Cook. Craft. Enjoy.

Weekend Cooking

What did you think about the game yesterday?  It was such a nasty weather day yesterday that we stayed home and goofed off with the game in the background.  I was amazed (along with everyone else I'm sure) at what a low scoring game it was -- and happy to see the Giants win.  (Gotta love the underdog.)

Travis wanted "junk" food for munching on during the game so we had some chips and salsa and I made some sausage stuffed jalapenos.  (The recipe for that can be found here.)

They came out so good -- I got probably 2 of them and the rest Don and Travis ate in record time.

My other cooking project for this weekend was a recreation of Outback Steakhouse's bread.  A couple of weeks ago we went there for dinner and Liam just loved it.  He's been bugging us to go back for their steak and their bread (2 of his favorite foods).  My problem with that is if/when we do go back we have to get him an adult meal -- the kids steak was much too small for his appetite -- and I have objection to spending $20 on a meal for a 6 year old.  Luckily I came across this recipe on Recipezaar.

The only change I made in the recipe was to omit the food coloring -- I figure we really didn't need to add artificial anything to it.  It really is a great recipe and Liam declared it just as good as Outback's (though he did ask why it wasn't darker in color).  I can see this on our menu again soon.

Happy Half Birthday, Travis!

Today Travis turned 15 1/2 and I thought that was a great reason to celebrate.  I asked him last night if he wanted a cake or something similar and he told me he wanted pumpkin pie.  Fast forward to early this afternoon and he changed his mind to key lime pie.

Now I'm not much of a pie maker, but I can make a few decent types and key lime just happens to be one of them.  I love my recipe because it's so simple.  Here are the ingredients:

(okay, you actually only use the egg yolks, but that would have been a little messy to photograph like that...)

You mix the ingredients together, bake for 15 minutes and poof! a pie.  I like to serve it with whipped cream and Travis's piece was the whipped creamiest (by his request):

And for those of you that would actually like to see what the pie looks like ...

One Hundred and What?

After school today Liam and I went and got haircuts.  It was around 2:00 when we were finished and back out to the van.  When I turned the van on and started to go we looked up at the thermometer and it was reading 117.  117?  Yep.  It is way too early in June to be this hot!  I hope this doesn't signal how awful our summer is going to be.

For tonight's dinner I was planning on making a Rachael Ray recipe.  However, the heat zapped me too badly and we ended up with leftovers.  (That recipe will be for tomorrow no doubt.)  No real leftovers were to be had for Liam so I asked him if he wanted pasta or spaghetti.    (He thinks of pasta as any shape other than spaghetti -- that has its own category.)   Pasta was the verdict and while dining he decided to make "rafts" out of them:

After dinner Adrienne went to her friend's house for a sleepover and the boys got in some pool action.  (Doesn't this look like a big hamster wheel?)

I did get one recipe made today, though.  I wanted something cool and decided on a frozen peanut butter cheesecake.  The results, unfortunately, were less than stellar -- it was way too heavy and sweet for me but Don and Travis enjoyed it.  The recipe came from All Recipes and is linked above if you'd like to try it.  It did look really yummy, though.