Keep out of children

Today, I was going through some stuff in the back room at work, and I came across this package. It's for a 2-pack of cheap box cutters. I about died laughing, and it really helped make work suck a little less.

This week's menu and other things....

I feel like I've been insanely busy lately, but at the same time, I feel like I haven't been. I keep making excuses for not blogging, but really, I spend plenty of time at my computer, I'm just lazy. Anyways, I made up this week's menu mostly out of leftovers that we had in our freezer, and trying to use stuff up. Made for a nice short grocery list. :)

Sunday: Chicken Noodle Soup
Monday: (Leftover frozen) Crockpot Pizza Soup
Tuesday: (Leftover frozen) Chicken Tacos
Wednesday: Rib-eye steak with whiskey cream sauce and roasted potatoes with garlic
Thursday: Nachos with (leftover frozen) cheesy nacho sauce
Friday: (Leftover) potato soup (from the previous recipe)

It was supposed to be Turkey Noodle Soup for dinner tonight, to use up some leftover turkey in the freezer, but then I needed more chicken broth anyways, and I make my broth from wings that I buy in bulk from Costco, so I'm using the chicken from that. I also made a huge batch of noodles and froze half, so in a couple weeks, when I'm craving soup again, I'll be able to quick throw it together with very little prep work. It's nice that we're getting a lot of our leftovers used up, especially because a lot of the time, we'll decide to freeze stuff....then immediately forget that we put it in the freezer to begin with. So this morning I just went through and found everything that would require minimal prep for dinner this week. It'll be nice to not have to worry about dinner all week, but I might actually start to miss cooking. ;)

I haven't been up to a whole lot lately. It feels like I've been working CONSTANTLY, but I know that's not the case. I did just get off of a 6-day stretch, which was exhausting. I want to get back into crafting (knitting, macrame, etc), but then I feel like I'm trying to cram more into my life. Maybe I'll try knitting a simple scarf or something to feel like I'm accomplishing something and see how that goes. I just know that I really miss my crafting. I don't know if I'm up for re-opening my Etsy shop, because that was a lot of work, but I know that I liked the joy I got from knowing that people were wearing my creations. And the extra cash was nice, especially when it came time for that tattoo. ;)

Well, I don't want to promise that I'll try blogging more often, but I will attempt to put a more frequent effort into it. In the meantime, I'll try to get my chicken noodle soup recipe up in the next day or so. It's my ultimate comfort food, because it's exactly like my mom used to make it. :)

(Oh, quick P.S.: If you're on Twitter, follow my sweet little guy: The Cuter Peyton. I'll be posting cute pictures from Peyton on there.)

Roasted Potato Soup

Tonight, I improvised a potato soup recipe off of a couple different recipes, with a few tweaks of my own. I wanted to share it with you, as it's DELICIOUS. Note that all measurements are approximate.

Roasted Potato Soup
6 Russet potatoes, washed and cut into 1" pieces (peeled if you wish, I didn't peel mine)
1 head of garlic
Extra-virgin olive oil (I think I used about 1/4-1/3 of a cup)
Kosher Salt
Fresh-ground Pepper
White wine (I think I used about 1/4 cup)
4 slices of thick-cut bacon, cut into 1" pieces
1/2 large or 1 small/medium onion, diced
3 cups chicken broth
1 cup milk
8 oz. Velveeta
1/2 cup sour cream
Shredded cheddar cheese, to add as topping

1)Preheat oven to 425 degrees (F). Put potato pieces on a shallow roasting pan. Drizzle olive oil over them, salt and pepper them, then toss to coat. Cut the top off the head of garlic so the cloves are exposed, then place in the middle of the pan and drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 25 minutes.
2) While the potatoes and garlic are roasting, cook the bacon over medium-low heat. When finished cooking to your desired texture, remove the pieces to a paper towel-covered plate until needed. Take a tablespoon or two of the bacon grease and put it in your soup pot. Add the onions to the soup pot with the grease and saute for about 5 minutes over medium heat, until onions are soft and starting to brown.
3) Remove potatoes and garlic from the oven and throw the potatoes in the soup pot. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the skin and chop up and add that to the pot. Add the chicken broth and milk to the pot, and bring to a light boil. Reduce heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.
4) Mash up the potatoes with a masher in the soup pot to desired consistency. Throw the bacon in the pot, along with the Velveeta. Cook until the Velveeta is melted into the soup. Add the sour cream, and mix well. Salt and pepper to taste.
5) Serve the soup with shredded cheddar on top. :)

Makes about 6ish servings, but potato soup always freezes well if you're cooking for only a couple people!

formspring.me

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/Peenut0319

This week's menu

This week's menu is small, because I work until 8 Monday and Friday, which means that we will be eating convenience foods (I know, I know, not the best way to do things). I'm going to try to find some super easy healthy foods to eat on my late nights from now on so that we're not falling off the healthy wagon. We've done salads those nights a couple times, and I think we should probably make that more of a habit. Either that, or I should have a hotdish (that's casserole for those of you not living in Minnesota) prepared and ready for Brian to throw in the oven. So without Monday and Friday, here's what we're having this week:

Sunday - Greek Shrimp
Tuesday - Sesame scallion tofu and sea slaw
Wednesday - Asparagus and poached eggs on toast
Thursday - Spinach Artichoke Hotdish

The only one of these that I've made before is the dinner on Wednesday, and we'll be eating it with a couple slices of bacon too. I'm not going to include my shopping list this time because I haven't gotten everything on it yet, and I'm lazy.

*Note: Just got done eating the Greek Shrimp. If you know what is good for you, you will make it for dinner this week. That is all. :)

Vacation: Day 4

Well, I didn't post the past couple days, because I'm lazy. So I'll try to sum up everything I've done since then.

Tuesday:
We got up and headed out for breakfast, only to find that the "all day breakfast" place that Google maps told us was a few blocks away, no longer exists. So we ended up finding McDonald's, and ate there. We did some wandering around the Lincoln Road mall, which is a really gorgeous area. The rest of Tuesday was spent walking around South Beach, just looking at everything there is to look at here. Our legs still hurt today from all that walking. It was a little too chilly to lay on the beach comfortably, so we declared it tourism day. I'll post some of the pictures I took that day when we get back home and I have a better internet connection. For dinner, we headed to the Ice Box Cafe. We both had the rigatoni there, and it was really good. However, the Ice Box Cafe isn't known for it's dinners, it's known for the desserts. Oprah Winfrey has raved about the desserts here. So we got a couple slices of cake to bring back to our hotel room, an Oreo cake, and a cake called "The Bomb". The Bomb consists of layers of cheesecake, chocolate mousse, and brownie. Oh. My. Word. Both desserts were amazing.

Wednesday:
Wednesday morning, we headed to Big Pink for breakfast. Another amazing meal, I had "Pinky's Hollywood Breakfast", consisting of polenta fries topped with wilted spinach, bacon, poached eggs, and a rich cheese sauce. After digesting a bit, we went and laid on the beach for a couple hours. I was one of only a few women on the beach that actually kept my bikini top on. I would've joined in the topless sunbathing fun, but I neglected to sunscreen up the girls, so I kept myself contained. We did step into the water a bit, but it was really chilly, so that was short-lived. When we got back to the hotel room, Brian was really tuckered out from all that laying around, so he took a nap. For dinner, we went down the block to Grillfish. Brian had steak, and I had a fantastic shrimp picatta.

Today:
Started the day heading to the 11th St. Diner. We each got a massive omelette. The old lady in the booth next to us saw the guy bring our food and said to me, "A skinny girl like you can't eat that whole thing!" I told Brian that sounded like a challenge, but apparently, the old lady was right, and I just couldn't finish the damn thing. We headed down to the beach for a couple hours again. We've both gotten some color now, although Brian is definitely more of a shade of pink, while I've got a decent tan going. We got an early dinner at La Sandwicherie, which is just a block away from here. I got a seafood croissant. Again, a fabulous meal. Now, we're just relaxing for the night, we'll probably head to a souvenir shop in a little bit here.

I really, really, really don't want to leave tomorrow. My tan isn't dark enough and I haven't eaten enough food. I haven't seen enough sights here.

Which just means I'll have to come back again soon. :)

Vacation: Day 1

Today we started our vacation in Miami Beach! We got up well before dawn to be to the airport, and it was crazy there. The lines for check-in were long, and the lines for security were insane. We finally got here though, and hopped a cab from the airport to the hotel. I think there's a reason why I've never ridden in a taxi before. This guy was insane. Zipping between lanes, honking his horn 1/4 of a second after a light changed green, and changing direction at the last second. Finally, we got within a block of our hotel, and he decided that he needed to be over a block to pull up in front of the place. He quick turned and went down a creepy alley behind the hotel, where we were confronted with a small space to fit the car through, and a homeless guy pushing a bike on some kind of cart in that small space. The homeless guy stood his ground and refused to move, while the cab driver felt the need to start shouting at him. I slouched down in my seat, wondering why we traveled so far just to get whacked by a homeless guy within an hour of landing. Finally, the homeless guy backed down and got out of the way. We got almost all the way out of the alley, where there were two guys participating in what appeared to be a drug deal. Apparently they stared at us a little too long, so the driver shouted in broken English, "Whats you problem?" then turned to us and said, "Everybody here, dey have da problem!" He finally got us dropped off at our hotel, and we got checked in. After a short rest, we headed out to find food and came across Five Guys Burgers and Fries. I'm not big on burgers, they all pretty much taste the same to me, but I could actually rave about this burger. It was SOOO good!! Once we got some food in us, we walked down to the beach and just walked for a while. It was nice and relaxing. We've mostly just been bumming around the hotel room since then, because we're pretty beat from all the flying and walking and almost getting killed today.

Tomorrow's Itinerary:
*Sleep in.
*Lay around on the beach all day.
Nice. :)