recipe round-up

with all the craziness going on in my life lately (and i still need to blog my easter pics, yikes), i haven't written about my adventures in the kitchen. sad! but i've been good about photographing them, so i decided to just gather 'em all up and throw 'em all in one post.

i found the easiest, super duper delicious recipe for marinara sauce to make for the teen. i've actually made it twice already, and she enjoyed it over some penne pasta as her easter dinner last weekend. it's seriously so simple and easy to make, and i'm never going to buy a single jar of pasta sauce ever again. and i always have the ingredients in my kitchen, so i'll always have a go-to recipe for those times when i'm totally lazy and don't feel like cooking. yay!

i had a bit of leftover corned beef brisket from dinner last week just kickin' it in the fridge. we usually end up devouring the whole thing that night, but somehow we ended up with a little extra. so on saturday morning, i woke up and decided it'd probably be yummy chopped up and cooked with some potatoes. homemade corned beef hash, yo!

'cept for that i didn't have any potatoes. d-oh! but i opened the freezer and found something even better and way easier - can you guess?

oh, yes. i cooked up some tater tots, tore 'em apart, and mixed 'em in with that diced-up corned beef. a little salt and pepper, a couple of scrambled eggs, and some sweet rolls, and the hub and i had quite a lovely breakfast. hell, i wish i had some right now.

i didn't get a picture of it because we were extra hungry when i served it up, but i took some leftover bbq'd chicken, some fresh veggies, and egg noodles and served up a yummy chicken noodle casserole. i was really glad i'd grabbed a bag of packaged-up leftovers at the ILs that weekend, because it sure made for a great dinner that took maybe half a brain to put together.

my friend ssinca is a total cookie enabler. i get so many great recipes from her, although she's usually trying to get me to be the guinea pig and test it out before she makes it herself. haha! she knows i'm only too happy to be the sucker. er, tester.

she sent me a recipe for chocolate peanut butter surprise cookies a few weeks ago, which she'd swiped from the martha stewart website. and i sat on it for a while before i gave it a shot, mostly because it looked like a pain in the ass to make and i liked the ease of just using peanut butter chips to get the same flavor. not to mention, it calls for shortening - which is something i don't typically have in the pantry. but of course, i'm a sucker, so on friday i bought some butter-flavored crisco sticks and mixed up the batter.

these are good. really soft, and the dollop of peanut butter is pretty fabulous. although i polled the hub and the teen, and they prefer the peanut butter chip version - which is a relief, because these were a lot more work. remember, i'm a lazy ass.

i had a couple of pork roasts in the freezer that i'd bought at costco a few weeks ago. i'd already used one in a bacon-wrapped brown sugar roast that was truly delicious, but i wanted to try something new - pulled pork. so i googled and found a great looking recipe that used a homemade rub and got some good reviews. i busted out my spices and got to work.

i wrapped up the relaxed, rubbed-down roast and stuck it in the fridge to marinate overnight. then yesterday morning, as i got up to make breakfast, i put it in the crock pot and left it alone for eight hours. when it was done, i used two forks to shred ("pull") it all up, dumped in some barbecue sauce, and left it again to heat through.

i served it on some hamburger buns (the teen ate a gardenburger, which was really yummy too - i know because she let me try a piece), and it was a huge hit with the hub. we ate it with chips and carrots and dip, and it made for a great dinner.

while the roast was cooking, i got a wild hair up my ass to make some sugar cookies with icing. as crazy as it sounds, i was kind of tired of making chocolate chip cookies (blasphemy, i know it) and wanted to do something different. but i wanted to find a recipe that would make really soft sugar cookies with some icing that would harden, but not chip a tooth when you bite into it. there are cookies like this at the grocery store, which we've bought quite often but are on the pricey side. and, of course, google came to my rescue again.

i found that my food coloring choices were limited to green (remember the st. patrick's day cookie debacle?), black (how morbid!), and orange. i was wearing an orange tank top because it was butt-ass hot, so i decided on the latter. and they sure made for some happy, spring-y cookies!

with the teen home this week, our meal plan has me exploring the world of quiche, revisiting the black bean enchiladas, and falling back on good ol' spinach salad (sans bacon, how sad!). we'll see how it all comes out.