foodie friday: easter cake balls

i made the chick cake pops from bakerella last year and loved them, but they were very time consuming. this year my sister and i decided to try the cake balls instead. quick and easy and they turned out really cute! i still think i'll do the chick pops for easter for the boys, but at least now i don't feel like i have to since i've already done one easter treat for the year.

we followed this recipe and used boxed red velvet cake mix and canned cream cheese frosting. emily was our little helper! we dipped the cake balls in white chocolate candiquick (since that was what we could find at wal-mart on short notice) and it worked really well. i think it would have been fun to have some of the chocolate be pink or another springy color, but we didn't have any way to change it since you have to use special candy coloring. we decorated with sprinkles and they were done!

foodie friday:meal planning

my first attempt at meal planning was almost a year ago. i do great for about 6 weeks and then go through a period of frenzied trips to wal-mart in search of last minute ingredients and end up with an overstocked pantry. then i clean out the pantry and try to meal plan again. i do enjoy it, sometimes things just get the best of me and i get too busy to figure out what we're going to eat and how much food i need to buy.

i love it because it makes it so easy when i come home from work knowing exactly what i am going to make. i love that i can plan for harder to prepare meals or crockpot meals on the days i stay home so i can easily work on them during the day. lance loves that it keeps our pantry organized (a relative term) and that it saves money. i don't know if i really spend less on food (i'm not organized enough to keep track of stuff like that) but i do know that cutting back our wal-mart trips to one, maybe two a week has drastically cut back on the random purchases.

so menu planning is a good thing for me and i try to keep it up. we normally do our big shopping trip on sundays so i try to have everything planned out by saturday afternoon.

here is our sample menu for the upcoming week:
saturday: leftovers from dinner out last night and fresh bread
sunday: blackened catfish, squash/onions/peppers on the grill, salad
monday: fish tacos and fresh salsa (pioneer woman's resturant salsa)
tuesday: grilled chicken, oven roasted brocolli and salad
wednesday: eat out
thursday: grilled chicken pizza (rachel ray recipe)
friday: steak, sweet potato fries, salad

here are a few references on getting started in meal planning:
meal planning 101
the benefits of meal planning

foodie friday: favorite kitchen gear

it was a busy week, so i didn't really get to try any new recipes.

i love kitchen gear and could wander the gadget section at bed, bath and beyond for hours!!! and one of my all-time favorite stores is williams-sonoma. as a result, i have gathered a pretty good collection of kitchen stuff.

here are my top 5 must-haves:
1. kitchen-aid stand mixer: lance bought me this one year for christmas (probably about 6 years ago) and it is STILL one of my favorite things to use.

2. keurig coffee maker: this was my christmas gift this year and i really don't know how i got along without it. love how easy it is to use and that it just makes single cups. i had a regular coffee pot, but i barely used it because it was a waste and i hated cleaning in. the keurig is super easy to clean and keep up with.

3. oxo cherry pitter: i bought this last year to make cherry pies for miles' first birthday party. it is soooo easy to use and it makes feeding cherries to the kids so much easier. definitely worth the $13.

4. good knives: i don't have many yet, but i am in the process of gathering some good quality knives. my parents gave us some steak knives for christmas a few years ago and i bought a little set of paring knifes and they are so much nicer to use than the wal-mart ones i have.

5. silpat baking sheets: i LOVE these! i heard about these from my sister and they are amazing. i've used parchment paper in the past and did like it, but i like that these are reusable...in my effort to try to be greener and more earth friendly :) cookies turn out perfectly done pretty much every time.

what are some of your top kitchen must-haves?

foodie friday: not exactly panera...

but still edible. actually they turned out pretty good, even though they may not exactly look like store bought bagels.

i LOVE bagels. i could eat a bagel every day, especially with cream cheese. yum. but i have never even thought to make them. after cindy's comment about making bagels with her bread machine, i was inspired to give it a try. i just went with the basic bagel dough recipe that came with my bread machine. it called for 3 cups of flour and i used 2 cups of whole wheat and 1 cup of bread flour. the mix turned out well, though my dough was really stretchy and hard to work with. maybe not enough flour in the rolling/shaping process. i will probably experiment with some other recipes as well.

apparently with bagels you have to drop them in boiling water right before you bake them. i don't really know what it does, but i was kind of nervous considering that mine were not overly bagel-ey at this point and it was basically like dropping a blob of dough into the water. but it really helped! after they came out of the water, i was able to easily place a little hole in the middle and it helped them keep their shape a little bit better. i sprinkled some brown sugar and cinnamon on the top and popped them in the oven. the brown sugar didn't fare too well after i turned them over (maybe next time i won't do that) and looked kind of burnt on the final product, but they tasted really good straight out of the oven with some cream cheese.

i can definitely see myself making more bagels. they definitely taste better than store bought. i will be able to make up a couple of batches and then freeze them. plus i can try different add-ins and toppings.

i'd still love to have a panera bread closer than 80 miles away, but at least now i'll have some yummy bagels for in the meantime.

foodie friday: using the bread maker

as much as i'd like to get away from ready made, processed foods, it is hard. it is so much more convenient to just grab something almost prepared and just heat it up. but in an effort to have our family eat healthier i am trying to focus on making more of our own foods. i have always wanted to make bread, but an attempt at rolls a few thanksgivings ago did not go well and i haven't tried since. turns out i added too much butter so the things never rose properly, but still it was a lot of work and i just didn't have time for it on a regular basis. i do like to make biscuits and even tried the pioneer woman's buttermilk biscuits from her new cookbook a few weeks ago - a resounding "delicious" from lance until he found out how much butter was in them!

my friend nikki was looking through the martha stewart living magazine she gets every month and we decided she should try to follow martha's calendar for a month and blog about it. i'm not sure if you've ever read martha's calendar, but any normal person would need to drastically change it to make it doable. well after some revisions, we decided today we'd give homemade bread a try. i ran to wal-mart and got their only option at a bread maker (thankfully it was very reasonably priced in case it only gets used this one time) and supplies.

using a breadmaker is wonderfully easy. i followed this recipe for french bread and it turned out delicious! we were running out of time though, so i had to help it rise in the oven a bit, but other than that, i followed the recipe pretty much as is. i will definitely be making it again! and hopefully will be trying out some other new breads. there seems to be so much you can do with the breadmaker.

foodie friday: easy chicken pot pie

my sister gave me this recipe several years ago and i LOVE it. easy to make and is perfect for leftovers.

preheat oven to 425 degrees.

you'll need:
1 jar turkey or chicken gravy

white meat from one rostisserie chicken (or a large can of white meat chicken in a pinch)

1 box of pillsbury pie crusts

frozen veggies of your choice (i don't like cooked carrots, so i just buy separate bags of peas, corn and green beans and mix together)

combine chicken, gravy and veggies in a bowl. place one pie crust in a greased 9" pie pan. pour chicken and veggie mixture into pan and cover with remaining pie crust. cut vent holes in crust and bake for 40-45 minutes. place foil over the crust for remaining 10-15 minutes to keep crust from burning.

i'd like to try it making individual pot pies and i think it would work well other than requiring a few extra pie crusts.

foodie friday: favorite food blogs

so this is my new thing. i'd like to branch out the blog a little bit to not only be about the kids. even though i started the blog to be about the boys, and i could write about them all day long, i'd like to start adding me into the mix more. i am starting small though, one post a week about one of the things i love: cooking, baking and eating!

i think food blogs are one of the best things ever started. i love how people chronicle recipes they've tried, food tips and tricks and pictures, so many pictures! most of the recipes i make now are from food blogs or the internet rather than a cookbook because it seems more personal to me. not only do i love reading the blog authors insights, but i enjoy seeing what others say about the recipe.

while i don't neccesarily read these food blogs everyday, they tend to be the ones that i go to when i am trying to figure out what to make.

in no particular order, my 10 favorite food blogs:
1. The Pioneer Woman
2. Good Things Catered
3. Bakerella
4. Our Best Bites
5. The Way the Cookie Crumbles
6. The Brown Eyed Baker
7. Little Spatula
8. Annie's Eats
9. Smitten Kitchen
10. Confessions of a Foodie Bride