Stuck Indoors. Completing Some Pins.

I pin a lot on Pinterest. I especially enjoy pinning recipes, but don't always have the time to actually make anything that I've pinned. Well, like I mentioned yesterday, we've been stuck indoors a ton over the last week. In that time, I managed to make four of the recipes that I had pinned. Three of them worked out wonderfully, one I think I'll have to tweak to make it really work for me. Here they are with my reviews:

1. Soft Caramel Corn from The Girl Who Ate Everything. This recipe claims that it is the softest most wonderful carmel corn you will ever have (or something along those lines). We had a movie afternoon last week, so I decided that we'd have this for a little treat. I used a single bag of popcorn and halved the other ingredients. This truly is the best carmel corn I've ever had. The kids loved what little I gave them (I ate all of the rest). It came together really easily and delivered. This recipe is a keeper.

2. Buttermilk Roast Chicken from Smitten Kitchen. D doesn't love roasted chicken, but sometimes it just sounds like something that I have to make. You can hardly go wrong with a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. This recipe requires that you marinate/brine your chicken for a good 24 hours. The end result was probably the moistest chicken I've ever had. A couple of notes: I used smoked paprika (which I'm now in love with) and it ended up taking my chicken a lot longer to get up to temperature. I used all legs, but they were gigantic legs. I think they were in the oven for a good 45 mins. I started checking them after the recommended 30 minutes and they definitely needed more time. Also, the skin never did get very crispy, I ended up removing the skin on my serving  (after roasting) and enjoyed it a lot better that way. Again, this recipe would be a keeper if D appreciated bone in chicken more.

3. Cheesy Biscuits from Plain Chicken. I was really excited about this recipe and felt rather like Martha Stewart baking these on the same night as the roasted chicken.  I was really hoping that they would taste more like the biscuits at Red Lobster. No joy. In my opinion, these need more cheese and less sugar. The end result was just too sweet for me. That said, the kids liked them more than I did. For my taste, this recipe needs tweaking.

4. Snow Ice Cream from Life with Moore Babies. I'm amazed that with all of the snowy winters I've been through, I'd never heard of snow ice cream. I heard mention of it from one of my Face Book friends and promptly pinned this recipe. We certainly had enough snow for it, so I had Jellybean help me collect some and we mixed up a batch.

It was delicious. We added a little extra snow to cut the sweetness. I think we'll have to make a tradition out of making this on snowy days.

The kids agree.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

Pretzel Break

I have been struggling with a terrible head cold for the last few days.  It was a gift from my beautiful children.  Don't you love the way illness works its way through the family?  All in all this darn cold has been working us over for the last two weeks.
On Saturday, despite being under the weather, I had a sudden hankering for soft pretzels.  I'm pretty sure that this was my train of thought: I started thinking about how much I wanted to be out of the house (we've been cooped up for a while). Then I thought how nice it would be to go to the mall. From there I imagined purchasing some lovely soft pretzel bites from the Pretzel Maker in the mall....mmmm.
Off to Pinterest I went for a pretzel recipe. I found one that I thought was worth trying. I found the recipe via Just Another Day in Paradise and it looks like the original recipe was found on In Katrina's Kitchen. Both are great websites. Here's the recipe:

Soft Pretzels and Pretzel Bites

Ingredients
2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (1 pkg)
2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups warm water
4 cups flour

2 cups water
2 Tablespoons baking soda
3 Tablespoons butter, melted
coarse Kosher salt

In the bowl of a mixer, fitted with dough hook, dissolve yeast, brown sugar and salt in the warm water. Mix in flour until the dough has come together enough to turn out onto a floured surface. Knead the dough until smooth and elastic, about 7 minutes. (If you don't have a mixer, you can do all this by hand with a sturdy spoon and then kneading an extra 2-3 minutes) Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover it, and let it rise for 1 hour.

After the dough has risen, cut it into 16 pieces. Let the dough rest for five minutes. Roll each piece into a 1 1/2 foot rope. Twist ropes into small pretzel shapes OR for bites: Cut each rope into small pieces. Don't cut them too small. I found that larger was a little better. 

In a large saucepan, bring the 2 cups of water and the baking soda to a simmer over med heat. In batches, place pretzel pieces in the water. For larger pretzels, I did two at a time. Let them cook in the water for about 20 seconds. Take out and lay them on a greased cooking sheet. Repeat until all the pieces are done. Let them rise for another 15 minutes.

Brush them with melted butter and sprinkle them with salt. Bake at 450 degrees for 8-10 minutes, or until golden brown. Make sure not to over cook them. I liked them best when they were on the lighter side of golden brown.

My children gobbled the pretzel bites right up. They kept coming back for more. If they hadn't just gotten back from getting bagels, they probably would have eaten half the batch. It was fun trying my hand at something new.  We'll have to make them again in the future.


Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

This post is partying here:

Random. Awesome. Friday.

I don't usually post on Friday.  This is my Pinterest/catch up on blogs day. I'm breaking from the usual routine because I have a few totally random tips that I wanted to share:

1. Bake Don't Boil Eggs:

I found this awesome idea on Pinterest, but it's really all thanks to Alton Brown from America's Test Kitchen.  Turns out that it is 20 times easier (at least for me) to hard cook an egg in the oven instead of boiling it on the stove.  Plus, less sulfur smell and the eggs come out perfectly every time.  I've been baking eggs weekly since I got this tip. 325 degree oven, 30 mins. Place in ice bath immediately for about 10 minutes. Peel eggs, put back in ice bath to completely cool. Keep in a sealed container in the fridge. I'm now able to enjoy deviled eggs any time I want. :)

2. Dryer Sheets on Water Stains:

My awesome sister in law gave me this great tip.  I was having trouble cleaning the glass surrounds on my shower.  I tried a ton of different options, this one took the cake. Turns out that a slightly damp dryer sheet is excellent for removing water stains on the glass.  Rub the glass well with the dryer sheet and then finish up with a slightly damp microfiber cloth and you'll have lovely clean glass that you can actually see through.

3. Engage, Embrace, Enjoy:

Nice little tip brought to you from the lovely people at Dove chocolate.  I eat an embarrassing amount of chocolate. So much actually that I've mostly stopped reading the little sayings inside of each wrapper.  Well, I read one today and found it particularly applicable to my current state of mind regarding my children.  I'm sure it had more to do with life in general, but I decided, as a mother, that this would be an excellent daily mantra.  I need to engage my children more, embrace them more and just simply enjoy them more. Words to live by and a tasty piece of chocolate to boot. Not bad.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ