Crockpot Teriyaki Chicken

This past weekend I had a special visitor.  My mom came down for the long weekend.  I needed a babysitter for Saturday so she decided to stay up for a couple nights.  My Ma lives 90 minutes away.  I know it's not that far.  But when your mom is your best friend, anything further than walking distance is hard!  We spent all of Sunday together and we had the most lazy, relaxing day.  Days like this call for Crockpot meals!  I have had this recipe for Teriyaki Chicken kicking around my Pinterest for a few weeks now and I've been dying to try it.  Finally boneless skinless chicken breast went on sale so I picked some up Friday so we could give it a go.

Here's what you need.

I made three changes to the recipe.  First, I didn't have Cider Vinegar on hand.  The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons.  My substitute, 2 tablespoons White Wine Vinegar + 1 tablespoon Apple Juice.  Second, the recipe calls for 1 clove of garlic.  I refuse to follow any recipe that calls for only 1 clove of garlic on the grounds of principle.  I added 2.  Third, I reduced the amount of sugar in the recipe from 1/2 cup to 1/4 cup.  

The recipe was very easy to put together.  All you do is mix the ingredients and pour over the chicken.  Personally I think you might as well mix all your ingredients in the crockpot and then put your chicken on top and stir it around.  Why make more dishes?? According to the recipe you are to cook this on low for 4-5 hours.  I must absolutely express here the importance of getting to know your crockpot! Mine gets really hot!  In fact, the 'keep warm' setting actually boils any liquid in the pot!  My chicken was perfectly cooked after only 3 hours on low! 

Next step is to remove and dice the chicken.  Strain the liquid into a sauce pan and bring to a boil.  Then you have to add a slurry of cornstarch and water (2 teaspoons of each) and let boil until thickened.  This only took me about 30 seconds.

Toss the chicken in the thickened sauce and you're all set!  We served our chicken with rice and broccoli.

This was delicious! The chicken was tender and juicy and the sauce had just the right balance of flavors.  Give this one a try.  It's worth a Pin!

Here's a printable recipe for you!

Easy Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs

 

 I've made these slow cooker ribs before and they were a huge hit with the hubs.  So when ribs went on sale cheap I didn't think twice about making them again!  This time I documented the process for you guys!  I used this recipes method but I use my own spice rub that I'll share with you.  I hope you will like it! 

Here's what you'll need.  Plus barbecue sauce of course.  I hesitated sharing this pic with my little one.  But it was so funny I just had to.  Usually he is in the background somewhere saying "cheese" whenever I'm taking pictures for my posts.  This time he was sitting on the counter and leaned over to get into the "food selfie".  He's always trying to be a part of it all!

Start by making your spice rub.  2 tablespoons brown sugar, 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning and 2 teaspoons garlic powder.  I try not to get too complicated with my spice rubs.  And using a pre-made mix like Cajun seasoning is a great shortcut.  I don't add salt or pepper here because the Cajun seasoning has enough for my taste.  It's pretty spicy!!  This amount of spice rub was perfect for the 2 pound rack of ribs I had.  If you are making more ribs, make more rub accordingly.

Place your ribs in your slow cooker standing upright, leaning up against the sides of the pot.  Then pour your barbecue sauce on top of the ribs, allowing it to drizzle down the sides. The original recipe calls for 1 cup of barbecue sauce.  I didn't measure.  Just pour until you ribs are completely covered in sauce.  Set the slow cooker on low and cook for 6-8 hours until tender and you can easily pull meat off the bones with a fork.

Carefully remove the ribs from the slow cooker.  I use a flipper and a pair of tongs.  Place them bone side up on a baking rack sprayed with non stick spray.  Put this on a baking sheet lined with foil for easy cleanup.

Strain all that sauce from the slow cooker into a small sauce pan.  Bring to a boil on medium heat.  Cook this for about 15 minutes until it has reduced by about a third and is nice and thick.  While the sauce is boiling set your oven to broil.

Brush the ribs with sauce and broil for about 3 minutes.  DO NOT LEAVE THE KITCHEN!  This will burn really quickly if you're not looking.  Now, this is totally optional but I like to double baste my ribs with barbecue sauce.  The outside is the best part after all!  So take the ribs out from under the broiler, brush with sauce and broil again.  Then flip them and do the same thing on the other side.

These ribs are delicious!!!  If you've been nervous about making ribs at home, this is a really fool proof recipe!  Give it a try!

Deep Dish Pizza

Do you ever have one of those days where you feel like everything takes longer than you expected?  The days where you only get out of the house in the afternoon to do a billion errands?  Traffic is heavy, the stores are busy and you end up at home right at supper time.  This is exactly what happened to me the other day.

Now I'm all for homemade, healthy food options. But do you know how many meals we make in a year?  If you only cooked two meals a day for five days a week (I'm leaving room here for left overs) that's 480 meals you've made in a year.  So sometimes I'm all for adding a jar of this or a can of that.  Sometimes.  This was one of those times. I seen this recipe and I knew this would be great for a busy day.

 

The first thing I did was throw my bacon in the oven, yep that's right I said oven.  Check out how  here

Then I put my pan on medium heat and squeezed my sausage from the casing and broke it up with my spoon as it cooked, so i would have little pieces of sausage to scatter throughout.

 

Next find a "deep dish" to cook your pizza in and spray with cooking spray (make sure to spray up the sides a bit too) and place your Pillsbury pizza dough inside pressing up against the sides of dish. Spread your pizza sauce on top with the back of a spoon.  At this point I decided to look at the back the package for the dough and it told me to pre-bake dough for 8 minutes sans sauce.  But when I had read the Pinterest recipe it didn't say to do that.  So I just continued on and disregarded the package instructions, since I didn't really see the point of pre-baking anyways.

Then add the rest of your toppings.  Mine were onions, peppers, pepperoni, cooked sausage, bacon and of course cheese, lots of cheese.

Put in the oven at 400 degrees (bonus oven is already at 400 degrees from bacon)

 

Bake for about 20 minutes.

My extra step was to top with a few drizzles of olive oil and Italian seasoning and broil for a few minutes until cheese is a little bubbly and slightly browned.

YUM!

 

A quick easy deep dish pizza.  This is a great base for leftovers.  Left over chicken, sausage, ground beef, even ham can be used up on this quick pizza. 

DIY Gift Box

I started an Etsy shop last year, I sell mostly handmade jewelry and baby mobiles (look out for a giveaway soon). A follower of this blog and my Etsy shop commented that they would like to see a tutorial of how I make my packages.  I thought this was a great idea since it was my biggest dilemma  figuring out how I was going to ship my items.  My first sale came along I was so excited!  I hurried and scoured the city looking for a small, pretty box to ship my handmade earrings safely.  I couldn't find a suitable box.  I ended up going into a jewelry store and convincing the salesperson to sell me one jewelry box for $1.00.  I ran to the post office to ship my items and ended up paying more shipping than I had charged my customer.  I figured out the hard way the my packages had to be a certain height and had to fit through a certain sized opening for me to get the best deal in shipping charges.  My first sale wasn't a financial success.  I decided not to give up on shipping my items in a pretty way.  I didn't want to just throw them in a bubble wrap.  I wanted my customers to get excited when the open their envelope to find a pretty package.  I found the perfect pin to make my own pretty boxes that would be "flat" enough for me to ship. Here's how I make my lovely packages, these are great for gift giving and can be made any size.

 

You will need Bristol board or you can use patterned card stock(I just like white Bristol board so I can customize mine, and since I make lots of these the price is right), a ruler, pencil, eraser, scissors, and any extra things to decorate your package. I use a stamp,ribbon , and I make a tiny origami crane for mine.

 

use your ruler to make your box.  This should be slightly bigger then the item your packing up since this is the part your item will be in. Try and lightly mark your paper since you will want to erase your lines after its all finished. (I made mine a littler darker so you could see the lines in the photo).  *Tip* if you are using Bristol board draw on the non-shiny side it will erase better.

 

Use your ruler to extend your lines for each side of your box.  My square is usually a little bigger than a business card. About 3 inches. Your lines should extend far enough that when they fold down they overlap slightly, so you can tape them down. On my 3 inch square they are a little over the 2 inch mark.  These will become your flaps.

 

round off the ends of your flaps.

Cut out and decorate.

 

Pre-fold down your flaps, insert your item and tape down flaps.

Add ribbon and your are all done!  Sine my boxes are usually the same size I save one of my cut-outs as a template so when I need one I just have to trace my template and cut out and decorate. 

These can be made any size just increase the size of your box you make in the first step.  I haven't tried it yet but I'm sure you could even do this the size of the entire Bristol board to wrap a sweater or small blanket.  Give it a try next time you have a gift to give.

Taco Tuesday

A few days ago when cleaning out my freezer I discovered some ground beef that had been sitting in there too long.  Usually when this happens it means Taco night!  Taco Tuesday anyone?  I don't actually remember if it was a Tuesday when we had the tacos, I just really love the Lego Movie!  Anyone out there know what I'm talking about?  Anyways, I've been wanting to try this pin I'd seen for baked tacos for a while now.  I had a taco kit, I had ground beef, mission was a GO!  So, technically this Pin was a more complex recipe including homemade taco seasoning.  Please guys don't get me wrong, I'm all for making your own taco seasoning!  But I got the taco kit on sale and, well, I'm a busy girl.  Who are we kidding, I'm ashamed.  Very, very, ashamed.  Now that I've got that off my chest let's continue.  The first thing I do when getting supper ready is get all my ingredients out and prepare as much as I can before I actually start cooking.  This is especially important if the meal comes together quickly.  This recipe only takes about 20-25 minutes from start to finish.

I start by preheating my oven too 400°F per the instructions from the recipe I pinned.  Then I begin to prepare my beef according to the directions from the taco kit.

Now pretty much all you have to do is fill up your tacos with meat and cheese.  

Here's what mine looked like before they went into the oven.  You'll notice that I have half hard and half soft tacos.  I bought the half and half kit, so I thought that it would be a great opportunity to test both for you guys.  

Here's what they looked like after about 8 minutes.  The pin recipe said to cook them for 10 but I kept an eye on them and felt like they looked about right at the 8 minute mark.  Maybe my oven is a bit hotter, who knows.  

Yummy!

You guys have to try this recipe out next time you have a taco night!  You know how everytime you eat tacos they always crack right down the bottom making a massive mess!  Well not anymore!  The shells became just a little softened during cooking, they had great texture!  As for the soft tacos, the sides didn't stand up very well while they cooked as you may see in the picture.  They also stuck to the glass dish.  Cooking spray should help with this problem.  I think I liked them just as much as the hard tacos though!  They were so delicious!  I think I ate four!  And I made a big taco salad the next day for lunch. 

You guys gotta Pin this one!

Watercolor Tree

I've really been getting into watercolors lately.  I started a watercolor board on my own Pinterest and started pinning what appealed to me.  So far I've been enjoying painting flowers the most.  I came across this tutorial on Pinterest a bunch of times and finally got around to clicking on the link.  The process looked so easy!  It was easy!  And the beautiful thing about this project is that every tree you paint is going to look different! It's completely unique, and fun.

Here's what you need.  I used three colors, Bright Yellow, Crimson and Ultramarine Blue.

Now in case you are wondering, that is a gift back in the picture above.  My original idea was to paint my tree on these gift bags I got from Dollar Tree.  This was a complete failure!  The bags somehow repel water, which is not what you want.  So I ended up painting my tree on inexpensive watercolor paper.

The first step for this project is to spray your paper lightly with water.  I tried to keep the water just in the general area I wanted to have my tree.  Then you "tap" in your colors.  Yellow, blue, then red.

 

When you are happy with the amount of color you've got going on, pull out your spray bottle again and gently begin spraying.  Above is just a couple of sprays.  Looking good so far! 

A couple more sprays and this is what I have.  Now comes the most important part...PATIENCE.

You have to let it dry completely before you paint in the tree trunk.

Here's my finished product.  This was so easy.  I'm going to give it a try with the little dude soon!  I think there might be a little more mess though!  I really love this Pin, so don't Pin it and forget it! Give it a try!

Spice Organization

I have a confession to make!   It's been weighing on my mind for some time actually.  It has even been on my husband's mind...My spice drawer, it's a mess!

Until I read the The Organized Pantry blog post.  I was sitting down with my morning coffee, contemplating what I was going to do with it.  I didn't want a spice carousel on my counter and those small spice jars, well they don't fit an entire packet of spice in it.  What's the point in that?  And then I saw it, Lauren's post about this very thing.  I read it and felt her exact feelings. The anxiety, the frustration and then the relief in finding the answer.  Mason jars!  I love me some mason jars. So I ran out and got my jars (I used the Bernardin 250ml jars, because they pretty much fit a whole pack of spice and fit perfectly standing up in my drawer) and I got my label maker.

   I removed everything from my drawer and gave my drawer a good bath (I really dislike those spice envelopes, they never close right again and my drawer showed it, spice dust everywhere)!  I used my canning funnel as Lauren suggested (wiping it down between spices to avoid contamination, because I didn't want to be the first to discover curry flavored cinnamon).  Then you just make a label for each spice and put it on your lid.  I also arranged mine alphabetically because I was that excited!

Things I learned from organizing my spice drawer:

1.  I seem to always think we are out of chili powder and cumin (I had two packs of each). When you have an organized spice drawer or rack you can easily see what you need and what you don't. I found out I was low on garlic powder.  Say goodbye to duplicates.

2.  With this system it's going to cut down on cooking time for me, I spent a lot of time looking for spices, getting frustrated and messy in the process.

3.  My spices will stay fresher longer, since those Ziploc envelopes never closed right for me. Yes, spices have an expiry date. They don't necessarily go bad but they lose their potency.

4.  I have room for more spices.  My spice drawer is actually really big.  It was so crowded before but now I have I have lots of room to add more. 

Please don't judge me on my embarrassing before picture of my spice drawer.

 

Don't forget to pin this one, it's a life changer!