Literally the Best Sugar Cookies in the World!

I didn't even attempt to mess with this recipe and make it my own. Sugar cookies and I have a love hate relationship; in that, I love to eat them, but they hate to come out right when I try to bake them. It's very sad. Until now, that is. I came across this recipe on allrecipes.com. It is awesome because most sugar cookie recipes call to be put in the fridge for an hour or more. Sometimes I'm lazy. I don't want to do all that. Well, this recipe is a little bit of labor, but it's so good, so it's worth it.

(I do not recommend these cookies for cut out cookies)

What you need:

2 3/4 cup all-purpose Flour

1 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

1 1/4 cup Margarine

2 cups White Sugar

2 Eggs

2 tsp Vanilla Extract

Additional white sugar for decoration

What you need to do:

Preheat oven to 350. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and 2 cups sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla.

Gradually stir in the dry ingredients until just blended. 

Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and roll the balls in remaining 1/4 cup of sugar. 

Place cookies 2 inches apart onto parchment lined cookie sheet.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until lightly browned at the edges. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

These cookies come out perfectly crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. 

They do however, get harder. What I recommend for consistently chewy cookies if you're keeping them for more than a day is to put a slice of bread in a tightly fit container. The bread lets out moisture, so your cookies never get hard. Try it. It seriously works. 

Also, what I recommend, if you're like me, you'll eat the whole batch because they are so good, so do this: Bake a few, then on another parchment lined cookies sheet place the sugar coated raw cookie balls then freeze them. When you want more simply defrost them (it doesn't take long at all) then bake them like normal!

Enjoy!


file:///C:/Users/Alyssa/Downloads/pinterest-2a0be%20(1).html

Pumpkin Oatmeal

It's that time of season again, and it's my favorite time: Pumpkin time!

I try not to go too nuts on the pumpkin, but I can't help it. It's so good!

So far I've only made this and pumpkin granola, so it's okay. But I plan on making Pumpkin donuts, pumpkin spice latte, pumpkin bars, and of course a few pumpkin pies. This year I will be doing something different though. I'll be making a pumpkin cheesecake pie for Thanksgiving since we're visiting family and I'm sure everyone else will bring pie too. 

ANYWAYS, I've been trying to lose weight for a long time now. I've recently joined a gym though called Just Ladies Fitness and I'm loving it!

So, in addition, I've been trying to eat healthier. It's tough but I'm making do. So, for breakfast I've been trying to have more oatmeal and fruits instead of cereal, especially since it's getting cold out. 

Here's a delicious recipe for Pumpkin oatmeal.

What you need:

1/2 cup Old-Fashioned Rolled Oats

1 cup Milk (Skim, soy, rice, 2%, whatever you choose)

1/4 cup canned Pumpkin Puree

Ground Cinnamon, Nutmeg, and Ginger

1/2 teaspoon Maple Syrup (or honey)

Brown sugar or walnuts or anything you want to top.

What you need to do:

Simple really: Boil the oats in milk, pumpkin, syrup and spices. You can even use pumpkin spices if you'd like. I put a few shakes of each spice into the oatmeal. Let sit until oats are soft.

Sprinkle with your topping.

That's it!

It's so simple and so delicious! My favorite part, besides the pumpkin, is that it doesn't have any preservative or processed junk or anything. I actually found a link to a few copy cat of those instant oatmeal packets. I will have to share. :)

Enjoy!

Lasagna Cupcakes

Cupcakes are taking off. I've seen so many things in cupcake forms lately. Like in Tokyo, theres a 'red velvet' cupcake. Sounds normal, right? WRONG! The red in the cupcakes is from beets. Ick! Cinnamon buns can now come in cupcake form. And now, lasagna. 

This was really good, but really hard work! Like... it took a lloooonnng time to finish. Was it worth it in the end? meh... not really. I'm all about pretty, delicious and pretty easy and less time consuming to cook. 

Pretty, right? They were pretty tasty. But honestly, I think I could use this same recipe and just make it the old fashion way. This recipe was adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything

What you need: (Sorry, I don't have measurements)

Italian Sausage (I used Johnsonville Chicken Sausage, 3 cheese Italian Flavored)

Red pepper

Onion

Garlic

Lasagna noodles, cooked al dante

Ricotta Cheese

Parmesan Cheese

Mozzarella Cheese

(I added in some Fontina Cheese as well)

Italian spices (I.e. basil, oregano, etc)

Spaghetti sauce (I use Prego, my Favorite!)

What you need to do:

Start out by putting your sausage in a food processor.

Pulse until it looks like the above photo. The smaller, the better.

Next, pulse some pepper and onion. Garlic would be nice too, but I crushed mine with a knife so we have lots of big pieces! 

Saute it all together, fully cooking the sausage.

Spray your pans and warm your oven to 350 at this point, if you haven't already.

Take your lasagna noodle and put it on a hard surface, like a cutting board.

Grab a cup and cut little circles out.

Voila!

You may even have to pinch off a bit more if it doesn't fit right.

Place your lasagna circles in the tin.

Take a lasagna noodle and cut it in half, the long way. Wrap the noddle in the pan like so. It doesn't have to be perfect, the stuffing will hold it together later.

Mix your cheeses, making sure their creamy and well blended.

Add in your spices!

Now layer. Sauce first.

Meat/onion mix next.

Ricotta mix next.

More sauce.

Place shredded Mozzarella Cheese on top.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, allowing everything to get warm and melt. The edges should get a bit crispy, but don't leave it in more than that otherwise it will harden. 

Not so bad, just a lot of prep work. I hope you all enjoy!

Linky Parties:

FriDAYS Made Sweet

Too Excited, Must Share!

 But thanks to pinterest, which I don't think I have the pin, I have found an amazing way to help my frustrations, and I highly recommend you doing the same!

 I have a gazillion appliances! A BILLION! The cords are everywhere. 

 They get on my nerves.

VELCRO!!! It's your new BFF!

Apply, wrap, stick!

Simple yet effective!

I did it to everything!

My Rice Cooker.

Waffle Maker

Air Popper

My Bosch

My Magic Bullet, my crockpots, etc, etc, etc!

Thank you for entertaining my excitement. now I suggest you go and get some for yourself.

The West Wing

4334 S Regal St

Spokane, Wa 99223

The West Wing is another branch of the White House Grill in Post Falls, ID.

I'd have to give this restaurant 4 out of 5 stars. Their a bit on the pricey side, to me, for what you get, but worth it in the long run. 

If you do not like garlic or just mildly like it, DO NOT GO! Everything except for their fries contain massive amounts of garlic in it and it's amazing!

This was my going away 'party' and I went out with my mom and my dad. 

I miss them so much :(

When you enter you can see the kitchen. It's not too big so you're pretty close to the people at the next table but far enough away that they'll mind their own business. 

I'm in the patio and they have massive open doors into the restaurant.

Other side of restaurant.

Patio.

The best appetizer EVER! It's a Balsamic Vinegar inside olive oil with crushed garlic on top served with sliced French Bread. This garlic packs a punch, but its oh so good!

I got the gyro with fries and pasta salad. The pasta salad was a bit too much on the mayo-y side, but I'm not a fan of mayo, so I'm biased. The gyro was delicious! The meat was so tender and flavorful with a tzatziki sauce that topped it off into perfection.

My mom got a Balsamic Spinach salad. It's pretty big, and pretty garlic-y. There are chunks of garlic inside, along with croutons and Romano cheese.

My dad got the same thing as me, but vegetarian. They put mixed veggies inside along with feta cheese and tzatziki sauce. 

Update: This restaurant is now closed. You can still visit the main branch in Post Falls, ID.

Blueberry Muffin Top Cookies

I have finally gotten settled, but don't get used to it guys! We're going to start looking for houses in February. But until then, there is a LOT I have to catch you up on. I have a few restaurant reviews as well as recipes that I want to share! 

I got this recipe from Iowa Girl Eats. I love that blog! I'm on my journey to finally looking great and feeling great about my body. So, I haven't been baking much because of it. But Iowa Girl Eats has so many inspirational ideas and recipes to help me lose weight without eating crap and feeling guilty. 

Blueberry is Joe's favorite, so of course I had to try these when I stumbled across it on her blog.  

ok, on with pictures and recipes!

I must admit now, her's looks SOO much better than mine!! I don't know how she got the blueberries to be so plump and not collapse. 

What you need:

2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup salted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon almond extract (or Vanilla Extract)

2 teaspoon lemon zest, about 1 lemon

1 cup frozen blueberries, thawed and drained

What you need to do:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl, set aside.

2. In the bowl of your mixer, cream together butter and sugar until well combined. Add in egg and beat until combined. Add milk, almond extract and lemon zest then beat until combined.

3. Slowly add dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, and mix until combined. Gently fold in blueberries. The dough will seem too thick, but just keep at it!

4. Refrigerate the dough for at least one hour, then shape into large balls. Bake 6 to a baking sheet for 13-15 minutes, or until slightly golden brown on the bottom, and set on top. Do not over bake! Let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool all the way.

I had extra's so, I greased up a cheap ice tray and dolloped some dough into each slot and froze them for another day. 

 Recipe from Iowa Girl Eats

Influenster Natural VoxBox '12

     We're finally here in Wichita, KS! We got here on the 26th, got a place on the 27th (a one bedroom apartment, which compared to our nice three bedroom house, it's overwhelming), our stuff arrived here, we found out on the 28th, on the 25th, but we couldn't get our stuff delivered until the 2nd, and just got internet today. Ugh. It's been crazy and busy. But as I unpacked my cook books and baking gear, I got re-inspired  so hopefully I can get back into the game soon.

     On another note, I signed up for an Influenter voxbox. If you want to sign up HERE is their web site. Influenster basically sends out free samples and people like me, those with blogs or vlogs give their opinion out on these things. I recently received the Naturals VoxBox which had in it:
The Original Dish Drying Mat
CleanWell Antibacterial Hand Wipes
GeoDeo
Nectresse
EBOOST
Lypsyl
And within each box, everyone gets one in four items. I got Maxi Hair Tablets.

Ok, here are my 100% honest opionions about each product.

The Original Dish Drying Mat

Before I had this dish drying mat, I had a bulky dish rack. It was nice, but it took up so much space. On top of that, at the time we lived in New Mexico and the water was so hard that it would leave nasty hard water stains all over it. I like my house to look clean and clutter free. This was not clean. Then I got this mat. Three letters: OMG. It took less space, did the same job, without the hard water stains. It is always clean. It absorbs so nicely and dries fast! It's machine washable if it ever does get dirty. It's affordable. It's about $5.  The only con: You can't place glasses or cups faced down on it because it isn't airy enough to let out the moisture. So the water just sits there. But you can easily fix that by tilting the cup to let in some air. 

Facebook Page

CleanWell Antibacterial Hand Wipes 

The biggest pro: They're natural. They use thyme oil instead of harsh chemicals to do the same job. For this packet you see in the photo you get 8 pocket packets with 10 wipes in each so 80 total and it costs $26.99. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to tell you this, but I'm going to anyways. If you go to store.cleanwelltoday.com and and enter in the promo code voxfb20 you'll get 20% off of your order. This deal expires on 10/12/12 so get to it! Also if you go to their Facebook page you can get a coupon for $1.00 off.

GeoDeo

GeoDeo is 97% natural. The other 3% is apparently is essential to maintain the effectiveness. I have EXTREMELY sensitive skin. Anything besides Dove Sensitive Skin and I break out. I end up itchy and make myself look like a monkey itching my arm pits. It's awkward. But this deo doesn't have any harsh chemicals, especially metals, which I have noticed that aluminum is the main and active ingredient is most deodorants. The only thing I didn't like was the smell, but there are 2 other scents that I will be sure to try.

Facebook Page

Nectresse

I love Splenda. I use it in everything. EVERYTHING! Well, Splenda has made Nectresse. It's 100% natural made from Monk fruit with nothing artificial. It is zero calories and it tastes pretty close to Splenda. So if you like Splenda and you like all natural, get some Nectresse. 

Facebook Page

EBOOST

I'm not big on energy boosters, so I, unfortunately, have nothing to compare it to. I liked everything about it but the taste. It was orange and had a horrible after taste. Luckily you only have to drink 8 oz. Jillian Michaels gives it an A+, so that's saying something. There's no added caffeine, just natural caffeine from green tea, so there's no crash. It's also 5 calories per packet! What the what! Yea...

If you go to EBOOST.com you can order them from there and get free S&H on orders over $30. If you go HERE you can also get a coupon!

Lypsyl

Lypsyl. This is the only one I didn't like. 

When it comes to chapped lips, there's no better lip balm than Burt's Bee's. Put one coat on and you're good. This balm, about 30 minutes after applying, it was all gone! Why? The first ingredient is Mineral oil. The second ingredient is Petroleum. These are both drying ingredients and should not be used for your skin. Go to this web page to read more about it. 

Burt's Bee's, however, doesn't have any of these ingredients. 

Facebook Page

And within each box you got either one of four products and I got Maxi-Hair.

Maxi Hair is for hair, nails and skin. It is about $17.99 per bottle, which to me is a bit spendy. I personally take pure biotin for my hair, skin and nails. Maxi hair's main ingredient is Biotin and not only do you have to take two (and there are only 90 tables, so 45 uses), but the pills are HUGE! Biotin's tablets are smaller than a pinky nail and you only have to take one a day. Plus Biotin is about $3.00 per bottle and has 120 tablets (that's 120 uses!)