Menu Board

I have been wanting to get meal planning a little more organized. I dread planning the weekly menu and grocery list. I found a bunch of ideas on Pinterest and put a few if my favorites together to create this

  

Depending on your craft supplies this craft could cost you less than five dollars. I used:

A foam board

Scrapbook paper

Stickers

My recipes 

Each envelope has meals inside for breakfast lunch and dinner. Each card has a meal idea on one side and the items needed for that meal on the other.

I pick meals use them to make my shopping list and to let my family know what is for dinner. Most of my meals I make without a recipe but the ones that I need a recipe for I wrote where the recipe is on the card next to the items needed.

Tuesday Treats: Frozen Hot Chocolate

I have been craving Frozen Hot Chocolate from Dairy Queen, and I found this recipe at mels kitchen cafe.com and tried it out. It turned out so good! 

INGREDIENTS:

4 ounces of your favorite chocolate (I used semi-sweet chocolate)
2 teaspoons store-bought hot chocolate powder
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 cups milk
3 cups ice cubes
lightly sweetened whipped cream
chocolate shavings (optional)

DIRECTIONS:
Chop chocolate into small pieces and melt in microwave on low heat. Once melted, add hot chocolate mix and sugar, stirring constantly until thoroughly blended. Slowly add 1/2 cup milk, stirring until smooth. Cool to room temperature.

In blender, place the remaining 1 cup milk, room-temperature chocolate mixture and ice.

Blend on high speed until smooth and the consistency of a frozen daiquiri. Enjoy! (This recipe made a large blender full – I believe I got at least 4 8 oz. servings from one batch.)

I also found this recipe its a little more work but its totally worth it if you have the time and ingredients!

I found this one at Tasty Kitchen

• 3 Tablespoons Granulated Sugar
• 1 package Hot Cocoa Mix (about 3 Tablespoons)
• 2 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter
• ⅓ cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips
• ⅓ cups White Chocolate Chips
• 12 ounces, fluid Can Evaporated Milk, Divided
• 4-½ cups Ice
• Whipped Cream, To Taste
• Mini Marshmallows, To Taste

Combine sugar, cocoa mix, and butter in the top of a double boiler that is set over gently boiling water. Stir often until melted and a smooth paste forms. Add semi-sweet & white chocolate chips; stir. When chips begin to melt, slowly stir in 1/2 cup of evaporated milk. Stir until smooth. Cool to room temperature.

Combine the chocolate base mixture, the remaining evaporated milk and ice in a blender (you can do this in batches) and cover. Blend until smooth. Pour into frosty glasses. Top each with whipped cream. Sprinkle with additional chopped chocolate chips & mini marshmallows, if desired.


We hope you had a good tuesday!

Chicken Parmigiana

 

This week for Tuesday Treats I made a delicious quick meal. 

Chicken Parmigiana

My photography is not good,  I promise it looked a lot better than it looks in this photo. It tasted wonderful too.

You'll need:
1     small onion
1     clove garlic
1     tbs butter
1     can of diced tomatoes
1/2  tsp sugar
1/8  tsp salt
       dash of pepper
1/4  cup fresh basil (less if using dried, I never have fresh basil)
4     boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1/3  cup seasoned fine dry bread crumbs
4     tbs grated Parmesan cheese
1/2  tsp dried oregano
1     egg beaten
2     tbs milk
3     tbs olive oil
1/4  cup shredded mozzarella cheese

I started with the sauce. cook onion and garlic in hot butter until tender. stir in tomatoes, sugar, salt, and pepper. Bring to boil. Simmer, uncovered, about 10 minutes. Stir in basil (if using dried basil add with tomatoes and other spices). set aside and keep warm.

Meanwhile. Pound chicken lightly to about 1/4 inch think in plastic wrap to keep counters clean.

Stir together bread crumbs and 3tbs of Parmesan cheese, and oregano. In another dish stir together egg and milk. Dip chicken in egg mixture then bread crumbs. (I like to dip chicken in flour before dipping it in egg to make it stick better.)

In a skillet cook chicken in hot oil for 2 to 3 minutes on each side or until done.

I decided that we needed some noodles too, so I made some fettuccine noodles. A secret I learned from "The Chew" is to cook your noodles 1 minutes less than the directions say on the package and let finish cooking in the sauce. It makes the noodles have a perfect al dente. 

Serve with extra mozzerela and parmesan cheese. 

Its delicious. Try it and tell me how you like it.

Broccoli Pin Wheels

Last night for dinner we had these beauties. These are so easy to make and so delicious, they are even great left over. Last time I made them I had the use of a Bosch Mixer, this time unfortunately I didn't have the use of one so it took a bit more muscles and time, but turned out great.

 Cheddar, broccoli and ham pinwheels.

The bread recipe I used to make these delicious treats took me about 10 minutes in the Bosch mixer. It was wonderful!

I am going to have to save my pennies for a while to be able to get one, but I am determined.

Recipe:

I got the pinwheels recipe from the Lion House Bakery cookbook, and I added ham to it.

Ingredients

1 recipe dough for Lion House Dinner Rolls, prepared through first rise. (Any bread recipe will do)

1 (10 ounce) bag frozen and chopped (I used fresh, and steamed)

1 Cup grated cheddar cheese

1/4 Cup dried minced onion (I used minced fresh red onion)

1 egg

1 teaspoon onion salt 

2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1 teaspoon seasoned salt

Directions

After dough has completed first rise, turn our onto a floured surface. Roll out dough into a large rectangle, about 1/4-inch thick. Mix broccoli, cheddar cheese, onions, egg, onion salt, Parmesan cheese, and seasoned salt (and some diced ham) into a small bowl. Spread broccoli mixture over dough. Tightly roll up the dough jelly roll style. Using a little water on fingertips, pinch edge firmly to seal dough. Cut dough into 24 slices.

Place slices, cut side up, in cavities of muffin pans sprayed with cooing spray or place on greased baking sheet. Brush panned dough with melted butter. Cover with plastic wrap and let rolls rise until doubled in size, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours (I couldn't wait that long).  Bake at 350 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes. Remove from pan immediately to cool on a wire rack. Makes 2 dozen rolls. (1 dozen was enough for us so I halved it).

Enjoy :)

Tuesday Treats, comfort food.

This week for tuesday treats we decided to blog about comfort food. One of my favorite things is breakfast for dinner. 

I got this amazing recipe from a friend and these are the best waffles I have ever had.

Grandma Lindley's Waffles

Dry ingredients:

3 c. flour

1 tsp. salt 

2 tsp. sugar

4 tsp. baking powder

Wet ingredients

4 eggs, separated; beat egg whites until stiff

2 c. milk

2/3 c. melted butter or oil

Combine milk and egg yolks in a large bowl. Add to the dry ingredients and mix well. Add butter and mix until only blended.

Fold egg white mixture into mixture. Bake in waffle iron.    

This is the secret to these amazing waffles, beating the egg whites until stiff. They will look like the picture on the right.

When everything is combined it will look white.

These are so good!! 

What is your comfort food?

Tuesday Treats

Yesterday I made some delicious pork tacos. Just like the ones from Cafe Rio.
We just moved to a new city, and there is no Cafe Rio here to satisfy my appetite. So I decided to create my own.

I got a simple recipe for the pork from a friend of mine.
1 pork tenderloin
1 can of Coke
1 cup of brown sugar
Put it all in a crock pot and cook until tender enough to shred.
So simple. So easy. So delicious

We also made some pico de gallo and creamy tomatillo dressing.
It made the meal complete.

I got the pico de gallo recipe from my friend the World Wide Web
1 1/2 cups of diced tomatoes
1/4 cup diced red onion
1 tbs diced jalapenos (if you want)
1 tbs garlic
Juice from 2 limes (I used 1 and it was almost too much for me.)
2 tbs cilantro
salt and pepper

Just combine all of the ingredients.

Creamy "Cafe Rio" Tomatillo Dressing

This delicious dressing makes a lot so be aware.
3 tomatillos, peeled and cut into quarters

juice of 1/2 lime
1/2 C buttermilk
1/2 C mayo
1/2 C sour cream
1 pkg. dry ranch buttermilk dressing
1 C cilantro
6 green onions
2 cloves crushed garlic
3 t sugar
1/2 jalapeno

Mix well in blender. Refrigerate for at least one hour.

It all came together with some amazing handmade fresh tortillas for a great grocery store here. They make them right in front of you fresh. They are incredible. I can never go back to other tortillas.

We added black beans, rice, and lettuce to make it a meal. 

It was great. Not quite Cafe Rio but pretty darn close.

Try it you'll enjoy it.

Coming Soon

Here at "a couple of creative sisters" we have decided to start something new, 

introducing...... 

and 

after august 31, tuesdays will be our treat day, we will be sharing some of our favorite recipes and recipes we want to try. On saturdays we will be having a link up sharing our favorite craft ideas and some crafts we hope to be doing in the future!!

<a href="http://2bloggingsisters.blogspot.com/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizss9IZrXtBPyQhyphenhyphenNXEN6a7oioQQnLd_k_hyphenhyphenGlCsHcCu0gDqWcVp7r9zB70fgVqV6IcKO4oQsvrNY-J8cTPhdHihyribKa1Z0jmVb48422jEhPdAmvozHQtkdbU0Lcn2Jix7ALqjncdlE/s1600/saturday_button3.gif" /></a></div></div>

<a href="http://2bloggingsisters.blogspot.com/"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn1LvWjIrh7uBdzxHAmkxHpxYxFAxOmX_ttKFJbteepgSfjRo4zOrC3y64kASJnBnA-11OLQ1ESph4zBpb5yYijO3FkbyHZpswotIzaM161ljfC3tmvkGwafO657FDSLE770vq9_R3Lns/s1600/treat_button.gif" /></a></center></div>

Get excited its going to be fun!!

Summer Garden

This summer we decided to do some gardening in our local community garden. We live in an apartment so we were super excited to find that there was a community garden in our area.  

This is what it looked like in the beginning.

We planted some root vegetables at first, 

than we planted squashes, tomatoes and other things that would go bad if there was a frost. 

So we have peas

squash and zucchini 

Beans 

corn 

Broccoli and Cauliflower 

and so many other things. 

I have been able to make so many yummy things from veggies from our garden. Gardening has been so much fun and has taken all my crafting time but it has been so worth it. 

5 Can Soup

I was looking for something super easy for dinner the other night and then I remembered my Mom's 5 Can Soup. This recipe is easy, it only takes about 15 minutes and its is very inexpensive.

 You will need:

Can of Tomato Soup

Can of ABC Vegetable Soup

Can of Chili

Can of Corn 

Can of Green Beans

This is the easiest version of this soup, you could add fresh veggies which would make it yummy too. My Mom would often make roast and potatoes for sunday dinner and then take the leftovers and add them to 5 Can Soup. She would add ABC noodles, and other veggies instead of the can of vegetable soup. 

I made this on Cinco de Mayo so I added chicken (just cause) and then added taco seasoning to the chicken.  

Then I added my cans

Then just bring it to a boil and you are ready to eat.

We also added cheese and sour cream, for Cinco de Mayo.

Kids will love it too!!

Lentil Soup with Quinoa

I spent some time in Peru and while there they had this amazing thing called quinoa, when I came home I discovered that it was a huge health craze. Well I have been wanting to cook something with quinoa for a while so I looked up some recipes and there is so much you can do with this little grain.    

I had some Lentils in my cupboard so I decided to try this Lentil Soup with Quinoa that I found here. You will need about an hour to cook it but most of the time is in cooking the lentils.

Here is the Recipe...

Recipe: Lentil Soup with Quinoa

Ingredients

• 2 cups green lentils (dried)
• 1 cup quinoa, soaked for 15 minutes and rinsed
• 12 cups vegetable broth
• 2 onions, chopped
• 4 carrots, chopped
• 1 cup celery, sliced thin
• 10 cloves garlic, minced
• ½ cup tomato sauce
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 T dried oregano
• Mineral sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper
• Juice of two lemons

Instructions

1. Place lentils and broth in a large pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for 30 minutes.
2. Add in quinoa, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, tomato sauce, olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper. Cook for another 30 minutes or until lentils are tender.    Stir in lemon juice just before serving.
3. If desired, this soup can be frozen for up to three months. Allow to cool first!

The veggies look so yummy! This was so easy you just cook the lentils for 30 minutes then add everything else.

into your pot and simmer for another 30 minutes. Make sure you are stirring quite often because the lentils burn to the bottom really easily.   

It turned out really good and the quinoa are really interesting the go clear in the middle and white on the edges and really don't have much flavor but a good source of protein.