New Recipe Challenge Week 3

You may have noticed that there was no "New Recipe Challenge Week 2" post. Last week was rather chaotic and I neglected getting my coupons cut, shopping list and menus made, and even going to the grocery store. It's only because of my very small stockpile that we made it through the week. In contrast, I have already done 2 shopping trips this week. I still need to go to Rite-Aid for pull-ups and FREE Johnson & Johnson bath products (yes, I said FREE), and the grocery store again on Saturday to get "fresh" cottage cheese for my husband before the sale runs out. At any rate, here is my new recipe for this week:

Buffalo Chicken Dip

courtesy of Allrecipes.com (recipe by NUNPUNCH)

Ingredients

2 (10 ounce) cans chunk chicken, drained 2

(8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1 cup Ranch dressing

3/4 cup pepper sauce (such as Frank's Red Hot®)

1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

Directions

Heat chicken and hot sauce in a skillet over medium heat, until heated through. Stir in cream cheese and ranch dressing. Cook, stirring until well blended and warm. Mix in half of the shredded cheese, and transfer the mixture to a slow cooker. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top, cover, and cook on Low setting until hot and bubbly. Serve with celery sticks and crackers.

Alterations I made:

I used leftover rotisserie chicken as well as a buffalo wing sauce instead of the Frank's because I didn't want it to be too hot for the kiddos. I ended up adding the Frank's to my portion. I served it with tortilla chips and several cracker varieties. I didn't use the crockpot because I was in a hurry and just cooked it on the stove then served it in bowls, but I recommended that you do because it begins to "tighten up" and separate as it cools down.

Verdict:
Yummy! This really isn't a main course, although it's the only thing I served for lunch today. *gasp* I would recommend it as a side or appetizer or a "game day" snack. Very tasty. :)

You can follow along with the New Recipe Challenge @ Feminine Farmgirl

UPDATE * I just went to post my new recipe over at the Feminine Farmgirl, when I read her latest heartbreaking post about a goat birth doesn't go right. It's very sad, but Jenna is such a faithful young woman who remembers to keep her eyes on God even in trials. Please read her story & pray for her and her family. Thank you.* 

Out Growing In

Have you heard of OutGrowingIn? It's a kids and maternity clothing swap. Apparently they will even send you boxes to ship your used clothing in. I haven't used it yet, but it seems like a good deal and I can't seem to find a Goodwill around here. Have you used it yet? If you have, please let us know. I'm at least going to go sign up, and if I end up using it I will let you know!

Mega Swagbuck Friday!

Mega Swagbuck Friday!

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Recipe Request!

Remember the New Recipe Challenge I'm participating in? Yes, well, I haven't even been grocery shopping for the week. It's been a crazy week and I'm very behind. I haven't even cut coupons in 2 weeks! :0

So, I'm asking for your help! I am specifically asking for recipes that utilize my slow cooker or my Vita-Mix, or frugal recipes. If you have some great recipes that fall into any of these categories, please share them!

Until then, I will be seeking out something for this week on my own. Perhaps I should look in one of my 50 or so cookbooks? Wish me luck!

Thank you for sharing your recipes! :)

Thankful Thursday: My Husband

I really am thankful for my husband! He works very hard to provide for our family, then comes home & helps wherever he's needed here at home. I could list all the reasons why I'm thankful for him, but then you'd all just be jealous!! LOL

To My KingBeaz: You are the cheese to my macaroni! I fluv you!

New Recipe Challenge

An adorably charming blog I follow Feminine Farmgirl is hosting a meal challenge to try one new main dish recipe every week for 8 weeks. This challenge came at a very convenient time as I had just purchased 4 1/2 lbs. of pork spare ribs because the were on sale. I've never cooked pork spare ribs before, so I obviously need to find one. I've been visiting a Year of Slow Cooking occasionally ever since I saw her on Rachael Ray a few years ago, but never used one of her recipes. Recently, I've been looking even more because I would really like to use the slow cooker more often. Anyway, this is the recipe I found for my spare ribs:

Greek Spiced Spareribs

The Ingredients.

serves 4-6 or 2 hungry moms

4 pounds pork spareribs (you can use beef, too)
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon anise
1 teaspoon ground mustard
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns (leave intact)
4 whole cloves (leave intact)
1 tablespoon honey
1/2 cup orange juice

The Directions.

Use a 6-quart slow cooker. Place ribs into cooker. In a mixing bowl, combine the brown sugar with all of the ground spices. Rub this mixture the best you can on all sides of the ribs. Throw in the whole peppercorns and cloves. Drizzle on the honey, and add orange juice.

Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, or until meat is super tender and separates from the bone.

*Please go read her post for all the extras!

I had to make some substitutions though because we didn't have some ingredients on hand. I used regular old table salt, omitted fennel seeds, ground mustard and anise, substituted ground pepper for peppercorns and ground cloves for whole cloves. I also didn't have any honey, so that was sadly left out. I may have thrown in a shake or two of Montreal steak seasoning. Just for yummies I sliced up a white onion and layered that on the bottom of the slow cooker first, which made for a tasty little topping when all was said and done. The house smelled SO good all day! These were fabulous ribs and so tender that they were literally falling off the bone as I tried to take them out of the cooker. There was a delicious sweetness to them that Kingbeaz & I both found very good. The kids might have enjoyed them more if they hadn't been so worried about the bones and fat. (I DID take all the bones out, but missed some of the fat...sheesh!)

Also, there are plenty of leftovers so tomorrow I plan on shredding them up, adding BBQ sauce & throwing them on some biscuits. From Greek to Southern. LOL

 

This was also a frugal meal. I added (frozen)curly fries & canned corn. Extremely healthy, I know. :)

 

Ribs = $8.64

Spices & OJ = $1.00 (I had them all on hand, but I'll just guestimate based on how much I used)

Onion = $0.30 (again, just guessing. It was part of 5lb. bag & I don't remember how much I paid)

Curly Fries = $1.69

2 cans corn = $.94

Total = $12.57

 

Tomorrow's BBQ sands will cost:

1/2 bottle BBQ sauce = $0.50

1 can Pillsbury biscuits = $0.67

Total = $1.17

 

Total for 2 meals = $13.74

 

Yummy & Frugal!

 

What new recipes have you tried lately??

Tuesday's True Confession: The Truth about Parenting

Sometimes I feel like I am the only parent on the planet who has to deal with certain issues. (Well, Kingbeaz too). Then I come across something like the blog post I read last night on The Crafty Classroom, and realize that some things are just universal parenting problems. Of course, they're MUCH funnier when they are happening to someone else. I laughed so hard I had tears running down my face & I could barely breathe. My poor husband came in from taking the trash out and thought something had happened to me. I had a hard time just telling him to read it for himself. By the time he got to Lesson 7 (my personal favorite), he too was laughing uncontrollably. I'm still giggling a bit as I sit here typing this. So if you're having one of those days, go read this post, laugh yourself silly & feel a little bit better knowing you aren't the only one!

SuperBowl XLV Bingo

On Thanksgiving our family used these football bingo cards & had a great time. So when a friend asked for ideas for SuperBowl, I went looking for them. I also found these. However, I thought they needed more variety & wanted to make them game specific, so I created a new set. I tried coverting to pdf but they lost their formatting. Even when I uploaded to Scribd & Google Docs I lost formatting. If anyone out there can tell me how to do upload documents in their original format so you can download them from your computer, I would be willing to share more stuff in the future. Until then, if you are interested in the SuperBowl XLV Bingo cards just let me know & I will e-mail them to you. Enjoy!

Football & Cheerleading 2010 Part 9 - Cheer Competition

Hooray! We've finally reached the end of the 2010 Football & Cheerleading season with Lil' C's Cheerleading Competition! Our girlies worked all season on their routine & they really did know it. However, on the day of competition it didn't turn out so well. I think they were just nervous and for some reason the crowd was really loud during their performance even though they weren't during the other groups. It made it hard to hear the music. :(

The girls love competition, though. They always think they've won because they get a participation medal. (They're really just practicing at this point; no real competition until the next age level.) Plus, the mommies go all crazy like we did for homecoming and get them swag bags, flowers, etc. This year we also went to CiCi's Pizza for an end-of-season/birthday-party-for-the-coach celebration. It was fun and I'm glad we got to celebrate with our friends before we moved.

Here is my layout of the best pictures I have. I honestly don't know why they are so grainy and/or pixelated. It's really quite frustrating, but here ya go:



I also have this video taken on the same camera as I took the pictures with so, same effect. Again, sorry. This is the first time I have uploaded a video so I hope it works.

Thanks for following along through our 2010 football & cheerleading adventures! :)

Swagbucks

Do you use Swagbucks?? If not, you should! And here's why:

You can earn FREE stuff just for searching the internet!

It's true! I've been using Swagbucks for quite awhile now, but have never redeemed any points...until today. I bought two $10 Amazon.com gift cards. I had been working towards the Target gift card, then realized it was probably only an on-line gift card, which it is (should have looked sooner...duh!). That's really not helpful. I was hoping to roll the gift card for more gift cards in store. That's okay though, because I found this great new site A Proverbs Wife who uses Amazon.com gift cards from Swagbucks to fund her entire Christmas!! How smart is that? She also gives you some advice for finding more swagcodes, such as reading the daily discussions on Facebook. You can also find more codes by clicking on the SC button of my Swagbucks widget at the bottom of this blog. Now that I know how to actually earn more I wanted to tell you about it. Today is MegaSwagBucks Friday which means you have the opportunity to earn bigger denominations! If you're ready to start earning FREE stuff (you'll get 30 swagbucks just for signing up!):

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