Recipe: Broccoli Baked Mac and Cheese

Ingredients:

1 cup of macaroni

1 cup broccoli (chopped up)

1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese

3 tbsp flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

2 tbsp butter (melted)

2/3 cup bread crumbs

Directions:

Cook macaroni in salted boiling water until soft. Drain well.

Grease a large shallow casserole dish and set aside.

In a bowl mix together cooked and drained macaroni, broccoli, 3/4 cup of cheese, flour, salt and pepper. Place mixture in the casserole dish and cover with remaining cheese. 

Mix melted butter with bread crumbs and sprinkle on top of macaroni.

Bake at 350° for 40 minutes.

Enjoy!!!

Organizing My Husband's Workspace

My husband is away travelling right now, and as much as I miss him, this has been the perfect opportunity to purge and organize his work space. It's hard to believe looking at the picture below that he actually was able to work here and knew where everything was. I've been told all tech workers are like this, but it still seemed a little too much to me. 

The picture above is from about a month ago, a few things were organized by my husband before he left, so I shouldn't take all the credit, but it still took me three days to get it from close to that to this:

I love my husband very much, but if his desk gets messy again I think I may have to kill him. 

Leftovers Recipe: Creamy Spinach Dip Baked Pasta

In my last post I made some creamy spinach dip, well I realised I made just too much for the amount of people in our home right now and it was getting a little repetitive. I only had about half the amount of spinach dip left when I used it in this recipe, so keep in mind, what I made here is a relatively small amount and you may need to double up this recipe to satisfy everyone's stomach. 

Ingredients:
Creamy spinach dip (click here for the recipe)
1 1/2 cups of bow tie pasta (or 1 cup of macaroni)
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1 tsp butter

Directions:
Cook pasta according to directions on the box until soft. Drain well.
Using the butter grease a shallow casserole dish and set aside.
Take the cooked pasta and stir in the spinach dip and half the mozzarella cheese. Place in the casserole and sprinkle with the remaining cheese.
Bake at 400° for 15 minutes.

Enjoy!!!

Recipe: Creamy Spinach Dip

I love snack foods. I sometimes replace lunch with various types of snack foods, which, (hanging my head in shame) is really bad. Nonetheless, I thought I'd share a current favourite snack food of mine, a creamy and delicious spinach dip. 

Ingredients:

1/2 cup onion

1 1/4 cups washed and thoroughly drained spinach 

1/2 cup softened cream cheese

1/2 cup sour cream

sprinkle of cayenne pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

2 tsp garlic salt

Directions:

Chop up the onion and spinach and set aside. 

In a small mixing bowl, bring together all other ingredients using an electric mixer. 

Spoon in chopped spinach and onions, stir in well until combined. 

Let the dip sit in the fridge for a few hours before serving.

Enjoy!!!

DYI: Glass Cleaner

There are many reasons to start making your own household cleaning products, be it environmental reasons, financial reasons....really any reason. Although, no matter what the reason may be, we all still want products that work well. I think I have it, this might possibly be the best homemade glass cleaner ever. This recipe comes straight from Crunchy Betty, all I did was alter the measurements a teeny bit to fit in my spray bottle. Try it, it works great!

Ingredients:

1/5 cup vinegar

1/5 cup rubbing alcohol

1 tbsp cornstarch

1 1/2 cups warm water 

Direction:

Pour all the ingredients into a spray bottle and shake well. Voila, homemade glass cleaner.

Recipe: Crock Pot Apple Butter

This is my favourite crock pot recipe, I love absolutely anything with apples in it. My kids eat this mixed in with yogurt, on top of waffles and I'm sure they wouldn't mind having it straight out of the jar either. It uses minimal ingredients, doesn't require much effort and tastes great. When it comes to recipes, what else is better than that?!

Ingredients:
1 dozen apples, peeled, cored, and cut into small pieces (I used red delicious)
1/2 cup Water
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon all spice
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

Take the cut up apples place them in the crock pot or a large bowl and coat them with the brown sugar, all the spices and water, mix well and turn the cock pot dial to the lowest setting. 

Cover and let sit for 5-7 hours....really the longer the better. 

Use a blender to make it a smooth apple butter (which is what I did) or leave it as is.

Jar it and enjoy!!!

Health Food Review: Bolthouse Green Goodness

From the website: "Bolthouse Farms® Green Goodness® starts with wheat grass, spirulina, spinach and blue-green algae. We add apples, kiwis, mangos, bananas, pineapples and dragon fruit to make it a good source of iron and Vitamin B6, naturally rich in Vitamins A, C, and B12, and packed with powerful phytonutrients found in nature's most nutritious greens.

• Blend of 8 delicious juices/purees.
• Packed with 14 powerful nutrients delivering unmatched healthy green phytonutrients.
• No preservatives and nothing artificial.
• Flash pasteurized and cold-filled for longer shelf life and superior nutrition.
• 100% Juice, 100% Natural and no sugar added.
• Gluten free."

The colour of this drink can understandably put anyone off, but once you take that first sip, you will soon become addicted. Although this juice contains many kinds of potent vegetables, the first thing I noticed was the taste of tart apples, the drink is overall very sweet, but that doesn't hide the tart taste.

This drink tastes more like it is a fruit juice concoction and not a fruit and vegetable juice mixture, although the slight vegetable taste will be stronger for those who are new to these types of drinks. This juice is more like a smoothie rather than a juice, but does not have a gritty texture. As well, one cup of this juice is pretty filling, I wouldn't use this juice as a meal replacement, but drinking one cup of this instead of eating a chocolate bar would leave you feeling physically more satisfied, while consuming less calories. What really makes this juice worth drinking is the amount of vitamins and minerals even one serving contains, as shown below. 

At the end of the day this juice is just good, I don't find it to be spectacular, it's tastes good, but there are also better tasting juices out there that have the same nutritional value and similar vitamin and mineral content. 

Organizing the Pantry

Our pantry has needed a little love and attention for a while, so I finally got around to doing some organizing. Although there is a vast improvement, I'm not 100% happy with how it looks now, I think I'll let some of the food whittle down a bit and go from there. Here are some before and after pictures, just in case it's hard to tell the before is on the right, while the after is on the left.

Canned and baking goods before, become canned, soup and baking goods after.

From the top to bottom: baking goods, pasta related items and baking items that are sealed. Notice how I used some old baby wipe containers as risers, pretty ingenious eh? Well maybe not.

I have no idea what to do with this pantry, all I know is that I want to change it. Add some more shelves in between the existing shelves? Paint the Shelves? Some thing's in store for this pantry. 

Today's Great Deal: Thrift Store Shopping

My family and I went thrift store shopping today, I think we've gone so much lately that we've really gotten all we can get for the time being. There are really only a few other things I'm looking to pick up that is second hand, but have had no luck finding them. Garage sale season is coming up shortly, so I'm thinking I'm going to take a second hand shopping break until then.

Today we went to Talize where all blue ticketed items were 50% off, unfortunately the blue ticketed items were few and far between. From Talize I bought a shirt/dress, can dispenser and camping pan. After that, we went to this little thrift store, I can't remember the name of it but all the proceeds go to the Surrey Memorial Hospital, where we picked up the jars, jar accessories, salad spinner and mini cake pan. Considering we spent just over $15.00 for everything it wasn't at all a bad trip.

Recipe: Old Fashioned Pectin Free Strawberry Jam

I'm sure just about everyone knows how to make pectin free strawberry jam, but since there was a point in my adult life when I didn't, I'm making a recipe post for all others out there that mirror the younger version of me in the this department.

Ingredients:

8 cups of whole strawberries 

6 cups of sugar

1/4 cup lemon juice

Directions:

-Set the stove to low-medium (on a 1 to 10 dial I use a 3).

-Rinse and drain the strawberries and place in the a large pot. Add sugar and lemon juice to the pot and gently stir together. 

-Take a fork and press the strawberries against the pot as everything starts to heat up. Stir occasionally and let the jam come to and stay at a boil. Leave on the stove for at least an hour, or until you get the desired thickness and then place in jars.

Enjoy!!!