Uh oh…

Well, all baking/cooking will be put on hold for a couple of months. We are babysitting a kitten and he’s enough trouble when we are just eating a piece of candy. I don’t wanna try to see what happens if I am baking something. He’s worth it though. We loves him.

PEACHES!

I am still working on getting everything ready for the Paula Deen project…making menus, picking recipe orders, stuff like that. I’m even more excited about the project now that I have seen the movie that inspired me, Julie & Julia. I highly highly highly recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it and loves food! My husband even liked it! It was spectacular.

In the meantime, I have been cooking a lot. Right before we moved into the new place I made a butter pecan cake. Yes, it was from a box but I just couldn’t help it. It was a whim purchase because it just sounded soo good. And it was…

Yesterday I had a huge craving for cheesecake. So I decided to make one…from scratch. It was very rich but it was so good. I could only eat one piece but Fletcher is loving it.

Our house is filled with sweets right now. It’s ridiculous. I need to start exercising if I’m going to keep baking this much. Let’s hope I can.
Today, Fletcher and I decided to make a road trip to Porter, Oklahoma and get some peaches. We ended up coming home with 1/2 a bushel! That is a lot of peaches.

I decided to make cobblers with these. One for my parents and one for us. I’ve made one so far and I didn’t even dent the peaches. That picture was post cobbler. Pretty crazy. I think I’m also going to try to make jam sometime this week. Anyway, here is my cobbler…

Pre-crust and baking

Pre-baking

FINALLY DONE!

It turned out absolutely amazing!

This cobbler was amazing! I’m not the biggest cobbler fan but I loved it. My husband, Fletcher, on the other hand was so happy. He LOVES cobbler! I love this recipe. I got it from my friend Abi’s blog. She is an amazing vegan cook. Everyone should check out her blog. www.craftedmybones.wordpress.com

If anyone wants any of these recipes just ask. I’d be more than happy to share the wealth.

Thanks for reading!

-Mandy

Update

I haven’t updated in a while so I thought I’d let everyone know what I’ve been up to. I haven’t baked much in the past month or so. We’ve been moving! Fletcher and I just got a rent house with our friend, Brittany. We are still in the process of moving, organizing, and cleaning. I can’t wait to be done so I can start cooking again. Here’s my next venture. Have you all seen the previews for the movie “Julie & Julia” ?

If you haven’t here is the video…

I am going to try my best to recreate the Julie/Julia project. Not with Julia Child though, I’m thinking PAULA DEEN! This is going to be a super fun project. It will be a couple of weeks before I start so I can finish the house and then get everything ready for the adventure. So I will keep you all updated when I start. Thanks for reading and check back soon and see how the project is going!

Until then…

Sweets

As always I’ve been making lots of sweets! I have a tremendous sweet tooth and baking is so much fun. The cupcakes and things that I make each week for church are always a big hit. I even got asked last week if I had ever thought about going into business making cupcakes! Well, actually I have. It would be amazing! It would cost a lot of money though. Maybe someday… in the meantime though I will still be making lots and lots of cupcakes for every occasion! Here are the ones I made last week that everyone loved so much.

They were so tasty!

The next treat I made was chocolate covered pretzels. Fletcher and I went to wal-mart to get some groceries and they now have a $1 aisle. It’s the best idea they have ever had. So, I bought the biggest bag of pretzels I’ve ever seen and then I decided to get some chocolate to dip them in. They turned out awesome and were gone in just a couple of days. 

Today I ventured into Tulsa with my friend Amy to go to Whole Foods. She had never been before and was so excited once we got there. I have to admit the first time I went I was very giddy. They had the prettiest strawberries I have ever seen. I just had to have some! So I bought a bunch of strawberries and some peaches and bananas too. I also found some mini tart shells and wanted to try to make something with them. Once I got home I decided I would make mini strawberry cheesecake tarts. They are so cute and very delicious.

This week I will be making mini chocolate and vanilla cupcakes for church. So, check back soon to see how they turn out!

-M-

fruit salsa

My mom gave Fletcher and I an Easter basket full of fruit! It was awesome! I didn’t really know what to do with it all because some of it I usually don’t eat. There were bananas, apples, a pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, a pomegranate, and oranges. I think that was all of it, but I didn’t know what to do with the kiwi. So, Christia came over and we were talking about it and she brought up making fruit salad so I decided to try it. It turned out amazing! It would have been even better if I had some cinnamon chips to dip in it.

This is Stanley. Fletcher’s mom gave him to us full of candy for Easter. He’s so cute!

Last week I made Easter egg cookies for church. Brittany helped me decorate them. It was fun as always.

Cake decorating is going great! We decorated cakes this week. I made a confetti cake and decorated it just for my lovely husband. He is such a sweetheart.

If there are any recipes anyone wants just let me know! 

-M-

experiments

I made honey oat granola tonight and it turned out okay. I overcooked it a bit but it was my first time making it, so I have an excuse. It was okay though, just next time let’s hope I don’t overcook it again! 

Drink-wise I have been trying new things like blooming tea and Tropicana Peach Punch. My favorite tea I have tried recently though is definitely Plantation Mint Green Tea. Yummy!

Very good. I really like this punch a lot!

Mmm…Mint tea!

I’m a very big cereal person so I looove trying new cereals. I recently bought some Banana Nut Cheerios and they are amazing! The best Cheerios I have ever had.

A very easy midweek meal for our household is usually any type of pasta. I am not afraid of the whole semi-homemade thing so I just buy some sort of noodles and add a type of sauce. This week was angel hair spaghetti with Ragu spaghetti sauce. 

On a side note, I am taking a cake decorating class and here was our first project.

SUGAR EGGS!!! We decorated them for Easter and I game mine to my Mom. We were learning how to use different tips like the grass tip and flowers tips and such. It was a lot of fun. I used jelly beans as easter eggs.

Until next time! – Mandy

Quick update…

I made my friend Brittany cupcakes for her birthday. They are just a box confetti cake but it was fun. 

This is the icing pre-color.

This is post-color.

Here is the finished product!

I’m a little tea pot

It’s been a while since I’ve updated and I have gotten a lot of new things. I’m obsessed with tea so I have accumulated a lot of that recently and a tea pot to go with it. I found some blooming tea and it is amazing! It’s so pretty. 

I’ve also been buying a lot of fruit. Grapes, strawberries, pears, apples, I love them all. 

Also, Fletcher wanted some blackberries the other day so we bought some, he said he just wanted to eat them but I wanted to make something with them. So, we ended up with blackberry sauce for his waffles.

They are store bought organic waffles and Fletcher likes butter! 

This past week I was put in charge of making cookies for a group of men from our church that were going on a trip to New Mexico this weekend. Brittany came over and we made no-bake cookies, chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cup cookies, and monster cookies. Yeah, that’s a lot of cookies! They all came out amazing too. It was fun. Then we made snickerdoodle cookie dough just for Brittany to eat. 

It was a pretty busy week all-in-all. Fun, though. In other news, I got a wok, which I am excited to use. I got my Jonas Brothers tickets and tomorrow I am getting my Taylor Swift tickets. Oh, and the best of all I got a new macbook. Pretty sweet…I’m still trying to figure it out but I’m getting there. Lastly, but not least, I got new dishes. They are very pretty. I’ll be using them in pictures soon! Well, off to finding more recipes!

cooking with friends

My friend Brittany came over the other day so I could teach her how to make cookies…and to watch Twilight. It was good by the way. I liked it. It made me want to read the book. Anyway, we made no-bake cookies and snickerdoodles. They both turned out really good. It was Brittany’s first time baking and it was fun! She did a good job. I just helped her stir and she did the rest.

No-bake cookies are one of my favorites. They just now started solidifying a day later. They are so tasty!!!

These were pretty good too. They are such an easy cookie to make, if you ask me, and fun too!

Also this week I bought some orzo pasta which is really good. If you’ve never seen it or heard of it you would think it was rice but it’s not, it’s pasta! I decided to make a homemade mac&cheese with it and it turned out really good. Just added some velveeta cheese, a little milk, and a little butter and it was great! Fletcher and I had some the other night for dinner.

I could seriously live on pasta.

I also tried my hand at making bread this week. I made sweet bread and it was okay…not a lot of taste. I think i’m going to make wheat bread next and see if it turns out better.

-Mandy

dinnertime

Tonight I made dinner for my Fletcher and me. I made chicken pot pie minus the pie. It was more like a casserole since it didn’t have any bread involved. It was delicious…I thought. Fletcher is not a big vegetable person so it was not his favorite. Veggies are my favorite though so I liked it a lot.

I did, however, make wheat bread. It was my first try and it came out fairly well. It wasn’t completely done in the middle but the part that was done tasted amazing! So, I am going to try again tomorrow and hopefully it comes out better. I just need to bake it longer. It was very pretty too.

I’ll repost once I try this recipe again. It was a very simple and easy recipe, as was the chicken pot pie recipe.

This past week I have been surfing food blogs and I ran across mochi. It looks very good. I haven’t found the right recipe yet. I can’t wait to try it though. It is a Japanese ice cream dessert.

Also, I have fallen in love with The Republic of Tea. Their teas are amazing. I’ve had a couple of them and I can’t wait to try more. I went to their site and signed up for a catalog and they sent me a free sample of their strawberry vanilla tea! They have a line of teas that are for specific things such as immunity, energy, and cardio health. I want to try some of them. I’ll probably order some soon. Anyway, you should all check them out.

www.republicoftea.com

There is one more thing I’ve been dying to try for a while now…matcha! I want to make green tea cupcakes! I found a site that I want to order some matcha powder from because I cannot find it anywhere around here. It’s called matcha source… www.matchasource.com

–Mandy–