple puree packet

1 cara cara orange peeled

Small bowl of black seedless grapes (about a cup)

About 1/4 c of vanilla yogurt

Splash of almond milk

1 1/2 c of ice cubes

Put all this in your blender, and blend until you have your desired consistency! 

Her stand point is that this tasted like an Orange Julius, only better! I'm sold!

This can be found in the frozen section at select grocery stores!

If you have a Reasor's...that's where this particular bag came from

Cara Cara Navel Oranges! Delish

Boomer Sooner Realtree Mug! Looks so good (the mug and the contents lol)

I do believe she likes it! Almost getting a thumb's up from this sweet girl! 

Stay tuned for some more great recipes!

Until then...