Strawberry Bruchetta

Geez, I hope I spelled that right.

So, with the impending move I've been doing less and less hounding lately. I have, however, recently uped my cooking game! In the past week I've made Strawberry Bruchetta, Creamed Spinach, and Chicken Scallopine, all with moderate to great success (yay!!!). Not to be outdone, DBF made me Bisquick pancakes this weekend... mmm. I found The Pioneer Woman's blog from my hound friend frugalsuz's links, and her cooking is fantastic, and she takes enough pictures to break it down into steps a newbie like me can manage.

As for the Strawberry appetizer, that one I stole from my roommate. And now I'm passing it onto you, because it is SUMMER, and sometimes you just need food that has fruit on top.

Ingredients: 1 loaf french bread or a baguette, extra virgin olive oil, goat cheese, strawberries.

Unfortunately I did not take any pictures, so regular instructions will have to do.

-Preheat your oven to 350 or 400, I don't think it really matters.
-Slice the bread into snackable sized thicknesses.
-Coat one side of each slice lightly (ish, you just don't want it soaked) with the EVOO.
-Spread some goat cheese onto the bread. You can spice it up or buy the pre-herbed cheese if your heart desires.
-Slice your strawberries and put a few slices on each bread slice.
-Bake 'um til the strawberries look dry on top. Since we're not in the broiler, it's very hard to overcook them, so these are very nice for when you'll be busy prepping something else, or just chatting up whomever is so lucky as to have you cooking for them.

Ta-Da! Summer appetizer. They're yummy- I promise!

Triple Threat!

WAGS, CVS, and RA all in one day... I think I may need some Jim, Jack, and Jose to follow that! I decided that I didn't want to risk my RRs expiring if I don't feel up to hounding next week, so I spent all of them today! Never fear though- I spent it on ESR items, so I'll get some of it back via my GC.

WAGS:
2*$10.00 Garnier lotions (I have sources that tell me it's good stuff, and spf 28 prolly isn't bad for me either)
5*$0.20 Royal Gelatin (filler/more food I can eat this weekend)
-2*$1 Garnier lotion Q's
-3*$2 Chapstick RR
-$3 Skintimate RR
-$3.50 Colgate RR
+$1.75 tax
=$8.25 OOP, and will get $11 back on my GC from the Garnier... I can't count this as profit since I spent $ to get the RRs, but converting them back to $ that doesn't expire is just as good in this case!





Psst... my stacking abilities have quite improved since I learned to post pictures. Just observin'.


Now off to CVS, where I'm sure I doddled for over an hour. But my store was OUT of skintimate, the bogo razors, pringles, and it seemed like everything else I wanted- so I had lots of reconfiguring to do.




$11, 3/11 Coca Cola
4*$3.99 Pantene natural shampoos and conditioners
2*$6.29 Pantene nourishing detangler spray
3*$0.99 Puffs
$13 Olay/Covergirl foundation
$7.99 Covergirl TrueBlend loose powder (you can get mascara here instead and hit the $20 mark even for the CG EB deal, but I'm stocked to the brim on those so I opted to pay the extra buck for this stuff)
$9.99 Physician's formula- has Try Me Free rebate. Keep an eye out for these for the WAGS sale coming up- I'd rather have done it there, but I needed a big filler.
$3.89 Kotex
-$15/$75 CRT
-$1.50 Kotex CRT
-$1.50 CVS CRT cashier put through (I didn't give this to her, I think it was her first attempt to type in the $15 CRT)
-2*$3 off Pantene Shampoo AND Conditioner (must buy both)
-2*$6.29 FREE Pantene Styler when you buy a shampoo and conditioner
-$0.25/3 Puffs Q
-$4 Olay/Covergirl Foundation Q
-$1 Any CG Q
-$15.54 EBs
+3.99 Tax
+1.80 CA can deposit
=$25.12 OOP, got back $15 EB and will submit for $9.99 TMF rebate





Rite Aid free Shampoo

My RA seemed to be out of the Blink stuff, so I just got 5 shampoos instead of 4... I can always use clean hair though!
5*$5.00 John Frieda Shampoos/Conditioners
-$5/25 RA Q
-5*$2/1 John Frieda Q
+$2.19 tax
=$12.19 OOP, will submit for $10 RA single check rebate (and request immediately in case they stop the program... this deal is kinda iffy b/c of that, but I'm feelin' risky so I bought it!)

Oh and for those of you with tons of that Hunt's sauce- 3 cans with 1 lb ground turkey and your own spices made for some pretty yummy pasta sauce in the annathy house this evening. I use italian seasoning, oregano, basil, and garlic.

Mouesday Dinner Lasagna!

We'll start with an annathy vocabulary lesson: Mouesday is a combination of Monday and Tuesday. Mouseday dinner occurs when you haven't made a particular meal before and get home to find you got WAY too much food to feed everyone just once. Oops.





In this photo, I'm boiling enough water to cook a whole pound box of lasagna noodles, because that mega skillet there has over 3 pounds of beef in it! And as it browns, chop up some onion and garlic and toss it in. I don't care for onions, but my roommate gave me a little trick- toss in a few tablespoons of brown sugar to nuetralize some of the acidic taste, and put them in right away with the meat to soften them up some before baking.




I forgot to take pictures while layering the lasagna, but basically it went like this: Noodles, ricotta cheese (easiest to spread on noodles directly), meat, swiss cheese, noodles, meat, spinach, mozzarella, and a few dollops of ricotta for good measure. Popped the baby in the oven for 30 minutes at 360 and here's Monday's:


Today's (seperate, and larger, pan) looked very similar. And we have leftovers from both pans for tomorrow... anyone down for dinner tomorrow?

Dinner (delicious, if I do say so myself)

Last week when I made tacos, I hadn't figured out the whole new-camera-to-blogger bit yet. Fortunately, some of my technical issues have since been resolved, though I have no taco pictures. I could say something tragic had happened to the poor blokes, but really, I just didn't take them. Not so tonight! I borrowed a recipe from a women's health website I found to make spaghetti with turkey sauce (though I did make a few substitutions). So I failed to take a picture of the first step, which is cook the turkey! And drain the fat (though I skipped that, having hounded extra lean which yielded um, nothing, fat-wise, into the pan) too. I'm also going to assume that you, being intelligent enough to navigate this so-called internet, are capable of cooking pasta in accordance with the directions on the box.

So to make that beautiful sauce, once you have cooked turkey, pour in a large (28 oz) can of diced tomatoes, without draining. You can also use two smaller cans that add up to somewhere in that range (also, this seemed like a lot of turkey, and a lot of pasta, so I'll be doing more than 28 oz next time). Then dash in your favorite pasta spices, which had better include Italian seasoning and oregano. And garlic. The recipe called for onion and bell pepper as well, and assuming you don't have weird lingering texture issues with them from childhood, I hear they are quite excellent additions to many a meal. Anywho, get the sauce up to a boil for a minute and then simmer with the lid on for 15 minutes. Then simmer it without the lid for another 15.

That Dole salad I got yesterday, btw, is HUGE! You see it in my little "assemble your own salad" station and um, that salad spinner looked pretty much the exact same after dinner, only you didn't have to squish it to fit the lid anymore. Also, salad spinners are amazing. In case you were unaware.

And there you have a photo of what is now in my belly. Along with the wine that went on that coaster above the salad.

New knowledge on the Eats

Pasta- yum! It was very tasty, and roommate approved! The next time I make it I'll use a second jar of sauce though, which will also allow a little more space for extra veggies- mushrooms perhaps?

Wraps- I must have gotten corn tortillas, which tasted really wierd and so I'm switching to bread for the remainder of the week. The fillers were still yummy though.


Also go get your free toothpaste at CVS! I love free stuff!

Eats this week

My night to cook dinner is tomorrow, so I'll let you guys in on a little secret: I'm going to be lazy. My plans for the meal include nothing more than penne pasta, vodka cream sauce (premade), chicken breast, and asparagus (arguably the best vegetable ever). Okay, okay, if I get off work on time I may pick up a baguette and make some garlic bread too. I'm going to chop up the asparagus and cooked chicken breast and heat those in a sauce pan with the cream sauce. Oh, and I'll cook the pasta too so the sauce has something to go over. It's easy, but hopefully it will look nice and taste nicer. If you want to make the garlic bread, you overachiever, just slice, coat on one side with a extra virgin olive oil/garlic powder mix, put a little extra garlic powder on top if your heart desires (mine always does), and broil on low on a foil lined tray for a minute. Maybe two, but best check to it after one.

Lunches for me right now are wraps. Though I learned tonight making them that I need either bigger wraps or to slice smaller portions of stuff. Just an FYI. I spread some cream cheese on the wrap, put lettuce on that, cucumbers and tomatoes on the lettuce, and add some turkey. If you have honey mustard sauce that's a good dipper for it- I'm out, so I was just a little liberal with the cream cheese instead.