Couple of New Pages and a Recipe

I stumbled upon the folder of pictures from our courthouse ceremony and mini honeymoon, so I thought I should probably do something with them. 

This one I just was having fun with.  I wanted to make another page for the My Memories challenge (create a page using A Saxon Creation kits).  I had the My Colorful Flourishes kit and thought it would be great for the playful nature of our pictures from the Children's Museum in Indianapolis.  Plus it gave me a chance to try making a rainbow colored wordart, it was a little tricky, but I managed it.

For dinner tonight we have some uncooked turkey ranch cheddar burgers left over from the party on Saturday.  Since it was kind of cold and rainy outside today, we didn't feel like grilling.  Instead I cooked them into a pasta dish.

Ingredients

8 ounces uncooked macaroni pasta

1 pound ground turkey

1 cup cheddar cheese

1 packet ranch dressing mix

2 cups frozen peas

8 slices of bacon, cut into one inch pieces

1 can non fat evaporated milk

1 1/2 tablespoons corn starch

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 tablespoon chili powder

Directions

Make the pasta according to the directions.
Combine the ground turkey, cheese, ranch mix, bacon and peas in a large skillet. Cook until the meat is no longer pink.
While that is cooking, whisk the corn starch, garlic, onion and chili powders into the evaporated milk.
Stir the seasoned milk into the meat mixture and let boil for a few minutes, or until thickened. After the noodles are cooked and drained, mix into the meat mixture.

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 6
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 434.3

• Total Fat: 12.9 g
• Cholesterol: 79.2 mg
• Sodium: 541.1 mg
• Total Carbs: 46.2 g
• Dietary Fiber: 4.0 g
• Protein: 35.2 g

Sinless Raspberry Triffle

I had a great time with my friends today at my Pampered Chef party.  Not many people showed up, but it did give me a chance to try out a bunch of new recipes.  And like nearly every party I have, there was a triffle.  I tried to make this one as low calorie as possible because some of the people who were supposed to come are on diets. 

The bottom is a layer of angel food cake, just baked in a 9"x13" cake pan and cut into bite size pieces.  The best thing to do is make the cake up a day or two beforehand.  I discovered with the last one I made that using warm cake pieces doesn't work too well.  It still tasted good, but it wound up sinking in as the cake cooled.

The next layer is cool whip with a big box of sugar free raspberry jello mix stirred in. I used extra creamy because that's what I had in the house, but the sugar free version would cut out a few more calories.  Word of advice, don't mix it up the night before, it gets kind of putty-like.  I was concerned that it wasn't going to be sweet enough, but it turned out tasting like cotton candy. 

The layer after that is sugar free cheesecake flavored jello made with 2% milk.  I don't like skim milk and it doesn't always work so well for cooking, so I don't normally have it in the house.  Usually I have 1%, but the commissary was out of it (oh, the joys of living overseas sometimes :-P ). 

That gets topped off with some raspberries.  You could use fresh ones, but this time of year they are usually crazy expensive.  So instead I thawed out two bags of frozen ones and let them sit in a strainer while I got all the rest of the ingredients together.  Next time I might use three bags, but it wasn't bad with two.

Then just repeat the layers one more time and top with a couple of pieces of the angel food cake.  I usually wind up with a good amount of cake left over, so this is a good use for them.  The leftover pieces are also great if you have any kids over.

After you add each layer (except for the cake), you might want to clean up the edges with a paper towel to keep the layers looking pretty.  It's just for looks, but it is a nice touch.

I really like making triffles for parties because you can use just about any combination of ingredients to make them fit a theme or season.  Plus if you tweak just a few things you can make them fit into any diet.  And because they turn out looking very pretty, everyone thinks you spent a ton of time on them when in reality it only takes about ten minutes to assemble them.

Tasty little bites

I'm getting ready for my party tomorrow and tried out a couple new recipes for it.  Both come from Pampered Chef's Season's Best for spring/summer 2012.  I changed up one of them to make it *slightly* better for you. 

First up is the Bourbon Pecan Tarlets:

Ingredients:

1 cup pecan halves, divided

1/4 cup bourbon (one of the airplane bottles)

1 package (15 ounce) refrigerated pie crusts (two crusts)

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 light corn syrup

2 tablespoons butter

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 egg

Preheat the oven to 375. Set aside 24 pecans, finely chop the rest of them.  Mix them with the bourbon and let it sit. 

Roll out the pie crust and cut 12 three inch circles from each crust.  Press them into a greased mini muffin pan and try to make the edges pretty (I failed on this part).  

Mix the brown sugar, corn syrup, butter and vanilla in a glass bowl.  Microwave for about a minute, stirring every 15 seconds, or until everything is melted together.  Add the chocolate and stir until melted, then add the egg and pecan/bourbon mixture until it's well combined. 

Fill each of the pie cups with about a tablespoon of the mixture and bake for 11-13 minutes.

Press a half pecan into each one.  Let them cool on a cooling rack.

Next up is a Bacon, Jalapeno, Pepper Pizza Bite (in the book they are called Jalapeno Popper Pizzas, but I like my name better).  I changed up the ingredients a little bit (adding more bacon and leaving off the extra cheese).  I also changed up the directions a little bit.

Ingredients:

1 package refrigerated pizza crust (11 ounce)

8 slices of bacon

1 small red pepper, finely diced

2 jalapeno peppers, finely diced (with or without seeds, depending on how hot you like it)

4 ounces softened cream cheese

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Preheat the oven to 425. 

Leave the pizza crust rolled up and slice into circle (ish) shapes.  Baked for about 10 minutes.

Put the bacon on a towel lined plate and microwave for about three minutes.  Let it cool a couple minutes, then chop into small pieces.  Put in a pan with the diced peppers and jalapenos, saute for three or four minutes. 

Place the cheddar cheese, cream cheese and bacon/pepper mixture in a bowl, mix until well combined.

Using a tablespoon, press a slight depression into the pizza crust rounds and fill them with a tablespoon of the mixture. 

Bake for another three or four minutes.  Move onto them onto a cooling rack.  Let them cool a little bit before eating them



My Memories Challenge

Here's the page I'm going enter into this week's My Memories challenge.  The challenge was to use any of the kits from A Saxon Creation.  For this page I used the Vintage Rose kit, the picture was taken by a photographer friend of mine back in Maryland.  This was one of the first pictures Don and I had taken of us.

Hanging with the Boys

In honor of my husband's best friend moving today, I decided to make up a page with a couple pictures of them hanging out.  The Man Cave kit that I found on mymemories.com was perfect for it :-)

Aviano, Italy

Last weekend I went down to Aviano, Italy for a class.  This time I was able to do a little exploring.  There's a huge mountain range that I can see from my school building.  I decided follow the road that went up and over the mountain and discovered a cute little ski resort town somewhere near the top.  I also found out that I was either in the Dolomites or very close to them.  Next time I'm hoping to take my husband and see what else we can find up there.

Sometimes Life Takes Over

I know I haven't been posting much lately, but my school term is wrapping up and my Pampered Chef business has really picked up.  I promise after this week I'll be better at posting.  Besides, now that my husband is home again I'll have to start cooking again :-)