Ok, so wow it's been a while...

and let me tell you why. My house has literally been ripped apart for the past month or so. Yes, we are renovating, we've torn down wall and put up walls, now we are sheet rocking and hoping to have tapers/mudders here next week so we can finally get things put back together, well a bit anyways. My kitchen is pretty much unusable because we ripped out all the cabinets, my stove is covered with a sheet and several layers of dust- and that's after cleaning it like 10 times. I also have a cabinet dead center of the middle of my room. My floors are nasty dirty and my babies have very few places to play now. So I haven't really been cooking or baking, in fact in the past 2 months my hubby has lost 10 lbs because of it, you'd thought the take out would have made up for it! Anyways, we are hoping to have life back to normal in the next few weeks and then I can get back to cooking, because I miss it so much!

The dog

We have a shih tzu, her name is Bella, and before you all think, oh my gosh another Twilight obsessed fan, let me explain. Ever since I was about 18, I'm almost 26 now, I had Isabella as a name I wanted to give my daughter, and then came Twilight, I decided I couldn't do that to my kid, so we we did it to the dog instead. Anyways, we tend not to cut her hair during the winter months, she's a house dog, but she definitely spends a decent amount of time outside and I don't want her to freeze. Also, being a shih tzu she has hair instead of fur, so it just keeps growing and growing, my project yesterday was to finally shave the poor overly fuzzy dog. Now I forgot to take a before picture, however we did pile up the hair so you can see her standing next to it. The hair was easily as big as her if not bigger! All the sudden I was wondering if we needed to start feeding her more. She's plenty active though and seems to be a whole lot happier. She also now kind of looks like a heavily spotted mini dalmation...

Here's the beef spare ribs...

So this is totally one of my favorite things to make, its not nearly as hard as it seems, it does take a while though, but it always pleases.

First, heat some oil in a braising pan (I actually use a sautoir, which is like a regular frying pan, but instead of curving up its sides are straight). Then salt and pepper, and I like to add granulated garlic, your ribs and roll them in flour. Then sear them on all sides in the oil. Then you are going to add enough liquid to cover the ribs about 2/3rd the way up, I use stock, you can use beef broth, or boullion. Cover and stick it in the oven on 275 F for 2-3 hours.

So for the sauce you are going to take some shallots, I used 2 larger ones. Slice them, put them in a saucepan, add some sugar, and a little butter, and cook till golden, you may have to add a little water every once in a while so it doesn't burn, keep an eye on them just so they don't burn, but you don't have to stir them the whole time. After they look like this you can let them sit till the ribs are done.

The topping is just very thinnly sliced purple onion they were tossed with flour and seasoned salt, you can slice them ahead of time, but don't toss them with the flour until you are ready to fry them. To finish deep fry them in 325 F oil till golden.

Lastly the potatoes, I use red because I love that they are more starchy, I left the skins on. Boil them, then whip them up with some butter, milk and some smoked gouda cheese (one of my absolute favorites).

So now your ribs are done, take them out of the pan and put them on a cookie sheet lined with tin foil, and put them back in the oven for a few minutes just to crisp the outside up a little. Now we are going to finish the sauce, first skim off the fat and then add the juices and all that other good stuff in the pan to caramelized shallots, and blend it (again I used the immersion blender), and bring it to a boil. Now chances are you didn't use stock, so you are going to need to thicken the sauce a little, my go to is cornstarch, I like that it thickens, but doesn' really change the color of the sauce. Just take some cornstarch and mix it with water and add to the shallots and l roasting liquid that should already be boiling. So hears the thing about cornstarch, you have to boil it at least 1 minute, first because that gets rid of the starchy flavor and second, after 1 minute that's as thick as it's going to get, so if its still to thin, add a little more and boil another minute till it's a consistency you like. And there you have it. :)

Cinco De Mayo...

I've actually tried to get to this the past several days and it hasn't happened. Anyways here's what's up. The Easter lesson went really well, I honestly think it could have gone on a lot longer. Also I finally got my little guys pictures taken, its been almost 8 months, I know I'm a horrible mom, but it's just so hard to want to pay for pictures when your kids don't really do anything new and now they are finally sitting up, therefore totally worth it, plus aren't they just they just so cute? Can you tell who's who? Next thing, I've felt like this totally lazy mommy for the longest time, I mean I went to culinary school and I was never actually even making dinner. The hubby would come home and I swear 9 times out of 10 we ate ramen...how sincerely pathetic is that? So in an effort to be a better wife, mother, chef etc. the hubby and I sat down and made a plan of what we were going to have for dinner for the next 2 weeks and I finally feel like I'm doing something, which leads me to the title of this post. So yesterday, day 4 of my dinner goal, was cinco de mayo, and I really got into it. I made black refried beans, which by the way I like way better than the standard. I also made homemade tortillas for fajitasfor the first time ever, guacamole, and pico de gallo. Tyson made the drinks, and he did a great job!

So the food run down, for the beans I used canned beans- remember I'm all about making it easier which is a total necessity when you still have to take care of 2 babies when you are doing anything- I cooked up some onions, garlic and bacon, added the beans and heated that up, added water and chicken boullion, and used the immersion blender and just cooked it down, seasoned with some salt and they were yummy and my tiny little guys agreed, which is totally the best part.

I got the recipe for the tortillas off of the Ourbestbite.com blog, I love that blog! and my hubby loved the tortillas, said they were just like the ones from his mission in El Salvador, so I guess that means they were pretty good right? The filling for the fajita was just sliced peppers, onions, and rump roast cut into strips with a little fajita seasoning. Sadly I forgot to take pictures of all of this, so sorry, but you'll have to take my word for it, they were yummy. I think we are gonna end there on the food front, but if you have questions feel free to ask. However, I will leave you with this tomorrow is braised beef ribs with a sweet shallot sauce, smoked gouda mashed potatoes, glazed carrots and fried onions (and no those are not onion rings). I'll try and remember a camera for that one, its def one of my favorite things to make.- Last point of note, this totally won't let me post it the way I want it to, so sorry that it's so freaking spaced out, maybe one day I'll get the hang of this.

Chocolate covered eggs & Easter

These were yesterday's project. These days its all about making things as easy as possible, that said, it still took me like all day to make these, granted I made quite a few more than this, but I forgot to take a picture and some had already been given away. The dark chocolate ones are filled with Caramel and chopped pecans, so kinda like a turtle, which is probably my favorite type of chocolate. The milk ones are peanut butter, well, the base is peanut butter with a few other things mixed in and the white ones which I obviously played with the most were filled with dark chocolate truffle filling with a little bit of almond extract. I did those first and then I just decided it was taking way too long, so the others aren't nearly as cute, but hey they are eggs, just in time for Easter. Speaking of Easter, I'm excited because it will be my boys first Easter, not that they will really understand it, but that's besides the point. I am however decently nervous, I have to teach Young Women's for the first time, thankfully it's only for about 10 minutes or so, but that last age group I taught were the Sunbeams, they were great just fyi. So we'll see how that goes. Really I just have to cover the last week of the Savior's life and his Resurrection. My wonderful hubby typed up a timeline with all the scriptural references so that's been a great help, not that I'm clueless as to the order of things, but I'm not the teacher that he is, and I tend to get things a little jumbled when they are actually coming out of my mouth, so here is praying my lesson actually comes across decently on Sunday. Wish me luck!

Our garden...

We sort of started it yesterday. I'm kind of an experimentor, I don't have a lot of practice at it, so we'll see how it goes. Yesterday we tilled all the soil and added fertilizer to it, mostly the garden we haven't used before. We planted 3 strawberry plants and a raspberry bush, wish us luck. We are hoping to plant corn, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, peas, carrots, and a few other things, I'm not sure what I really expect to happen, but I hope we get something worth while out of it, if nothing else, maybe a slightly healthier diet :)

Young Womens Fundraiser, and my cake..

Today we had our Young Women's fundraiser for Girls Camp, it feels like we've been working on it forever and I'm fairly sure I've only been in Young Womens for a month. Glad to have it over, but it went really well. We did a spaghetti dinner and dessert auction, I made this for it I made 9 inch yellow cakes, cut them in half and sliced strawberries, sprinkled them with sugar and put them inbetween all the layers. I used the cupcake frosting recipe from Ourbestbites.com, its my favorite and I tripled the recipe. Lastly I just used chocolate coating and dipped the strawberries.

Anyways, the night went really well, and now we are on to the next project. Though I'm not really sure what that is yet. I'm hoping it's turning my garage into a family room, but we'll see.