Pinspired: Sugar High

 

Mmmmm Easter, the best excuse to eat as much sugar as you possibly can.

Challenge Accepted.

We made this lovely Lemon Pull Apart Bread for breakfast. It's basically lemon monkey bread and it's basically delicious.

creationsbykara.com

Later that afternoon I started to whip up some Strawberry Cake, then decided to practice the tiniest bit of self control and halved the recipe to make cupcakes instead. By the end I was licking the bowl - both batter and frosting :)

sweetapolita.com

Of course there was the required Cadbury mini eggs that Chad somehow doesn't like?! Which is a-ok in my book because the 2 bags I snatched up at the store are barely enough for me. There were also some brownie sundaes involved too.

So if your in the mood for some lemony and strawberry deliciousness check these two recipes out. They don't disappoint!

{Sleepy} Meatless Monday: Brocolli Cheese Soup Fail

It was a whirlwind of a weekend here. It started out in the dead of night with a photography date and ended with us picking up Will at the airport last night/this morning :)

On the way to the airport

Chad and I headed out to a ghost town about a half hour away from us to take pictures. Who needs dinner and a movie when you can take pictures at 3am? Luckily we didn't alarm anyone, no police showed up wondering what we were doing, and we weren't abducted. Around 3am we started hearing weird noises in the distance. Chad wanted to go check it out, I wanted to get out. I won. I've seen these movies and they end in tears my friends.
 

 Sunday was spent cleaning, even though Will has seen our apartment at it's absolute worst, and cooking. It's a good thing the freezer is full and there's a giant container of soup in our fridge because there's no way that I'm cooking after work after 4 hours of sleep last night. It's frozen meals for us! That or we'll use this as an excuse for Cafe Rio, whatev.

We headed out to the airport last night, missing Breaking Bad - that's how much we love you Will. We ended up getting there around 9, his plane got in around 8:30. At least that's what we thought. We parked in short term parking and attempted to find him. After checking the arrival board and his itinerary again we realized he plane really didn't get there until 10:15. Boo. So we got gas, drove around aimlessly, parked in short term parking again and waited patiently. We wandered around the strip for a little while and headed back home. We were all falling asleep so we stocked up on sugar at our favorite gas station and made it home around 3:30am. phew.

In addition to lasagna rolls and twice baked potatoes I made a big pot of Broccoli Cheese Soup. I love a good broccoli cheese soup! I decided to try a new recipe, mostly because I saw someone make it on food network and it looked delicious and awesome. So I thought I would give it a go. Last Sunday I burnt it so this was round 2. Round 2 wasn't really a fail, but it wasn't a giant success.

The consistency is a little wierd and even though I dumped in a LOT of cheese, it's not as cheesy as I would like somehow. It's not bad enough to toss out but it's not delicious enough to share. My favorite Broccoli Cheese soup? The kind in the Kroger soup bar. I'm fancy like that. So if you want a bowl of really good soup just pick up a cup next time your out grocery shopping. It will surprise you how tasty it is. Until I'm near a Kroger again though I will have to keep searching for a better recipe.

Awkward and Awesome {stormy} Thursday

View of tonight's storm

This week has gone by sooooo slooooow. I swore that yesterday was Thursday, which really seemed to confuse people when I was making apointments for "tomorrow, Friday, July 13th". Does anyone else feel like you should do silly halloween-ish type things whenever it's Friday the 13th? I don't quite know what these things would be but I feel like we should "celebrate" in some manner...

Chad's summer classes are coming to an end soon so he's been slammed trying to finish up everything. He's got to make up one or two yoga classes before the end of next week so that means that we will both get to go to his teacher's yoga studio this coming week! I LOVED going to an actual yoga class (I've only been once, sad day) but it was infinitley better than doing yoga to a stupid DVD. We've also found a few other yoga spots around town that let you try the first class for free! Definitley need to jump on that! Hopefully the week went by a little faster for everyone else!


Awkward:

• Ok, I know you are all sick of hearing about church awkwardness but here we go again :)  I have literally had 4 people over to my house from church. 2 ladies who welcomed me to the ward after I had been here for months, my visiting teacher, and the family (ok, 7 people counting the family of 3) of the girl who watched our dog when we were in Hawaii. The mom of this girl saw me on Sunday and asked me if I was visiting. Um, no... you've literally been in my house... twice. Next week I'm taking Carly and Chrystal's advice and dying my hair pink while wearing the most outrageous thing possible, then maybe people will remember me. Chad seems to be having more luck in this department. People know who he is, although people are still super rude for no reason. We are really missing our Clarkston Ward.
• Helping a little girl in the bathroom on Sunday only to watch her pee everywhere. Her dress, underwear, and all over the floor. Yes, she was sitting on the toilet. Yes, I had to clean all of it up. No, I'm never going to be the one taking her to the bathroom again.
• While helping a little old lady take her shoes off at the nursing home the guy sitting right next to her was taking off his. I was initially excited that one of our patients could still manage to take off their shoes on their own. Then as he was taking off his sock he just pulled it off inside out... flinging dead skin cells e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. Oh, and by everywhere, I mean all over me. Seriously, my neck my scrub top, all over my pants, arms, all of it. I got pretty good at avoiding the foot confetti at my last job but this came out of left field and very literally attacked my face.

Awesome:

• An old cranky lady in the nursing home caught my eye as she was waiting to be seen. As soon as she realized she had my attention she started pointing at other people waiting in the room, rolling her eyes and making faces. It was hysterical. She clearly was not impressed with these people. When she saw that she was making me laugh it only got worse. She's my new favorite.
• We got a "new to us" juicer at the DI last weekend. This one is the press kind, so it's better than our electric one for citrus. We have been on an orange juice kick at our house ever since, it's delicious! Last night we bought a pineapple and had pineapple orange juice. SO GOOD
• A/C in our car has been recharged! Again! 112 degree heat is not compatible with no A/C. We tried. We failed. We also have two new front tires since the tread was gone. The heat shield that was trying desperatley to fall off also got zip tied back on. Yup, our car's fancy like that. Now it doesn't sound like our car is trying to explode every time we start it or go over any kind of bump. Now we don't have to have random strangers and police officers point out that we are "dragging something".
• Church now starts at 9am! I was sad to see my extra day of sleeping end go away but excited to be able to have the whole afternoon to ourselves after a morning full of awkwardness!
• Frozen Dinners. I love my crockpot in the winter for soups and such but I needed something else for the summer. No one wants hot soup when it's over 110. It's just ridiculous. So I made twice baked potatoes and lasagna rolls on sunday and froze the little buggers! So much better than a pizza and easy peasy on the nights I don't want to cook, which is turning in to every night apparently. We've had them 3 times this week, and it's only Thursday. You do the math. 
• Thunderstorms. That's right, we finally got a thunderstorm tonight. It was crazy, windy, dusty, bright and loud. We drove around in our car so we could watch it as it moved through St. George :)

Tasty?

We get on food kicks. Chad especially, usually with junk food :) It started with Swiss Rolls, then Oreos, Nutty Buddies, and Sour Patch Kids (still trying to break this one). We've done pretty well at cutting out most of the junk in our diet, especially the processed junk. When we want something sweet or salty we try to at least make it ourselves now, and only on our declared "Dessert Sunday". We are recently in a love affair with Strawberry Shortcake with home made Angel Food Cake. Pretty "healthy" as far as dessert is concerned. We've also got a whole bag of popcorn kernels to make our own stove top popcorn that is soooo much tastier than the microwaved stuff!

Now that dessert has been cut down to once a week our kicks center around macaroni and cheese, pizza and burritos. As you know pizza had to go as well. We still reserve the right to have pizza once a week as a treat when we (I) don't feel like cooking anything. Our most recent food addiction? Tuna fish sandwiches. Super easy, cheap, and kinda tasty.... Chad is much more into this one than me.

At Costco this weekend we thought it would be best to just buy our tuna fish in bulk and be done with it. They had a few kinds and after comparing prices we went with this:


The biggest and lets be honest, grossest can of tuna fish ever. Chad's got to have hard boiled eggs and dill pickles in his tuna sandwiches so of course we had to buy the biggest jar of the biggest pickles ever to go along with our disgustingly huge can of tuna fish. Here they are again with Chad's hand as a reference :)


As soon as we got home we mixed up the whole can with 6 eggs and 6 pickles. It was awesome and nasty all at the same time. You better believe that the cats were freaking out! The smell of tuna was very strong. Of course we shared with them!


We mixed it all up and it's stored in our fridge, making lunches and a couple of dinners very easy to put together! Because making tuna fish sandwiches is soooo difficult to begin with right?

It's Always Sunny....

Today was super productive and relaxing and wonderful. First, it was actually Stake Conference this weekend! So today was our free Sunday! I worked out in our garden for a hot second, pulled some weeds, watered and replanted some things that weren't wanting to grow. I was really only out there a second though because it is HOT! 99 degrees today my friends. We stayed inside today though and kept our windows open and it was really nice. Step outside though and be prepared to melt. Get into our car (our A/C isn't working) and it's like you've stepped inside Hell itself. OMG it is H-O-T in our car. Chad's taking it to the mechanic on Wednesday and we're hoping that it won't be outrageous to get it fixed. BJ has already warned us that it might, keep your fingers crossed.


Second, it was my cooking/baking/preping day for the week! I was on a role. Not only did I get a bunch of things cooked, but I did ALL dishes as well! Boom! Take that dishes! While this may not be something to brag about for normal, responsible people, it is for me!

Enchilada Sauce

Bran Muffins

Greek Salad with Cous Cous

Black Beans

YAY!!!

Third, hello Dessert Sunday! Chad and I made our beautiful Angel Food Cake. Drool.... We added some orange zest into the cake itself and Chad rocked out the homemade whipped cream as usual. Our big plan for the night? It involves watching The Killing, Mad Men, and Chopped. Oh, and eating as much angel food cake, strawberries and whipped cream as we can. To make ourselves feel better we will be working out while watching that ridiculous amount of TV :)

Hope your Sunday was as awesome as ours ;)

Bean Queen

A nice little surprise when I was taking Rukia outside this morning...


I am channeling my inner Aunt Peggy and growing a garden! I am extremely paranoid about overwatering, underwatering, and the cats eating anything that happens to pop up. Hopefully we'll have more pictures of the awesome veggies to come :)


Don't you wish that you could hold the title of Bean Queen?! I have been on a role, three days in a row of cooking beans. Refried Beans, Black Beans and White Northern Beans today. My secret weapon? My crockpot! Oh, how I love you crockpot!!! We eat tons of burritos and soup so we go through lot of beans, plus they're great for you! And the dry beans are so much cheaper! And I can control what goes it, make them more flavorful and use less salt! Have I convinced you yet?

The method for all are the same. After you go through the beans to get out any little stones dump them in your crockpot and cover them with a bunch of water (very exact measurement there!) Check on them every so often just to make sure that they stay covered with enough water. For the refried beans I throw in an onion cut in half, cumin, salt, diced jalepenos, cayenne pepper and garlic. For the black beans I did the same (minus the onion) and added a can of fire roasted tomatoes. Cook them on high for 8 hours and they're done! I've tried cooking them for 6 and that just isn't long enough, 8 really is perfect for us. After, make sure to rinse them off and get rid of all that cooking liquid, that liquid holds the magical stuff that gives you gas :) Beans, beans, the magical fruit... For the refried beans, I just throw the beans back in the crockpot and mash them up with a potato masher, super easy and delish.


The pup and I went for a run today while Chad went mountain biking. As soon as we got home from our 3 mile run Rukia threw herself down on the ground in the kitchen. This is her usual routine after we take her running or biking with us and it's hilarious. She did manage to pick up her head and smile for the camera though!

We are definitely loving the warm, sunny weather! Happy Spring Everyone!