I am Martha Stewart's worse nightmare.

I made THIS for dinner tonight.

Looks edible enough, right? It's layered with chicken, broccoli and cheese, and some other tasty ingredients. Pretty normal ingredients for a casserole dish.

Well, it wasn't a hit. With me. The kids. Or the Mr.

In fact, it was so bad Madi made the comment, "It looks like it's something that should go in the garbage."

Followed two minutes later by Avery vomiting it back up onto her plate.

Nice.

Yeah. It WAS that bad.

Even the hubby who walked in the door five minutes after the vomiting occured said, "Something smells a little off in here."

I have never claimed to be a good cook. Out of 6.8 billion people on the earth, I rank down there with the worse of them. I am not being negative. I am just stating the facts. There's a difference.

And the fact is, I will probably never hear or see the words,  "Best Cook..." for anything. I will probably never win a blue ribbon for homemade jam or bread. And I will probably never be featured or have a recipe shared in a recipe book anywhere.

Sad. I know. You are probably feeling really sorry for me now, aren't you? (heavy sarcasm)

I totally accept that cooking is not one of my gifts. I know you can become good at alomst anything if you practice enough and work hard, so I am trying to do just that. But some things, no matter how much you practice or work at it, you still never become great at it. Maybe better over time, yes, but never great or outstanding.

However much I stink at cooking, I find myself really enjoying the time I do get when I cook and prepare food...(when that doesn't involve kids crying, whining, telling me they are hungry a ba-zillion and one times while I am trying to prepare it, or having to wipe their noses and/or bums another ba-zillion times(don't worry I wash my hands, which is another frustrating thing, always having to wash my hands because of the snot and poo (yes, I just said, "poo".))).

I have made a few dishes/desserts that I find absolutely divine. Recipes that my family gobbles up as soon as it's done. For one thing, I think I can scramble up some pretty tasty scrambled eggs. And I love my chocolate chip oatmeal cookies! Oh, they are Heaven.

So even though this casserole failed beyond even my wildest imagination...(because I don't imagine vomiting when I imagine my cooking) I will keep trying to cook and become better not only for my family but for those poor individuals who get invited over for dinner. God Bless their hearts... and their taste buds.

A few of my favorite foods...

For breakfast or for a snack, I sometimes have a cup of low-fat cottage cheese with fresh blueberries, strawberries and peaches. SOOOO good! You are drooling at the mouth, aren't you?

I love love LOVE a good salad. In my opinion there is nothing better than that. It makes you feel good, it tastes good and it's good for you. I eat a salad almost everyday whether that be for lunch or dinner. Most of the time this is what I make for lunch:

Love at first sight, right??

I buy a big bag of grilled chicken strips at Costco that usually lasts me almost a month. Before I prepare my fresh salad and cut everything up I grill up about 3 ounces of chicken strips.

With the chicken grilling, I add my lettuce, cut up red peppers(sometimes orange), broccoli, sliced red onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, sometimes an avocado, and sometimes dried blueberries or a few dried cranberries. And then I top it with a sprinkle of sunflower seeds. For dressing I add about 2 tablespoons of poppy seed dressing. I have tried about 5 poppy seed dressings, because I wanted to find one that was low in calories yet not disgusting to MY taste buds.

This dressing was definitely my favorite as far as flavor goes, but

LiteHouse makes a pretty good poppy seed dressing that is half the fat and calories and tastes similar to the Brianna's brand.


Now obviously you can add whatever you want to YOUR salad. I just wanted to share my specialty salad with you. My husband loves it and even my girls love it. I like to see them eating healthy foods along with me.



What is your favorite snack or salad?

Chicken Zucchini Caserole

It's a recipe that I got from my mom and I love it. I really like making casserole dishes and also crock pot meals, because they are fast and usually pretty easy to throw together even when you got two kids hanging from each leg and a baby crying.


Get a big pot of boiling water going. Then slice/cut up 2-3 whole zucchinis and 1 whole onion. Dump it all in boiling water for 8-10 minutes until they are tender. Drain. While that is cooking add in a large bowl:

1-2 cans of chicken(already cooked) or 4 large chicken breasts cooked
1-2 cans of cream of chicken
1 cup of sour cream
1-2 cups cheese
salt for taste

Mix drained zucchini/onions together with the rest in the large mixing bowl.

In another bowl take a half a stick of melted butter and add that to a box of stove top dressing.

Finally coat the bottom of glass dish with the stove top/butter mixture, add all the chicken/zucchini mixture and then top that with the rest of the stove top.

Cook at 375 until top is brown and crispy.

Enjoy!

Another Favorite

My sister, April made this dish for us one time for dinner and I have made it at least twice a month since! It's healthy, fast and so good! I love it! And my kids like it too!

Ingredients:

Saute' all these together:
1 TBSP olive oil
1 medium onion- chopped
1 package of Italian sausage- sliced up
1 tsp. garlic (optional)
1 large tomato- chopped up
1 package of mushrooms (optional)
2 squash- sliced up
2 zucchini- sliced up

Cook on Medium High. Stir often and cover with lid. When squash and zucchini are tender it's done about 15 minutes or so.You can salt if you like, I just like it plain because it makes a lot of juices while it cooks.

Hope you like it too!

9 out of 10

There are a few reasons I usually don't share my food concoctions with others...

1.The dish almost always tastes weird and my husband will try sneaking to the garbage to throw it away, but not before I catch him in the act. haha!

2. I burn food all the time, even with a timer. Don't know how that is even possible, but I seem to make it happen again and again. (I bet I have a faulty timer! That's got to be it! ;) My husband and I even have this joke, that whenever I am making cookies that he cooks the last batch, because I ALWAYS end up burning them. Always.

3. I am not too fond of cooking. Why? Well, that's reason #3.

4. It takes 30-60 minutes or LONGER to make something and 5-10 minutes to eat it. Ugh.

5. The most important reason of them all: By dinner time, I am usually exhausted. So settling for Mac and Cheese or pancakes is fine with me. No big mess, and No, "I don't like that!" or "I want ______ instead."

I think my mom is an amazing cook. Growing up my mom made sure we had a good meal to eat 5-6 times a week. We always ate as a family and I think that is so important. It was so fun being together as a family talking around the dinner table. Those were some of my favorite memories. Looking back I think, Wow! How did my mom do that? I appreciate her now and what she did for our family even more as I have my own family and I am grateful that she made that happen.

Anyway, I made a goal a while ago that I would cook up something NEW, whether that be by experimenting like I did here in this recipe or making a recipe from a book or friend. Well, last week I had some ideas floating around in my head about the food in my fridge that I needed to use up and how I could put it all together. I am sure there is a dish similar to this somewhere but I just did it on my own. That may not be a big deal to all you cooks out there, but for me it WAS! And it was a success. Which is even a BIGGER deal for me...and my husband. Ryan gave it a 9 out of 10!


Ingredients:

1lb. lean hamburger (or turkey)
1 package of Butoni noodles
1 medium onion chopped up
1 red bell pepper chopped up (or green)
1-2 cup mushrooms (optional)
2 cup cheese (any kind I guess)
1 jar of spaghetti sauce (or for you amazing cooks, you can make your own! I prefer the easy route.)

I cooked the meat some and then added onions, mushrooms and red bell pepper together. Drain.

While doing the meat, I had a another pan boiling the noodles.

Add a thin layer of spaghetti sauce to the bottom of a glass dish. Layering it like lasagna, I added the noodles, hamburger and vegetable mixture, cheese, and sauce again. I did about 3-4 layers till it was all gone and then topped with cheese.



Put in the oven for 15-20 minutes on 350 just until the cheese is melted. And Wallah! You have a delicious dinner for the family!

Food Flop!

Everyone has their little secret indulgences. Mine is chocolate. A side of chocolate with anything and dipped in everything sounds great to me! ;) I have been craving CHOCOLATE chip pumpkin bread for the past, oh I know don't...2 weeks, but finally got around to making some last night. I have been trying to do things more healthy as far as food choices go, (The Biggest Loser inspires that in me... don't worry it doesn't last long!) One reason I put off making it, is because it isn't very healthy. But my craving for it kept resurfacing, and I found myself at those moments salivating uncontrollably. haha! So instead of adding 1 cup oil like the recipe says, I substituted that for apple sauce. And instead of three cups sugar I did 2 cups. And instead of 4 eggs, I did 2 eggs and 2 egg whites only. With all those heathly alternatives I thought, "I hope it tastes the same. I am really craving some 'good' chocolate chip pumpkin bread!"

Well, just like you thought... it was a FLOP. (The title must have given that away, not all the sarcasm)

I made three loaves and although they look great on the outside, the middle looks like gel and reminds me of fruitcake. (I am not a fan of big chunks of fruit in anything- pizza, pie, and especially cake). The texture is all wrong and doesn't even slightly resemble anything known as "bread". I was sadly dissappointed the way it turned out, and actually thought before baking it I would take plates of bread around to friends...what a joke that would be! (Sorry, I had good intentions mind you...) But what did I expect after taking out all the "good" ingredients!? At least now, I am not craving pumpkin bread like I was and saved myself a few long hours in the gym!

Anyone still interested in something that sort of resembles what should have been known as pumpkin bread, be my guest!

I found this cartoon and just thought it was funny.