On 2012's Resolutions

For as long as I can remember, neither I nor any one family member has been to keen on committing to a New Year's Resolution. I know that this is typically when people decide they want to exercise more, eat healthier, quit smoking, etc., but I also know that most resolutions never make it out of February. And sometimes even January! So I never really had any intentions of creating "resolutions" for the year of 2012. (As a side note, for all of those health-related things, I know they are difficult. I also know you won't stick to them until you are TRULY ready to make LIFESTYLE changes. That takes some time.)

But last year, I decided, to heck with it. I'm going to do it! Because I have some fun ones that I've been wanting to do for some time now!!

The result: C-

Let's recap what my 2012 resolutions were:

1 new local restaurant each month, totaling 12 new local restaurants for the year.

The Result: 9 new restaurants.

Blogged: 7

9/12 not so bad. Fail on blogging and picture taking.

See them here:

January. February. March. April. June. August. August part 2 to try to catch up.

1 book each month, totaling having read 12 books the entire year.

The Result: 4 out of 12 of the books I intended to read.

According to my "Reading List" page: 8 books.

According to mygoodreads.com profile: 12 books

Blogged: 5

FOUR OUT OF TWELVE?! I'm ashamed!

Apparently the only 5 I blogged about, I put all in one post here:

Recent Readings.

Overall, I'm really not too disappointed in reaching 9/12 and 4/12. Guess that just comes with never really having done resolutions before.

So what did I learn?

+I apparently really like American bistros and barbecue. and Mexican food, because one of the restaurants I didn't blog about was also Mexican.

+I tend to read A LOT less when I have people to hang out with.

+These types of resolutions are fun and not once did I feel guilty about not meeting a month.

+Sometimes, you start a book with good intentions. Then it's like torture trying to finish it (Pride and Prejudice.)

+I didn't meet everything I wanted to do in 2012, but it was still a pretty kick ass year!

I never decided on anything I wanted to try to accomplish in 2013. In all honesty, it may just be "read as many books as possible," "do as many tourist-y things I can in Tulsa," and "try to eat at lots of different restaurants when we go out instead of the same ol' stuff every time (not that same ol' is bad!)."

So far, I think I've done a fairly good job of just those!

p.s. Are you on goodreads? Find me here! goodreads profile

7 for 12

My 12 books in 12 months has kind of fallen by the wayside...I just don't read near as much as I did when I lived alone and I didn't have a boyfriend. So I'm still going to try to get as close to possible, but the restaurant thing is definitely way more fun. :)

month one, two, three, four, five, and six

So after I posted in August that I was going to try to catch up a little bit on my new local restaurant of the month. Friday, August 31, roommate and I decided that we needed to go on a best friend date. While she had been home the whole summer for the first time since the summer after her freshman year in college, she and I didn't spend as much time together as we had hoped to.

She and I decided to hit up this new (ish) restaurant in downtown Tulsa called Black Alley Blues & BBQ. Being that I am from Oklahoma, I love me some good BBQ. Nothing tickles my tastebuds more than a good smokey flavor and good barbecue sauce (I am spoiled to Oklahoma's own Head Country barbecue sauce. It's the best ever.) Okay, pictures!

Take home cups!

House special drink. I believe it had bourbon and bitters and orange in it, and it was pretty good.

my dinner--BBQ nachos

OH. MY. GOODNESS look at that plate of nachos. My mouth is watering staring at it!

I got a glass of sweet tea and the bourbon drink per recommendation of our waiter. When it came to the meal, I was torn between the BBQ nachos and the spuds. The waiter also recommended the nachos, and they were FANTASTIC. I was so full about halfway through the plate but I couldn't stop eating. Just could not stop, they were that good. I don't know if it was how good the meat was, or how good the chips tasted with the ranch and barbecue and sour cream mixed together.

The meat wasn't necessarily the best I've ever had, but I'm spoiled to my uncle's awesome barbecued meat. But, what they did with their sauce definitely made up for it.

The atmosphere is amazing, right in the heart of the Blue Dome District in downtown Tulsa, which is by far one of my favorite places in downtown Tulsa. They have live blues music ALL THE TIME, and I loved the guy who happened to be playing that night....couldn't tell you who it was, but he played well.

The price was a really good price range too, which kind of took me by surprise. Most BBQ places tend to get more expensive, especially around here. But with me getting the nachos, a refillable drink, an adult beverage, and a beer, my tab was still under $20 before the tip.

I will definitely go there again, and if you ever find yourself in Tulsa, you should definitely check it out!

The weekend I fell in love with dueling pianos

A couple weeks after boyfriend and I went on our first date, I asked him if he wanted to meet my best friend. I also asked best friend if she wanted to meet boyfriend as well, and she was all about it.

She and I decided that we wanted to go to a restaurant on Cherry Street, as neither of us eat there too often. She and I were talking about all the different places to eat, and I asked her about The Full Moon Cafe. She had never eaten there before. Boyfriend had never eaten there either. I can't remember if Katy's boyfriend had eaten there or not, but she and I decided that it would be a fun place to go to.

We got there, and they were having a a disaster relief fundraiser for the Mannford wildfires. It was loud, and we couldn't hear very well, and the woman that was singing was singing TERRIBLY. I looked at Katy and told her that I was sorry, and that maybe we should have picked somewhere else. We didn't even get our food until like 8:15, so by the time we finished eating, the dueling piano show was starting in about 10 minutes. Katy and I decided that we wanted to buy a bucket of beers and stick around for the first couple of songs to kinda see how it was.

It actually ended up being A TON of fun. They did allow requests so all the favorite bar tunes were played. The four of us ended up buying another couple buckets and singing along almost all the way to the end of the show. We were singing along, very loudly, at the top of our lungs and enjoying each others' company.

There was also a couple of birthdays and a bachelorette party there that night. The most funny part of the night was when this drunken woman got up on the stage and started dancing around with one of the pianists. Se then grabbed some of the dollar bills in his tip jar and tried to put them in her bra, and the pianist was like, you don't jack with my money. It was HILARIOUS how he freaked out on her.

Boyfriend singing along off tune like the rest of us at the top of his lungs made it to where best friend liked him and thought he was great. I actually had a great time listening to the two pianos play back and forth. I had seen dueling piano bars other places like Dallas and OKC, but I had never gone. It was an awesome night with great company. I believe the four of us decided that it needed to be done again. Not all the time, but definitely needed to happen again. Lots and lots of fun.

What do you think about dueling pianos?

New Year's Resolution fail (6 for 12, 2 months behind)

SO. Way back in this post, I wrote down that I wanted to go to 12 new local restaurants here in the Tulsa area. If you have been following along, you would know that I have gone to The Brook (January), Gaberino's Homestyle Italian Restaurant (February), Main Street Tavern (March), Caz's Chowhouse (April), and Oklahoma Joe's BBQ (June). So if you're reading that correctly, I missed May and July. I think I'll be okay if I get to 11 out of 12 since I did eat like a queen on my cruise in July, but that still puts me a month behind.

Last week, I attended a loan training class. Each day, we got just a little over an hour to go to lunch on or own. The first day, me, coworker A and guy friend John all went to Mazzio's to indulge ourselves in the buffet. I DEFINITELY over-ate. The second day, the three of us went to Goldie's (a hamburger joint) per my choice. The third day, John picked the place. Amy didn't want to go because originally we were going to go to a Philly steak sandwich joint, but halfway over there he asked if I had been to a restaurant called Mi Cocina. I know, I know. This technically isn't a "local" restaurant. BUT, it is the only location in the state of Oklahoma, so to me that made it justifiable to use it for my August restaurant.

First of all, AMAZE BALLS. For real. Everything they do, they want it to be fresh. They don't even have a soda fountain. If you want a pop, you get a can. It's unlimited "refills" too. For real. Anyways, pictures!

FRESH SQUEEZED LEMONADE.

"Luann's" Dish

fresh salsa

"Luann's" dish

HOLY. WOW. First of all, the lemonade was good. Not necessarily my favorite, just because I like my lemonade a little more on the tart side, and not so sweet. But it was still a really good glass of lemonade. So good, I had like 4 glasses. Seriously.

Salsa - wonderful. I judge a Mexican restaurant on whether or not the salsa is good. Obviously. it's the first thing you taste at the restaurant. This salsa had a little bit of a kick to it. I love spicy foods though. And the salsa wasn't too overpowering with onion. Usually salsas are too tomato-y or too onion-y. This one was pretty well balanced.

Entree - Luann's the menu says "guacamole chalupa, beef taco, cheese enchilada, cheese taco, rice and beans." OBVIOUSLY, there was no cheese taco, but a beef enchilada. This beef taco also had some kind of house dressing on it, and it was SO GOOD. Guacamole was the perfect amount of creamy-ness, and again, not too much onion (can you tell I'm not too big of an onion fan?). The enchiladas were well cooked. The cheese one was pretty good, just a lot of chunks of onion in it and in the cheese sauce covering it. The beef enchilada was stuffed with seasoned ground beef, and was way too good. I could tolerate the onion-y cheese enchilada if I cut a piece of it to stack on top of a piece of the beef one. Rice and beans were rice and beans.

Downside: The chips didn't stay warm for very long, the waitress we had was AWFUL, and I definitely ate way too much food.

Overall though, I would say it was probably a 4 out of 5. I loved EVERY. SINGLE. THING. I ate, but it is definitely a little too expensive for my taste. I have heard that their margaritas are amazing as well, but we were on lunch and there is a very strict no-drinking-and-returning-to-work policy. I don't think that I will be going back to try the margaritas. If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm kind of a cheapskate, and I have a small budget. So now matter how amazing this food was, I really don't think I'll be going back. But definitely try it out once if you get a chance!
-Actually if you were in Tulsa and going, let me know. I might go for some guac and a marg :)

Vacation 2012: Food Edition (photo dump)

Sunday morning we loaded up our luggage into my brothers newly fixed car and headed to the Port of New Orleans. Mom and I went through the line that very closely resembled going into an airport, got our picture taken, and anxiously waited to be allowed to board the ship.

You guys, these food pictures I'm about to share with you do not give the taste justice. I swear I gained nearly 20 pounds the two weeks were gone. I ate like a Queen, and I know I'll never eat that well as long as I live alone. But seriously, I hope your tummies feel as full looking at these as mine did eating. Enjoy!

appetizer: tomato soup

main course: breaded shrimp with Asian Thai noodles

dessert: creme brulee 

just a small sample of the random stuff they had on their lunch buffet!

"strawberry cheesecake" that was not made very well and key lime pie on the lunch buffet

appetizer: PUMPKIN soup. IT WAS SO DELICIOUS!!

prime rib and baked potato :)

lobster tail and shrimp

dessert: some kind of apple pastry with vanilla pudding. Also delicious.

main course: seafood pasta. it had shrimp, scallops, mussels, and salmon on it. I forgot to take a picture of my appetizer and dessert this day because we were chatting with a couple the next table over.

lunch in Jamaica: Caribbean jerk pork (SO FREAKING GOOD!!), french fries, and a Red Stripe. And I still don't like Red Stripe....

appetizer: potato soup (I had a lot of soup and pasta this week!) 

turkey bowtie alfredo pasta

my first time to try bread pudding! I liked it.

yummy bloody mary from the Hard Rock Cafe in Cayman

my AMAZING jerk chicken sandwich and french fries from the Hard Rock Cafe in Cayman

appetizer: zucchini and marina pasta

main course: chauteau-briand braised pork, mashed potatoes, and peas.

dessert: amaretto cake and vanilla ice cream (yes I had some chocolate this week)

chicken noodle soup. meh.

I can't really remember what this was, I believe it was supposed to be two different types of steak with a part of a potato and mashed sweet potatoes. But the "steak" kinda tasted like pot roast. Not the best of the week.

dessert: yummy apple pie and vanilla ice cream!

appetizer: baked sweet potato and cheddar cheese soup (I have to find a recipe to replicate this!)

main course: chicken and bacon mac and cheese

dessert: souffle, also my first time trying. With white chocolate sauce on top. Very yummy!

And this was just mostly dinners that I took pictures of! There was a buffet for both breakfast and lunch, or a sit and eat together breakfast and lunch cafe. Not to mention there was a create your own Asian dishes during lunches, burger/french fries/chicken strips/hot dogs stand during lunch, and a 24 hour pizza place. SO MUCH FOOD.

Now let's all go out for a jog together...
:)

4th of July appetizer

Last minute, I decided that I wanted to make some pinwheels to our friend's for the fourth. I had had these pinwheels before, and scoured the internet trying to find what I wanted. Unfortunately, almost every recipe I found called for green onions, olives, and all kinds of different herbs and stuff that did not sound all that appetizing to me.

If you have friends from Oklahoma, have visited Oklahoma, or are an Oklahoman yourself, you will know that most of us think that ranch dressing makes just about everything taste better. Which is why I really wanted a basic pinwheel recipe. So I started reading around a lot at all the different recipes and decided to create a little bit of my own concoction. I give you my pinwheel appetizers:

Ham/Turkey and cheddar cheese pinwheels

Ingredients

*2-8 oz. packages of cream cheese

*1 large packet of Hidden Valley ranch seasoning

*10 (11) large burrito-size tortillas

*Ham and Turkey lunch meat of your choice

*2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese

Start by softening the cream cheese by either leaving at room temp or throwing them in the microwave for less than a minute. Then add the ranch packet and mix the two ingredients together well.

Next, spread a layer of your cream cheese/ranch mixture on the tortilla. Make sure that you spread the cream cheese to the edges of the tortilla like so:

place 2-3 slices of  lunch meat in the center of the tortilla, and add a handful of shredded cheddar cheese on top of the meat:

Then roll up the tortillas to where the cream cheese on the outer edge is secured to the outside of the tortilla, kinda like glue. (I apparently forgot to take a picture of this.)

Then refrigerate the rolls for a couple hours (I put another cookie sheet on top of them to hold them in place).

Then do other things to busy yourself. I read, took a shower, and danced my butt off to some country music.

Once 2.5 hours had passed, I took them out of the refrigerator, and cut them into little slices:

Then, I arranged them in a pretty little flower-esque shape:

Now just try not to eat them all before you take them to your party....

And all together now:

Ingredients

*2-8 oz. packages of cream cheese

*1 large packet of Hidden Valley ranch seasoning

*10 (11) large burrito-size tortillas

*Ham and Turkey lunch meat of your choice

*2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions

*Start by softening the cream cheese by either leaving at room temp or throwing them in the microwave for less than a minute. Then add the ranch packet and mix the two ingredients together well.

*Next, spread a layer of your cream cheese/ranch mixture on the tortilla. Make sure that you spread the cream cheese to the edges of the tortilla.

*Place 2-3 slices of  lunch meat in the center of the tortilla, and add a handful of shredded cheddar cheese on top of the meat.

*Then roll up the tortillas to where the cream cheese on the outer edge is secured to the outside of the tortilla, kinda like glue.

*Then refrigerate the rolls for a couple hours (I put another cookie sheet on top of them to hold them in place).

*Once a couple hours have passed, remove the rolls from the refrigerator cut them into little slices.

*Enjoy!

5 for 12 (supposed to be 6. boo.)

So I have no idea what I was doing the month of May. For some reason, I didn't go to a restaurant of the month. It might possibly be because things got crazy hectic around here when Katy graduated. All I ever wanted to do once she got to town was spend time with her, plus I spent quite a bit of money I didn't have to go watch her graduation and bring her pretty flowers. Because all I wanted at my graduation was pretty flowers.

SO, I skipped a month. BUT, it was in the 5th month and not the 3rd. And I plan on making up for it in July (hopefully). But for now, I give you June's new local restaurant of the month, Oklahoma Joe's BBQ. If you're from the Kansas City area, you know that this place opened there before it did here in Tulsa. Plus I believe there may be a restaurant in Stillwater as well, which technically makes this a chain and not a local restaurant. But for me, I consider it local because the owner of the restaurant started his business in Oklahoma and even graduated from Oklahoma State University. That makes it a local restaurant in my book.

Plus what better way to kick off the beginning of summer than with some delicious barbecue??

The menu was had some traditional plates, and not-so traditional plates. I decided to get "The Hog Heaven" sandwich because it had two of my favorite kind of barbecue meats, pulled pork and sausage links. Here's what it looks like:

Now, you can't see the sausage links very well, but if I had to guess it was a whole sausage link cut into four pieces and put on the bun, then they piled the sandwich high with the pulled pork.

What can I say about this sandwich? UM, IT WAS FREAKING DELICIOUS. I do love some good barbecue because my uncle kicks ass at firing up the grill and smoking some mean ribs or bologna, so any public barbecue place has some pretty big shoes to fill. Both the meats were perfectly tender and had just the right amount of smoky flavor without being too overwhelming or the meats being too dry.
The extra barbecue sauce you can add to any of your dishes is also his own recipe, and they were actually really good too. I tested out the hot barbecue sauce on its own before adding any to my sandwich (I've had a bad experience before). It actually was not too spicy, and the base for it was just sweet enough that it didn't set my mouth on fire. So I added a generous helping of both the hot and the sweet onto my sandwich and dug in.

Even though the meat was almost perfect, I doubt that I will go back to this place again. You see, for just the sandwich and a beverage, I paid a little over $9. I didn't even get a side! Granted, I was on VERY limited funds when I went, but still! The sandwich by itself was over $6 and the sides were $2.29 A PIECE. Great food, but not good enough for me to want to pay that price again. Especially when I have family members that cook meats better. Plus, if I'm going to spend $9 for barbecue, I'd much rather spend $9 on a Big Daddy's meat potato.

Who knows, I may change my mind about going back to the restaurant. It is about a mile and half from my house, I don't have a grill/smoker, my uncle who cooks BOMB barbecue is roughly 40 minutes away, and the Big Daddy's in Broken Arrow is no longer open for business. And Lord knows I love me some good barbecue food. But then again, there is also a Dickey's open now, and I can get a sandwich and 2 sides for $9. Plus a take home cup and I'm looking at $11 and some change. For more food.


OKAY ALL YOU TULSA AREA PEOPLE! HELP ME OUT! I need some ideas for where to go for my TWO places of the month for July. The only other thing I have right now is Back Alley Barbecue that recently opened in the Blue Dome District in downtown Tulsa. And trust me, I will definitely still be going there, but I can't go to two barbecue places in a row!! I would love some suggestions as to where I need to go...you know, that little hole in the wall that everyone HAS to try...I'd even be willing to drive a little to get to the restaurant! Just PLEASE help me out!

4 for 12

Welcome to the April restaurant of the month!! I went to this local eatery VERY late in the month...you see, we went to The Black Keys concert on Saturday, April 28, and I still had not gone to a local restaurant yet. Luckily, my girls and I had decided to go to a place downtown that I had never been to before. It's a little place called Caz's Chowhouse, and there is also a bar across the street called Caz's Public House.

Unfortunately, there were a couple shows going on that night, so they didn't have the full menu to choose from. I did, however, get something VERY yummy from the small menu that was available.

Pulled pork sliders, mac and cheese, and mashed potatoes

Typically, the pulled pork sliders come with cole slaw on them. However, I don't like cole slaw at all, so I asked for them without it on there. Other than the fact that our waitress was SUPER slow and our food was cold by the time it got to us, it was actually pretty good.

The bread on the sandwich was REALLY good...slightly sweet and complimented the tangy barbecue sauce  of the pulled pork.I wolfed down all four very quickly, and would LOVE to eat them again. Seriously, SUCH GOOD SLIDERS. The mashed potatoes were pretty good too, I love a good red mashed potato. The Mac and cheese was big shells, and the cheese was just creamy enough, and they topped it off with bread crumbs.

I truly think I want to go to this place again on a different night when there aren't two or three different shows in town...maybe. I would definitely like to try my food when it's hot.

Another recommendation, DEFINITELY DO NOT try the margaritas. All they do is mix tequila with sweet and sour, no lime, no margarita mix. It was not good at all.

Meh. Hopefully May's will be better. And no, I haven't gone, and no, I have no idea where it's going to be either.

Would I go back? Maybe. Not anytime soon though. Caz's is tainted by the cold food.

Adventures in Cooking, part 3

As I started living at my place longer and started craving certain foods, I decided I wanted to explore quite a bit more. I actually found quite a bit of inspiration on pinterest, but I wasn't exactly sure where to start. So instead of trying everything at once, I just tried something very simple (without pinterest), and then traded up to trying something from my pinterest board.

First up, Yummy Tomato Soup in a Bread Bowl:

Not going to lie, I kind of cheated on this one. We had one of our few cold days this winter, and I was having some allergy issues. All I wanted was the comfort of some warm soup and I absolutely love soup in a bread bowl. However, this tomato soup is TOTALLY Campbell's (they make the best), and the bread bowl is definitely not home made either. I went to our local grocery store, and went to the back of the store to the bakery, where they had sourdough loaves on sale. I took a loaf home, toasted the entire loaf in my toaster oven, and then carved out the inside of it. Once the soup was heated, I poured it into the well of the bread bowl I had created. It hit the spot, and was exactly what I was craving that night.

Next Up, my very first Pinterest recipe, Crock Pot Buffalo Chicken!:

How I ate it for the first meal, on a sandwich with some Italian blend cheese toasted on the buns.

I first pinned this recipe probably within the first couple of weeks of having my pinterest board, and knew that this was definitely something I wanted to try ASAP. If you follow the pin, you will find this recipe on this blog. It's a super easy recipe and so. dang. tasty. I've had it 3 times since the initial time I made it. It is that good.

Ingredients

-1  3 lb. bag of frozen chicken tenderloins

-1 bottle of Frank's Red Hot Wings Buffalo Sauce

-1 package of Hidden Valley Ranch Dip mix.

Method

Put all ingredients into a crock pot. (Chicken goes in frozen.)

Cover the ingredients and cook on low for 6-7 hours.

Pull out each chicken piece and shred with two forks. Return shredded chicken to the crock pot. ad 1-2 TBSP of butter to the crock pot.

Heat on low for another 1-2 hours.

After that, it's ready to eat!

I had it on a sandwich the first time I had it, but it's GREAT as a soft taco with some shredded cheese and sour cream to top it off. It is such an easy recipe too! I gave the recipe to my grandma to cook at her house, and it was a hit there too. Definitely try this one out!

Adventures in Baking, part 2

So one week, I bought a clump of bananas. Stupid me didn't realize that when you put bananas on top of a refrigerator, the heat makes them age faster. So I had to find a way to make the remaining three bananas last for a couple days. Enter Banana Bread! Banana bread was a rare treat at my place, but I loved it a lot. However, my mom came over one night and I told her my plan to bake some banana nut bread. I didn't give her enough notice to bring me whatever recipe was at home, so we scoured the internet together to find a recipe that seemed fairly easy enough and what she thought had the right ingredients for a "perfect" banana bread.

After searching through a couple recipes, I found the one on this site, and it was mom-approved.

Part of its appeal was not the need for a mixer, as I don't have a good stand up mixer, just a small hand mixer.

Ingredients

-3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed (you want the bananas to be almost inedible)

-1/3 cup melted butter

-1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)

-1 egg, beaten

-1 teaspoon vanilla extract

-1 teaspoon baking soda

-pinch of salt

-1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.

With a woodens spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl.

Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla.

Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in.

Add the flour last, mix.

Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan (I used a loaf pan the next size up).

Bake for 1 hour.

Cool on a rack, remove from pan, and slice to serve.

The problem is that with my oven, it cooks a lot faster than I realized. So while I was trying to make sure the middle of the loaf was fully cooked, the tops and outsides of the loaf got slightly burned. So here is the result on my end:

As you can see, the very end of the bread got burned.

The ends were bad bad bad. But if you cut away the burned parts of the bread, it was PHENOMENAL. Like I said, I wanted banana nut bread, so I added a 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts into the mix. I added them as the very last ingredient, after the flour.

So, like I said, I had never cooked or baked much before, so when I went to pour the mix into the loaf pan, I was very confused as to why my batter looked kind of like extra lumpy cake batter. If you've baked this type of bread before, I'm sure you're probably laughing at me right now. But if you're wanting a pretty easy banana nut bread recipe, definitely try this out.

I'm definitely going to try this again, but in muffin form. And I now know that anytime I am baking, I just need to lower the temperature on my oven about 15-20 degrees. My oven cooks hot for some reason. If you try this out, let me know!

Adventures in Baking

In all the cooking that I had done in my apartment, I very rarely ever baked. And when I did, it was something straight from a box. I have seen and tasted WONDERFUL homemade things, so I decided I wanted to try my hand at making something from scratch.I used my February visit to Norman as an excuse to bake some homemade cupcakes to take to my friends while I was visiting them.

I asked one friend in particular if he preferred vanilla or chocolate cupcakes, and then hunted the internet for a fairly easy vanilla cupcake recipe.

Here are the cupcakes before they were iced:

Recipe (taken from here):

Yields 12-16 cupcakes

Ingredients

-3/4  cup butter (not margarine)

-3 eggs

-2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

-1/2 teaspoon salt

-1 3/4 cups sugar

-3 Tablespoons vanilla extract

-1 1/4 cups milk

-2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

Instructions

• Prior to starting, get the eggs and butter to room temperature. Grease and flour 2 cupcake/muffin tins, or add cupcake wrappers to trays.

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In a separate bowl, stir together the salt, baking powder, and flour.
3. Beat butter in an electric mixer on high for 30 seconds. Add sugar and beat until combined. Continue to beat and add the eggs. Beat well and add vanilla extract.
4. Add part of the flour mixture, then part of the milk and beat on low. Repeat until all of the milk and flour mixture have been added. Combine and spread batter into cupcake pans.
5. Bake for 15-18 minutes, until the cupcakes are golden brown and toothpick comes out clean from the center. Cool for at least 15 minutes then remove from pans. Frost cupcakes as desired.

Things I learned while making these: You definitely need quite a few bowls for this. I just did not have enough. Make sure the butter is beat well before you start adding other things because you'll get chunks of butter in your mix if you don't. Don't fill the cupcake wrappers all the way to the top. The cupcakes come out HUGE!

I wanted to make some homemade strawberry icing, but the recipe that I wanted to use had weird ingredients, so I just ended up buying already made strawberry frosting:

The cupcakes were GOOD. I just haven't made these again since then, and I want to make a vanilla bean cupcake that links to the page I found this recipe on.

Adventures in Cooking, part 2

Once I started to realize that there were only so many times you could have grilled chicken tenderloins or grilled burgers before your stomach started craving other things, and wanting junk food as well.

So I started looking in my church's cook book for ideas and reading the back of my rice and pasta sides boxes to see what I could do for a meal.

Mexican meatloaf and Mexican rice

I do not like meatloaf. But I found this Mexican meatloaf recipe and thought that it sounded really good, so I wanted to try it out and see if I was going to like it. I LOVED IT, and have cooked it a couple times since living here.

The recipe is this: For every 1 lb. of ground beef, add 1 egg, 1/2 cup salsa of your choice, 1c. shredded cheese (any kind). Mix ingredients and form loaf. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes to an hour, or until top is browned. Serve topped with sour cream (I added more cheese on top of the piece of meatloaf).
The only thing that I didn't like about this first time I made it was that I used a picante-style salsa, and I'm not too big of a picante fan because of the huge chunks of onion and bell pepper in it. But every time since then that I have made it, I used a salsa that I like and it is wonderful.

For the Spanish rice, I followed the instructions on the package.

Chicken Fried Rice

For this meal, I used the chicken fried rice Pasta Roni box, and if you look on the back of the box, it gives you instructions on how to make it a meal by adding chicken, frozen peas, and an egg. I didn't have frozen peas so I had to add canned peas. And I like peas a lot so I added more than it called for, but other than that I followed the directions on the box.

This wasn't one of my favorite dishes I made, and to be honest I think the canned peas had something to do with it. I probably won't make this again.

Extra meaty chili

For this one, I bought a package of McCormick's chili seasoning and followed the directions on the back of that to make the chili. I used a little more meat than it called for because I like thicker soups. The one package made enough chili that I was able to freeze it to eat at a later date.

You should definitely try out the Mexican meatloaf if you're looking for something new to try! I really do like that recipe quite a bit and was glad that I decided to try it out.

Adventures in Cooking

So if you follow me on twitter, I'm sure you've seen my many food photos that I post. While I was thinking about it, I realized that I have never shared any of those photos on my blog. So this week is going to be all about food. What I've cooked, and my April restaurant of the month. This may even last more than a week because I've surprisingly done quite a few creative stuff with food.

When I first moved in, I didn't realize any cooking capabilities I may or may not have had, so I just had normal meals that were pretty simple and easy to make:

George Foreman grilled chicken with butter and garlic pasta sides

For this one, I just put the chicken tenderloins on the grill plain, and then cooked the pasta sides according to the package.

George Foreman grilled buffalo chicken and buffalo rice pasta sides

For this one, I decided that I wanted something a little more spicy for my dinner. For the chicken tenderloins, I rubbed Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning on the chicken before placing them on the grill, then topped them with Franks Buffalo Wing sauce once the were done being cooked. For the buffalo rice, I followed the instructions on the package and then topped it with some more Franks buffalo sauce.

George Foreman grilled hamburger, flaming hot Cheetos, and baked sweet potatoes

For the burger, I put the Creole seasoning and some Cavender's Greek seasoning on both sides of the hamburger patty before placing it on the grill. I used a bagel for the bun and topped it with Head Country barbecue sauce and Swiss cheese. For the sweet potatoes, I cut them up into cubes and then put in about half a stick of butter and 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and then baked them in a glass dish on 375 for about 20 minutes, or until most were soft. In all honesty, I probably should have baked them a little longer because quite a few of them were a little crispy.

As you can tell, I used my George Foreman grill quite a bit in the beginning of living on my own. I was given a smaller size grill as a housewarming present from one of my aunts, and I used the crap out of it for the first couple of months. It was winter so it was nice to be able to have grilled things.Plus watching all the fat drip off of what I was eating made me feel like I was eating healthy.