A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Pinterest Recipe: 1, 2, 3 Cobbler: Fruit, Cake Mix, Sprite...and that's it!

"Hi, My name is Glenna and I, too, am addicted to Pinterest."

I admit it.  I have a million (well, maybe not QUITE that many) pins of recipes and crafts that I will, I promise myself, someday cook, create, paint, plant, or read. 

I pinned this cobbler photo/recipe earlier this very afternoon and thought "I have all three of these things on hand, why not tonight?"  So, along with the spaghetti, homemade bread, and roasted garlic we had for dinner, we also have this lovely peach (or the original is berry) cobbler to enjoy for a little something sweet to end the night on.

I tracked this photo back to Jennifer's blog "Living a Changed Life", Be sure to check it out  and follow her amazingly inspirational weight loss journey. 

I followed the directions which are just as simple as the directions someone has written on the Pin itself:

Nannie's Banana Pudding for Gene

 

Redneck Auntie's Cape Codder AKA "Don't Judge Me, Princess"

What do you do when you only have moonshine soaked cranberries, off brand powdered no-calorie lemonade, and nary a clean glass glass in the house?  Make Redneck Auntie Cape Codder AKA "The Don't Judge Me"

Junior's Midnight Moon moonshine is a family business based on Junior Johnson's original North Carolina moonshine recipe from the mid-1800's.  The jar and label caught my eye at the grocery store the other day and demanded I bring it home to play.  Okay, I'm as friendly as it is, and it's happy in my home and tummy.

Just for the few people who may not realize it....while it is a delicious cocktail, my calling it "Redneck Auntie" is a joke so if you feel the need to take it seriously and be offended, I won't necessarily feel the need to publish your comment.   

My 17-year-old niece may give me hell on Facebook for using "HER"  princess glass, but my older niece, who's only months away from drinking legally is going to LOVE this.  I may even have to surrender the glass to her for her birthday (if Sydney will allow it).

Off to have another sippy cup of Redneck Auntie.

Good & Good For You: Summer Porridge aka Yogurt Oats

 

When I first saw this recipe, called "summer porridge", "yogurt oats", or "overnight oatmeal", I honestly thought it sounded gross but so many people were enthusiastic on Pinterest and other places on the web that I knew I had to give it a chance. It's not like I'm not an adventurous eater anyway, and with these ingredients I knew that at the very least it would be very good for me. (I just needed to check it out to see if it was "good" in the concept of "good & good for you".)

Guess what? It's my favorite way to make oatmeal now.  Hot oatmeal in the winter is filling and somehow defines cold weather for me, but the summer? Not so much.  Now I have a summer oatmeal to enjoy and start off the day with a nice healthy meal that keeps me going.  And more than just breakfast, it's now included in my lunchbox almost every time I go to work as my go-to healthy mid-night snack that keeps me going until 0700.

This healthy habit plays off another of my new favorite healthy habits:  Sangria Water, where I fill a pitcher with filtered water and fruit of all kinds and let it soak overnight, giving me great fruit-tasting water to drink all day and then the fruit to put on my oatmeal for the next day. So the Sangria Water  I made yesterday, with peaches and blueberries, became the peaches and blueberries that topped my yogurt oats this morning for breakfast. It's a win-win, for sure.

 

Get Your 8 Glasses with Taste: Sangria Water

Every time I go to a restaurant and am served water with lemon wedges I always think to myself "Why do I not do this at home?"  It's a lemon wedge: uncomplicated, easy, and takes 15 seconds to cut, but the difference in taste is amazing. We're lucky, here in the Ozarks, to have great tasting water but that tiny extra makes a lot of difference in how much water I drink, so now I do cut lemon wedges at home for our water.... and limes...and grapes, blueberries, peaches, apples, and so on.

I love the Dannon water commercial that says something like "...at some point it occurs to you to replace one can of sugary soda a day with water..."  I always think "How about all or all but one...that would be even better!"

That's what I do now.  Every evening before I go to bed, I put together a quick a pitcher or two of Sangria Water for the next day by combining whatever fruit I have that sounds good to me at the time.  It only takes a few minutes, sitting in the fridge overnight intensifies the flavors, and we wake to a great tasting drink that doesn't have the sugar of juice or soda. At night, after the water has been downed, the fruit is left to munch on as an after dinner snack.

In the pitcher shown, I used a combination of blueberries and peach slices from the freezer, quartered fresh green seedless grapes, and a lime that I halved, reamed, and then dropped the peels in as well.

 

Good & Good For You: Cauliflower Salad with Grapes

If you like the broccoli raisin salad, you'll like this, it's very similar.  I created it out of desperation. With only two of us in house, it's hard to make batches of things I can't eat by myself if the hubs doesn't care for it.  Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying he's super picky or that he won't try new things, he just doesn't like broccoli.  But. What I have found is that when I substitute cauliflower in some of my favorite broccoli recipes, he loves it as much as I do.

For me, I love both broccoli and cauliflower so this is another great salad with that sweet, sour, creamy, bacon smoky flavor combination I crave.

 

 

Fun Kids' Food: Apple, Peanut Butter, & Marshmallow Smiles

I'm a little late to the Pinterest game, but once I checked it out I was immediately hooked. So many fantastic ideas!!!! 

I've, of course, been pinning ideas for myself but I've also been funneling crazy cute kid food ideas to my sister, Suzanne, on Facebook for her daycare kids. Her kids loved our first effort of hot dog spaghetti so much that we've got the family all looking for fun ideas for her to play with this summer with the kids and I'll be blogging the results.

This Smile idea is very simple but ingenious idea of "glueing" marshmallows between apple slices with peanut butter. The kids loved them and Suzanne loves that they're simple, fun, and healthy for the little guys and gals (and adults too). Auntie Miranda is thinking they'd be great for Halloween made with Granny Smith apples--GREEN lips--LOVE that idea too!  We'll be making up a platter of that version in a few months so stayed tuned.

Just a little "by the way": the apples Suzanne used are all deep red delicious, but the back few simply photographed darker. Wish there were black apples for Halloween, that would be fun too.

 

Celebrating James' Birthday with Auntie Miranda's Grapefruit Cake

(Photo below: James demonstrating his "Dexter knife skills".)

 

After tweeting one night that grapefruit-flavored cake sounded "awful", as usually happens with my crazy family of foodies, the decision was made that we had to make it, bake it, and try it.  Auntie Miranda volunteered her time and James volunteered his birthday--win/win!

After reading through several recipes, Auntie used her own baking skills to create her own version based on elements from different recipes and her own experience.

Our prounouncement:   Delicious!  Just like orange, lemon, or lime, grapefruit is just a twist, so to speak, on the citrus genre.

Thanks, Auntie, for introducing us to this new dish and for sharing your recipe!

 

 

Note: Please excuse the phone pics--forgot my camera.

Halloween Food: Eyeball Rice Cereal Treats, Devil's Eye Eggs, Blood Clot Cranberry Dip, and I See You Meatballs

Bwahahahaha! Halloween--my very favorite holiday!  And a family favorite as well. No matter how old "our" kids get, this will always be our tradition: get together at Aunt Gonnie and Uncle Gene's house, eat great creepy food, dress up or dress down, take any little ones trick-or-treating the neighborhood and just hang out..

This year our creepy food was all eyeball in theme. We didn't really plan it that way but as the eyeballs piled up we just kept running with them it:  Gummy Eyeball Rice Cereal Treats,  Devil's Eye Eggs,  Blood Clot Cranberry Dip, I See You Meatballs, and just for fun, the un-eye-ball Mexican Villa Cheese Dip and Chips. There was also two crockpots full of chili and a few others goodies on the table like spinach dip, witch's pretzel/candy fingers, etc.    

 

 And now for recipes....

Good & Good For You: Sweet Baked Acorn Squash with Apple Butter

The most simple recipe ever and Gene and I both loved it. That's saying a lot for Gene because he barely tolerates acorn squash...so when he says "Yeah, that'll work" I know I've hit on a great recipe!