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....

Diva's Pins-Banana Pancakes!

So I brought out the apron today!

Yep, says Domestic Diva ;-)

Last night I was perusing Pinterest and came across this pancake recipe. Two ingredients! Bananas and eggs! I thought to myself no freaking way! Since I'm always searching for new healthy recipes, especially during Alex's fight camps, I knew I had to try it!

First you take a banana and mash it.

I started out with the fork, then used my potato masher.

Then you add the eggs. The original recipe calls for two eggs. But I found another recipe that said you can use one. I only used one since I have jumbo eggs.

Once you've mixed the egg and pancakes, pour them onto the skillet. Make sure it's lightly greased and preheated on low medium heat.

It may take a while, don't get too impatient and flip them too soon.

They came out pretty well!

Voila! End result!

I drizzled them with a little honey and added some strawberries on the side! Alex liked them a lot. So my first attempt was a success!

What a Hero!

Simon had to save a princess!