Caramel Apples!

I DO have some 'real food' photo'd and prepped but today we made these, using the instructions found HERE. It was pretty easy but rather messy... *wink

And my photos are not ah-mazing because it is night and they must be devoured! (I mean, who doesn't need a ton of sugar right before bed the night before Halloween?)

So we started with this: a bag of caramels, unwrapped by the helper team, and two apples for each of us!

Then, we rolled some apples in crushed oreos and some in a smashed-to-bits butterfinger bar! I melted some chocolate chips mixed with a bit of shortening and attempted to drizzle it over some of the apples.

 voila! My husband wanted them plain, I wanted both with butterfinger and chocolate and the kids wanted one butterfinger, one oreo, and all chocolate! *grin

In spite of all the work, I will be slicing mine. There's no way I can take a bite out of that! LOL!

apple cider floats!

Earlier this week I took my kids to the local pumpkin patch, where we always get some fresh apple juice and apple cider doughnuts. The juice is not clear and I always thought it was cider. So today I picked up some ginger ale, vanilla bean ice cream and we made THIS.

Ohhhh yummm!!!
Yes, really, you MUST make this!
This is mine! 

And in case the recipe is ever removed from the link: 

1 cup apple cider
1/2 cup ginger ale
1-2 scoops vanilla ice cream, or any seasonal flavor such as cinnamon or apple pie
ground cinnamon and nutmeg for sprinkling
1-2 tablespoons jarred caramel sauce

Pour apple cider and ginger ale into a glass.  Add vanilla ice cream.  Sprinkle on nutmeg and cinnamon to taste and drizzle caramel sauce on top.  Serve immediately with a straw and a spoon.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bread!

Between my husband and I, we've found a lot of yummy food ideas and blogs in the last little while. This recipe comes from Mel's Kitchen Cafe blog, which my husband found. Oh. my. YUM! And this is our first recipe we're trying from it! Can I just say how wonderful my house smells?? Even tho it snowed at our house a week and a half ago, today it's back up to 70* today and maybe just a bit too warm for the wonderful smells of autumn, but ohhh they are the best food smells and I am ready for autumn baking!

Here's the wet and dry ingredients just starting to be mixed....

first yummy slice.......! mmmmmmmmmm!

My slice was still a little warm, but according to Mel it's even better the next day and that its great for breakfast!! Looking forward to it! haha!

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Now, I have to say...

I ran into a snag. or, created one, is the thing. I've been working hard to do better and lose a little weight so when I read this recipe and saw that it called for a cup of vegetable oil I decided to substitute with 1/2 cup applesauce and 1/2 cup oil. Healthier, maybe. easy to get out of the loaf pan in one piece? nope.
I used this scraper around the edges of the pan and also tried to go under the loaf a little. Annnd when most of the loaf came out, I left it upside down, scraped the rest out and laid it back on the bread like it was supposed to be.

lesson learned.
leave the recipe alone and eat it anyway! *grin!*

"Sweet" Pork Barbacoa

Yes, this is extremely similar to THIS recipe.
The meat was done exactly the same, except with 1/4 cup, 1/2 cup brown sugar.

This time we did a black bean mixture.

And the rice was just lime rice....1/2 cup dry rice, 1 cup water, 1 tbsp lime juice, cooked til done!

But this time! We put meat, beans and rice all into the tortilla, wrapped it up burrito style, stuck it in a baking pan, smothered it with about half a can of enchilada sauce and a bunch of cheese! Then we had corn on the side. Quite tasty!

bottling salsa!

We tried a brand new recipe to bottle 19 pints of fresh salsa! ...I hope its good!!! LOL! The recipe came from HERE and our edits (you knew that was coming...) were:

• leave out the sugar,
• used 1 tbsp freshly ground black pepper, instead of a tsp 
• add 3 tbsp of chili powder
• 1 cup lemon juice and 1 cup lime juice instead of choosing one.

Also, I started out squeezing the tomatoes with my hand and removing seeds, but that was a little ridiculous and time consuming for me, so I quit. You can see below that juice and seeds come out on their own, no need to work harder, haha. My favorite tip from that recipe link is that they put their cutting board into a cookie sheet, to keep the tomato juice contained. best. idea. ever! LOL!

cooking/reducing the salsa...

and here's the finished product!! Yeay!

It is a smooth? juicy? sauce, more than a salsa because we pureed the tomatoes with a stick blender before adding anything else. That's my fault...I don't like eating a bite of onion with my chips... lol! And my husband spoils me!

Yvette's Corn

If you have fresh corn on the cob still, or a local farmers market that does, here's a cool tip from my friend Yvette that I forgot to share when it was still summer...

I baked my corn the other night. Put a few slabs of butter in some tin foil, added garlic powder to 1, fresh basil leaves to another and paprika to the other, wrapped them up and threw them in the 425 oven for 25 minutes. The basil and garlic ones were sooo good. I would have done fresh garlic if I had any.

Of COURSE I gave it a try, but put it all in one packet and just added garlic.

Very tasty and something I don't usually have- garlicked corn?