What We've Been Eating: Spring/Summer 2014

My friend Jill introduced me to this, and I think I bought one a week and ate them myself for almost a month. SO delicious!

A typical breakfast at our house (back when Kendrick was eating purees still...sniff sniff)

Whenever we have the opportunity to get Papa John's pizza, we take the opportunity.

Breakfast on vacation in Brainerd: Belgian waffles and OJ

The other days...it was my homemade cinnamon rolls and coffee :)

One of our favorite meals to make for family and friends: Chicken Teriyaki Sandwiches with Swiss. A Pinterest Win!

Rafferty's was a huge find in Brainerd. The picture may be blurry, but their Pulled Pork pizza was out of htis world!

Lunch in Brainerd at Grizzly's: I had the Pulled Pork sandwich with slaw and a salad

Yummy scrambled eggs, bacon and toast with Biscoff spread

Lunch in Brainerd at Ernie's on Gull Lake

We picked an enormous boatload of strawberries from Schumaker's this year!



DELICIOUS fresh salsa. Recipe courtesy of my buddy Jim from work

Our fair share of yummy watermelon!

Sadly, we "grilled" on our griddle for the 4th of July. We got our new grill a week later!

Our Church's Annual 4th of July Picnic (on the 6th this year)

Centennial Picnic for work: HyVee catered

A "just alright" gyro at the International Fair in Worthington

You had better believe that as soon as the grill arrived, we put it together and made our very next meal on it!

Kendrick has been loving all the fresh fruit this time of year!

Cupcakes for the hubby's 35th birthday, but a week early for a surprise party!

It's CORN SEASON!! :)

Of course, there can never be too much cake, right? We got a real cake for his actual birthday a week later :)

Grapes and cheese have been a big time favorite at our house!

Cashel tried cotton candy for the first time at the Cottonwood County Fair. He didn't care for it too much, sadly, but Kendrick ate his leftovers right up.

Nutty Bars at Lake Okoboji

We froze 7 batches of sweet corn this year: More than we have ever done!

LOVING the fresh cherry tomatoes from the farmers' market

Like I said in my previous post: Any opportunity to get Papa John's, and we will take it!

Pinterest Win: Spicy Sausage Pasta

One of the greatest parts of meal planning this year has been the recipes we've discovered to be our new regulars. This one is absolutely one of them!

To be honest, this may now be one of my favorite recipes of all time. The variable levels of spice (depending on the level of heat in the Rotel you use) just make this perfect for anyone, really. Looking at the picture now makes me drool!

I found the recipe on pinterest linking to the website Kevin & Amanda, which they found in This cookbook.

The recipe link can be found here: recipe link

But as usual, I'm always nervous that one day someone will clean house and take away the recipe, so I want to have it here just in case!

The only changes I made to the recipe was to use penne pasta simply because I didn't have campanelle noodles (but really, you can use whatever you want to) and I used regular smoked sausage instead of turkey sausage.

I'm not going to do a step-by-step here, because Kevin & Amanda do it SOOOOOOOOO much better (so check them out...seriously), but I will list the basic recipe here for future reference :)

Spicy Sausage Pasta

4 servings
Recipe from: kevinandamanda.com

1 tbsp olive oil
1 lb smoked sausage
1.5 cups diced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 (10 oz) can Ro-Tel tomatoes and green chiles, Mild
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 oz penne pasta
1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper, each
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
1/3 cup thinly sliced scallions

1. Add olive oil to an oven-safe skillet over medium high heat until just smoking. Add sausage and onions and cook until lightly browned, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

2. Add broth, tomatoes, cream, pasta, salt and pepper and stir. Bring to a boil, cover skillet, and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer until pasta is tender, about 15 minutes.

3. Remove skillet from heat and stir in 1/2 cup cheese. Top with remaining cheese and sprinkle with scallions. Broil until cheese is melted, spotty brown, and bubbly.

Cake Balls

Oh my word are these a hot commodity lately! I'm almost afraid to bring them anywhere because I end up getting hit up about a dozen times for the "recipe" haha :)

The credit goes to my little sister, Amanda, for introducing these to me circa 2007. She was the cake ball QUEEN in those days, back before her or I had any kids, and we chuckled when our nephew Jacob would come to visit in the summer and just go nuts over these. He LOVED them!

They are SO EASY. It's really not even funny. Or fair. They are absolutely perfect for a bridal or baby shower as favors, and most of the time, the guests end up wanting to take more than one, because they are so.good.

Cake Balls

Ingredients:

• 1 box any flavor cake mix (and whatever ingredients are required for that, usually an egg, oil and water)
• 1 can any flavor frosting
• 1 package almond bark (either white chocolate or regular chocolate)

Instructions:

1. Make the cake as usual. Let cool.
2. Cut into chunks and throw it in the blender: Add the entire can of frosting. Blend.
   I discovered this last step just this last time making cake balls, and I kid you not: It was life-altering!
3. Freeze the batter for approximately an hour or longer.
4. Roll into balls whichever size you'd like. (I find that the 2 inch balls seem to work best)
5. Melt almond bark for approximately 90 seconds, stir, then continue to melt in 15 second increments if it is not melted.
6. Dip the balls into the chocolate and let cool on some wax paper.

What We've Been Eating: Early Winter 2014

Cashel really loved the Elmo cake I made for his birthday. It was a total frosting fail, as it ended up bitter when I added so much food coloring to make it so bright red! He didn't care haha

These cupcakes from River City Eater in Windom that we took on our first night away from the boys just before Valentine's Day weekend.

One of my absolute favorite meals of ALL time from Chevy's TexMex: Crispy Flautas with Jalapeno Jelly. I literally moaned through this entire meal, and may have closed my eyes numerous times. SO.GOOD.

Mark had this at Chevy's and was only mildly impressed. I'm pretty sure he wanted to disown me during this meal lol

Superbowl 2014: Mark bought a 5lb bag of chicken pieces...and then proceeded to freeze it...in a 5lb bag. Needless to say, I was really really sick of chicken for a while.

Valentine's Day: Strawberry Trifle

Valentine's Day: Grandma Vi's turkey enchiladas - SO DELICIOUS!

Coffee...and more coffee...and more coffee!!

Kendrick's first food: Peas. He wasn't too fond.

One of our all-time favorite meals at our house: Roast, Potatoes, Onions and Carrots. I only ever just sprinkle a packet of Lipton Onion Soup Mix in and put it in the crockpot for 8 hours.


This picture doesn't even remotely do this sandwich justice, but SO GOOD! Italian Chicken Sandwiches: A Pinterest Win!

My friend Mandy introduced me to this DELICIOUS country chicken chowder. Cashel refers to it as "soup", and LOVES it!

Blue cake pops I made for my friend Heather's baby shower

Baby shower spread, courtesy of Heather's Mom and sister

Pasta bar night at Minerva's with my good friend Angie!

...and my seconds: asparagus and mushrooms with pesto and garlic

And a truffle from Goodie's to round out the meal :)

Ben Lee's for lunch to meet up with Rach and Nancy

Chinese at Panda House in Worthington: VERY good!

Cupcakes for my sister-in-law's baby shower!

A very blurry pic (sorry) of Easter dinner. I was a smidge busy with the boys to really sit down and enjoy it for long.

A bunny cake for the boys made with love by Aunt Sharon. Cashel and (First) cousin (once removed) Alex loved it!

2 pans of lasagna for our friends Believe me - it tasted better than it looked!

This version, however, was MUCH easier! Another Pinterest Win: 15 Minute Skillet Lasagna.

A special day with my Mama - we had this delicious Meatloaf and stuffing at Sadies Tea Thyme in Fort Dodge for lunch.

Well, I think that's enough for one post. I'll be posting some Pinterest WINs hopefully soon! And no, we really don't eat out that much typically: I just didn't make anything extraordinarily exciting this month that I hadn't already posted about before.