Baked Instead Of Boiled

Just in time for Easter... I was able to try out baking eggs instead of boiling them. Something I found on Pinterest. Found here. I loved how they turned out! They peeled perfectly. I only had two slightly cracked eggs. Everyone should definitely give this a try. I actually prefer this method over boiling my eggs now!

Here is how you make them.

1st - place the eggs on the center rack parallel (as shown) with a cookie sheet underneath incase an egg cracks and oozes. I have not had one make a mess on me yet, but better to be safe then sorry!

2nd - Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and bake for 30 minutes. *Eggs go into the oven before you preheat so they will cook slowly*

3rd - place the eggs in a bowl of ice water when done to cool down. Wait about 10 minutes before peeling them. After you peel them place them back in the water to continue cooling.

Done! You should have some perfectly hard baked eggs. Try it, I dare you!

Aubri is my huge fan of eggs at home! I don't have to worry about them going to waste...

You can use the baked method of eggs to make Deviled Eggs, Egg Salad Sandwiches (must see our awesome recipe HERE!), or decorate them with the kids for Easter! Basically, whatever you use boiled eggs for, you do the same with these baked ones!

My adorable Aubs had a great time decorating them for Easter!

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Chicken Pillows | Recipes

When I went off to college, I wrote down a ton of recipes from my moms recipe box. This recipe was in that box. I don't ever remember my mom making them. She might have, but I don't think she did. How I even got the recipe in the first place, I have no idea. Its in a hand writing I don't even recognize. Maybe it ended up in my recipe box by mistake. I don't know, but I'm sure glad I decided to try it one day.

 Its a family favorite of ours! Your kids will love them and its one of my hubby's favorite dinner!

Chicken pillows is a very strange name for a recipe, but delicious all the same and very easy to make! You don't need a whole lot of ingredients which makes it very inexpensive. 

When choosing the crescent rolls, I go with the Pillsbury Big & Buttery. They are bigger and seem a little more fluffy. Its a win win in my book.

Chicken Pillows

Ingredients:

2 chicken breast (cooked and cut up)

1 - 3 ounce cream cheese

1 Tbs chopped onion

1-2 Tbs milk

1 package crescent rolls

2 Tbs melted butter

bread crumbs (optional, but highly recommended)

Sauce:

1 can cream of chicken soup

1/2 can of milk

Directions:

Boil chicken and cut up. Return to the pan and over medium heat add in the cream cheese, chopped onion, and milk. Stir until all the ingredients are combined and the cream cheese has melted into a sauce. Put a heaping Tbs on crescent and roll up, widest end to the smaller end. Pinch the dough together in places that have an opening. Melt butter and brush on top of the rolls and sprinkle with bread crumbs

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Depending on your oven. You want the tops to be nice and golden. Pour the sauce over chicken pillows when serving. Enjoy!

When you are putting the tablespoon of chicken on your crescent roll, make sure you put it in the widest part of the triangle.

 When folding the crescent rolls up to resemble a pillow you want to bring the dough over the chicken and the two corners tucked in on the sides. Like the following...

Then all you have to do is bring the skinny end up and over the top. Make sure you pinch the dough together wherever you see some chicken exposed. 

 Then you are left with 8 chicken pillows! Super easy! Now all you have to do is brush some butter on top, sprinkle on some bread crumbs and toss it in the oven. 

This is what yummy goodness (as my 5 year old would call it) looks like when you sink your fork into it!

Enjoy!!!

Egg Salad BLT's

I thought I would be really clever and come up with a double whammy of a blog post. Riiiggghhht, not so much. Have you seen the so cute, gotta try it, kids would love it, dying eggs with whip cream? Me, too! Well, let me just say, pinterest FAIL. Mine ended with my kids eating eggs, er, egg shells and rainbow stained hands, hair, and teeth. I think we might try it again, like never. Do you have a pinterest fail story? I'd love to hear it. Head on over to our Facebook page and share it with us. The entry with the greatest fail will win a $20 gift card to Amazon from yours truly. Oh, and "like" us, because we are pretty awesome.

My hubby is a man of simple taste buds, eggs are a staple in a house. Egg sandwiches, fried eggs, hard boiled eggs, breakfast for dinner, you get the idea? He also loves BLT's, so I decided to marry his favs.

Ingredients:

- 8 slices Sour Dough Bread
-Mayo... or are you a miracle whip fan?
-Tomato
-Lettuce
-Bacon...buy the center cut kind, nothing is worse than fatty rubbery bacon.

Egg Salad:

-1 dozen eggs... We bake ours.
-1/2 cup onion
-1 stalk celery
-1/2 cup mayo
-2 TBSP relish
-2 TBSP mustard, I use honey mustard
-1 TBSP lemon juice-Salt and pepper to taste

Dice up your eggs. My sister Dana, who makes a mean potato salad taught me to do this with a spoon, seriously best trick ever. Mix together remaining ingredients.

Directions:

Skip the "I'm going to be the cool Mom and dye eggs with the kids" part. Ok?

Whip up your egg salad, and stash in the refrigerator so it can set up a bit. Fry up your bacon, and toast your bread. For extra yumminess I turn my oven onto broil, put a layer of mayo on my bread and toast it that way, soooo good. Just keep an eye on it until it is to your personal golden perfection. Next slice up all your goodies and put your egg salad on your sandwich. Easy peasy!

I hope you enjoy this recipe!

Vegetarian 4 Bean Enchiladas

I'm baaaaaaaack. Whew, it's been a whirl wind of a month, and it doesn't look like it's going to ease up for another month or so...aye!
I recently had the opportunity to take a meal to a friend, her husband is a vegetarian so I was struggling a bit to come up with something that would be easy to transport and delicious...it's harder than it sounds. I did some searching on pinterest and found this recipe. I made some alterations to make it vegetarian friendly, and it turned out great. I made two since we needed dinner too, haha.., my in-laws were visiting, and it's hubby and FIL approved!

I served it with a salad, and Zatarain's (love them) spanish rice. 

Ingredients:

-10 Tortillas (Nicole and I both prefer Mission brand)

(all beans are 15 oz cans)
- 1 can red kidney beans rinsed and drained
- 1 can garbanzo beans rinsed and drained
- 1 can black beans - drained
- 1 can great northern beans rinsed and drained
- 1 can (10.75 oz) Campbell's Fiesta Nacho Cheese
- 1 can whole green chilies (you will get more flavor if you dice these bad boys up yourself, or go ahead and buy the diced ones)
- 1/3 cup chopped onions (optional)
- 1 can enchilada sauce (pick your flava)
- 1 1/2(+) cup shredded Mexican blend cheese (Am I the only one that doubles the amount of cheese called for...I hope not)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Combine beans, soup, onions and chilies in bowl. Put a thin layer of the mixture on the bottom of a 13x9 inch casserole dish. (I used the foil kind for delivery) Spoon about 1/2 cup filling onto each tortilla. Roll tortillas up and put into pan.

Spoon on your enchilada sauce so that it covers all of the tortillas. Cover with foil. Bake for 30 minutes. Then take out and sprinkle with cheese. Put it back into the oven until cheese is melted... about 10 minutes. I like it when the edges of the tortillas are crunchy.

Bling Push Pin Art

Ok! This was an awesomely EASY project to tackle. I have so many projects on my To Do list that I decided this was a good one to start with. Yeah!

I saw this idea on Pinterest. It was just basically a picture... no tutorial or website to go to. So, I decided to come up with my own tutorial. This is a really cheap project. You basically just need 1- 12x12 white canvas, 2 packages of push pins (Walmart), letters, and a pencil and scissors. Thats it!

To make the letters, you just need a program... microsoft word, photoshop... I don't know, whatever you have that you can print a font of your choice. I used my photoshop. I opened a plain white file using the size 8 in x 8 in. The font I chose was Times New Romans in Bold using the size of 380px. I just tried to fill up the whole white space with my font. Here is my screen shot (click on image to see it larger):

I printed out LOVE on card stock. I needed something thicker than printer paper for tracing the font onto my canvas. After you cut out the letters, place it onto your canvas how you would like it, then trace it on your canvas with a pencil. Then you are ready to start layering your push pins to create your blingy (yes I made up that word) art!

You may get intimidated about how to put your push pins in your canvas, but trust me, the more you do it the faster you will get. Sometimes you need to put the pins in at an angle. You'll get the hang of it. Hopefully my pictures below will help you... :)

(side note: The push pins stay very well in the canvas. You don't have to worry about them falling out. It also helps that the push pins overlap each other. I have yet to have one fall out.)

Look at that!!! How fun is that?!!! I LOVE IT! You can use this tutorial to make a number of things like this... put together your own words or just someones initials or a silhouette, chevron, anything really. So cool! So BLINGY!

I plan to use this in a collage with more 12x12 canvases of pictures of my little family but for now, I'm displaying it on my fireplace with my wedding photo until I can get the other ones done.

Enjoy!

Best Ever Sugar Cookies

We are very sorry we have been a bit MIA this past month. One of us has been dealing with some big health issues and the other one of us is in the process of selling their home and moving very soon. I'm hoping you will accept these next two posts as a bit of an apology and we promise to get back into the swing of things on the blog and bring you more great ideas and yummy recipes!

I know Valentines Day was 2 days ago and I should have posted this ahead of time, but this is a recipe you can make anytime, for any holiday (Easter is coming up). All you have to do is just switch out the cookie cutters and decorations. I happen to like making this recipe with my kids on Valentines Day and let them decorate cookies and have fun.

You will be so glad I shared this recipe. They are soft and fluffy and melt in your mouth sooooooo good! The fact that they are topped off with Cream Cheese Frosting makes these cookies the best!


I've known this recipe from my childhood. The recipe comes from my Grandma Carmen, my dads mom, whom my mom's cooking never seemed to live up to (men). My Grandma Carmen is no longer with us so I'd like to share her recipe in memory of her.


Best Ever Sugar Cookies
by: Carmen Nielson

1/2 cup butter flavored crisco
1 cup sugar
2 beaten eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
3 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk

Directions:
Cream shortening with sugar add eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl combine dry ingredients. Add dry ingredients alternating with the milk to the shortening and sugar. Once all ingredients are well mixed, put cookie dough in a bowl, cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.  Once the cookie dough is nice and chill, flour your surface and roll cookie dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters and bake @ 375 degrees for 9 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8oz package of cream cheese
1/4 cup softened butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar

Directions:
In a bowl, beat together cream cheese, butter and vanilla until light and fluffy. Gradually add powdered sugar half a cup at a time, beating well until combined. Separate the frosting and add food color to desired colors.

** This recipe makes about 3-4 dozen cookies depending on your cookie cutter size. I was able to get about 4 dozen with this batch because my heart cookie cutter wasn't that big.

The best part is watching your kiddos decorate and enjoy their tasty treat!

Enjoy!

Best Ever Banana Bread

The Banana Dilemma...

Do your kids go through phases where they can't get enough of something, and then BAM out of nowhere the hate it? Like dry heave at the sight of it hate it? What the heck?! On the plus side I get to make this when they are going through one of the hate cycles.

I am in love with this bread. It's moist, it has rich flavor, and can even be consumed the next day and be fantastic...granted it lasts that long.

Ingredients: 

1/2 cup butter, melted
1 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream (it makes everything better! Click, here and here)
1/2 chopped walnut...we opt for chocolate chips. The kids really have to twist my arm.
2 medium bananas, smashed.


Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl stir butter and sugar, add eggs and vanilla, stir until mixed well.

In another bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon, stir into the butter mixture until smooth.

Fold in the sour cream, bananas, and walnuts (*cough* chocolate chips) Spread evenly into a greased 9x5 loaf pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for 50-60min.

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