Chile

Todays conquest was chili! You may be asking yourself why someone would make chili in the summer? My answer: don't ask questions that don't have answers! honestly iv never been good at cooking things that are right for the season... I had dried kidney beans and ground beef, so what else would someone make? The recipe I used is from the back of the market pantry bag of dried kidney beans (target brand.)

The biggest problem with this was the kidney beans! First of all the quick way to soften the beans was a flop! So I let them soak over night then you have to let them boil for one to two hours! I recommend the caned beans! Don't worry ill give you the recipe at the end.

This was an easy recipe, altho it was slightly time consuming.

The flavor was good, altho if your a fan of spicy I would highly recommend adding some hot sauce or something. Being pregnet I can't currently do spicy so this was perfect for me! Zach thought there needed to be more beef, I'll probably add more tomorrow. To top it off we put some sour cream and cheddar cheese! And who can have chili without corn bread? Not me! The recipe for corn bread muffins is on the next post.

Good luck! Any questions or comments please feel to let me know!

Easy bread

Like many young couples who are starting a family, money is not always on our side... So we do things to help save. We share a car, I don't currently have a job so most days Zach has it, and it works great.

Today however we were all out of bread, and I really wanted a sandwich! For those of you who don't know I'm 7 months pregnant, so me walking to the store on a 90+ degree day just isn't going to happen! So I went on a quest to find a bread recipe, that I had all the ingredients for. I'm not an experienced bread maker in the least so when I found one that was called: "Super Easy Bread for Beginners" I knew this would be a winner! I found this recipe at:
http://breadbaking.about.com/od/yeastbreads/r/1loafbread.htm

First off the things I had to change: I didn't have white sugar, so I used brown sugar, currently from what I've found it works just the same. I also don't own shortening, but I found that equal parts butter works (if it's a higher quantity of butter reduce the salt.)

Now the big question, how did it taste? We thought it was great! Don't get me wrong, it's not some amazing bread with herbs or cheese or something, but it's fresh bread! It probably cost less then $2.00 to make, and any one can do it. Another great thing about making bread is that you have to kneed it (also means punch it) which is a great way to relive stress!

Would I change it? I think that would defeat the point of this recipe. It is meant to be easy so I would keep it how it is.

Any questions or comments please let me know!

4th of July cake

Being that today is the 4th of July and Zach is in the military I thought I would make something festive! I decided I would make a cake that looks like the flag. I found my inspiration at the Foodnetwork web site (link at the bottom). What makes this cake great is that it's really not hard to make and it looks awesome! It is also made in a jelly role pan, so no worries on it rising right and how to transport it, or anything like that! I wouldn't normally change a recipe before I've tried it, but today that just had to happen. It stated with Target not having raspberries, not a big deal I used strawberries.

Now it was time to start, I had my music playing, just took the dog out, all was right in the world! Then I realized I only had a cup and a half of sugar, the recipe called for three... I know your probably thinking what kind of cook runs out of sugar?! First of all I'm just an at home cook, not a formal one. Second I just assumed I had enough and didn't bother checking (always check what you have before you start it will save you a lot of undue stress). Now the big question what is one to do in a situation like this? I substituted it with brown sugar, it seemed to work just fine. Some of the supplies this recipe needed I also had to edit slightly, I currently don't have a stand mixer so I used my hand mixer. I also don't have pastry bags, so I used a zip lock bag and cut a little hole in the corner and used the star shaped pastry tip. Personally, I really like the cream cheese frosting, however it's far from healthy... Due to the butter it's an off white color, I didn't mind and once you put the fruit on you notice it even less.

Now for the most important part, how was the flavor? I thought it was ok, nothing amazing. We put more strawberries on it. It's great for a group though. Some of my untested ideas would be to make it with banana bread, or carrot cake. Not only would you get more flavor, but you would also get some health benefits. The problem would be the rising factor...
Hope you had a fun filed 4th! Any questions or comments please let me know!

Flag cake

About Me

My name is Tracy and I recently moved to Sacramento with my fiance Zach, dog Chassi (Zach is a car guy so the dog gets to be named after a car part) and our unborn baby (name to come soon). I was born and raised in Minnesota, so as you can imagine things are much different here (one big perk would be that I don't have to shovel my driveway every day!). One of my biggest passions is food! I have been cooking as long as I can remember. I learned from my mom, who is an amazing cook.  Now I cook for Zach and I every night and family and friends for little gatherings. I am always looking for new recipes to try, most turn out good some turn out questionable...

This is where the blog come into play! I will be trying new recipes, rating the difficulty, quality, and any ideas I have for improvements. Being a soon to be mom I will also be writing about what tips and tricks work for us and what flopped and fumbled. Being new to the west coast I will also be rating different activities that I try (restaurants, farmers markets, theme parks, museums, ect.). All in all I'm going to try and take the guess work out for you! If you have any questions or comments feel free to email me!