Failure

This is by far the worst meal I have ever created. I don't know what my problem was but I was completely off this night. 

Here it is in all of its glory, what's that your asking? What is that sauce? Well funny story...those are actually mashed potatoes. See where we're starting to go with this?

Everything started out normally, I just got a fry basket for our cookware & decided to use it. I quartered some red potatoes & started boiling them.

Once they were fork-tender I put them into the blender.

I added in some frozen garlic cubes. Trader Joe's sells them & they are fabulous.

I also added in salt, pepper, sour cream & milk (way too much milk) which left me with soup. I tried to thicken it up with cornstarch but that gave it more of the consistency of glue. The flavor was good but I couldn't get past the consistency.

Onto failure number 2. Next up, oversteamed green beans. Whenever I steam vegetables I always use this fabulous little silicone insert & typically have great results.

This time not so much, wilted & oversteamed vegetables are pretty disgusting & don't do a lot for you nutritionally as most of the nutrients have been cooked out.

Next up, a semi-success. Tim doesn't eat fish, he's convinced that he won't like it so I decided to work on changing his opinion. I spoke with the guys behind the counter at Whole Foods that suggested Dover Sole Fillets as they are a mild fish. 

I started out by mixing Panko crumbs with grated parmesan cheese, salt, pepper & paprika. 

I also mixed up 3 eggs with some milk added in salt & pepper again. 

I dipped the fillets into the egg mixture then covered them with the panko mixture followed by placing them into a hot cast iron skillet with some olive oil until they were nice & brown.

Throughout this entire post you may be asking yourself what is the burnt hockey puck looking thing on the plate? Well, that was the biggest failure of them all. There were extra panko crumbs which had become a bit like a dough with the egg mixture.

I had the brilliant idea of frying them up as well. I really can't tell you just how terrible they really were. Tim told me they were pretty good with ketchup but I have the feeling he may have been stretching the truth a bit.

So there you have it, my biggest failure in cooking thus far. I'm sure I'll have many more in the years to come but hopefully none will taste this bad again!

Shower Upgrade

This is a little "upgrade" I did awhile ago for us. When Tim is on chemo he can't get his injection site wet so having a handheld sprayer is a must but I'm not a huge fan of them, no particular reason why, I'm just not a fan...

We had some money leftover on a Bed, Bath & Beyond gift card where I found this little beauty. It was the perfect compromise for both his needs & my wants, the best part is how easy it was to install.

Here are all of the parts all laid out in their glory.

Here is the old leaky showerhead

First I removed it & saw the tape was good to go so I didn't have to wrap anymore which is great because I am terrible at that task.

I then screwed on the base portion

Next I screwed on the hose, then figured out I screwed it onto the wrong part so I unscrewed it & moved it to the correct position.

Finally I screwed both showerheads on & they were good to go!

Chipotle Night, Part 2

Continuing on from yesterday, time for all of the sides...

First up, the Corn Salsa. This was incredible easy, all I had to do was take a bag of Trader Joe's frozen corn, squeeze a lime on it and mix it with a jalapeno pepper (we aren't big fans of hot so I didn't use much) before letting it sit overnight & it was ready to go the next night. It could have been much better had I remembered to put the red onion in it.

Next up, the Cilantro Lime Rice. I pulled this recipe from Pinterest as well. First I rinsed off the rice and let it soak for about ten minutes.

While it soaked I heated up a teaspoon of olive oil with a teaspoon of sugar.

Once it was all nice & toasty I added in the drained rice and made sure it was all coated with the oil before squeezing the juice of a lime onto it.

I then added water and some salt, covered the pan and let it cook for about 15 minutes before adding some chopped cilantro.

Next up I set out the pork, rice, corn salsa, regular tomato salsa, the sauce leftover from the pork, tortillas, cheese, sour cream & the pickled onions I spoke about here before we all got to work on that feast. Needless to say there were not any leftovers that night!

Chipotle Night, Part 1

Everyone has their personal favorite whether it is Moe's, Qdoba, Salsarita's or Chipotle. For me, Chipotle is the hands-down winner. All of their food just tastes so fresh & delicious. A few weeks ago we had a friend over for dinner & I made all of the fixings for a Chipotle night (thank you Pinterest).

Before I left for work I followed this recipe except for deciding to put it in a crock-pot so everything could be good to go when I got home. I placed a 3 lb pork butt into the crock-pot & sprinkled it with salt.

I then quartered an orange and squeezed it over the pork & placed those quarters into the crock-pot, I also quartered and onion & placed that in as well with 4 cloves of garlic, a few bay leaves & a cinnamon stick. I turned the crock-pot to High and headed to work for the next 8 hours.

When I came home, this is what I found.

I pulled out the meat, strained out the juice and pulled out the orange slices, bay leaves and cinnamon stick leaving only the onions & garlic cloves.

I then pureed the onions and garlic with a little bit of the liquid, combined that back with the rest of the liquid and brought it up to a boil.

I cooked this down to be about half the original amount and put it off to the side.

I then shredded the meat, after cooking it so slowly it just fell apart on me.

Next up, the side items....

Caramel Frappacino

Tim & I both love starting each summer day with a Starbucks Caramel Frappacino. Unfortunately the bill for 10 Frappacinos a week is incredibly steep. I decided to start trying to make our own at the house after my sister gifted me with a Magic Bullet for my birthday this year. I'll be the first to admit that it is not exactly the same but at least with these I know exactly what is going into them & that they are a lot healthier than the Starbucks version.

First I add some sugar into the bottom of the cup.

Then I added in some caramel syrup I purchased at Whole Foods, probably about a tablespoon.

You can either add in some espresso or I like to use coffee I freeze into ice cubes and throw those in there. If you are using the espresso you will need to add ice. I just choose to skip that step which also keeps it from getting watered down.

Next, add in about 1/2 a cup of cream or milk. Check out all of these layers of flavors.

Then all you have to do is blend that sucker up until it looks like this.

But wait, there's more....check out this gorgeous contraption from Trader Joe's. It has two types of sugar crystals, chocolate bits & coffee beans & grinds it into your drink, on top of your cupcake, into your mouth....not that I've done that or anything...

Here is the goodness in the cup & ready to go. Have a great morning!

She-Woman

So a LONG time ago you may remember that I won my choice of fabric from Tonic Living from a contest held by Aubrey & Lindsey from Aubrey & Lindsay's Little House Blog. Well I ordered the fabric & then it sat for awhile...as in about 3 months while I tried to figure out what to do & how to do it.

I finally decided I would use it to build a bench for the end of our bed. I wasn't finding anything I was particularly crazy about & there wasn't anything that was exactly the size I needed. I measured everything & went to Lowe's to get some 2x4s cut down to size.

I hammered in 2 3-4" nails attaching two of the short pieces to the long pieces making a long rectangle (yes, I know I'm very descriptive). I also use a square to make sure the corners were square, somehow I actually managed to do that in my first attempt.

Next I added in the 3rd short piece to the middle, just slightly off-center as my original plan was to tuft this beast.

Now was the real test. Since I had been using my dad's equipment to put all of this together I had yet to see if this was even going to fit beyond my one-time measurements which I'm not really know for being accurate about.

Success! It fit perfectly, actually even better than I had originally planned. Then it sat there as a frame for about a year. That's right, I put this together about 9-10 months ago...

Fast forward to 2011...& get your imagination all fired up because I forgot to take pictures for awhile during these next few steps.

I bought six table legs from Lowe's 15 1/4" Country Pine to be exact. I stained them with some leftover Minwax Jacobean and did about 3 coats, letting them dry for 24 hours between each set & not wiping the stain off after applying it. Once they were the color I wanted I used some WaterLox to seal & protect them. Once they were ready I took them & the frame over to my dad to drill through the frame & legs before bolting them on with 4 3" bolts for each leg. We wanted to make sure they weren't going anywhere.

After they were attached the fun began. I purchased jute webbing from a local upholstery store & borrowed a serious air-powered staple gun from a friend of my dad's. I first stapled them lengthwise before going back width-wise as I wove them between those length-wise strips.

Once I completed the entire bench I took a long piece of batting & split it into 2 pieces. It came apart pretty easily, I just had to be careful not to pull too much from one side or the either so it split evenly. I took one of the halves and stapled it around the webbing so the cushion wouldn't slip through the small holes between the jute.

I then cut a 4" piece of dense foam to be roughly an 1" wider than the bench on all sides.

I stapled another piece of batting over the top of it to help smooth it out since as you can see the edges are not exactly clean to say the least. Finally I stapled the fabric all around the bench folding the corners as neatly as possible on the edges. At this point I was slightly burnt out on this project to say the least so I kiboshed the tufting idea and loaded that sucked up in my little car for the drive back home.

Finally got the bench home & in its rightful place which has really helped the entire room to feel just a little bit more homey.