White Bread

My awesome parents bought me a bread machine for Christmas, I'm very excited about not having to buy bread anymore, its highway robbery for the good bread. I've used it three times in the week since I got it! I've made this King Arthur flour recipe twice now and yesterday for dinner we had BLTs, which I make way too much for dinner but how can you go wrong with a good BLT? This one may just have been the best BLT I've ever had.

Toast & Sandwich Bread

Source: King Arthur Flour

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup lukewarm milk

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 cups unbleached all purpose flour

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Place all ingredients in the pan of your bread machine, I have a Cuisinart bread machine, I set it to white regular, 1.5 lb loaf and choose light crust and pressed start.

Happy 2010, let's hope you're a better year!

It has been a very long time between my blogs, I haven't been in the best place the last few months. Most of my summer was spent working on the house my brother and I inherited and it was very time consuming and costly and we haven't seen any reward for our hard work and let's me honest my brother is difficult at best to work with and he's lazy. It's time like that, that make me wonder how we were raised by the same parents. We did get an offer on the house this fall, we accepted went through the inspection and a month before the closing date, our buyer backed out due to her personal financial situation. I turned 27 in October, I am now the age where my mom had me, so I really started to thinking about starting to conceive a baby especially with the house sale pending and when that fell through I was heart broken.

With the decade and year ending, I started to think about all the things that happened to me over the past decade. In the past ten years, I have graduated from high school, lost all three of my grandparents, lost my aunt, graduated from college, gotten married, paid off my car, and gotten a big girl job. It's definitely been a rocky decade but there were definitely some shining moments in there. It gets hard to focus on the positive when you are surrounded my difficulty and struggle.

So that brings me to a new decade and a new year. Here's a list of things I plan to focus on in the year...

1. Be healthy, get in shape and get to my goal weight.

2. Make more things myself, this was on my list last year and I was pretty successful at it but I would like to add a few more things to that list.

3. Be greener, also a on my list last year and I was successful at buying more organic, making my own things, using reusable grocery bags, filtering our water and being mindful of our electricity use. This year I want to be more mindful of my water usage in the kitchen and switch to green cleaning products and not using those prepackaged ones, making my own.

4. Make a budget, make better weekly menu plans, cut

out the excessive spending on useless crap that we don't need whether it be shoes, food, clothes, etc.

5. Save money, we don't even have a savings account and that's just pathetic, setting a budget will definitely make saving easier. I do try to look at the positive, we do pay extra on student loans every month and we always buy things in cash and we have barely any credit card debt to speak of, and we both put money in retirement savings with every paycheck, so its not all bad. We just need to get in the habit even if its a little bit.

6. Quit drinking soda again, I do so good with this and then I fall off the wagon.

7. Organize our man room, purge a lot of the junk we do not need and get a spare bed in this room.

8. Go meatless one night a week, my husband isn't going to like this one but he's going to just have to deal with it.

9. Blog a lot more.

10. Finally, try to be more positive, focus on the good, try to not get jealous of other people's station in life and focus on improving my own, and let shit go.

If I was depressing I apologize buy I'm feeling good about my plans and I hope I can stick to them! I leave with two of my furbabies, Juno and Cayden who were watching me cook, there will be many upcoming foodie updates, I have a ton of pictures and recipes to upload and many more I've tried but did not post.

So I've gotten fat (yea the one with the F)

I'm hoping that by going public about my weight loss struggle it will help me through this. Yes I've gotten fat, I've struggled with my weight my whole adult life. I did really well a few months ago about loosing weight, I lost about 25 pounds in 3 months, I was great about exercising and I was eating the right things, not denying myself anything I really really wanted.

Fast forward to two weeks ago, my best friend calls me and says she (finally) got engaged and wants me to be her matron of honor, of course I say yes but the first thought in my head is shit I need to go on a diet, because I REFUSE to be a fat in a bridesmaids dress. Last week I "tried" to go on a diet and I did well until Friday when I had an awful day at work, so I drank a 6 pack, went to the movies and had popcorn and candy, and was just bad all weekend.

Monday I hop on the scale and I had gained 2 damn pounds, enough is enough, no more excuses. I've been better about what I have eaten this week and I have taken a walk during my lunch break two days in a row. Tomorrow I am going to the gym with my friend, who better to be your gym than a bride to be, no excuses. So I need to loose 74 pounds to get my goal weight of 140, yea you do the math.

Penne with two tomatoes and fresh mozzarella

Words cannot express how delicious this meal is, I've always wanted to try sun dried tomatoes to see what the hype was all about. I was really afraid to make this meal because I thought JT would think it was too weird and hate it, he actually really enjoys it; especially now that I added some grilled chicken to it.

Penne with two tomatoes and fresh mozzarella (Martha Stewart)

6 ounces fresh mozzarella, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Salt and pepper

12 ounces of penne

1 T olive oil

1 pint of cherry or grape tomatoes

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes, sliced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/4 cup snipped chives

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1. Place cheese in freezer. In a large pot of boiling salted water, cook pasta, reserving 1/2 cup of pasta water; drain pasta and set aside. I cooked my grilled chicken during this time, adding a little olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder for flavor.

2. In pasta pot, heat oil over medium-high. Add cherry tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, garlic and pasta water. Cook until cherry tomatoes soften, two to 4 minutes.

3. Add pasta, chicken, cheese (I left the cheese in the freezer until right before I needed and then cut it, it was much easier to cut that way), season with salt and pepper, and toss to combine.

I omitted the chives that last time I made this, I just forgot and I served with a yummy salad of "weeds" as JT likes to call them.

Salsa

I love Chili's salsa, often times I want to go there just to get chips and salsa. When I saw a recipe for it on What's Cooking I knew I had to try it, I literally went to the store on my lunch break to get the ingredients. I have made it four times now and have adapted it finally to my liking.

I work with my father-in-law and I brought him a little sample about a week ago, when I went to his office he said "Oh you didn't have to bring me chips too, I'm going to bring this home to share with Gina." My phone was ringing when I got back into my cube, we work in different building, it was him raving about how great that salsa was and how I needed to give him the recipe and he was going to go share some with his neighbor who I work with fairly closely. The phone rings again shortly, it was Brie raving about how great the recipe was and how she needed the recipe too, I love hearing that people enjoy the things I make. Tomorrow is John's birthday so I made him a batch of salsa to bring to his birthday get together, he was very excited to hear I was bringing this.

"Chili's" Salsa by Jenn T. (Source: Recipezaar.com)

1 small can of green chilies

1 can of Jalapenos (not pickled)

1 large can of whole tomatoes (28 oz. size)

1/2 cup of chopped onion

1 14.5 oz. can of stewed tomatoes

Salt (to taste)

Cumin (to taste, I put a lot in)

Garlic Powder (to taste, I've made this salsa with raw garlic and I've since found that I can't stand the taste of it)

Splash of lime juice

I begin by processing the jalapenos, chilies and onions in the food processor. I have to process things in small batches and mix in a bowl since my food processor is so small. Next I process the stewed tomatoes and whole tomatoes. I mix all the veggies in a mixing bowl and add spices to taste. Refrigerate for several hours to combine flavors. Serve with your favorite chips.

Peanut Butter Bars

In an effort to get back into trying new things and blogging I was perusing foodgawker or tastespotting and I saw a recipe for peanut butter bars and it reminded me of home. You cannot go to a function on Vinalhaven without peanut butter bars being there and this recipe held up those yummy ones of the ladies of Vinalhaven. It was surprisingly easy to make and I only dirtied two dishes.

Peanut Butter Bars (http://stylishcuisine.com)

1/2 cup butter

1 3/4 cup confectioner's sugar

1 cup peanut butter

3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs

1/4 c. butter

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Line a 8 x 8 pan with foil.

Melt 1/2 cup butter on low hat. Remove from heat and stir in confectioner's sugar. Add peanut butter and graham cracker crumbs, stir until creamy. Spread mixture into pan and even out.

In same pot, melt butter again on low heat. Add chocolate chips and stir until chips are almost melted. Remove from heat and continue stirring until chocolate is smooth and shiny. Spread over the peanut butter layer. Refrigerate for 30 minutes, remove the bars by the foil and cut into squares. Store the bars in the refrigerator.

So I've been a bad blogger...

I've been extremely busy the last 3 months, my grandfather passed away a week before Thanksgiving, and we just started to clean out my grandparents' house in March. They were pack rats so say the least so its been a long uphill battle to just get things out of the house. My brother and I inherited the house and have just put it on the market and will be dividing the money equally. My brother plans to go to grad school with his money. JT and I are going to buy 2 new to us cars and invest the rest for a down payment on a house in about 2 years. I really wanted to buy a house sooner but some things at work have made me rethink that plan, part of me really wants to start having children soon, but I refuse to do so until we have a house and I'd really like to get our student loans paid down a bit more. So between work, this house, birthdays, holidays and trying to keep up with everyday life, I haven't felt like blogging.

I have still been cooking and baking new things but just not photographing anything for my blog, I promise to add a few of the hits in the upcoming weeks, my brother and I have decided to take a short break from the house now that its on the market and for the most part cleaned up, we still have to do a bit of painting and cleaning.

This is the house, it needs a lot of updating inside, but other its a great house, my grandparents did a lot of work to it, the added a second level and put in a wonderful basement. Its not much but its the house my mom was raised in and the money will definitely make my brother and my life's a lot better and I appreciate they're thoughtful gift, now I hope and pray it sells quickly!