Boys will be Boys

Last summer my husband and I discovered a ropes obsticle course in a nearby town.  We had so much fun that we had to bring my husband's bromance a long with us.  Considering how the boys were acting, I thought the primary colors and paint splatters in this page were appropriate.  I used the My Memories software and kits to make the page.

Slow Cooker Coconut Curry Chicken

Like I said the other day, I love slow cooker recipes.  On days like today when I have errands and chores and homework to get done, it's a little reassuring to know that I'm not going to have to worry about making dinner.  Tonight's experiement was Chicken Coconet Curry, though you couldn't really taste the coconut much.  Next time I think I'll sprinkle a little shredded coconut on top of it and maybe some green onions for color.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts, chopped
2 medium potatoes, chopped
1/2 large onion, chopped
1/2 cup shredded carrots
1 large red pepper, chopped
3 large green onions (scallions), chopped
1 can light coconut milk
2 tablespoons chili garlic sauce
3 cloves garlic, minced
4 tablespoons curry powder

Directions

Place all of the ingredients in a slow cooker and cook on low for six to eight hours. Serve over rice (not included in nutritional info).

Makes Four Servings

Servings Per Recipe: 4

Amount Per Serving

Calories: 255.9

• Total Fat: 6.8 g
• Cholesterol: 45.0 mg
• Sodium: 481.6 mg
• Total Carbs: 32.7 g
• Dietary Fiber: 5.7 g
• Protein: 20.7 g

Bacon Stuffed Meatloaf

Tonight's dinner is one of my husband's favorites, bacon stuffed meatloaf. Of course the challenge is making it work for me :-) If possible, use the ground turkey that comes in a styrofoam tray instead of a tube. The tubes of ground turkey seem to be soggier than the other type. If this is all you can find (like at the commissary here in Germany), you may have to add a little more bread crumbs to it.

I also reattempted the zucchini fritters. They weren't too bad, I need to add a little salt to them (I added it to the recipe). I know there's a lot of garlic and onion powder in these, but we like stuff garlicky and oniony. I also add some chili powder to them too, because I know Don (my husband) likes things spicy.

Bacon Stuffed Meatloaf

Ingredients

6 slices center cut bacon, diced
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 pound ground turkey
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 can stewed tomatoes, drained
4 tablespoons bbq sauce
1/2 tsp onion powder
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup cheddar cheese

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Saute the onions and bacon together until onions are soft and starting to carmelize. Set aside to cool.
In a bowl, combine the ground turkey, bread crumbs, tomatoes, bbq sauce, onion powder and garlic. Press half of the mixture into a loaf pan, making a depression the length of the loaf.
Fill the depression with the bacon, onions and half of the cheese. Cover with remaining meat mixture, making sure to seal in the bacon mixture.
Sprinkle the top with the remaining cheese and additional bbq sauce, if desired.
Bake for 50 minutes or until fully cooked.

If you have the Deep Covered Baker (one of my favorite things in the kitchen), then you can make this in the microwave and it's much quicker. Follow the same directions as above, but use the baker instead of a loaf pan. Don't sprinkle on the cheese or additional bbq sauce yet. Cover it and microwave for 14-17 minutes. Remove and add the cheese and extra bbq sauce. Cover and microwave for an additional 3 - 5 minutes. Let it sit for about ten minutes before slicing.

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 4
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 426.6

• Total Fat: 16.8 g
• Cholesterol: 106.1 mg
• Sodium: 983.7 mg
• Total Carbs: 35.4 g
• Dietary Fiber: 2.9 g
• Protein: 34.4 g

Zuchinni Fritters

Ingredients

2 cups shredded zucchini
1/2 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 egg
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine all of the ingredients together. It will be very thick and seem to fall apart. Use a 1/4 cup measuring cup and scoop out heaping cups of the mixture and drop on a greased cookie sheet. Flatten it out using the bottom of the measuring cup. Bake at 400 for 15 minutes. Turn on the broiler for a few minutes and allow the fritters to become golden brown.

Servings Per Recipe: 6

Amount Per Serving

Calories: 86.6

• Total Fat: 1.4 g
• Cholesterol: 30.8 mg
• Sodium: 406.2 mg
• Total Carbs: 16.5 g
• Dietary Fiber: 2.7 g
• Protein: 3.4 g

Wedding Dress Page

I was playing around with some old pictures of my wedding dress and came up with this.  It's really bright, and I don't know that I would use it for an actual scrapbook, but it's really fun :-)

Pretty Clipboards

I hate it when I go to a selling party and I have to try finding something to put the order form on so I can write on it.  Usually I wind up trying to use the catalog as my writing surface, but this causes two problems.  First, it's a flexible surface.  You still have to balance it on your lap, a friend's back or where ever you can find space.  Second, you have to refer to the catalog for item numbers and things like that, so you are constantly flipping back and forth between the catalog and the order form.  Not so much fun. 
So I decided I was going to get clipboards for people to use at my Pampered Chef parties.  Now, I'm in Germany living near an Army base.  I could look off post, but with the current exchange rate it's just a bit cheaper to buy things on post (usually).  On post there were only two options, the standard ugly fiber board brown ones for $1.35 or these really nice ones made of plastic with a cubby for pens and stuff for about $5.00.  I wanted something a little more than the brown ones but not quite as big or expensive as the plastic ones.  Well, pinterest to the rescue!  I stumbled upon this pin to a tutorial on how to make the ugly ones pretty using scrapbooking paper and mod podge.  Luckily I have a ton of scrapbooking paper that I've been trying to find projects for now that I'm doing the digital scrapbooking.  I've only done six of them so far, and they aren't quite as good as the ones that were pinned, but I really like them.  I found some cheap stickers that had food quotes on them that really just give them that little extra. 
So I went from these (don't mind the icky iphone quality):

To these:

With a couple closer shots of my favorites so far:

Home Organizer: Daily Planner Page

I found a ton of free downloads for pages to make into a home organizer, some of them were great and some were kinda eh-ish.  But none of them were exactly what I wanted.  So here I am, almost a month into the new year and I've barely used my home organizers I put together because it doesn't really fulfill my wants and needs.  So I've decided to go ahead and try making the pages myself.  I'm using the Blue Heaven and Crystal kits from Laitha's Designs on www.mymemories.com for this page.  I can't make the page available for download because it goes against their rules, but I can show you what I made to give you ideas for making your own.  I'm still tweaking it, but I like it so far :-)

Chunky Mango Guac

I have a Wine and Dessert Pampered Chef party coming up, so I've been on the look out for delicious but easy (and healthy would be a nice bonus) recipes.  Of course we'll be making the brownie I posted before (gotta have chocolate you know) and I think that we are going to do some chopped fruit and different fruit dips.  Another thing that I think is going to work well is my Chunky Mango Guac.  The mangos add a slightly sweet twist on your regular guacamole.  Normally I leave salt out of recipes, but this is one that actually kind of needs it.  You can also add some chopped cilantro to it if you would like.

Ingredients

2 Avocadas, peeled and diced

1 Mango, peeled and diced

15 - 18 Cherry Tomatoes, diced

1/4 cup Lime Juice

2 tbsp Lemon juice

1 tbsp Garlic powder

1 tbsp Salt

Directions

Peel and dice the avocadas and mango, dice the tomatoes. You can add some onion if you would like, dried or fresh onions work well. Mixx all the ingredients together and let sit for a few minutes to blend the flavors.

Serving Size: Makes a big bowl

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 8
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 148.7

• Total Fat: 11.0 g
• Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
• Sodium: 879.4 mg
• Total Carbs: 13.6 g
• Dietary Fiber: 6.0 g
• Protein: 2.2 g