I Love Leftovers - Especially Turkey!

Everything we ate for dinner tonight was entirely John's fault! :)

It's the first of the month, which is often when I think about going for more walks and exercising a little more portion control at meal time. I had to put those thoughts on hold though, as we had turkey leftovers in the house and John excitedly announced that we should make awesome club sandwiches. How could I disagree?

This is only one sandwich, you guys!

So we had triple-decker club sandwiches full of turkey, bacon, cheese, and mayo. Apparently others put lettuce and tomato in theirs, but we forgot about vegetables! Whoops! We fried up some mashed potatoes and had some leftover sweet potatoes, so our meal wasn't completely vegetable free, right?

We followed that up with some cake John's grandma made.

It was a yellow cake but she told us: "It's a chocolate cake, I just didn't add the cocoa". Adorable.

I am very full and very happy right now. Hope you are too!

Anniversary Card - 1 Year Smoke Free

A friend of mine is marking one year free of cigarettes today and is having a get together to celebrate. According to her count, over the past year she did not smoke 9500 cigarettes! That is amazing! I bet her lungs feel great!

A congratulatory card was needed to commemorate her achievement. Over the past few months I have gotten out of the habit of making my own cards, but I've been socializing with quite a few card making bloggers recently and it has inspired me to get back into it.

For this card I did a spin on the saying 'quitters never win', changing it up to 'quitters always win", as they always do when they quit smoking!

When I first looked at the finished card I thought the design looked like a quilting square. I quickly read over the words and it looked like it said 'quilters always win'.  It is true that quilters always win. The way the card turned out may mean that I'm subconsciously into quilters, but I accept that.

So a big congratulations to my friend celebrating her 1st year smoke free! And many more to come!

Spring Oreo Truffles

I have been itching to make some Oreo Truffles, which are the amazing combination of a bag of crushed Oreos, a package of cream cheese, and some chocolate coating [find the recipe here]. For some spring flare, I used white chocolate coating that I dyed pastel colours. I have made these truffles before, but they were trickier this time around, probably because I gave myself the added pressure of wanting the colours to look good (normally I just cover everything in milk chocolate, which hides any imperfections).

Good Looking Spring Oreo Truffles

Not pictured (love editorial control!) are the truffles where the coating was too thin, or where the truffle part got mixed into the coating, giving them a dirty snow kind of look. I had made these before so I only skimmed the recipe, but it turned out I skimmed the part about using two forks to help coat the truffles evenly. Oops. So these ended up being a little harder to make than I thought, but the amazing thing about baking is that even if the end result doesn't look like it's supposed to, it still tastes pretty good!

Tasty Spring Oreo Truffle

Cinnamon Sticky Buns - Can't Have Just One

Cinnamon Sticky Buns: a time intensive but oh so satisfying treat that I love to bake. My new rule when making them is that they must be taken to an event of some kind, as having 20+ sticky buns in my house is very dangerous.

I would like this and seven more please.

I use my bread maker to make the cinnamon bun dough, using a recipe taken from the book that came with my late '80s machine. I adapted the original recipe to enhance yumminess (sugar, butter, and cinnamon need not be restricted by measurements!). My bread maker has passed through three generations in my family, from my dad's mother, to my mother, and now to me. Sometimes we talk about getting a new one, but honestly, this one still works great!

Late '80s bread maker - still working hard!

Cinnamon Bun Dough (adapted from Sanyo's The Home Bakery Book, 1988):

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
   1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
   1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
   2 eggs
   1 cup lukewarm water
   1 package active dry yeast

Add ingredients to bread maker and let stand 5 minutes. Use Dough setting and press start. This takes 1 hour and 15 minutes on my machine. When dough is finished, remove dough from bread maker and place in a greased bowl, turning to coat evenly. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.

Punch down dough and divide in half. On a lightly floured surface, roll out each half into a large rectangle.

Spread melted butter or margarine over entire rectangle so that it is completely covered. I don't measure, I just keep covering it until it looks adequately drenched. Next sprinkle with enough brown sugar to completely cover. I spread it out with my hands to make sure it is even. Finally, sprinkle with cinnamon.

Roll up the dough lengthwise.

 

Cut into buns. Put buns onto baking sheet, cover, and let rise for 1 hour. I normally get around 10 buns per rolled up rectangle (about 20 buns total).

Now for the "Sticky" part.

Heat 1/2 cup of butter or margarine, 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar, and 1/2 cup corn syrup in a small saucepan. Heat until combined. Pour mixture into baking pan (I use multiple 9x13 glass baking dishes). Place risen cinnamon rolls into the sugar mixture.  Bake in 350 oven for 20 minutes.

When rolls have finished baking, spoon sticky sugar mixture from bottom of the pan onto the rolls so they are sticky all over. This makes them extra delicious.

Enjoy!

St. Patrick's Day Stew

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day we made some stew and a loaf of bread that I dyed green. That sounds kinda Irish, right?

I grew up on a beef cattle farm, so stew is one of those meals that makes me feel comfy and warm with good memories of home. The recipe I use is pretty similar to the one Mom used to make, with the addition of a few more exotic vegetables (yams!) and spices.

For our stew we used a beef roast that we cut into chunks. The roast was crazy cheap and that made the stew beef we cut even cheaper. I love saving money by doing some of the prep work myself (plus I really like doing the prep work!).

Beef Roast

Beef roast cut into stew beef chunks

Jen and John's Simple Stew

Ingredients:

1 lb (or so) stewing beef
onion, finely diced
garlic, finely diced

2 medium carrots, chopped
1 yam, cut in chunks
2-3 potatoes, cut in chunks
1 can of diced mushrooms
1 cup frozen corn kernels
Broth packet (beef or what you have)
Various spices to taste: garlic salt, salt, pepper, basil, turmeric
Corn starch + water

Method:

1. Brown beef in pot you intend to use for your stew. Once browned, add water to pot, almost covering the beef. Add in finely diced onion and garlic (I use a small food processor) and simmer on low heat with lid on for 2 -3 hours. I recently learned that this is called braising the beef.

2. Add in chopped vegetables and enough water to cover them. Add a broth packet or two to add flavour (beef if you have it). Add various spices to taste. Soften the vegetables over medium-low heat for 1 hour.

3. Continue simmering as long as desired. The more it cooks the more it thickens. To thicken to desired consistency, add corn starch mixed with water until it looks right.

Serve with bread (dying it green for St. Patty's Day is optional).

Sometimes we make the stew the day before and let it sit in the fridge overnight to allow the flavours to intensify. It makes it super yummy.

Enjoy! And Happy St. Patrick's Day!