Empanadas!

I've been wanting to make empanadas for a while and yesterday my brother and I made them together. It was so much fun! The recipe I used if you want to call it that was a mash up of three different recipes I found and the only thing I want to change the next time I make them is the dough recipe since it was a bit crumbly. But the filling was awesome! Pictures first then the recipe.

Filling:
- a little over a pound of lean turkey (you could use pork/beef or whatnot, but I only eat turkey and fish, and somehow fish didn't seem like a tasty idea)
- 1 large onion
- 1 cup of tomato sauce
- 1 heaping cup of black beans (canned, drained and rinsed off)
- 3 medium-ish cloves of garlic
- 1 1/2 tsp of ground cumin
- 1 1/2 tsp of chili powder
- 1 1/2 slightly heaping cups of cheddar cheese


        Cook the turkey in a pan over medium-high heat until browned (beef, pork...), stirring frequently to break up the meat. Add the green onions and garlic. Cook until tender. Stir in the tomato sauce, cumin, chili powder into the pan. Reduce heat to low and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the cheese and beans. Let filling cool and snack on the extra cheese you spilt all over the counter while measuring it out.


So I had this all typed up and everything at the end of May and thought I had it scheduled. But I didn't, or rather I did, but for next year...

Cheesecake

Well, the title pretty much sums it all up. Cheesecake. It was fun to make, tasted amazing, and didn't last very long.

Absolute Fail

I know that we have all had massive fails at attempting different crafts or recipes and here is my most recent one. Macaroons. The first time I made them they came out wonderfully and this time, well I'm going to let the photos do the talking.

No little feet, got a bit crispy on top and....

I'm not sure if it was the oven temperature, the ingredients, my mixing (beating eggs to a stiff peak by hand while incorporating gel food coloring and sugar) or the fact that I used a different recipe from last time and then had to half the recipe. Oops, notes to self don't mess with a recipe the first time you try it.

Yeah, a big fail

But I still wanted to make something. So I looked around for something to make with chocolate chips since I had them and decided on cookies. Who doesn't like cookies? I know he likes them. So here are the cookies which are amazingly good.

Super yummy cookies!

Easy Lunch

Three days of lunches from a convention worked the past three days. Each one took no longer than 10 minutes to prepare.

Dip was in the small container

I also had an apple and I got a small pizza at the convention as well.

If you are looking to make lunches quickly and love rice, grilled rice balls are a great and easy thing to make. You do have to spend one day making them all and grilling them, but you can freeze them and pop them in the microwave before packing them in your lunch. I think it took me about an hour to make 18 of them and most of that was spent cooking the rice at the beginning. And they are yummy! If anyone wants the recipe just let me know.



On another note, I also went to a Get Started meeting for the 3-day and learned a lot about all of it, but what really got me was the video they showed. One man was walking in memory of his wife and at the beginning of one of the days he saw the 'My Wife' banner, picked it up and carried it for the 19 miles that day. He said that others would ask him if he needed help and his reply to them was, 'No, I'm carrying my wife.'

I have thought about doing the walk for a few years and decided that this was the year. Not only do I want to be able to say I did it, but the statistics for breast cancer make me want to do it even more. As they said tonight, 'we walk until we no longer have to walk'. Here are some of the statistics that we heard:

- 1 in 4 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer

- During the course of the 90 minute meeting we had 30 people will have been diagnosed

- The majority of women with breast cancer have no significant family history or other known risk factors

- Somewhere in the world a women dies of breast cancer every 69 seconds

PIE!

A pie post for National Pi Day!

So instead of a cake for his birthday, my brother requested that I make pecan pies. Works for me, I like pie. However I pigged out at his party and didn't eat any of the pie that we cut there, but never fear, I made two pecan pies and the second one wasn't even touched. And I even made the pie crust! However a week later and I still haven't tried it, though I have it on good authority that the pie was good.

Yeah, I just had some and it was good.

Crafty Goals for the Year

Yes sir, here are my crafty goals for the year. I may not accomplish everything on the list and things will be added, but I figure I'd give myself a starting point. It also might help me to remember projects that I might forget about otherwise. I'm slightly ADD when it comes to crafts and have quite a few half finished projects hanging around.

- Finish the 1000 cranes project

- Kindle cover

- Halloween bags and zipper bags from this post (yeah...they will get done, though there was some switching around as to what is going to who)

- The infamous Weekender bag by Amy Butler (have had the pattern and outer fabric for quite a while)

- Some clothes for me

- Cloth napkins

- A quilt for me

- Start planning a special project for my cousin's bat mitzvah gift (and get working on it)

- Holiday cards

- Some sort of small zipper pouch/wallet to take with me to ballet
- More hair bows

Do any of you keep a list of crafts you want to accomplish during the year/month/whatever or do you just craft as the inspiration hits you?

Jan 2007 Photo by my good friend Katie

French Macarons

Kitchen experiment time! I am so taking advantage of the fact that I have a kitchen this weekend while I'm home and I decided to attempt to make macarons. And go figure, I left my macaron book back at my place which is only four hours away. Meh. That is what the internet is for. So here is the mixed recipe macaroons with chocolate ganache filling:

Yummy

The macaroons are a bit on the large size and by a bit I mean about 2 inches across. I had issues trying to use my pastry bag after not touching it for way too long and the mixture seemed really loose to me, but hey, what do I know? I've never made macarons before so...yeah. Or it could have been that I used a piping tip that was a bit to large. But the tops didn't crack, they got little feet, but I didn't sift the dry ingredients well enough so there are some little lumps of almond meal. Eh, here they are right out of the oven.

Not the most uniformed and way too big....

Oh well, I'm going to try again with different filling and maybe be adventurous and make colored shells.

I also feel very acomplished today because not only did I make macaroons, but with the leftover 1/2 cup of cream I used in the filling, I made butter. Yes, butter! And I made it just by shaking a jar. Today was a  fun day in the kitchen.

Fresh butter!!!

New Year's Resolution

Happy New Year's Eve! So it is the time of year to make resolutions that will generally be broken not long into the new year and I will admit that I'm guilty of doing it. However I have already gotten a jump start of sorts on my resolution which is to eat healthier and to keep the costs down. Now I have to say that I love making meals that I can freeze and reheat and enjoy later, but I have very limited space. Or at least I did, until I realized that my brother doesn't actually use his freezer other than the ice maker and keeping a frozen pizza and bagel bites that he got when he first moved to the city something like 6 years ago and when he was in his first apartment. I'm trashing them and invading, he only lives a few minutes away and I can store the mass of the frozen there and about 6-7 servings at my place. If he wants to eat some of the frozen food, no problem My brother has been gone for the past few days on vacation and doesn't get back for another week so while I'm holding down the fort (collecting the mail and newspaper) I figured it might be a good idea to get a jump start on making meals. I also like when I can just go into the fridge and find something to eat. This also means that I have a basic menu that I can go to at any point during the week that will keep me from picking up food to go or just grabbing the first easy thing in the fridge/pantry.

Messy kitchen

 Ok, so it doesn't look too messy in this picture, but what you can't see is the flour, milk, butter, oil, water, salt and goodness knows what else all over the counters and the floor.  I have perfected the art of making a mess without trying,  oops. Oh, and I took the picture after I put a bunch of stuff in the dish washer, I think it is half full.

Lunch of fettuccine alfredo with leftovers in the freezer/fridge

The list of things that have been made over the past two days: pasta, alfredo sauce, marinara sauce, boiled eggs, mini cupcakes (for new year's party), black beans and kidney beans. Of course not everything is going in the freezer, but the sauces and beans are cooling off to be stuck in there. I really wanted to make some grilled rice balls, but I'm going to wait until my mom sends me my rice ball makers. I've tried making them by hand, but they tend to fall apart and the bear/star/heart shapes are too dang cute!

Another healthy eating goal for this year is for me to make a weekly menu and try to stick to it as best I can. I say if I can because sometimes I don't know what nights I will be nannying until an hour ahead of time if something has come up and I end up eating whatever the little ones eat. Still healthy, but a deviation from my menu. My plan to working on keeping to the menu is to only by what I need for the week based on my menu plus a few small healthy snacks.

Oh, and what to do while the cupcakes were cooking or when I needed a break?

Please excuse the pile of scraps

I brought a bunch of fabric over to work on cutting out. So far I have eight zipper pouches cut out, the picture was taken yesterday with only three in the lower left cut out. The purple pouches are going to be lined with the other purple fabric, but I think I want to line the blue/green fabrics with light blue and green fabrics which I need to dig up. There are somewhere...Or I might line them with white or a light grey. I'm also am going to make neck warmers out of the purple and tea wallets out of the blue/green leftovers. My friend will be getting six little sipper pouches with a tea wallet or two. There is also enough of the Nicey Jane fabric to make six more zipper pouches which I'm going to do who knows what with. 

And again...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!