Vicky Learns to Cook

In the interest of eating better I decided, among other things, I was going to try making Popsicles. I love popsicles. Love them. I want one every night and i even budget for them in my diet. I must preface this with I don't know what I'm doing but i'm happy to try things on my own even if it makes a big sticky mess. So I had some ripe bananas, some frozen peaches, and tried tossing them into the blender. Well they fit, but they didnt blend. They just kinda sat there while the motor turned. Ok I added a small little tub of jello. Surely its liquidy enough to make it turn? No. No it just sat there on top of the bananas and peaches, mocking me. Humph. Ok so then I added a half of that tub full of water, and with some pulsing, got it to blend. It smelled great and looked like peachy frothy goodness. Yay! Then I got out my popsicle molds and poured some in. Then took a spoon and removed some. and evened it out. And spilled some. It's kind of sticky. And then ...

We've all heard the stories about super healthy people having heart attacks or getting cancer for no reason at all, and it makes us question, why even bother trying to be healthy?  It can be so discouraging. And a little frightening. But what we forget is that our focus determines our reality (to quote Star Wars). If you focused only on when might you die, you might never live a full life. And to live a full life you need to have energy, and interest in life. You have a much better chance of that, if you're feeling good. So, then with that in mind, regardless of how much time each of us has left, it makes sense to be a healthy as possible so we can do all those things on our bucket list, right?. (And then make a new bucket list*.)  *NOTE: Always make a new bucket list once you're done, always have something to look forward to. Or revise it, revisit it, change it. Purpose is what drives us to move forward. If we don't have that, we can stagnate, grow ill and unhap...

Hi there! I know, I've been a bit absent lately. A good friend of mine passed away this Christmas, and we had the memorial service this weekend. It was beautiful and awful, as these things are, but we were glad to have gone. Today was the first day I've had to try a new recipe. The plan was Bangers and Mash. However, Anne aka The Teen Daughter wanted broasted potatoes. We are fans of Chicken Shack, for the rest of this post we will call them CS (try it if you haven't, its butter-licious). And we love their broasted potatoes. So today we tried out an Ina Garten recipe. Except, in true form, I forgot the garlic. (roll eyes) So add garlic to this recipe if you make it! So basically you start with redskin potatoes but despite our 4 trips to various stores (see why at the bottom), we did not buy redskins. We did have Yukon Golds, which we love, too. I think thats what CS uses anyway. So, with my daughter playing Sous Chef, she cut them into bite sized squares. We d...

Why is this a two part blog? you may ask. Because there is more than one way to make a pizza. This is the quick method and the least amount of trouble without buying a frozen pizza. (Have you tried those pizza ordering apps?!) I start here, with a frozen ball of pizza dough. Tisseo's is my favorite kind, I get this at Kroger in the frozen "ethnic" section, if there is one. They don't put it by the bread. They put it by the frozen pierogies and raviolis. The ball of frozen dough was taken out of the freezer, then out of the bag, around 430pm when I finally decided what I wanted to eat for dinner. Depending on the events of the day and who is coming home, the less people involved, it seems, the less scratch I go. If it's just me I've been known to eat cheesy rice since it takes literally no prep work and I can go play on facebook until the rice is done.  We'll blog that one another time; when my family is away.  Here is the frozen dough....

Well, I'm rather amazed. I have to admit, I've been a skeptic of the "healthier" cookies or cakes. How good could they be? I mean, what's a cupcake without white flour? But after trying the blueberry cupcakes yesterday (light and fluffy? No way!) and the chocolate chip cookies today (baking now), I think I'm being swayed a bit to the dark side. (Yes, they do have cookies!) My favorite new ingredient was coconut sugar. I opened the bag and sniffed. Oh, heaven! It's a bit like caramelized s'mores mixed with toasted coconut. Oh my! This is going in my cookie with chocolate chips? yay! The thing that is throwing me, is that I tend to make enough for work, so at least anywhere from 17 to 23 cupcakes at a time (depending on recipe) and these are much smaller batches. The blueberry cupcakes only made 11, and the chocolate chip cookies made 8. Eight! I mean, there are more ingredients in the cookies than there are cookies! Still, if ...

1pm: It's Monday, January 2, 2017. The last day of Christmas/New year vacation. While I certainly don't want to go back to work, I do want to set myself up for some leftovers for lunch. After shopping, I have no room in my stuffed fridge for my whole chicken, so that will be part of dinner. (An up coming blog will be dealing with leftovers, I'm guessing.) Yesterday, as part of the meal I cooked a spaghetti squash. I expected it to take maybe 20 minutes. Turns out it was more like 45 and we had already eaten dinner by the time it was done. So today I'm going to turn the squash into a lemon and herb dish to go with the chicken. With it I will make some mile high biscuits and minted carrots. I'll see you when I get done.... 6:49pm: ... Okay the squash is done. Biscuits are done and cooling. For the Spaghetti Squash: I heated up some crushed garlic in olive oil, added 1/2 squash to the pan (scraped out the spaghetties), added juice of 1/2 lemon, salt,...