Crockpot Kickin' BBQ Chicken

Ingredients

4-6 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
1 bottle sweet baby ray's bbq sauce
1/4 c vinegar
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 c brown sugar
1 tsp garlic powder

Directions 

Mix BBQ sauce with vinegar, red pepper flakes, brown sugar and garlic powder.

Place chicken in crockpot (still frozen is ok). Pour sauce mixture over chicken.

Cook on LOW 4-6 hours.

Recipe courtesy: Tamara Martin

Easy Homemade Fried Rice from Scratch

Ingredients

3 cups cooked white rice (day old or leftover rice works best!)
3 tbs sesame oil
1 cup frozen peas and carrots (thawed)
1 small onion, chopped
2 tsp minced garlic
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/4 cup soy sauce

On medium high heat, heat the oil in a large skillet or wok. Add the peas/carrots mix, onion and garlic. Stir fry until tender. Lower the heat to medium low and push the mixture off to one side, then pour your eggs on the other side of skillet and stir fry until scrambled. Now add the rice and soy sauce and blend all together well. Stir fry until thoroughly heated!

Trisha Yearwood's Baked Potato Soup

This is my husband's favorite soup! He looks forward to it every time I make it.

Source of Recipe
From "Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen" by Trisha Yearwood

Ingredients

4 large baking potatoes *

6 bacon slices

2/3 cup (1-1/3 sticks) butter

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

6 cups milk

¾ tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

2 green onions, finely chopped

5 ounces Cheddar cheese, shredded

8 ounces sour cream


Instructions

Preheat the oven to 400° F.
Wash the potatoes and prick them several times with a fork. Wrap them individually in foil, and bake them for 1 hour, or until they are soft when squeezed. Let the potatoes cool slightly.

While the potatoes bake, cook the bacon in a small skillet. Drain the bacon on paper towels and, when cool enough to handle, crumble it into small pieces. Set aside.

In a large, heavy saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the flour, stirring constantly for 1 minute until smooth. Gradually whisk in the milk and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, for 5 to 10 minutes, until the mixture is thick and bubbling. Cut the potatoes in half lengthwise, and scoop the flesh into the thickened milk mixture. Add the salt, pepper, green onions, reserved bacon, and Cheddar. Cook over low heat just until heated through. Stir in the sour cream and serve.

Serves 10

NOTE:
* Leftover baked potatoes may also be used for this recipe. Peel and mash them coarsely before adding to the milk mixture.

My Favorite Apple Cobbler with Delicious Crumb Topping

Apple Cobbler
Ingredients
2 1/2 pounds Granny Smith apples
2 pounds Fuji apples
1 1/2 pounds Gala apples
3 cups granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 sticks (6-ounces) chilled unsalted butter, plus softened butter for baking dish
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1 (6-ounce) package sweetened, dried cranberries (I never actually put cranberries in my pie, to be honest, but the original recipe calls for this, you can skip it)
1 large egg

1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 (6-ounce) package sliced almonds
Note: You will need approximately 8 to 10 apples total.
Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and butter a 9 by 13-inch baking dish.

Peel and core the apples and cut them into 1/4 to 1/2-inch dice. Try to get the apples pieces as uniform as possible to ensure even baking in the cobbler. Combine the apples with 1 cup of the sugar in a large bowl. Cover and set in the refrigerator while preparing the cobbler topping. The sugar will draw out some of the moisture in the apples, so the filling will be nice and thick.

Combine the remaining sugar with the flour and salt in a medium size bowl. Set aside 1/2 cup of the sugar and flour mixture to coat the apples. Cut the chilled butter into small pieces and work into the sugar/flour mixture using a pastry cutter, a fork, or your fingers until it forms a coarse meal.

Drain the sugar syrup from the apples and set aside. Combine the apples with the reserved flour and sugar mixture. Add the cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon zest, and sweetened dried cranberries to the apples and stir well to evenly distribute all the flavors. Pour into the buttered baking dish.

Lightly beat the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla and slowly drizzle it into the flour mixture. Don't worry if it seems a little dry at first. Continue to stir the mixture until the flour is completely absorbed into the egg. (You might want to get your hands into it and use your fingers to finish.) Take a small bit of the topping and roll it into a 1-inch ball. Gently flatten the ball into a disk and place it on top of the apple mixture in the baking dish. Repeat with the remaining topping, slightly overlapping the disks.

Bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until the juices are bubbling and the topping is a light golden brown. Let the cobbler rest for 10 to 15 minutes before serving. While the cobbler is sitting, coat the almonds with the reserved sugar syrup. Drain off the excess syrup and place the almonds on a buttered parchment lined baking sheet. Roast until the almonds are golden brown, approximately 5 to 10 minutes. Scatter them over the cobbler.

Tips: To make cutting the butter into the flour/sugar mixture a bit easier, try grating frozen sticks of butter on the large holes of a hand grater. You'll have small bits of cold butter which will help the coarse meal form quickly. Use a melon baller to scoop out the core of the apple halves quickly and with minimal waste.

Crumb topping for Apple Cobbler

1 cup brown sugar 
1 cup all-purpose flour 
1/4 cup butter, diced
Caramel (optional, for drizzling on crumb topping if you prefer)

Directions:

In a medium bowl, mix together the sugar and flour. Mix in butter with a fork or stand mixer just until the topping is crumbly. Top your pie before baking.

Summer Craft for toddlers

My son is at that age where everything about nature fascinates him. He loves bugs, plants and all kinds of wild life. He loves animals in general, so does his sister, but she is still a little too young to understand it yet.

June brings one of my many favorite critters... Fireflies! Or, as I call them, Lightning Bugs (the hell if it's not "politically correct" I will always think of them as Lightning Bugs because that is exactly what I called them as a kid).

For a project, we cut out shapes of a firefly in construction paper (black), where we cut out the hole where the firefly would light up, we turned it over, and taped a piece of tissue paper (or plastic wrap works too) over the hole.

We held up our fireflies and shined our flashlights through the holes and watched the fireflies glow!

Like I said before, I love to use specific things each week to teach the kids, I will pick things like colors, numbers or the alphabet, and I incorporate animals into this now. So this week we have been learning about fireflies! This was a fun project of many that my son really enjoyed. We took the fireflies outside at night and he had a blast!

The Royal Treatment

My amazing husband surprised me with a spa basket when he came home after work.

I've felt sick all day, and last night I started to feel nauseous, too. :( So he decided to give me a restock of my bathroom spa supplies, and it was perfect! I had the facial, Epsom's salt, coconut milk, exfoliation, sugar scrub, everything. So tonight I thought it's been a while since I've blogged, and I decided to share my personal skin care regimen with everyone.

To start, I love anything coconut. I'll eat it, wear it, soak in it. It's amazing. I've done this since I was 13. I absolutely LOVE coconut milk especially. I use it in my baths every night.

I usually add around 1/4 cup of coconut milk to a luke warm (not hot!!!) bath, I add bubbles, Epsom's salt, bath beads, or anything like that if I want to.

I use a sponge, a buff puff and nail brush. I use these near the end of my bath, because first I like to soak and read a good book with a glass of wine, some relaxing tea, or even coffee or a martini etc. It doesn't really matter how long you soak. I soak for a good 20-30 minutes, then wash, exfoliate, shave and step out.

Before dressing, I moisturize. Not just my face, I moisturize my legs, my arms, my neck. Your skin needs moisture. So I am really big on moisturizing and exfoliating. It's amazing and my skin stays super soft and smooth all year round.

I am a big exfoliation buff. I exfoliate with a number of things, from Brazilian nut to caffeine and coconut. I like to use whatever I am in the mood for. But I always make sure to use one every weekend.

I do the facial masks as well, and I moisturize moisturize moisturize! I can't stress how important keeping skin clean and moisturizing is for me. It's something I never fail to do each day and night.

I also don't eat a ton of sugary foods, or salty things. I'm not a huge pasta fan and I love water and I drink plenty which also helps your skin stay beautiful.

I don't know if it's just genetics, but I've never had a pimple in my life. It's weird. I've never had acne or anything either, not even in high school. But my mom and my grandma were really big on skin care and so they taught me a lot about taking care of yourself.

I also shave every night. I can't stand the prickly feel of leg hair. I guess I'm weird that way, too, haha. But I've always found my legs rubbing on pant legs or the sheets to be really annoying and so I prefer smooth legs at all times. (It's just me).

After my bath, I rub vitamin E oil or coconut oil into my nails and cuticles. I apply hand cream and read more of my book and have more wine or tea and then go to bed all clean and moisturized.

Wow! So much is going on this year and I've had very little chance to get on here to update or do anything else besides cooking, kids, cleaning and wedding planning! While it's true, my husband and I are technically married, (we were privately married four years ago and none of our family or all of our close friends could make it due to us not making our marriage public back when it happened), so we decided to have an actual ceremony where we exchange our vows and celebrate with our close family and friends.

It feels like we have been waiting for this special day forever! And now it's almost here! We only have 5 months to go. I can't believe how fast this year is flying by!

Well, between wedding planning, I've been doing a lot of things with the kids indoors due to the weather taking a bad turn this past weekend, freezing cold temps and frost and cold rain. Yuck! I know we need it, it is Spring after all, but the cold temperatures I could do without. We also need sunshine. :-/

Our days have been centered mostly around arts and crafts, indoor games, reading and other things that usually fail to keep my otherwise repetitive childrens' minds occupied. They have about a 3 second rebound rate at this age, so I am trying to do everything possible so I do not go insane haha.

I love my kids so much and I absolutely love what I do, so I'm not complaining. I do, however, see the humor in everything and just laugh about it all. Like I do with just about everything in life ;).

This week, the kids learned about frogs. It's one of their favorite animals. For whatever reason they love reading about them and my son especially loves them. I don't know where it comes from, although I love frogs. :)

Yesterday, for Father's Day coming up, we made a frog card out of construction paper and a paper plate. My son painted the plate green on one side, then colored it pink on the other side. We folded it in half and glued a scrunched up (accordion style) piece of pink paper into the folded inside of the frog's mouth and wrote Happy Father's Day on it, so when you pull the tongue out you can read what it says.

We cut out legs and arms for the frog out of green construction paper, and glued that to the paper plate in the back. We took two cotton balls, glued them to the face, marked two nostrils with a black marker, and then glued googly eyes to the cotton balls. I can't wait to give it to Tim! I know he is going to love it. And this is the first year Lukas has been able to make anything for him, last year we did finger paints and other cool things. But this year we got way more creative! ;)



Today we made a chart out of construction paper and frog pictures from Lukas' used up preschool book. I ended up having to cut out the frog pictures because they were so small, but Lukas helped me with the rest and it turned out pretty awesome! We purposely shaped it like a lily pad. I wasn't really sure where we were going with it all at first, but everything came together the further we worked at it. This is the result:

Well, the kids are asleep and so now I plan to do more DIY wedding stuff, and then read a good book with a glass of wine and then get some rest! (Hopefully). My daughter still wakes up at night, so I can use all the sleep I can get at this point! Between her growing, teething and everything she has been a little stinker when it comes to a full night's sleep. :-/ Oh well. Such is parenthood! :)