Pinter Test Kitchen 1: Cookies & Salsa

I found another fun blog that does another fun linky party. Something to keep me motivated to cook and post about it for ya'll. (Yes, I'm from the south).

First up: Lemon Crinkle Cookies

These won the LDS Living Best Cookie award. I've had a motto my whole life, "If it doesn't have chocolate, I don't eat it". In my later years I've started branching out...and...there are some good non-chocolate things out there. AND since Amy said these were the BEST COOKIES EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I had to try.

The first time I made these I forgot the baking soda. I think they turned out better that way. You may want to give that a whirl...

Ingredients:

• ½ cup butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest 
• 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• ¼ teaspoons salt
• ¼ teaspoons baking powder
• ⅛ teaspoons baking soda
• 1-½ cup all-purpose flour
• ½ cups powdered sugar

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease light colored baking sheets with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Whip in vanilla, egg, lemon zest, and juice. Scrape sides and mix again. Stir in all dry ingredients slowly until just combined, excluding the powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl and mix again briefly. Pour powdered sugar onto a large plate. Roll a heaping teaspoon of dough into a ball and roll in powdered sugar. Place on baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough.

Bake for 9-11 minutes or until bottoms begin to barely brown and cookies look matte {not melty or shiny}. Remove from oven and cool cookies about 3 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

*If using a non-stick darker baking tray, reduce baking time by about 2 minutes.

I won't say they're the best ever, but for a non chocolate dessert, they were pretty dang good.

Next: Quick and Easy Salsa

I love my own Mexican food. However, I don't make a good salsa. My favorite restaurant salsa is probably Taco Surf. You can buy theirs in a huge containers for like $10, so that is what I usually do when hosting a party needing salsa. However, when I needed salsa for the tostadas I was making for Boston's birthday, I left getting over to Taco Surf until the last minute, and they were closed :( So...Pinterest to the rescue!

You can click on the link above for the original recipe. I've made it a few times and altered a couple of things.

Ingredients:

• 2 medium sized tomatoes
• 1- 10 oz can orginal Rotel or the lime and cilantro variety is yummy too.
• 1/2 small onion, roughly chopped
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and smashed
• 1/2-1 jalapeno, seeded or not (depends on how spicy you like it)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• medium size handful of cilantro leaves, washed
• juice of 1 lime

For non chunky salsa, just throw all of that in your food processor and blend it up. If you like some chunk, set aside 1/2 of the tomato, onion and cilantro and chop it up to your desired chunkiness. Blend the remaining ingredients, and then add in your chunks. Make sense?

Super easy, super yummy.

Linking up with:

Pins of The Week[s]: Cafe Rio Copy Cat

This needs it's own post.

Pin: Here
Website: Here

Who doesn't know that I live for Cafe Rio? You do now! Well, really Mexican food, but some how Cafe Rio, although not authentic (in my opinion), has a hold on me that I can not shake! Since the first one opened in St. George back when I was in high school, I've seriously eaten there for a decade and have never gotten sick of it.

I've tried a few copy cake recipes, and while good, still wasn't the real deal.  Well... I will say that the combination of these copy cat recipes together, make a better, (again, in my opinion) pork salad than the "real deal".

The only thing that I tasted alone that made me say, "Oh, that is good!" were the black beans. I could have eaten them as a soup. Delicious.

*The rice, Just okay alone. Needed more flavor to it to be eaten alone, and I'm pretty sure CR puts green onion in theirs.

*The pork, definitely a different flavor than CR, but good. CR doesn't have any chili powder flavor as far as I can taste, so the fact that the Copy uses enchilada sauce was a red flag.

*The dressing. Perfect. Although not as thick, I thought it tasted exactly the same.

But all together = AMAZING.

A quick note with her dressing.  She says, "1 packet TRADITIONAL Hidden Valley Ranch mix (not BUTTERMILK)".  I used the Ranch Dip Mix, because all the dressing ones I saw said buttermilk. Like I said, it turned out perfect, so I think the non-buttermilk is really the key.

To get the full effect, I bought round tins. They really are a good dish for a big salad.  I grilled a tortilla on the stove with a little cheese and then layered my salad just how I like it. Rice, beans, pork, lots of romaine lettuce, extra, extra pico, cilantro leaves, guacamole, and lots of lime. I made my own pico, (tomato, onion, cilantro, jalepeno, lime & salt) and guacamole (avocado, salsa, salt, garlic salt, & lime).

It was quite a bit of work to make all of this from scratch, but it was awesome having all of it on hand to eat as left overs throughout the week.

Pins of The Week[s]: Hair & Nails

Knot your Average Pony

My hair is way too thick for this. I got it to work, but with 1/2 of my hair. Then I tried to tie two separate knots (dividing my hair into 4ths), but I couldn't get anything cute out of it.


Flat Iron Twists

Again, I felt my hair was too thick. You would have to do pretty small sections, meaning it would have taken me hours. No thanks. Plus once I did one, I realized I would have looked like a crack head.



Sock Bun

Love this one. I've done this about a half dozen times now.  I prefer to do it when I'm on 2nd or 3rd day hair. I don't like all of the wisps. Tip: If you can, when you start to roll your hair do it upside down. It made it much easier for me.

Sock Bun Curls

This one, you need to do with fresh hair. I didn't leave it very damp, so it might have held longer had I sprayed it more. It looked this curly for about an hour. And I had to smooth out the line from the hair tie with a flat iron. But pretty curls, right?

Glitter Nail

I need to go get crafting glitter for next time.  None of the polish I have or see seems glittery enough. I've been having a lot of fun with doing different things on different nails. Sorry, no pictures, but most of them involve glitter :)

Pins of The Week

I super love Pinterest. I think that the creator of it deserves to be filthy rich. Brilliant, just brilliant.


Naturally, with my love of pinterest comes trying new things. So I thought it would be fun to document what I've tried, how it turned out, etc.

Here are some of the things I've tried or been inspired to do since creating my account a little over a week ago.

Let's start with a kind of a funny one.

Hair.

Click here for pin

I've been wanting a new do for awhile. Coloring is out of the question, and I kind of feel sad when I think about cutting off my mane. (I've never been that attached to my hair, so that was a new experience). When I saw this pin I thought, "Hmm, my hair's that long. I'll have to try that". Minus the snooky bump mind you. Anyway, I followed her instructions just giving my hair a slight tease for a little volume. Pinned it down, made two braids and then went to wrap them around.  Uuuummmmm ya. My hair was long enough to have the ends stick straight up. (Looking like devil horns). Bummer. So either her hair is waaaaay longer than mine or my head is really that much bigger. Maybe both.

Next pin: Nails

Click here for pin

Absolutely love this. This is so me. Since I don't have vodka in the house. And turns out no rubbing alcohol either, I resorted to using hair spray.  I've done it twice. The first actually turned out better than the second. Tips: 1. You MUST wait until your nails are 100,000% dry. Like I would paint them one day and then do the newspaper the next. 2. If using hairspray, you'll have to press the newspaper on super firm, being careful not to let it slide and then peel it off as you're rolling it on. Otherwise you'll just end up with paper stuck to your nails. Other than that, it worked beautifully, and I've gotten a ton of compliments.

Next pin: Food - Crock Pot Potato Soup

Click here for pin

Stacy scored me a 10 lb bag of russet potatoes for $0.79 cents last week. Putting them to good use, I made this crock pot recipe. Although I love Stacy's potato soup recipe, I thought I'd try one that doesn't use cream. aka, less fattening.  This one was delicious. (not as good as Stacy's but still really good). Definitely follow her advice when she says to blend in the cream cheese in the blender.  I didn't and the cheese never did fully melt. I was left with tiny (and some not so tiny) chunks.  It has great flavor, and my house smelled delicious all day.

Next pin: Food - Freezer Breakfast Sandwiches

Click here for pin

Again I had gotten a killer deal on Pillsbury biscuits ($0.33) and some eggs ($0.99 per dozen). And I didn't want to let them go to waste. This recipe uses English Muffins so I was nervous the biscuits would turn out too dry or something after being frozen. Not at all. These are so good, and to me, taste totally fresh reheated. I put them in the oven to defrost and then the microwave to heat through as to not over cook the biscuit. I'm going to cook some bacon along side reheating these next time. Yum. Oh, but be careful. I greased my cupcake pan well, but could NOT get off the egg residue.  It was an older pan, so I just tossed it. But be warned. I was thinking about lining the tins with foil next time.


Next pin: Organization - Cereal Box

Click here for pin

Let me just say that wrapping a cereal box is not as easy as it looks. I'm combining this idea with another so I'm not quite finished. Hopefully it will turn out cute though!

Next pin: Organization - Ribbon Organization

Click here for pin

 

I bought a couple of buckets to do this with. For my ribbon and my 3 inch tulle.

Next pin: Kid Craft - Bath Paints

Click here for pin

I felt like using a cup of wash was a bit much, so I just made a thickening with water and corn starch. I added a little dawn for good measure since every recipe I found had soap in it. I have a prefabricated tub.  Meaning that it is not tile. It's one of those plastic type, all in one pieces you see at Home Depot. I was nervous it was going to stain, so I tested a small area and let it sit for a good 30 minutes.  It rinsed right off :) So I stripped down my girls and let them paint away using foam brushes I bought from the Dollar Tree. Brighton especially loved it. Boston tried eating it a few times, but enjoyed herself as well. We will definitely do this again.

And last. The Belle Dress. I am very proud of myself for making this. It took a full night without sleep to complete so that I had it ready for our photo shoot the following morning, and a Halloween party that night. I never dreamed it would take so many hours. Nevertheless, I most definitely should have started on it much earlier. The pin that inspired me was this: http://pinterest.com/pin/265126430/

I mean, how stinkin' cute is that!

I started by tying a classic tutu using pale yellow tulle and bright yellow organza. Both 3 inches wide. I traced a tank top of Brighton's for my pattern, (changing the neckline just a bit), directly onto the fabric for the bodice. I didn't want it to be see through so I doubled up on my material, sewing right sides together and then turning for a nice finished out side.

I then stitched the shoulders and the sides together. I'm no seamstress, so of course the bodice turned out too small. Oops. I forgot that the knit tank top I traced is stretchy. This nylon type of material I got is not.  Marly was over crafting, and helping me and suggested I cut open the back and make it a corset type closure. Genius! I cut down the center of the back. Turned the cut edges inward and top stitched.  Then I cut tiny holes 2 inches apart going up the seams like shoe string holes.

Next, super awesome Marly cut a circle skirt for me out of the remainder of the material. We cut out a section for the front since I wanted the tutu to stick out. I then did a long stitch down the skirt every 10 inches or so, pulling each to make the ruched scalloped look like Belle has. I stitched the skirt to the bodice and then hand stitched the tutu underneath.

I laced a piece of the light yellow tulle through the back of the bodice and wallah! By 5am I had a Belle dress for Brighton.  Man, I feel like that was a birthing story. But she absolutely loves it and has asked, "Mommy, can I wear my puffy Belle dress all day long?" every day since. So it was all worth it.