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Cauliflower Nuggets {barely a recipe}

So I've made these a few times now and it STILL surprises me how good they are! 

 I'm bad at remembering to put these in an hour before time to eat them but when I do - YUM!

 I also recommend eating them right after cooking, they are MUCH better! You only need 2 Ingredients cauliflower & cooking spray.

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Ingredients

• Cauliflower (I use a frozen bag of already cut cauliflower - just because when I get fresh it always goes bad before I cook it!)
• Cooking Spray

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Spread cauliflower evenly on sprayed cookie sheet.
3. Bake for 40-50 minutes.

1. Low Broil for 5-10 minutes or until your crispy desirableness is reached.

Serve with ranch or dipping sauce of choice!! 

DIY Diaper Cake Motorcyclist

I was so excited to have a shower to make this for!  It was a big hit too! :-D  So I'm going to share the idea!   I have a couple more showers in the near future, I'm super excited to be making more!  

I can not at all take credit for this amazing idea!  I just put it together and followed this awesome blog's tutorial.  She has amazing instructions and great step by step pictures.

I did change a couple of the items, just to personalize it a little bit SO I will share those and these cute pictures :-D  I was pretty happy with how it turned out!

This is what I included in my Diaper Motorcyclist:

• 34 Pampers Swaddlers Size 1
• Baby Sunglasses
• Ribbon
• 4 washcloths
• 1 pair of baby no-scratch mittens
• 2 receiving blankets
• Stuffed Giraffe (this one was really neat it has a tab to twist and it plays a lullaby!)
• Travel Feeder  (Instead of a bottle - because I know you get a ton of bottles at a baby shower & the cardboard made a great seat for the giraffe!)

Other things I did differently instead of link chains I just tied ribbon around the receiving blankets to separate the handlebars.  I also tied on the giraffe with ribbon, I was afraid of transport! 

Crock-Pot Lasagna

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Ingredients

1 lb. ground beef

29 oz + 9 oz can tomato sauce

8 oz pkg. lasagna noodles, uncooked

4 cups shredded mozzarella cheese (I also used some mixed cheese for topping)

2 cups ricotta cheese

9oz pkg frozen spinach

2 TBS Onion Powder

1 TBS Garlic Powder

2 TBS Italian Seasoning

Directions

1)  Spray the inside of the crock-pot with cooking spray

2)  Brown the ground beef

3)  Stir the tomato sauce, onion powder, garlic powder, and Italian seasonings in with the ground beef.

4)  Spread 1/4 of the meat sauce on the bottom of the crock-pot.

5)  Arrange 1/3 of the uncooked noodles over the sauce (I broke them up to make them fit better.)

6)  Spread 1/3 ricotta cheese on noodles.

7)  Sprinkle 1/3 spinach on cheese.

8)  Sprinkle 1/3 of mozzarella cheese next.

9) Repeat #4 through #8 twice more.

10) Top with remaining sauce.

11) Cover and cook on low for at least 4 hours.

12)  Let the lasagna stand in the crock-pot with the lid off for at least 10 minutes.

Recipe was adapted from here.

Cube Steak Casserole

So if you haven't already noticed I love casseroles because they are super easy and you can clean everything up while it's cooking and not have it looming over you while your eating :-D!  


And my household LOVES mushroom soup, so excuse the excessive amounts I use when I add it to my recipes, probably not the healthiest, but OH, so yummy.


Okay back to this amazing recipe.  I will be making this A LOT.  Despite the fact that cube steak goes on sale for SUPER cheap, it was one of my favorite dishes I've made in a long time!  I adapted the recipe from here.

Cube Steak Casserole
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Ingredients

• 4-6 pieces of cubed steak
• 3-5 medium potatoes, sliced
• 20-25 baby carrots, cut in half or thirds
• 1 packet of Beefy Onion Soup Mix
• 2 can cream of mushroom soup (the original recipe called for 1 can mushroom and 1 can of chicken, I just had mushroom so that's what I used)
• 3 to 4 tablespoons butter

Directions

1)  Heat oven to 375°.
2)  Spray casserole dish with cooking spray.
3)  Layer the cube steak, potatoes, and carrots in casserole dish. 
4)  Heat soups with butter and onion soup mix then pour over mixture in casserole dish.
5)  Cover and bake for 60 minutes.

Buffalo Chicken Casserole

This was SO great!  I made it the same weekend that we made these yummy cookies!  It is a great  dinner to serve to out-of-town guests :-D!  Successful Together can vouch for that :-P!

Original recipe was found here!

Buffalo Chicken Casserole
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Ingredients

• 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch cubes 
• 8-10 medium potatoes, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/3 cup olive oil 
• 1 1/2 tsp. salt 
• 1 TBS. freshly ground pepper 
• 1 TBS. paprika
• 2 TBS. garlic powder  
• 6 TBS. hot sauce 

Topping Ingredients

• 2 c. Fiesta Blend Cheese or a mix of Cheddar & Monterey Jack 
• 1 c. crumbled bacon  
• 1 c diced green onion
• 1 c diced mushrooms {optional} (I added this to a second batch I made - but my household LOVES mushrooms!)

Directions

1)  Preheat oven to 500F, spray baking dish with cooking spray.

2)  In a large bowl mix together the olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder and hot sauce.  

3)  Add the cubed potatoes and stir to coat.  

4)  Scoop the potatoes baking dish, leaving behind as much of the olive oil/hot sauce mix as possible.  

5)  Bake the potatoes for about 50 minutes (both times I made it, it took 5-10 minutes longer), stirring every 10-15 minutes, until cooked through and crispy & browned on the outside.  

6)  While the potatoes are cooking, add the cubed chicken to the bowl with the leftover olive oil/hot sauce mix and stir to coat.  Put in Fridge to marinate.

 

7)  When potatoes are done, remove from the oven and lower the oven temperature to 400F.  

8)  Top the cooked potatoes with the raw marinated chicken.  

9)  In a bowl mix together the cheese, bacon, green onion, and mushrooms.

10)  Top the raw chicken with the cheese mix.  

11)  Return the casserole to the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.  

We served with Ranch Dressing -- yummy yumminess!

Funfetti Cake Batter Cookies - YUM!

I do believe these are my new favorite cookie!!

I made these over Easter weekend, so this post is REALLY late!  My really good friend from Successful Together and I made these for an Easter party when she was visiting from WAY to far away! 

The original recipe comes from this amazing lady!

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Ingredients

• 1 box vanilla cake mix, 18.25 oz
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 C vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 C - 1 C color sprinkles (Just depends how colorful you want them)

Directions

1)  Preheat oven to 350°.

2)  Mix together the cake mix and baking powder. 

3)  In a separate bowl mix together the eggs, oil, and vanilla. 

4)  Combine the egg mixture to the cake mixture.

5)  Stir in the sprinkles. 

6)  Drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet.

7)  Bake for 10 minutes. 

Just an FYI - I made two batches - the first batch we made with the Easter sprinkles were way too B I G and yummy.  They didn't make it very long in a household of four adults for a night!  

My 9 month old, of course, had a little taste and BIG SURPRISE she liked them! 

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Do you ever get so overwhelmed with all of your bookmarks and pins of online recipes? How about all those pieces of paper that have scribbles of recipes on them? I have tons and tons of recipes all over the place and Cook'n has finally helped me put some organization behind the chaos! Some of my favorite features of Cook'n are:

• You can enter you own recipes AND add pictures!
• Use Cook'n to search and capture online recipes
• Create and organize cookbooks, and sort them by chapters to make it easier to find what you are looking for
• Search for recipes by what INGREDIENTS YOU HAVE ON HAND!! :)
• Change recipe servings sizes and it automatically re-figures the amount of ingredients needed
• MENU PLANNING!!!! :D
• The software analyzes the nutritional values of recipes

When you enter in the ingredients for your recipes, it helps you develop a shopping list, which is sorted by location in the grocery store, separating by produce, baking items, meats, etc! Any thing to help simplify life is a wonderful thing!

Once you get a decent compilation of all your favorite recipes, you can even print a cookbook The software can be a little overwhelming at first but the developer offers tons of great step by step tutorials and even youtube videos to get you started. I even found this awesome Bloopers Reel, if you need a good laugh




  Visit their site and check out all of the cool ways that Cook'n can help you get better organized and start cooking up a storm! They have given me a special promotion code to hand out to my readers that you can get 50% off !!  When you go to check out, simply enter mb-success in the coupon code blank. I really fell in love with Cook'n. It is a great product and the company is very interactive and happy to help with anything that comes up.   * I was provided with a free copy of the Cook'n software in order to complete this review, but I was not compensated in any way. All of the opinions are my own. :) a Rafflecopter giveaway

Easy Chicken Baby Recipes

I was getting a little worried about my 8 month old daughter not getting enough protein.  So I found this recipe. She still doesn't have any teeth so it's hard for her to chew meats just yet.  Hopefully it will help someone else too!  I've tested both recipes out on her and she loves them!  The original recipes came from Wholesome Baby Food.

{My new button <3 when you see this my daughter enjoyed the recipe too!}

Notes:  The two recipes both called for sweet potatoes so I cut up one large potato and the carrots and baked together.  I also had leftover chicken drumsticks (they are not good as leftovers) so that is the chicken I used!  

Recipe #1

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Ingredients

• 1/2 cup cooked diced chicken or turkey 
• 1/2 large sweet potato
• Approx. 10 baby carrots
• 1/4 cup grated cheddar or colby cheese

Directions

1)  Chop potatoes and carrots and bake until tender.

2)  Blend potatoes, carrots, and cheese until desired consistency.

3)  Stir in pureed chicken

4)  Serve :-D

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Recipe #2

Apple & Potato Chicken Puree

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Ingredients

• 1 chicken breast 
• 2 medium sized apples, peeled, core and diced
• 1/2 cup peeled and diced sweet potato
• 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions

1) Bake apples with cinnamon.  Bake potatoes until tender.

2)  Puree apples and potatoes to desired consistency.
3)  Stir in pureed chicken.

4)  Serve :-D

The whole freeze in ice cube trays did NOT work for me.  It was a pain in the rear end to get them out so I decided to just ball up and freeze this time.  Then put them in gallon bags after they were frozen.  

It has worked great so far!

Oven Fried Drumsticks

So I stole the main recipe from here.  But I changed a few things, mainly because I didn't have some of those spices.  I've never in my life cooked chicken drumsticks, I'm not even fond of dark meat chicken.  BUT, man-oh-man, were these puppies good!  So it's simple and barely a recipe but it was delicious!

Ingredients

• 12-24 drumsticks
• 1 cup flour
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 3 tsp paprika
• 2 tbs Memphis Style Chicken & Rib Rub  (Just because I had some and it sounded/smelled good!  Any spice would work!)
• 2 tbs onion powder
• 1/2 cup butter

Directions

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees.
2. In bag or large plastic container combine spices and flour.
3. Pour 1/4 cup of butter on cookie sheet. (All my drumsticks fit on one pan so I only used 1/4 cup of butter, if you need two pans use the other 1/4 cup on extra pan).
4. Shake drumsticks 3-4 at a time in flour mixture then place on buttered cookie sheet.
5. Cook for 30 minutes.
6. Flip drumsticks and cook 15-20 more minutes.  (Since I only cooked 12 I only cooked for 10 more minutes and they were perfect!)

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Eight-Layer Noodle Casserole

My first recipe!  So I might not post the most healthy recipes, BUT I'll try to keep them good and easy!  


I'm aiming for at least one a week and maybe squeeze some extras in if I get to it!


I do not want to give the impression that I make up any of these recipes.  I might add or take away ingredients, but I do not have any culinary skills besides FOLLOWING recipes :-P!  My younger brother went to culinary school, he got all those skills of the family!


So here you go!

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Ingredients

• 3 cups dried noodles (I used ziti noodles)
• 1 lb ground beef 
• 3 8 oz cans tomato sauce (original recipe only called for 2 cans but we like things saucy)
• 1 tsp basil
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 1 8 oz carton sour cream
• 1 8 oz package of cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/3 cup chopped onion
• 1 10 oz package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
• Mushrooms to taste (OPTIONAL - just an after thought and mushrooms never ruin anything! :-))
• 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions

1. Grease casserole dish.  Cook Noodles according to their directions
2. Brown & Drain beef.  Add tomato sauce, basil, sugar, garlic powder, salt & pepper into pan with beef.  Bring to boil then simmer for 5 minutes.
3. In separate bowl, beat the cream cheese and sour cream until smooth.  Stir in milk.  Put half of this mixture in fridge for later.  (I did not do this but I will next time because the onions did not cook long enough on the top layer)  Then mix onions in remaining cream cheese mixture.  
4. Now layer casserole
• Half of the noodles
• Half of the meat mixture
• Half of the cream cheese mixture with the onions
• All of the spinach
• Mushrooms (optional) (This makes it a 9-layer casserole!)
• Remaining noodles
• Remaining meat mixture
5. Cover casserole and bake 350 degrees for approx 45 minutes.  
6. Uncover 
• Remaining cream cheese mixture
• Cheddar Cheese
7. Bake, Uncovered for 10 more minutes.

We are only two mouths right now -- So next time I will separate into two dishes and freeze half, it made a lot.  If you are a bigger family double the recipe and freeze for an easy meal next time!  

For frozen casserole --- let thaw and cook for 1hr at 350 degrees (or until heated through) then sprinkle with cheddar cheese and cook 10 more minutes uncovered. 

I got this recipe from

 Find this recipe and go share your own here:

Hello!

I am just starting this blog (if that isn't obvious), as a close friend of mine and I have discussed, I will try to keep the blabbering to a minimum.  My blog is called Eat Teach Parent because those are three things I fill my life with.  Of course, they are not in order of importance; just a cute spin off of Eat Pray Love.  The purpose of starting this up was to participate in some cool recipe swapping, and my kitchen skills could be fine tuned a little (or rather a lot!).  I then thought I enjoy swapping teaching ideas... I mean what teacher doesn't?  What do I teach you ask?  Well I currently do not have my own classroom, but I hope to very, very, very soon (and so does my husband!)!!  I am currently substituting for the local elementary schools, at least I'm putting my Elementary Education Degree to some sort of use.  I will still try to post some of the things I've done up to this point through school, student teaching, and my long-term subbing; if it doesn't give any of you ideas it will be a great reminder for me when I finally do get my own class!  I am guilty of spending my free time searching Pinterest, where I find all kinds of awesome ideas.  I might slip a few of these untested (by me) ideas on here as well, who knows!  Now the best part (at least in my opinion) being a mom!  I know I'm no expert, but it's still nice to see other peoples views on things!  I had my daughter last July and it's been the best 8 months of my life!  My husband and I are having such a blast and enjoying every minute of it.  I hope to use this blog to bring us moms, moms-to-be, and/or can't-wait-to-be-moms together, share stories, opinions, and advice.  With help from others I may even try to share some good deals; as parents, I know we save money wherever we can!  

Well that's the round about purpose of this blog, let's see if I can keep it up!! 

Here's to Eat Teach Parent!!!