Little Pumpkin Baby Shower Part 4: Fall Foods

So what's a party without some food? Below are the snacks from the Fall Little Pumpkin baby shower I helped with last Fall. 

Our fall food buffet at the shower. Lots of goodies here!

These are called so many different things. My family calls them "hammy sammys." I've heard them called "sassy tailgate sandwiches" and "ham and cheese melts, too." They basically consist of hawaiian rolls, ham/turkey, pepper jack/swiss, baked with a mustard/soy/poppyseed glaze. So rich and delicious!

One of the hostesses made some rotel sausage cups. They were delicious. Cream cheese, rotel, sausage (I think), and topped with cheese. Popped these guys like candy.

These super-cute pudding shooters were so easy to make! Vanilla pudding layered with fall-themed sprinkles and topped with crushed oreos. Um...who wouldn't love these. They were so stinkin' good.

Tried out the infamous "3-ingredient cookies." Result? Meh. Decent. I think I'd use the caramel kisses next time. I'm not a fan of the pumpkin ones myself. 

Next up? Activities!

Beach Cupcakes

At the beach, we needed some appropriately fun snacks! These little guys were too cute! There are a ton of tutorials online for these guys. We used chocolate cupcakes, cream cheese frosting, blue frosting (water), brown sugar (sand), teddy grahams (bathing beauties), life saver gummies (floaties), and candy tape (beach towels).

My shark attack cupcake. We saw a number of dolphins on this trip, but no confirmed sharks. Still had to have a little fun, though!

A Graduation and A Vacation

With the house sale pending, it was time to take in some relaxation!

Come May it was time for another special event: Hannah (college graduate) graduated from Texas A&M University. We all convened in College Station to celebrate.

On Saturday, we headed down to Sugar Land for the day to find a place to live. After a long search, we settled on a 2 bedroom 2.5 bath townhome in nearby Stafford. We'll hang here for a while until we know where I'll be working and we get to know the area a bit better.

Then it was time from vacation. Travis had just left his company and spent some time with his family in Iowa. I went to Miramar beach with my family. For a week. It was wonderful.

View from the deck of our beach house for the week!

Mom wins best decision for vacation: coconuts for coconut drinks!

Sunsets on the beach!

Some fun extracurricular activities! It's a....table.

Our beach house for the week!

Couldn't pass up a little crafty baking! *Note the awesome shark attack cupcake top right.

Beautiful!

Travis started with his new company right after returning from vacation while I stayed in Lubbock to get things packed, sold, and wrapped up with my work commitments. Came home to this lovely dust storm. Yay, Lbk!

Experienced some awesome weather a few days later...

This was the night I got locked out of my house: in my pajamas, at 7:30 at night, in a thunderstorm, while my husband was in Houston. Thank goodness I had my phone with me. I was saved by a rather large pacific islander in flip flops who emerged from the smallest car I've ever seen an hour later who didn't need to see my ID with address, because he didn't think anyone could/would make up the story I had.

And again a few days after that...

That's 105* outside in early June. Wasn't even the hottest part of the day yet. Unfortunately, I left my unopened diet coke in the car. Came back and it was opened...by the sun. Thankfully, the diet coke only ended up in the cupholder directly behind the can. Somehow, there was none anywhere else. Yucky WTex weather.

Ok. We'll move.

Sunday Night Dinner

Well, the first two weeks of college football are behind us! I am proud to say that our Texas Tech Red Raiders are 2-0! Our first tailgate was last weekend which was lots of fun. Pretty low-key.

A cool front moved in this weekend, and the high yesterday was only 78. Beautiful! That made me think about how much I love fall/winter food. Now, I do love grilling in the summer. There is just something about smoky/nutty fall flavors that I find delicious.

This is a recipe my mom made originally. I've tweaked it just a smidge to work with crock pots nowadays. I've found the instructions in the recipe don't accommodate the advances in crock pot technology. This is a true "slow cooker" recipe. Not a fix it and forget it. You have to do some stove-top cooking prior to putting it in the crock pot.

But...it is totally worth it! The stuffing turns into a nutty, crunchy, and spicy masterpiece. I could eat just the stuffing for a whole meal. No joke.

This was a perfect opportunity to use some of our jalapenos from our container garden. Look at this beautiful pepper!

Pork Chops with Jalapeno Cornbread Stuffing
(Adapted from 365 Favorite Brand Name Slow Cooker Recipes & More)

6 boneless pork chops
4-6 c. cornbread stuffing (packaged)
2 c. chicken broth (+extra as needed)
3/4 c. onion - chopped
3/4 c. celery - chopped
1/2 c. pecans - chopped
1 jalapeno - chopped (more or less to taste)
thyme
sage
salt/pepper
1 egg - lightly beaten

1) Sear pork chops in large pan just until sides are browned. Set aside. They will be raw in the middle. No eating!
2) Saute onions, celery, pecans, jalapeno, and spices until soft.
3) Combine stuffing, veggie mix, and chicken broth in pan and stir until combined. Don't over-mix as this will make mushy stuffing. Add the egg and combine.
4) Spray slow-cooker with non-stick spray (or olive oil spray). Put stuffing in bottom of slow cooker and arrange the pork chops atop the stuffing. Cook on low 5 hours, stirring stuffing after 3 hours. You want the edges to get some crispy parts, but you want this to be throughout so stirring once will ensure even cooking.

Baja Shrimp Taco Cups

I love tweaking recipes to make something delicious. We love making chicken baja tacos, especially during the summer. It's nice to have a light dinner option when its over 100* in W.Tex.

This "recipe" is less of a recipe and more of a method. The infamous wonton taco cups on that P-website can be modified as much as you want.

You can find some fabulous instructions for wonton taco cups here and here. We used the same methodology but added some cilantro lime rice at the bottom, chili-lime shrimp, feta cheese, and our garlicky-sour cream sauce topped with more cilantro. Add a little side of cilantro-lime rice, and you've got a great light summer meal.

We make our cilantro-lime rice from this recipe. It turns out fabulous each and every time. Yum!

Yummy Food and Yummy Weather

It has been a beautiful couple of days here in W.Tex. 72* with a slight breeze...perfect for sitting out on the patio! We've been working on installing a drip irrigation system for our potted plants, so we've taken advantage of the weather as far as getting that all set.

With the beautiful weather has come a great week of harvest for our container garden.

We've had a ton of okra as well as quite a few jalapenos. We've used our bounty in a number of dishes including some crunch jalapenos in taco cups. Of course, we have to make homemade fried okra. 'Cuz that's what you do when you have fresh okra!

Fried okra (and the fritters below) are great frozen and reheated in the oven at a later date. This makes for really easy meals later in the week, and you get to use all the okra you don't want to eat right away. However, as great as homemade fried okra is...we needed a change! I found this amazing recipe from pinterest here for okra fritters with grilled corn and goat cheese.

You must go print that recipe and make it ASAP. These fritters were uh-mazing. Seriously. Smoky grilled corn, fresh okra, and tangy goat cheese all melted together is about as close to heaven as food gets. Pretty sure.

We're totally going to try modifying the recipe next time. We may try these with a sharp cheddar and add in some jalapenos (from the garden)!

Spring Bunny Baby Shower Part 2: Food

For my friend's shower we decided to go with everyone's favorite meal...brunch! I mean, who doesn't love breakfast food all day long?

Seeing as how this shindig was a Spring themed shower for ladies we wanted to keep the food fun! We opted for some standard brunch staples like sausage balls. The hostess (who hosted us at her beautiful home) created a wonderful twist on standard pinwheels-- Green chile bacon pinwheels. YUM.

Chiles + bacon + cream cheese = I'm there. Add crescents, and I'm stealing the whole pan.

Next up came the mini pancakes. These were just too terribly cute! I stumbled upon some teensie forks at that PartyC place. I knew I had to use them.

With the pancakes, we served some berry butter. You can find the awesomely easy and fool-proof recipe here at PW. Not the prettiest thing to look at unless you have Ree's awesome food-stylin' and photographin' skillz, but absolutely delish none the less.

To balance out all these yummy brunch-carbs, we decided to add in some yummy strawberry yogurt parfaits. I'm not the biggest fan of yogurt (texture aversion), but I'll eat these any day of the week. Simply layer strawberry yogurt, a sprinkle of granola (or that JustBunches stuff), and some berries. Include one of those teensie spoons found next to the teensie forks at that PartyC place. Ta da!

On to the sweets! Of course we had some sugary snacks, too. My super-talented co-worker Jessica of JB Cakes and More made the beautiful nest egg cupcakes. Love me some malted milk speckle eggs!

Along with the beautiful cupcakes, I made Round 2 of Peeps Pops. See Round 1 here! I paired it with a cute little watering can. So very Spring!

The food was all so delicious! In the future I think I may try some mini cereal shots or something of that sort, too. Little shots of dry cereal and shots of flavored milk to pour into them. That sounds yummy, too.

Happy Spring!

Christmas Gifts 2011

This year Travis and I decided to make Chex mix for our co-workers. Not just any Chex mix. Pumped up Chex mix! We settled on 4 different kinds: Original, Chipotle, Apple Cinnamon, and Dark Chocolate Coffee Toffee. (I bet you can't guess which one was my favorite! Ha!)

The recipes we used were modified from the basic recipes on the Chex website. Of course we couldn't keep them all the same!

Our chipotle chex mix was modified to include canned chipotle in adobo instead of powdered chipotle. The apple cinnamon chex mix was modified to include cinnamon chex and cinnamon apple chips. The dark chocolate coffee toffee chex mix was modified to include dark instead of semi-sweet chocolate, extra pecans, big chunks of Heath bar, and Starbucks Christmas Blend instant coffee!

 We packaged them in treat boxes from HobLob with that great black/red/white ornament motif. Love it! Also, I saw some cute red glitter gift tags for sale while I was shopping for the treat bags. Unfortunately, they had "To" and "From" written on the back, and they were made with crummy glitter (that kept falling off everywhere). So....I made my own! The glitter paper in the scrapbook aisle was $1.99. It cost exactly the same to make 12 ornament tags as it would have been to buy them. Only mine don't shed glitter everywhere, and I wrote whatever I wanted on the back.

Here's another perfect bow! (squeal!)

Halloween Cake Pops

Whew! It has been a crazy couple of weeks.

Quick catch-up before the cake pops...

The Mortons (+ a few others) came to visit for the Texas A&M v. Texas Tech game. We had a house full of Aggies (I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere). The tailgating was great! More on the recipes from that later.

My sweet husband and me.

 My two Aggie sisters!

Travis's Grandfather passed away the following week somewhat unexpectedly. He was well-loved. We went home to be with family and were able to help out some. It was great to be able to share all our memories.

The next weekend brought a Texas Rangers loss and a huge Red Raider win. One week later we had an opposite experience (which was quite painful!). Travis's parents came to visit, and we had a great time tailgating!

On to the cake pops!!

I love chocolate. Not sure if I've expressed that enough. I also love brownies. I eat too many. Solution? Brownie cake pops! 

I used my Babycakes Cake Pop Maker. There's a bunch of recipes online, and much debate about boxed recipes. I threw caution to the wind (when my family was visiting) and gave these little guys a try. Result? Delicious!

Step 1: Mix
Mix up your boxed brownie mix. I used the recipe for thicker/cake-like brownies.

Step 2: Babycakes!
Preheat your Babycakes Cake Pop Maker.

Step 3: Zip Trick!
Load up your brownie mix into a big old Ziploc bag (I used 1 gallon). Cut the tip like the picture below.

Step 4: Fill 'er Up!
Fill up the wells of the maker. The instructions says to not overfill the wells and to use 1 tablespoon (if my memory serves me right). You know what? Forget it! Fill up each well to the top. You'll have some spillage, but it results in a perfect spherical cake ball each and every time.

Step 5: Cook! 
After some experimenting, we found that 6 minutes is just about perfect. If you overfill the wells, add an extra minute or so before taking the brownie balls out.

Step 6: Stick It
Insert your sticks in the brownie balls and let them cool (I stick them in the fridge for a few minutes here).

Step 7: Dip*n*Decor
Dip in chocolate and decorate as you'd like! I fixed these up to take to work on Halloween. Yum!

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!