Pin 3: Angel Fruit Cake

If you have looked through the Food & Drink category of Pinterest you've probably seen this:

Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you who came up with this or where the original pin started or what it is even called (I'm calling it Angel Fruit Cake). But this is the caption that was under it:

"1 box of Angel Food Cake Mix and 1 large can of crushed pineapple with the juice! Combine only those 2 ingredients!! Bake at 350 for 40 min or until golden brown:) Thats it!!!! It really works and is sooo yummy and FAT FREE:)))"

What? Mix two ingredients together and I get cake? Genius, right?

I feel like this pin could also be categorized as some kind of science experiment. When these two ingredients are mixed together the batter foams to twice it's original size. I've never seen food do that before! (Unless that is what adding anything to angel food cake does? I don't think I've baked an angel food cake before.)

Again, I did not take pictures of my process. But this was my final product:

Totally not as appetizing as the pin above, huh? And this was after letting them bake for about 20 minutes, not the 40 the recipe called for. After about 15 minutes I smelled burning and had Hubby check on them to make sure nothing had caught on fire.

He tried helping me figure out why I almost burned these to a pulp.

For starters (and I knew this going in), our oven is crazy. We have to keep a cookie sheet on the bottom rack to keep things form burning on the bottom. Cook times are also shorter when baking sweet things and longer when cooking savory things.

Hubby also suggested that maybe I filled the cupcake hole too much. He could have a point there. The worse burned ones did spill over the edge a bit. There was also more batter than I had anticipated since it "grew" and I wanted to use up as much of it as I could between the only two cupcake tins I have.

I ate them nonetheless. I was able to get past the burned smell that radiated from them (oddly, they smelled similar to burned marshmallows). They were decent with my coffee in the morning.

Was it easy? Totally! Now I know I can have cake without needing eggs, which I always seem to have on hand but are always past their prime.

Was it good? Not the burned ones. They ended up being super sticky so I had to have a wet towel handy every time I ate one.

Would I make it again? Yes. Next time with strawberries and in sheet cake form. And next time I will post pictures of the "before" cake batter and the "after" so you can see how much it puffed up!

Pin 2: Crockpot Hawaiian Chicken

I have fallen in love with the crock pot.

It only took me a year and a half to start using it and it's wonderful when I do. I love the concept of throwing a bunch of ingredients into a pot and letting it sit until it's time to eat.

The simpler the dish, the happier I am. Pin #2 is one of the easiest crock pot meals I've made: Hawaiian Chicken.

It's only three ingredients, with the option of throwing one or two more in there: chicken, a bottle of BBQ sauce, and a drained can of pineapple. Yum!

I didn't have time to take pictures of the process, but here is one of the final product:

I served it over rice with a salad and it was super delicious.

The nice thing is that you can tweak the recipe to your liking. I didn't go to Target for my BBQ sauce, as the original recipie offered, and opted for a different brand that was sweet and spicy. It gave the dish a nice heat. I didn't want to buy pineapple in heavy syrup and that was all the chunks came in so I bought slices in the juice and cut them up into smaller pieces. I also opted to make the dish with onion.

Was it easy: Yes! I think I could do it without a recipe next time.

Was it good: Yep! I had the leftovers in a sandwich and it was just as good as over top of rice.

Would I make it again: Yes! Next time I think I'll try it with the green peppers as well.

Pin 1: Pan Roasted Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes

We are in a food rut around here. Dinners are pretty predictable: Shake.n.Bake, spaghetti, pizza. Nothing very thrilling at all.



Since my son was born I have been trying to eat at home at least three dinners a week. It's just too much of an effort to take him out for dinner since he is cranky by the end of the day. But we also need things to eat that are easy and/or quick to make.

At some point I'd like to be a stay at home mom (SAHM). If I ever get that chance we'll have to eat at home instead of eating out. And I'll be the one who will have to make the majority of the dinners (it's part of the deal I've made with Hubby). So I've been trying to make new dishes on days off from work, when I can be as messy and as loud as I want, I can curse when I need to, and I Hubby isn't around to give me weird looks or ask questions. (I love you, Hubby!!)

I recently pinned this Pan Roasted Lemon-Garlic Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes. It looked so delicious and everything was cooked in one dish -- I had to try it!

From Real Simple

I should probably start out by saying that I am not a cook. I can bake just fine, but when I cook I tend to set off the smoke detector. It happened multiple times when Hubby and I first moved in together so he has done the majority of the cooking around here for the last five and a half years.

I was excited to try this dish because 1) it looked easy and 2) I was going to be out that evening. It sounded like something I could make ahead of time and leave instructions for Hubby to cook it while I was out so that it would be ready when I got home and we could scarf it down before putting the baby to bed.

I went to two stores to get the ingredients. (The Target by us has recently acquired grocery store status; however, their produce/poultry items are pretty limited. They have a ton of other fun things that I looked at and bought instead, but I digress.) Then I came home and started prepping, rocking to NIN and Matchbox Twenty as I went along.

I started out by coating the baking dish with 1tbs of olive oil and then layed a layer of sliced lemon (1 lemon).

Then I took the remaining 5tbs of olive oil, the juice of another lemon, salt, peper and 4 cloves of garlic (minced) and made the olive oil mixture.

I'm like some members of my family: I don't read directions; I just do. I put these ingredients in a small bowl and upon glancing at the next step, it said to do it in a large one. I realized after reading the next step why that was.

You add the green beans and toss everything together. Then take a straining spoon, remove the beans, and spread them in the baking dish. Then you do the same with your potatoes. I think I lost a bit of the olive oil when I had to pour it into a larger bowl.

When you have arranged your vegetables, you coat the chicken in the same olive oil mixture and put them on the baking dish.

As I was dicing, I realized that my potatoes were on the large size and I probably should have just bought four of them, instead of the eight small ones the recipie calls for. But hey, I love my carbs, so extra potatoes weren't a problem for me. I was just worried about whether or not it would affect the cooking time of the chicken, especially since we were on a tight schedule that evening and I wasn't going to be around for the cooking process.

It was my first time cooking bone-in skin-on chicken breasts. I am a fan of meat being a pre-prepared as possible. I hate touching it and I'm not even a huge fan of eating it. Luckily I was able to use the spoon to toss everything together and drizzle the remaining olive oil mixture over it. Win!

I covered it in foil, wrote baking instructions for Hubby and put it in the fridge (450 degree oven, roast for 50 minutes, take out chicken, roast veggies for another 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender). I probaby could (should?) have prepped this a lot later than I did. It sat in the fridge marinating for about five hours before it needed to be put in the oven.  Our fridge had a nice garlicky smell by then!

Hubby was great and followed my directions. This is how it looked when it was done (and after I put the chicken back in the dish to get a picture of the completed project): 

My overall opinions of this pin:

Was it easy? Yes

Was it delicious? Meh. We liked the potatoes. The chicken wasn't cooked very well. We had to stick it back in the oven. Hubby didn't like the green beans; they were too lemony since they were sitting on top of the lemons sitting on the bottom of the baking dish. I was hoping that the leftovers I took to work the next day would be good. I was disappointed.

Would I make it again? Yes, with tweeks. I won't put the slices of lemon in there. I might try juicing that lemon for the olive oil mixture instead. And I'll be using boneless, skinless chicken breasts next time. Hubby and I weren't a huge fan of these chicken breasts.

Welcome!

I, like thousands (millions?) of other people, am addicted to Pinterest. Now that I have an i.Phone I am on the app almost daily searching for cool things and re-pinning cool things my friends and countless strangers have pinned.

I have time to pin, but haven't had much time to really read what I've pinned or try it out. Out of 283 pins I have only tried three. I'd like to change that.

In an effort to try to get out of food ruts and revive my creative side, I am going to start trying out my pins and blogging about them. Was it easy? Did I have fun? Was it delicious? Would I do it again? I'm going to start finding out!