Diva Dinner...Times Two!!!!

Good evening all!

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We sure did in the Russ home. We didn't get to go to my hometown like we originally wanted, so I cooked.

I also made pecan pie!

It was good! Everyone loved it.

Three of my gifts I'm most thankful for! <3

I tell you guys! I had no intentions of going out shopping on Black Friday. Even less plans to go shopping on Thanksgiving! In fact, I was all like, "Who does that?!"

But my hubby wanted a man chair and Big Lots was having a sale on recliners that could not be passed up so I said to him, "Let's go get your man chair!"

We ended up buying an entire new living room set! And curtains! And wall art! Oh and new area rugs!

Yes, that's my bull doggy Brutus running around on the new rugs! He loves them!

That large old clunky monitor (that's like over ten years old, don't judge) and desk will soon be replaced with a small chair and side table to become a nice little reading nook area.

I've been enjoying decorating the house!

Today, I'm sharing two meals with you all! Try to contain your excitement!

Every year when it gets cold, I make homemade chili. Alex was asking about it on Monday so I promised him I'd make some when the weekend came around. I use to make it from recipe I found online. But as the years have gone by, I've made changes to make it my own. This year, I completely made my own recipe! So here it is!

Té's Homemade Angry Chili

Ingredients:
2 lbs. of stew meat (most chili recipes call for ground beef, I prefer to use stew meat)
3 slices of bacon
Chopped onions (I like to use the pre-chopped onions from the veggie section at the grocery store, because I absolutely despise chopping onions)
2 jalapenos, finely chopped
2 cans of kidney beans, slightly drained
2 cans of diced tomatoes
1-1 1/2 generous tbs. of cumin
1-1 1/2 generous tbs. of chili powder
1 tsp. of garlic powder
1 tsp. of paprika
My special "secret" ingredient, which is totally optional:  1 bottle of Angry Orchard Hard Cider!

Optional toppings:
Shredded cheese
Sour cream
Green onions
Whatever you like to put on top of your chili

Cook bacon in skillet until crispy then remove and set aside. Pour onions into skillet and saute in bacon drippings. Add stew meat and let brown. Transfer into a large pot. Add the rest of the ingredients, including the cooked bacon from earlier and pour in entire bottle of Angry Orchard.

Bring to a boil then cover and let simmer for several hours. The longer the better!

It smelled so good!

That's it! Not too hard! My hubby likes cheese and sour cream on top of his so I top it off for him.

I also served them with Ritz Garlic Butter crackers!!

Beware! These can become very addicting!

Now on to my next recipe, which was my dinner for the evening. No I did not partake of the chili lol...

I've been working out lately, trying to get by sexy back, haha! My husband has been aware of this and of course is super supportive and cheering me on all the way! He recently made me a wager. If I get a six pack of abs, he'll give me $1,000! That's right! Can you say shopping spree!?!?

So of course I've upped my workout regimen. Going to more classes at 24, including Zumba taught by a girl I like to call the Euro-Train Zumba Chick!

If you've never heard of "Euro-Train", Google "Terry Crews, My Wife and Kids"!

When I tell you guys we work hard in her class......

...Yes, what you see is right! We sweat so much we fogged up the mirrors!

Of course, one of the most important things to a healthier lifestyle is a better diet.

It's no secret, I love food!! I love cooking, baking and no doubt eating! But I've been working on doing better, incorporating more healthy choices food wise.

I've tried making it a habit to add a salad to every meal I get when we go out. So yes, I'm still enjoying foods I love, but I always make sure to eat the salad first, which fills me up quite a bit, so I'm eating less of the maybe-not-so-great foods lol...I'm a work in progress...

Yesterday we took the kids to Dave & Buster's and I ordered a Sweet Apple Pecan Salad.

OMG, it was so delicious. I ordered it with no blue cheese crumbles, because the night before I had the Greek Goddess salad at Applebee's and discovered I do not like blue cheese lol...I digress though....

It was so good, that I went to the grocery store first thing this morning and bought stuff to recreate the salad!

So here's that recipe!

Té's Apple Pecan Salad

Ingredients:
Spring mix salad

Pecans- I used these, but the D&B pecans were candied (which I do have a recipe for and they are delicious!)

Apple slices-I used pre-sliced packaged apples
Raspberry vinaigrette-I used this one from Tom Thumb, it's in the refrigerated section by the salads

Blue cheese (Optional-most other recipes online have it)
Grilled chicken-The one I got from D&B was just a side salad, so it didn't have chicken in it, but they do have a full one with chicken in it as well.


Simply mix all of the ingredients together!

It was very delicious! I'll admit, I snuck in a few of those Ritz crackers on the side. They were too good to pass up!

And there you guys have it! I hope you have a great holiday season!!


Speaking of holidays! Our Elf on the Shelf, Simon, will be returning soon! And he's bring something big with him!!!

Talk to you all later!!!

Diva Dinner-Easy Orange Chicken

This diva has been a tired diva lately. Thankfully I've had a little helper!

He loves helping wash the dishes with me. 

Tonight I did not feel like cooking. So I threw this quick easy meal together!

I took some breaded chicken strips and baked them according to the package. 

Then I chopped them up into pieces. 

Threw them is a skillet and added this sauce I bought at Tom Thumb. 

Mixed it up good then let it heat up on the stove for a few minutes before tossing it back in the oven. 

Then I heated up these minute rice bowls.

And boom! Dinner is served!

This sauce was just ok for me. Not great. I'd give it three out of five stars. There was just something missing. A little more spice I suppose. But the hubby thought it was good and it was in a tired bind. But I'm sure there are other orange sauces out there to find and try!

Well all, I'm exhausted so I'll catch y'all later!  

Repost: It's Me, Té!: Updating Your Kindle Books Tutorial

I just did a post over on my author's blog, that I thought I would share since it can be useful to anyone with a kindle!

Click on the link to check it out!
It's Me, Té!: Updating Your Kindle Books Tutorial:

Diva Dinner-Sweet and Sour chicken

I LOVE sweet and sour chicken. So delicious! But there's no place where I live that delivers take out (well there hadn't been in the last few years, I'm pretty sure there still isn't).

I was craving some so I made some from scratch tonight and decided to share. The recipe is pretty simple since I've got the whole "semi-homemade" thing going on. 

So here we go:

Ingredients:

3-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts

Salt, pepper and garlic salt

Milk (you can also use egg; most other recipes call for it, I was out of eggs so I improvised. It was still super yummy)

Corn starch

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350. Pour oil into skillet and turn on to medium. Most recipes call for canola oil. I only had olive oil. Again, they turned out fine. 

Cut up the chicken into cubes. Sprinkle the chicken with the seasonings then dip them in the milk. Dip the chicken in the corn starch making sure they're all covered. Put the chicken in the skillet and cook until both sides are brown then transfer to a 9x13 baking dish. 

Now here comes the semi-homemadeness! Cover the chicken in sweet and sour sauce.

Place in the oven and bake for 30 minutes turning them over after 15 minutes. 

While they're baking for those last 15 minutes you can make the rest of the food that goes along with it. 

First the rice. I use brown rice. 

As the box says, it takes ten minutes to cook. I also used some steam in a bag vegetables. I used the Asian medley.

This takes five to six minutes to cook. By the time the rice and vegetables are done the chicken is ready to come out of the oven and the food is ready for eating!

Once again the hubby loved it!

I've got some more recipes coming at you guys soon. Some impulse items I bought from the store not too long ago. Some sauces that I think are going to be yummy!!!  

Can't wait to post about it!!

Well it's Sunday which means time for Once Upon a Time. See you all next time!

Té's Pinterest-Taco "Wontons"

Hey all!

Getting a little knitting done before my primetime shows come on! I like start watching them later so I can fast forward through commercial ;-)

I'm trying my hand at a headband. Here's what I've done so far: 

We'll see how it turns out considering I only really know one stitch lol! There's always YouTube and Pinterest. 

Speaking of Pinterest I tried a new recipe today! Wonton tacos. Well, technically they were egg roll tacos. Lol. I bought egg roll wrappers instead of wonton wrappers. Alex says it was an awesome mistake, so it's all good! I also used ground chicken instead of ground beef. They came out very good!

I paired it with a southwest salad! 

I'll come back and update this blog with the recipe! Right now I'm off to watch Bones. 

Update:

Okay! I'm finally back to share the recipe! LoL... The original recipe can be found here.

Like I mentioned before, the original recipe called for wonton wrappers and in my not paying attention while shopping, I picked up egg rolls, but I got no complaints. So here is my spin on this recipe:

Ingredients:

1lb of ground chicken (I've noticed that ground chicken is cheaper so it works out! I used it in meatballs not too long ago)

1 packet of taco seasoning

Shredded cheese (I kind of just eyeball it. My family LOVES cheese so the more the better in this house!)

Egg roll wrappers

Cup of water (to seal the wrappers)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cook the ground chicken as you would according to the taco seasoning directions. After the meat has been cooked, add the cheese and stir until melted.

Add about a teaspoon and a half of meat to the egg roll. Add a little bit of water to the edges of the wrapper and seal them tightly shut (I like to use a small paint brush I keep just for food purposes; mainly for decorating my cakes).

Place them on a greased baking sheet and then lightly (and I mean really lightly) spray them with a little cooking oil.

Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

This makes about 8 large  taco triangles.

There you have it! It's a very simple recipe, but very delicious! I hope you all enjoy it!

Cakes!

Hey all!

So, since my last blog I've made a few more cakes and I wanted to share them with you!

I've been dabbling in the fondant realm! I'm still learning, but I think I've done well for my first couple of tries. I'm making another cake this weekend and one next week. The cake next week will focus on my icing skills, which need some work as well. Have done any piping in years. We'll see how that goes! 

The first cake I did was a purse cake! It came out pretty well!

I used luster over the fondant which I'm still getting the hang of. It was a lemon supreme cake with lemon icing. 

The next cake was a wrench wrapped around a pipe. I'm glad I got pics before because when we took it to the restaurant for our friend birthday the waitress messed it up :-( I was not a happy camper. 

Once again I used the luster and I bought a bigger paint brush and I think it came out better. I did a matte finish on the pipe. This cake was a cinnamon swirl cake with cinnamon bun icing and the pipe is made with cinnamon rice Krispy treat. If you have never made cinnamon rice krispy treats be forewarned they're amazingly addicting!

The latest cake I made last weekend was a pineapple upside down cake. A coworker of a friend asked if I could make one then cancelled. I'd never made one before so I accepted the challenge and made one anyway. It was a big hit!

I added a little twist though. I ground up walnuts and sprinkled them on the top of the cake batter before baking them. So when I flipped it over, the was a nutty crust on the bottom. Everyone loved it!

And that's all the cakes for now! Once I finish up the cake for this weekend I will post pics!

See you all later!

Diva Dinner-Sesame Ginger Oven Fried Chicken w/Mango Mayo Dip

Hey All!

It's been a while since I hopped on here. Things have been pretty good around here.

Chloe turned seven a week ago! We took her to the lake for her birthday and I made a beach themed cake.

She loved it, and it turned out well.

It sparked my baking flame a little bit so, I've been at it it in the kitchen whipping up some more treats and I've got some projects waiting in the wings! Can't wait to share them! You can see my other goodies on my Facebook page Té's Tasty Treats!

I bought a bunch of marinades recently and I've started putting them to use. Last night I made Alex and myself baked lemon pepper chicken. I coated it in Ritz crackers. Oh my goodness it was delicious.

I cooked again tonight and decided to tell you guys all about it.

Tonight I used Lawry's Sesame Ginger marinade. I split a chicken breast in half then chopped it into chunks. Then I put all the chicken in a Hefty bag and poured the marinade over it. On the bottle it says it's ready in 30 minutes; I just let it sit until I was ready for the next steps.

Tonight I made everything ahead of time, because Alex was at the gym, and I didn't want to be rushing when he was on his way home. The only thing I had to do was put the chicken in the oven.

The first thing I made was the mango mayo dipping sauce. There was no recipe for this so I kind of made up my own.

I used Miracle Whip (because regular mayo is forbidden in this house as per the law of Alex Russ lol!!!) I also used mangoes (I eyeball everything so I'd say it was a little more than a handful of mango chunks), as well a balsamic vinegar and some dashes of salt and pepper.

As I mentioned before I kind of eyeballed everything and threw it in the blender. I didn't want to use too much balsamic vinegar so I only put a cap full in the blender.

 I mixed it all together and got this lovely little dip. I wrapped it up and kept it refrigerated until I was ready to use it with the chicken.

After that, I went ahead and made the Ritz cracker coating, which was simply throwing a bag of Ritz crackers in the blender and pulsing for a few seconds.

Soon it was time to get prepare the chicken for the oven. Of course, make sure to preheat the oven. For this recipe I preheated it for 400 degrees.

As the oven was heating I prepared the chicken. I coated my chicken the way a lot of people tend to do: first flour, then and egg/water (sometimes milk if I have it) mix and then the Ritz crackers.

Then I placed the chicken in a shallow greased pan and baked it for about 25 minutes.

They came out pretty nice looking!

They were pretty tasty. I'm a very picky eater so I don't often try new things, but I'm doing my best to expand my food horizons lol...One day at a time right? Well today wasn't so bad!

Well, what do you guys think? I'm sure I could have made the presentation of the sauce look a little better but oh well! Lol...

I'm going to end this blog now, got to hop over to my writer's blog and make a post! Did you all know that August is Read-a-Romance month? Well it is!

See you all again soon!

The Video You've All Been Waiting For!!!

Morning All!!

I'm trying to squeeze this blog in before it's time to get little Chloe up and ready for school (which really just consists of me going to say "Hey time to get up!" then she handles the rest, but still...).

However I looked at the date of my last blog and I'm thinking "Holy Cow! December was the last time I wrote to you guys?!" The Russ Family is quite a busy family, especially with my writing (pause for shameless plug: Go to my Author's Blog and check things out over there! Including my books available on amazon!).
Ok let's see if the writer can just do a cliff notes version of everything from like the last six months.

December: Christmas was great!
December/January: Alex and I went on our first vacation/kinda finally honeymoon, on a cruise to the Bahamas (I'll have to come back and blog in-depth about that, shame on me for not doing it already). It was beyond amazing!
February: Alex and I celebrated 8 years being together! Better than ever baby, planning our next vacation for our 8 year wedding anniversary in October thinking of doing a vow renewal on the beach in the Bahamas.
March: Hmmm....Brittany turned 15...15! Yikes!
April: Can't think of anything...It rained?
May: Chloe lost her first tooth last weekend! That had me all full of crazy mommy emotions. Speaking of being a mommy I also went skydiving for Mother's Day....

I know for those of you who don't know or may not know me you're like "What?!" Those who do know me are like, "Finally! You haven't said much about it."

Ok here's the run down:

Were you nervous before?

Yes, but I honestly tried to think about it as little as possible. Alex was doing his first solo jump the same day so I thought more about that than my own jump. The closer we got to doing it the more nervous I got, but like the guy says in the video by the time we're up in the air "there's no turning back".

How was it?

Ok here's the thing. Like right before we got on the truck to drive to the plane, my allergies started going bananas. I mean the works! Itchy watery eyes, hay fever....everything. Also, I decided to do the jump with my glasses on under these goggles you have to wear. That wasn't the best idea either. The goggles are pulled super tight so my glasses were squished to my face so tightly I couldn't see. Pair that with itchy watery eyes....eh...not so hot.

I was the second one out the plane. What I didn't realize is there's like no break between the person before you and you jumping! Like as they're dangling over the plane to jump, you're scooching over right behind them and as soon and they're out you're dangling out of plane, then three, two, one and BAM!!!  You're free-falling.

At that point, I'm just thinking things like:

"Holy crap! I can't believe I'm falling through the sky with nothing but a man with a parachute strapped to my back!"
"What the #@%# was I thinking doing this?!"
"Breathe!"
"Relax!"
"Oh crap, hands like this, legs like this!"
"Don't throw up!"
"Have fun! They said that's the number one things."
"Smile for the camera!"
"Try to look around!" (Again this was difficult because of my squished glasses)
"Don't throw up!"

Once the chute was released though, everything mellowed out and it was totally awesome! I was able to adjust my glasses and see better! That was the fun part for me. But it was cold up there that day (although I wasn't complaining so much when I got back down on the ground!).

He even let me steer the parachute around, which was beyond amazing!

You always see things from that high in planes and stuff and it looks so cool, but being able literally fly through all of that, seeing everything God created like that...it's breathtaking.

The landing was a little rocky, but all in all, great experience.

Would you do it again? Would you recommend others to do it?

The more I think about it, the more I say yes. The type A in me is so nit-picky about my free-fall because I could barely see, I think that caused a small case of panics. So I've told myself if/when I jump again: A. Glasses stay on the ground and B. Either jump on a low/no pollen day or make sure I have my allergy meds on hand. Lol! I'm telling you guys, afterwards my eyes were so red and puffy and swollen, it was not cute. I wore Alex's sunglasses the entire rest of the time there! Thankfully another lady had some allergy medicine and offered me some.

Any way I would definitely tell anyone to do it! It doesn't matter if you're scared out of your mind at just the thought of doing it. If you have even an inkling of "I wonder what it's like" then just do it!
A few years ago when Alex got his motorcycle, I said to myself, I was never getting on that thing. But at some point I guess I had an epiphany or something and realized you only get one life! You should enjoy it as much as possible. And I trust my husband like 2000 percent...we went slow at first and soon we were blasting down the freeways and I was loving it! Ever since then, I try to have a much fun as possible, doing all sorts of things, even if they're scary.

The thing is, it's usually over before you know it and then you're left thinking, "I can't even believe that really happened!"


Anyway here's the video!!! FYI: The song is called 116 by Trip Lee featuring KB and Andy Mineo. They are all Christian rappers and let me tell you, it is the most amazing thing to see them in concert! I've been to quite a few concerts over the years and there is absolutely nothing greater than watching a bunch of people in the same room having fun, dancing, jumping, screaming and hollering for Christ. Whoever thinks Christians don't have fun must not know....