Texas Cowboy's Pie

I checked this book out at the library recently. It's filled with tons of fast & inexpensive recipes, along with shopping, food storage & nutrition tips. I've tried two of them already & this was my favorite. My mom used to make Shepherd's Pie every once in a while when I was younger. I had completely forgotten about it until I saw this recipe. It's very different from the Shepherd's Pie my mom used to make, but it's delicious! I made a few changes from the original, of course. This is a great way to utilize left over mashed potatoes or beef. The recipe calls for shredded beef but I used ground beef. Here is what I did:

Ingredients
-1 lb ground beef
- 1 cup mild salsa
- 1 t chili powder
- 1 t cumin
- 1 cup frozen corn
- 1/2 cup diced greed peppers
- 1/2 cup diced red peppers
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 2 1/2 cups mashed potatoes
- 1 T butter
- 1 cup shredded cheese (I used cheddar)

Directions
Turn broiler to high. Brown ground beef, add in corn, peppers, seasonings & salsa. Cook for a few minutes & add sour cream. (If you happen to have any other leftover beef you can just add all these ingredients & microwave for 4 minutes). Season mashed potatoes to taste & heat for 4 minutes (whatever you do, don't use instant mashed potatoes, they're gross). Spoon potatoes over beef mixture in 8 in. baking dish. Add cheese & place under broiler until cheese is bubbly, about 2-3 minutes.

This was yummy & SO fast. It's perfect for a busy night.

Grilled Asparagus & Rice Pilaf with Thyme

We went out for our Valentine's Day dinner the day before Valentine's Day. We decided to have a nice dinner in on Valentine's Day. We decided on crab cakes, grilled asparagus & rice pilaf with thyme. It was easy & delicious! I made the crab cakes the same way I posted about several months ago.

Grilled Asparagus

Ingredients
Asparagus
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper

Directions
Wash asparagus thoroughly & break or cut off woody part of stem. Lightly drizzle with olive oil & sprinkle salt & pepper over the spears. Grill for about 3 minutes on each side over medium-high heat. I used a cast iron grill pan because I love the flavor it gives off. You could also use whatever type of indoor grill you have or an outdoor grill.

Rice Pillaf with Thyme

Ingredients
-1 T butter
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 1 1/2 cup chicken broth
- Salt
- Pepper
- 1 c white rice
- 1 t thyme

Directions
Melt butter, add onions & season with salt & pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally until onion is softened. Add broth & bring to a boil. Stir in rice & thyme. Return to a boil, reduce heat to low, cover & cook until tender, about 15-20 minutes.

I got this original recipe from here. The only thing I changed was the amount of thyme I used. I doubled it. Josh hates bland rice & I love the taste of thyme. It turned out great.

Aquarium Date!

One of the many reasons I love where we live is because we're so close to so many things to do. The weather has been so beautiful lately, Josh and I decided to spend the day at the inner harbor. We decided to take a walk through the aquarium. I LOVE the Baltimore aquarium. We've been on several dates there & we always enjoy it. It was pretty crowded today but we still had a great time.

This is my favorite area of the aquarium. You can see it from the very top of the aquarium, I think this was taken from the 3rd level. There are so many large fish, several types of rays & even some sharks in this part of the aquarium. You can even look in from the underground level (the windows you can see just below the shark tank).

This is my absolute favorite reason to go to the aquarium! She's a green sea turtle, just like Crush :-) See the splashes where her front left flipper should be? That flipper had to be amputated because it was infected when she was rescued. This isn't a good picture but you can see a video of here here.

This is a pretty cool bird that let me get really close in the rain forest exhibit.

I decided to see if it would let me take a picture with it. It didn't seem too happy about me sitting on it's ledge, hence why I'm keeping an eye on it. Haha.

Pretty flower in the rain forest exhibit.

A HUGE tree frog. It reminded me of the old Budweiser commercials.

After the aquarium we decided to grab some lunch. We decided on Five Guys. Since it was so nice, we ate outside. We found a bench right by the harbor to eat. It was so nice & peaceful. The weather was really nice but it was SO windy! It was still nice to sit outside & get some fresh air while we were eating :-)

The love of my life!

Chocolate Croissants

During my college job I worked in a lab in the Food Science department. We had a breakfast or lunch probably every other week. Of course they were always amazing. We used to have these delicious chocolate croissants. I was craving them a few weeks ago & I decided to try to make my own. They turned out really good!

Ingredients
1 can refrigerated croissants
Chocolate chips

Directions
Place a few chocolate chips at the base of the croissant, roll it up & bake as usual :-)

I brushed a mixture of melted butter, cinnamon, sugar & vanilla on top. While this was delicious, it caused the outside of the croissant to harden a little more than I prefer. I think next time I will brush the inside of the croissant with it.

These are super easy to make & so delicious if you're craving just a little bit of chocolate.

100!

Wow, I've finally made it to my 100th post! As always, I'm a little behind, but I'll try to catch up without too much rambling.

Last weekend when Josh and I were at the library I thought it would be a good idea to pick up our favorite childhood movies & watch them together. (I have no idea why I never thought to do this when we had Netflix.) His was Homeward Bound & mine was Black Beauty (or at least it was my favorite for the longest period of time, I have lots of favorites). Black Beauty is on reserve & we'll get it sometime soon. We got Homeward Bound & watched it. I didn't see it when I was younger but we both really enjoyed it. I was super excited because Chance is an American Bulldog & that's one of the breeds we're seriously considering getting :-)

Saturday was productive & relaxing at the same time. I seriously needed a haircut (I hadn't had one since July!) & last week there was a Groupon for a salon nearby. It's in the historic part of a town just a few minutes down the road. I loved the area! It has a small town feel but it's still relatively close to everything. Around the area where we got my hair cut there are tons of old churches & shops. We plan to go back & walk around more when it warms up. It was a very nice day but the wind made it feel much colder than it was.

We found B&O Railroad! I didn't even realize it, Josh pointed out that it was from Monopoly.

One of Josh's co-workers, who is also a State grad, came over to watch Lord of the Rings with us. Neither of us have watched an entire Lord of the Rings movie so we decided we're going to watch the series with him. It's really good, just so long. That's the only reason I haven't already watched them. I have a pretty short attention span. We'll probably finish the series after we get back from vacation.

Today we went to the city for our Valentine's Day dinner. We decided the crowd would probably be a little bit lighter today than tomorrow. We went to an Italian place in Little Italy. All the pasta was homemade & it was amazing! Josh got chicken parmigiana & I got the tour, which was lasagna, fettuccine alfredo & eggplant parmigiana. As I would have expected, the lasagna was my favorite.

It has been a great, relaxing weekend, exactly what we both needed :-) Too bad it has to end so quickly!

Easy Slow Cooker Pork Roast

I love making things in the slow cooker. It's so easy & 9 times out of 10 it turns out delicious! It's easily one of my favorite kitchen gadgets.

Ingredients
1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 can Cream of Chicken Soup
1 packet French Onion Soup
1/2 cup Water
Pork of your choice
Salt
Pepper
Tablespoon Canola Oil

For this roast I used a portion of a pork loin. I'm not sure how big it was :-/

Directions
Pat meat dry, season with salt & pepper. Heat oil in pan & brown meat on all sides. Add soups, French Onion Soup packet & water to slow cooker. Mix & add meat. Turn to make sure all sides of the meat are coated. Cook on low 6 hours.

Then come home from work to this...YUM! I served this with dressing & creamed spinach. I kind of made this up one morning before work. I wasn't crazy about the taste of the gravy at first, I thought the cream of chicken overpowered everything else. After cooking all day while I was at work, all the flavors had a chance to blend together & it was delicious!

Homefries

I absolutely love potatoes! They are by far my favorite veggie. This past Saturday I decided to make homefries for breakfast. Hashbrowns are delicious, but these are way better :-)

Ingredients
5 medium potatoes
1 medium onion
Seasoning Salt
Pepper
Onion Powder
Canola Oil or bacon fat

Directions
Boil potatoes until fork tender. Saute onions in oil (I use bacon fat because it adds so much flavor). Slice, chop or mash potatoes, however you prefer. I leave the skins on mine but feel free to take them off. Remove onions from oil & add potatoes to pan. Season to taste (I have some french fry seasoning but if you don't seasoning salt & pepper will do fine). Cook for 5-10 minutes. Add onions back, cook a few additional minutes. Grab your ketchup & you're all set!

These would be great for any meal, not just breakfast. I think they would be great if you add green & red bell peppers too. I may try that next time :-)

Why do Weekends Pass so Quickly?

This past week went by SO slow. I was SO ready for Friday. It felt like the entire week was a day behind. We usually eat at home during the week but Josh asked if I wanted to go out for crab cakes Thursday night. There's a sports bar in the city that has them on special Thursday nights. We got a Groupon for this place a while back & we've been hanging on to it for a night like this. We just wanted to get out & do something a little different. We really enjoyed ourselves & the crab cakes were pretty good. Definitely not the best I've had, but good for the price.

Friday afternoon finally came & I couldn't have been happier. We were both pretty exhausted from the week so we made dinner together & watched some TV for the rest of the night.

Saturday was a great day. We had some errands to run so we got them out of the way first. There's a new pet shop in the shopping center across from our apartment so we decided to take a look. We like to go to places like that periodically & look at tropical fish & all sorts of other pets & accessories. We've kind of always done things like that. Now it's definitely much more fun knowing we'll get a dog in the next few months or so. We actually played with one of the puppies there just for fun. We don't want to get a puppy from a pet shop & it's a breed we've already ruled out. It was still fun though & she was adorable. We went to the library after that. I've been wanting to go to the library for a few weeks now to pick up a few books & it keeps getting put off. I picked up a ton of books as usual & Josh even got a few. I picked up a few dog & herb gardening books, along with a few for leisurely reading. I picked up Marley & Me. I've been wanting to read it since I saw the movie. It's pretty good so far. The books I wanted most were all checked out so I put them on reserve. We'll probably be going back next weekend to pick them up. Josh even got a few books, I was surprised because he's not much of a reader at all. We lounged around, played some games & read our books Saturday until our game came on. It was an absolutely horrible game! I actually kept reading my books most of the way through because it was just too painful to watch :-/ This season has definitely been a letdown!

Today has been a great day. We got up to go try a new church. We really enjoyed this church & I'm sure we'll go back again. It's both our favorites so far but we'll probably try a few more before we decide which one to make our home church up here. We met the preacher & his wife. The were both really welcoming, along with the rest of the congregation. It's a small church so we think it will be really easy to meet other people. There are a decent amount of young couples & families so that's a plus.

We didn't bother to check the weather, we just bundled up because it was cold & wet yesterday. It was actually a very nice day out. It was pretty warm & sunny, especially since it was a February morning! It was bittersweet. It was nice for a little bit of warm weather, but all the snowmen are gone & there's barely any snow left except the mounds left in parking lots from the snow plows. I'm really surprised at how I've adjusted to the weather. I thought I was going to hate the winter here because I always did back home. I hated it because it was always cold & dreary looking. More times than not, the winter precipitation we got was sleet or something of the sort. This winter here has been a little colder than back home, but not a huge difference despite the lack of random spring-like days. The big difference is that it has been beautiful. We've had snow on the ground for about a week until it started melting a few days ago...& I really liked having it around :-) It felt like winters I used to see in cartoons as a child instead of a cold, wet mess. While today was warm & sunny, I don't think winter is quite over yet :-) Our groundhog thought so, but I think he's clueless :-) I hope we get at least one more decent snow. If we don't & spring sneaks up on me faster than I expect, I'll welcome it with open arms. I may not be quite ready for winter to be over, but Spring has always been my favorite season. It's also the only season I haven experienced in MD yet, so I'm really looking forward to it. It just seems like Winter has passed by so quickly. I'm really starting to believe that time goes by faster as you get older...it's sure starting to feel like it, at least during the weekends.

I can't believe this weekend is almost over already! We'll spend the rest of the night watching the Super Bowl...although I'm not super excited about it, I don't care for either team. I'll pull for whichever score will win us some money I guess :-) I'm sure there will be some great commercials though.