Delicious Tuna Salad

When we went to Italy, my first lunch in Orvieto was a tuna salad per Aunt Grace's recommendation.  It was delicious!  Since then, I've been purchasing tuna in jars from a local Italian grocery store instead of cans.  It's more expensive, but totally worth it!  

This salad is a spinoff of what I had in Italy and Peter and I love to make it for a quick lunch/dinner any day of the week.  It's quick and easy and so delicious!  We use some of our favorite pomegranate balsamic vinegar drizzled on top.  Yum!

Homemade Chinese Food

I love Chinese food.  I mean, really, who doesn't?  I don't love; however, all the extra sodium in Chinese food and the inevitable belly ache after eating.  So I've been trying my hand at making homemade Chinese food.  

This Sweet & Sour Chicken with Fried Rice and White Sauce was delicious!  Below are the recipes that I made.  They were altered and put together from a few different sources so it's my own, right? :P

Sweet & Sour Chicken

INGREDIENTS

• For the chicken coating:
• 2-3 boneless/skinless chicken breasts
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• For the sweet and sour sauce:
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 4 teaspoons ketchup
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder

DIRECTIONS

• 1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

  2. Cut chicken into cubes.

  3. Dip chicken into the cornstarch to coat then dip into the eggs.

  4. Heat your 1/4 cup oil in a large skillet and cook chicken until browned and mostly cooked through.

  5. Place the chicken in an 8x8 baking dish.

  6. Mix all of the sweet and sour sauce ingredients in a bowl with a whisk and then pour evenly over the chicken.

  7. Bake for 45 minutes, turning the chicken every 15 minutes.

Fried Rice

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cups cooked white rice
• 1 tablespoon peanut or sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 cup chopped carrots
• 4-6 cloves garlic
• 3 eggs
• 1/4 cup soy sauce

DIRECTIONS

• 1. On medium high heat, heat the oils in a large skillet or wok.

  2. Mince garlic and add to oil.

  3. Add chopped carrots and stir fry until tender.

  4. Move mixture to one side of the pan.

  5. Beat eggs and pour into empty side of skillet. Stir fry until scrambled.

  6. Add the rice and soy sauce and blend everything together.

  7. Stir fry until thoroughly heated.

White Sauce

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 teaspoon tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 1 dash cayenne pepper

DIRECTIONS

• 1. Melt butter.

  2. Whisk together with all remaining ingredients, except water, until creamy.

  3. Add water until desired consistency is reached.
• 
  

Pumpkin!

I wanted to make pumpkin bread today and only had a big can of pumpkin.  So I made 3 loaves of pumpkin, 1 batch of pumpkin fudge, and pumpkin cream cheese.

I put chocolate chips in the pumpkin bread so of course those loaves were deeelicious.

The fudge was a new recipe and was also very yummy.

While I like the cream cheese, it's definitely more desserty so I wouldn't use it on my bagels in the morning.  I was really looking for more like what I found from Kraft so the search will continue for that.

I wish I would've taken pictures of more than just the bread, but oh well.  I'll get a picture for the other things next time around!

Pumpkin Season!

If you know anything about me, then you know that I LOVE pumpkin flavored foods. I just spotted a new goody - pumpkin cream cheese. This morning I tried it on a honey wheat bagel and it was DELICIOUS! I washed it down with a pumpkin chai latte. Heaven!

New Sheetz

A new Sheetz opened in Monroeville and we got a bunch of coupons for free items.  Awesome, right?  Well, one of the coupons was for a free "coffeez" so I decided it'd be the perfect opportunity to try out one of their frozen chai beverages.  I saw that there pumpkin beverages were back for the season and asked for flavor shots of pumpkin to be added.  Yum-city.  This newly discovered treat did not disappoint and will likely be enjoyed many times this Fall.  :)

Harvesting Basil

Got basil?

Tonight Peter and I harvested most of our basil and made pesto. We froze it all so that we can have some yummy homemade pesto sauce in the colder months when basil doesn't survive here. I wish I had a place we could even grow some on the windowsill, but the only one that would work is above the kitchen sink. Cadi would knock it down/eat it anywhere else. Unfortunately, the kitchen doesn't get enough sun. A greenhouse window is on my "future home" wish list. Along with a pantry, walk-in closet, and many other frivolous items, haha.

Our rosemary plant is huge as well. I recently found a recipe for a rosemary walnut pesto so I may try that and then make a bunch to freeze if it's any good. We'll have to wait and see.

Homemade Rosalind's Chocolate Covered Strawberries

My sister and I made chocolate covered strawberries with Rosalind's chocolate chunks. Yum-o! And way cheaper than buying them from Rosalind's! Happy 4th of July! I'm off to eat these and other delicious picnic food. :)

Farmer's Market

I ran out to do some errands today and passed by a local farmer's market. On a whim, I decided to stop and stock up on some produce. While I was there, a woman turned before the intersection and drove straight through a fence into the market area. It was really loud and frightening, but luckily no one was hurt. I ended up calling 911 since no one else did. After a little bit of excitement, I was able to purchase my produce and head home!

Check out all of this fruit!

I also got some red peppers, lemons, and limes. :)

And blueberries, strawberries, and watermelon.

Yum, yum, yum! For only $22, I got a ton of fresh produce!

Things like this only happen to us!

Well, we had quite an interesting night here at home.  It started off normal with getting home and relaxing.  I decided to make a quick, simple dinner of homemade pizza.  Looks delicious, huh?  It was!

Shortly before 9 PM, I put some water in the kettle to make hot chocolate since it's so cold here.  I was planning on settling in with some hot chocolate while watching "The Office".  The beginning of the show started when the kettle started whistling and Peter jumped up to move the kettle and I'd get my hot chocolate on a commercial.  We heard a rustling sound when he sat back down on the couch and didn't know what it was so Peter went back to the kitchen to investigate.  

Apparently the bag of BBQ chips we had bought on our grocery trip last night fell out of the open cupboard (I left the door open to get the hot chocolate from).

Where did it land?

On the hot burner of course!

The bag melted the chips were burning.  We couldn't help but laugh.  I grabbed oven mits and removed the burner.  We put it in the sink and cleaned up the chips, but there was plastic melted on the burner.  I was afraid the burner would be unusable, but as it cooled, most of the plastic came off.  I'm hoping we'll still be able to use it, haha!

The bag burned and so we decided to throw the whole bag out because we weren't sure if there were plastic pieces in the bag or anything.  Better safe than sorry!  :)

It was fun to tease Peter as we were cleaning up.  I kept bursting out with laughs because it was so funny.  He laughed too :)  

In the end I didn't make hot chocolate or watch "The Office".  I'll try again tomorrow haha.

Recipe Swap

I'm always creating new recipes or looking for new recipes and I recently stumbled upon this blog.  Every Friday she does a recipe swap so I decided to join in this week.  I linked back to my Chicken Cordon Bleu recipe from November just to try it out.  I think it's something I'll join in more often :)

If you're looking for recipes or how to feed 6 people on $60 per week then check out The Grocery Cart Challenge.

Free Tea

I don't drink coffee.  Ever.  I love the smell of it, but hate the taste.  But I do drink tea.  Especially chai tea.  I stumbled across this free offer:  http://www.teasta.com/free-samples.  If you like tea, check it out.  I've never had their tea, but what better way to try it out than with a free samples.  And you can pick two flavors.  And no, there's no shipping cost.  Enjoy!

The Dinner Rush

Since we had arrived home a little later than usual tonight after getting a late start from work, dinner was more rushed than usual since we had bible study starting at 7. We had 50 minutes to cook dinner, eat dinner, and get to church. Lucky for us church is only 2 minutes away. And double lucky that I had already taken chicken out of the freeze to defrost during the day. 3 boneless/skinless chicken breasts, 5 bell peppers (3 green, 1 yellow, 1 red), a bunch of sliced baby bello mushrooms, and 2 bags of cheese tortellini later...and we have dinner! Oh yeah, and add some basil and oregano. Yummy! Anyone who thinks a yummy dinner is hard to make, or takes a long time, needs to check out my recipes box, a lot of which I've just made up :)

While we were packing dinner after bible study, I snapped 2 quick pictures. Tell me you don't wish this was your lunch tomorrow. If you did, I'd call you a liar :P

All the yummy "nubbins":


And all mixed up:

Busy in the Kitchen

Another reason I really like fall is because I tend to spend more time in the kitchen. In the summer, it's more cold salads, grilled foods, etc to keep the a/c down and the house cool. When the cooler weather of fall arrives, before it's time to turn on the heat, it's a great time to bake and cook! At least in my opinion. :) Plus there are so many yummy things to make as fun "fall foods".

For instance, I baked Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies on Monday night while Peter and I watched "Definitely, Maybe". (The movie was pretty good, but not so great that I didn't mind having to keep pausing it to switch batches.) The cookies turned out delicious! Peter wasn't that much of a fan because he doesn't like pumpkin and spice flavors. I took this batch of cookies to Jerry as a (late) thank you for watching Cadi last month and then brought in the other half to work on Tuesday. They were gone in like an hour haha. I also kept a few at home for me of course! :)


Continuing with the yumminess of fall flavors, last night we had Baked Turkey Cutlets, Butternut Bowties, and Roasted/Pureed Cauliflower. Yum! :)


I got the cauliflower and butternut squash recipes a week or so ago while watching TV at home after one of Peter's several eye appointments. I took note of them because I knew I wanted to try them later. I gotta say they were quite tastey. :)

I also used up the rest of my few apples and made homemade applesauce last night. I think I'll use it tomorrow night and make a pork roast with applesauce. Sounds yummy, huh?

In other news, beyond the kitchen of our house, our roof is finally finished. I'm happy about that. Not too thrilled about them tearing up my yard and garden though as they "cleaned up". Peter's working out the details of how to rectify that situation though. :) I'm glad I have him because I can get fired up about things like that rather quickly and could chew the roofer out in no time. Peter is much more level headed and deals wonderfully in these kinds of situations. Just another reason God paired us up I guess :)

And besides that, we've just been working and attending weekly eye appts for Peter. His eye seems to be doing better, but we'll see whether or not he needs another needle procedure on Weds. And I'm afraid that the cold bug is nipping at my heels. For the past few days I've been feeling progressively more like a cold is coming. I've even popped an Advil Cold & Sinus on 2 different days. I've always had horrible allergies and am actually quite surprised that I've been able to fend off the cold for this long. Usually I'm sick by September. Making it more than halfway through October is quite the accomplishment for me. We've also gotten these air fresheners at work all over the place that I was highly allergic too so I'm afraid that has not helped the problem. Fortunately, yesterday I voiced that I couldn't take it anymore and the air fresheners are now gone. Each time they spritzed the fragrance I started hacking my lungs out and I had shortness of breath with difficulty breathing. As much fun as that was every 36 minutes (literally, it's one of those Air Wick things "every 9 18 or 36 minutes"), I just couldn't take it anymore.

So that's really all that's going on in our lives as of late. Hope everyone else is enjoying fall as much as we are :)

Cleanest Kitchen in PA

After work today Peter and I cleaned our kitchen from top to bottom, including taking all of the shelves and drawers out of the fridge and giving that and the freezer a good scrub down.  I figured since it was empty from the power outage that we should take advantage of the opportunity to clean it.  

Peter went to pick up the food from Jerry's and the coolers we took over the first time were sticky inside for some reason so when he called I said just dump it in the trunk of the car haha.  Luckily 2 folks from church were there to help him.  Here's what the trunk looked like when he got back:

It's kinda hard to see since it was dark out and we took it with his iPhone, but it was a trunk full of frozen foods haha.  He brought them in and I organized them back into our 5ft stand up freezer and then what needed to go upstairs again.  

Our fridge/freezer in the kitchen looks more empty than they used to because the fridge no longer has the half used marinades, etc in it.  And I only put a few things in the freezer for now. 

All in all it was a night of working on getting our kitchen back in order.  We're very glad to have power again and it even feels good to have a completely cleaned and organized kitchen and fridge/freezer.

35 cents pays for dinner.

Tonight Peter and I had dinner for 70 cents.  Not each, but total.  Wondering how?  Well here's how it happened.  I bought rice pilaf at GE last week for free with the double coupons.  And I bought a pound of fresh green beans on sale for 99 cents a pound.  Well we used half of those in last night's dinner and the leftover for tonight's.  So half of 99 cents is about 50 cents.  For the meat, we picked up Jack Daniel's sesame chicken strips from TGIFridays on the way home from the eye doctor's.  They are $8 with tax etc but I had a coupon for a free appetizer for up to $8.  So the total came to 21 cents.  That with the 50 cents is about 70 cents.  Divided by two = 35 cents for dinner.  So when we came home we had a nice 35 cents dinner of sesame chicken strips, rice pilaf and fresh green beans.  I can't believe how cheap it was haha.  This is really the cheapest I've been able to make dinner.  Usually it hovers around $2-$4 per person.  Sometimes I have a hard time eating out because I can make the meals for a whole lot less at home.  I'm breaking financial records this week with coupon savings and dinners!  It's such a good feeling to save money.  

It's already June 1?

Today was a productive day.  After church, we did some errands, grabbed lunch and were home by 3:00.  Peter got a haircut, I picked up Ashley's contacts, we returned things at JCP, and purchased superglue and a new adapter for one of our kitchen outlets.  We recently bought a new piece of furniture from Craigslist to hold our microwave, toaster oven, etc etc.  I was going to sand and paint it to  match all of the kitchen cupboards I painted last September, but got too busy so it will have to wait til next weekend.  We did manage to get some yard work done today though.  It was mid 70's and sunny so much nicer for doing such things.  Peter cut the grass and weed wacked and I did some weeding and digging in front for our landscape we're working on.  I think by next weekend I'll be ready to put some more plants in which I'm super excited about.  I know, nerdy, but I am.  We cleaned up, showered and were relaxing by 7 which was nice.  We ate leftovers for dinner because we've had so many yummy dinners this week all yielding leftovers since I cook more than what is needed for 2 since we take the dinners for lunches the next day, etc.  We've had Balsamic Chicken Pasta w/Broccoli and Portobello Mushrooms which I totally made up one day a few years ago and its delicious, also a chicken salad recipe I got from my mom that we had on toasted whole grain bagels (yum), Chicken Lo Mein which I totally made up as I went along and it was great (lots of yummy veggies in it too!) and Steak with Corn on the Cob and a salad.  We both chose the Chicken Pasta tonight as we watched some more of "The Office".  We're total addicts.  We've made it to season 4 which we watch online at nbc and I'm super excited Jim and Pam are dating.  Again, nerdy, but that's the kind of girl I am. :)

Peter and I both have a 4 day weekend next weekend which we're really excited about.  Plans?  None.  Well, that's not true.  We have a bunch of little ideas and things we want to do like explore Carnegie Library and part of Pittsburgh, paint that piece of furniture, do some misc. housework, etc.  Just a great 4 day weekend.  I have time to use before June 30 and have a big audit and things at work so that was the last I could use them with a weekend to make a 4 day weekend.   I'm glad that we'll have 4 days at home to do whatever we want.  Weekends go so fast and anytime we have an extra day off to use with weekends, we're always visiting family because we don't get to see them too often.  It's a lot of fun, but it means things at home don't get done and it's also tiring sometimes.  We just went to Berwick and Philly last weekend and are driving to VA/DC at the end of June so we didn't want to have to drive anywhere this weekend.  Lazy?  Maybe :P   Now I just have to make it through the next 5 days of work.  Then it's 4 days off, 3 days of work and another 2 days off haha.  I know it'll come and go before I know it though.  Ah, the realities of life :P haha

T-fal has passed the test!

Tonight for dinner I made some yummy chicken lo mein with veggies.  It was pretty simple and tasted good so another successful recipe that I just made up haha.  I was also planning ahead and boiling enough chicken for tomorrow's dinner as well so that when I got home it'd be a quick 5 minute fix and dinner would be ready.  Well Peter and I came in to watch some episodes of "The Office" from our DVD collection and got completely enthralled in the show that we totally forgot about the extra chicken we had boiling.....until Peter smelled smoke and then I was like UH OH.  I asked him if he thought the stove was on and he said no we turned it off (referring to the burners used for tonight's mea-which were off).  We got into the kitchen and it was completely clouded with smoke.  All of the water in the 5 quart pot had cooked up and the chicken was burnt to the bottom.  We opened the door, turned on the fan to draw the smoke out, and then poured cold water on the pot.  To much of the surprise of both of us, the pot literally wiped clean.  All of the burned on chicken, chicken fat, water, etc. just wiped off!  I was worried at first because of how bad it looked, but after washing it out, you wouldn't even know this little incident happened!  I'm glad because I love my t-fal and use this pot all the time.  It's good to know that t-fal won't let me down haha.