Pot of Gold Rainbow Cupcakes

 
A couple years ago I saw an article in a magazine (sorry can't remember) that made rainbow cupcakes with white icing for St. Patrick's Day. My kids call them pot of gold cupcakes.

Ever since I saw the article I've made these each year for my kiddos.

It's a really simple recipe, but a bit time consuming.

You need:
1 box white cake mix (not yellow)
3 egg whites (or whatever your box calls for - same with oil and water)
1/3 cup of vegetable oil
1 1/4 cup of water
food coloring
container of white cake icing
gold wrapped chocolate coins (optional)

Make the cake batter according to the box. Once it's well mixed separate the batter equally into 6 separate containers.

Add food coloring to each separate container as follows:
red:        18 red drops
orange:  12 yellow and 4 red drops
yellow:  12 yellow drops
green:    12 green drops
blue:      12 blue drops
purple :  6 blue and 9 red drops

Mix the batter and food coloring up very well. It should create nice, bold colors.

Then bake according to the box. Icing and top with a gold chocolate coin.

Great Food For Power Outages

Like I mentioned yesterday, the weather channels are saying a big storm may be coming to my part of the United States, so I decided to come up with a list of foods that you can keep on hand for emergencies. These foods don't need to be refrigerated and do not need to be cooked.

If you are able to use a grill or a camp fire to heat food or water that would be ideal, but these are all able to be eaten as is.  So here goes:

* cans of tuna fish
* peanut butter
* granola bars
* bananas
* apples
* oranges
* dry cereal
* crackers
* cookies
* canned chili
* bottle water
* bread
* peanuts
* trail mix
* dried fruits
* pickles
* fruit cups
* instant mashed potatoes (some only require water)
* Gatorade
* gummies or fruit snacks
* pop tarts
* beef jerky

Many of these foods can be kept in your car or go bag for emergencies. Always keep a supply of water on hand. One gallon per person per day is recommended, but something is always better than nothing.

Have a wonderful weekend and please feel free to leave a comment and/or add to the list above.

Still Gardening in October

Believe it or not my garden is still flourishing. Crazy I know for the mid-Atlantic region. It's October and just starting to get cooler, but I continue to get veggies.It was a dry summer and a pretty wet fall so far.

With all the rain I've been getting a bunch of good sized and still tasty tomatoes. Though I'm a bit confused about my onions. You see I pulled out all my onions, and new ones have started to grow in the same spot. This is my first time with onions, so I'm wondering is this normal???

This summer my garden has produced lots of veggies. I canned lots of tomatoes. My hubby has canned lots of banana peppers and I even canned 2 jars of carrots. Not to mention lots of radishes early in the summer.

The canned goods come in really handy over the winter in addition to throughout the summer and fall. I use the tomatoes in spaghetti sauce and to make stewed tomatoes. One of my favorite dishes.

The radishes will be put in salads, and the carrots will be used in roasts.

The banana peppers won't make it very far into the winter because my youngest and my hubby are constantly eating them.

I love gardening and already can't wait until next year. It's so fun deciding what to plant and watching it sprout and then bloom. And you can't beat shopping from your back yard.

Coming up in the next week or two I will need to clean up and turn over my garden. I enjoy seeing my yard neat and full of beautifully colored plants. On to the fall and the pretty multi-colored leaves.

Yummy Enchiladas

These are super easy to make and my family LOVES these.

Ingredients:
1 lb ground beef
1 pkg taco seasoning
2/3 cup water
1 can refried beans
1 can enchilada sauce
2 cups shredded cheese (Mexican/taco mix)
8 tortillas



Brown ground beef in large skillet. Drain.

Stir in taco seasoning and 2/3 cup water. Bring to a boil and let cook until some water has evaporated.

Stir in refried beans and 1/2 cup shredded cheese until thoroughly mixed and cheese is melted.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Lightly grease 9 x 12 baking dish.

Take one tortilla and spoon in approximately 1/2 cup* of meat/refried bean mixture into tortilla. Wrap up and place in baking dish. Continue until all the meat/refried bean mixture is used.

* Use more or less of the mixture to suit your tastes.

Once all the meat/refried bean mixture is used and tortillas are lined up in baking dish. Cover with remaining shredded cheese and top with enchilada sauce.

Bake until cheese is melted - approximately 20 minutes.

Serve and enjoy!

No More Boring Sandwiches for School Lunches

School has been in session here for just about a month and my kids are already getting tired of seeing sandwiches in their lunch boxes each day.

So I started searching online for some ideas and I found lots of cool stuff, but first here's a list of a couple non-sandwich lunches I came up with.

* pizza
* chicken nuggets
* salad - regular or Ceasar
* tuna salad
* quesadilla - chicken or cheese
* tacos
* bagel with cream cheese
* macaroni and cheese
* fish sticks
* soup with crackers or gold fish
* pita with lettuce and chicken salad
* veggies and dip
* apples slices and cheese sticks
* celery sticks with peanut butter and raisins
* English muffin with butter or cheese and mustard  (it's delicious trust me)
* chicken with broccoli or any leftovers for that matter

In my search I found this amazing website. They offer 365 Lunch Ideas - all with pictures of the food. Lots of wonderful ideas for your kids lunches or even for yourself. Plus they are all in cute little bento boxes. Now obviously - no bento boxes required. You can easily use sandwich/snack baggies for almost all of these.
www.laptoplunches.com/bento-menus/

If you are especially creative here is a really cute site showing amazing lunches. Some of the ideas on the site are a bit too labor intensive for me, but for those who have some time it's a neat site. Check it out here : http://www.squidoo.com/build-a-better-lunchbox

Hope this helps you as much as it's helped me. Have a wonderful weekend!

One Bowl Chocolate Cake

This is a really great cake that my family loves. I found in a cookbook from my local library a long time ago. Unfortunately I didn't get the name of the book, however I did find the same recipe listed here on recipes.com:  http://www.recipe.com/one-bowl-chocolate-cake/

This recipe only makes a small 8x8" square or one 9"x 1 1/2" round cake. Plus it's pretty quick and easy to make.

Ingredients
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup cooking oil
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Grease and light flour one 9 x 1 1/2" round pan or one 8 x 8" square pan.

In a large mixing bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

Add milk, oil and vanilla.  Mix on low speed until combined. Mix on medium for 2 minutes.

Add egg and mix on medium for 2 more minutes.

Pour into pan and cook at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Let cool and top with chocolate icing or powdered sugar.

Food Loving Friday - Homemade Pizzas

Okay so this week I decided to try my hand at making homemade pizzas. Let me just say I've never made bread or dough before.

It wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. It was messier than I thought. Flour everywhere ;-)

 I found the recipe on the back of the Fleischmann's Pizza Crust Yeast package. It's listed below for your info.

Ingredients: 

1 3/4 to 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 envelope of Fleischmann's Pizza Yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

2/3 cup very warm tap water (120F to 130F)

3 tablespoon oil

pizza sauce, toppings and cheese

Preheat oven to 425F

Combine 1 cup flour, yeast, sugar, salt in a large bowl. Add water and oil. Mix together until well blended, about 1 minute.

Add gradually 1/2 cup flour until soft dough ball is formed, will be slightly sticky. Add additional flour if needed to form dough ball.

Knead on a floured surface adding  additional flour if needed, until smooth and elastic, about 4 minutes. With floured hands, press dough out to fill greased pizza pan.

Top as desired with pizza sauce, toppings and cheese.

Bake on bottom oven rack for 12 to 15 minutes until cheese is bubbly and crust is brown.

By the way, it costs us about $13.04 dollars to make 3 pizzas.  Saying you have no ingredients on hand and you will have extra sugar, flour and salt left over. That's less than $5 a pizza and you make them with any way you wish.

$1.06 yeast - Walmart

$3.08 sugar - Aldi

$1.98 flour - Aldi

$0.35 salt - Aldi

$1.79 oil - Aldi

$2.99 mozzarella cheese - Aldi

$1.79 pepperoni  - Weis Markets

Enjoy and have a great weekend.

Food Lovin Friday - Pokemon Cake

My little guy is really and I mean REALLY into Pokemon, so when his birthday rolled around this year he asked for a Pokemon cake. Well, I thought for all of 2 seconds about making one of the actual figures like Pikachu, Charmander, or Dialga.  Then I came back to my senses and decided I would just make a Pokeball.

This was make using a large 14" cake pan and colored icing. The black outlining is a little squeeze tube of icing/decorating gel. To make the cake I used a Devil's Food flavor boxed mix that was on sale for $1.

If you're not particularly crafty, want something quick and easy or just don't want to worry about it there are links to a couple really neat Pokemon cake decorations and even a kit below. Enjoy!

Food Lovin Friday - Be A Star Birthday Cake

My youngest had her birthday party last Saturday. Her party theme was Toy Story, so I decided to buy a Wilton star shaped cake pan.

I had intended to decorate the cake as a sheriff badge, like "Sheriff Woody" only "Sheriff Jenny". The only problem was the birthday girl insisted on having chocolate icing.

We ended up using a yellow confetti cake mix and chocolate icing with confetti sprinkles around the edges. It tasted delicious, but was a little awkward to cut. I also took a piece of cardboard the comes under pizzas, cleaned it and covered it with aluminum foil to put the cake on.

We had 8 cute little kids over last weekend and plan to have 5 little guys over this weekend. Stay tuned next week for my son's Pokemon Ball Cake.

Enjoy your weekend.

Food Loving Fridays - Wanchai Ferry Orange Chicken Review

This week I fixed the new Wanchai Ferry Frozen Dinners for my family. We tried the Orange Chicken. I bought it because a.) I had a coupon and (b.) we love, love, love the boxed dinner version by Wanchai Ferry.

To start out with I have to say the package states it's a meal for 2 people. We are a family of 5 - two adults and three kids 10 and under.

Okay for the pros:
* It has the same great sauce as the boxed dinner kits. YUMMY!
* Chicken tastes really good. 
* There are lots of great coupons out right now to bring the cost down.
* It is quite easy to prepare and only requires one pan. Bonus for the quick clean-up.

 Now for the cons:
* The portions are very small.
* The chicken is breaded  -  which isn't the most healthy.
* It has quite a few calories - 610 calories prepared and 22 grams of fat prepared. 13WW points.

Overall, I'm not sure we would buy again. The reason is the serving sizes are too small - you get way more at any local Chinese restaurant. Plus, this is not a family friendly meal in that to feed our family of 5 we would need to buy 3 packages. Ouch - even with coupons that's pricey.

This would be perfect for a single person or two people who don't eat very much. Otherwise, skip the frozen section and visit your local Chinese restaurant for hot food your don't have to cook or clean up after. ;-)

* By the way - I was not paid or compensated in any way for this post.

Food Lovin' Friday - Sweet Corn Tomalito

Sweet Corn Tomalito Recipe

Each time my family is in the mood for mexican food we visit Chevy's Tex Mex Restaurant which is a couple times a year. Each time we go there I love getting the Sweet Corn Tomalito on the side. It's a little bit like corn bread.

Just a note - I had trouble figuring out what Masa Harina was so I used masa flour from my grocery store's Mexican food section. It turned out great.

Well I found this recipe online for it and it tastes almost identical to the one at Chevy's.

Ingredients:
5 Tbl. margarine, softened
1/4 cup masa harina
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup water
2 cups corn kernels, fresh or frozen, thawed, divided
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbl. plus 1 tsp. milk

In a small bowl mix the margarine, masa harina and sugar using an electric mixer for about 1 minute until it is light and fluffy.

In a blender, blend half the corn kernels and the water until smooth.

Combine the corn mixture and the margarine mixture, stirring well. Add the rest of the corn kernels, corn meal, baking powder, salt, and milk and mix well.

Pour the mixture into a 8" square baking pan.

Cover tightly with aluminum foil or plastic wrap. Beware if you use plastic wrap to keep it away from the bottom pan as it will melt.

Steam by placing the square baking pan on top of a medium sauce pan of water on top of the stove.

Bring water to a boil and steam corn mixture for 50 minutes to one hour or until a toothpick comes out dry. Make sure to add water to the saucepan if the pan boils dry.

Makes 9-12 portions.

Enjoy

Food Lovin Friday - Bring on Summer Foods

On the east coast of the US we've been very blessed to have nice warm weather lately. When the weather is warm my family starts craving "summer time foods".

We can't wait to start cooking on the grill and eating hot dogs, hamburgers, potato salad, BBQ chicken, fresh fruits and lots more. Foods just seem to taste better when it's cooked on the grill.

What's your favorite summer time food? Feel free to share it by leaving a comment below.

Food Lovin Friday - Sticking to Your Planned Meals

I'm a big fan of meal planning or planning your meals ahead of time. Normally people plan a week ahead of time. This helps you figure out what to buy at the grocery store and saves you money. AS LONG AS YOU STICK TO THE PLAN.

That's the hard part for our family - sticking to the plan. To help us stick to our plan we usually build in a take-out day. That's a day when we're too tired/too busy/too whatever to cook, so we go out to eat or order delivery. We also mix and match our meals. What I mean by that is we come up with 6 meals and they are fixed on whatever day we want. Let's face it you may not feel like eating spaghetti on Tuesday but you're craving it on Thursday.

Sticking to the menu planned is important because everyone knows what happens when you go to the grocery store to get a week's worth of meals and then order take out or eat out a lot that week. You waste a lot of food and spend more money than you probably planned.

To make our lives a little easier we almost always have pizza on Fridays. That's our Pizza and a movie night. It's a little tradition and it helps to make meal planning and grocery shopping easier. Try to automate as much as you can. Come up with a couple meals that your family really likes and rotate them over the course of a month.

Be flexible when planning the daily meals. Automate as much as you can. Remember, by sticking to the meals you have planned you will save time and money.

Food Lovin Friday - Snickers Pie

This recipe I found on http://www.thatsmyhome.com/healthy/weight-watchers/snickers-pie.htm

Obviously, I didn't make it into a pie - I made 24 mini cupcake size portions. Kind of like my own little bon bons :)

This is a really easy recipe to make and it takes delicious too!

Ingredients:

12 oz frozen fat-free vanilla yogurt
1 small box sugar-free instant chocolate pudding *
1/4 cup chunky peanut butter
1 cup lite Cool Whip
3 oz Grape Nuts cereal

Directions:
Mix all ingredients together and pour into 8" dish and freeze.

* Note do not prepare pudding according to box directions - simply pour the pudding mix in with the other ingredients.

Food Lovin Friday - Copycat Recipes

If you love eating out at restaurants, but don't like the cost - then you'll love all these wonderful sites full of copycat recipes. Learn how to make McDonald's secret sauce or even a Frosty from Wendy's. Yummy!

Top Secret Recipes
http://www.topsecretrecipes.com/recipes.asp

CD Kitchen
http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/cat/510/

Top Secret Copycat Recipes
http://www.topsecretcopycatrecipes.com/

I'm sure there are tons more, but these are the ones I found most useful. Have fun and enjoy :)

Food Lovin Friday - Fat Free Chewy Chocolate Cookies

I found these yummy cookies on the web at www.angelfire.com/journal/wwrecipes/284.htm . Not only do taste good, but they are Fat Free and are chocolate!!! Yum.

Fat Free Chewy Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup corn syrup or golden syrup
3 egg whites

Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Stir in corn syrup and egg whites until blended. The dough will be thick and sticky. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls of mixture onto cookie sheets. Bake in oven for 7-9 minutes or just until set. Cool on wire rack.

0 grams of fat, 0 mg cholesterol, 60 calories, 1 gram of protein, 13 grams carbohydrates, 65 mg sodium

I love quick and easy recipes like this one. Hope you enjoy them like I do :)

Food Lovin Friday - Hot Milk Cake Recipe

Hot Milk Cake

This is an absolutely delicious cake. It is moist and between a bread and cake in texture. This has been a long time favorite in my family.

Ingredients:
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 stick margarine
1 tsp. vanilla
1 dash salt
2 cups flour
1 cup milk
1 tsp. baking powder
3 tsp Margarine on top or spray butter for topping
cinnamon & sugar for topping

Spray bundt cake pan with cooking spray.  Heat milk and margarine stick together, do not boil. Mix other ingredients in a bowl until well blended with an electric mixer. Slowly add the heated milk mixture to the other ingredients in the bowl. Mix well. Pour into bundt cake pan. Bake for 1 hour at 350 degrees. Top should be golden brown. Remove from oven and let it cool for 5 minutes. To remove the cake from the pan you will need to place a plate on top of the pan, hold firmly in place and then flip both over. Once the cake is removed from the pan spray with spray butter all over the top of the cake or rub with stick of margarine. Then sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar.

Food Lovin Friday - Green Giant Just for One Review

 

I just tried these for the first time this week. I had the broccoli with cheese and I must say I absolutely love, love, love these!  I love broccoli with cheese and these are just the right size for me.  

I know many people aren't fond of the individual serving size and they are a bit pricey compared to making it from scratch. However, when you are cooking for one they are great. The added bonus is they fit right into the Weight Watchers diet plan using only 0 or 1 point per serving. Awesome! :)

Food Lovin Fridays - English Muffin Pizzas

This is a fun recipe I made when I was in junior high and senior high school and still love them to this day. It can be eaten as a snack or a meal.

These are the ingredients I use, but obviously you can choose whatever brand you wish - these are just my faves because they fit into my Weight Watchers Diet quite well.

Ingredients:
Thomas' English muffin - Better Start Light Multi-grain muffins cut open into 2 halves.
Kraft Fat Free Shredded Cheddar Cheese 1/4 cup   
Chef Boyardee Pizza Sauce
various meats and veggies for toppings

This is extremely quick and easy to make. Use the english muffins as the pizza crust. Cover with pizza sauce and add the toppings of your choosing.

I prefer to toast the pizzas in a toaster oven so the crust is crunchy. Another option is to heat in the oven or microwave until the cheese is melted.

Enjoy :)