Pinterest Recipes

I love Pinterest and I love it when I am able to actually make some of the things from it! I'm sure Patrick appreciates this as well since he likes to complain on how much time I spend pinning. :)
  From my last post, you saw my fried rice and baked sweet and sour chicken and finally, I'll leave you with the recipes! You should try them! It probably isn't the healthiest dinner, but it was pretty delicious!
I pinned them and found them on a blog from 2010 called Life as a Lofthouse. Yummy!

Baked Sweet and Sour Chicken
Fried Rice

Football Night

When Auburn played MSU a few weekends ago, Pat and I invited Kat and Dave over to our house to eat dinner and watch the game. Kathryn is my very best friend, aka my bestest, and we have known each other since the 7th grade. She went to State while I attended Auburn and when we started college, we tried to always go to each other's university for the game. This game always comes down to the very last minute causing craziness and this year was no exception.

After the game, we played a little Hand and Foot to bring on the night while Wrigley slept on his bed.

For our appetizer, I made spinach and artichoke dip with homemade baked bread and it was de-licious!! I kind of forgot to snap a few pictures when the entire plate filled with bread (it looked so nice!) and the full dish of dip. Oh well! We were hungry and devoured the entire thing in about 10 minutes. You definitely need to try these! The bread was freshly baked and it was even more amazing being so soft! I used the bread recipe that makes four loaves, but shaped it into a baguette instead of a round and I think it honestly turned out better.

For dinner, I made some Bourbon chicken over rice from a recipe I found on food.com and it was good, but I made it again for just me and Pat and added some stir fried vegetables in it and it was much more substantial!

Printables:

Spinach Artichoke Dip

Bread

Bourbon Chicken

An Assortment

I saw this trailer on another blog (A Cup of Jo) and I might need to find this movie when it comes out! I grew up on the muppets and Sesame Street and love a good story about the puppeteers!


Right now, the Roo is laying on his side and barking teeny, little barks in his sleep. Hilarious.

This week I am working a different, later shift and I am trying to get used to it. Next week, I start the shift that I will be on for a while until an earlier 12 hour shift opens up and I'm just hoping I can stay awake that late! I thought I would get up earlier since I don't have to be up until later, but nope, I am loving sleeping in! (My mom will say she is totally not surprised about that one because she knows I like to sleep late and go to bed early.)

Anyways, I made a superb meal for us on Sunday night and I am still reaping the benefits from it tonight! Score, leftovers! You should make this. Easy and delicious!!

The finished product-messy, but delicious!

Onions and carrots after browning

Browning the meat

Before cooking in the oven for 3 hours

On the Menu:
Pioneer Woman's Pot Roast
Pioneer Woman's Mashed Potatoes
Baked asparagus

After 3 hours in the oven. YUM!

I will try to thicken the sauce up some the next time I cook this roast and turn it a little more gravy-like by adding either flour or cornstarch to the broth mixture after I deglaze the pan before I add the meat back into the pot. I also may try to keep the onions more on top of the meat because I didn't like how completely mushy they were. The carrots, however, were so good! I couldn't believe I actually liked them because I normally don't like my carrots cooked at all, but I kept trying to fish out more to eat!

Mashed potatoes baking

Slicing the pot roast (falling apart, not much shredding involved on my part)

I used heavy cream in my mashed potatoes because that is what I had in the fridge, but I also think I could add milk instead of half and half or cream. These potatoes are delicious and very good heated up the next day too!

Over the weekend, I was able to go to Athens to watch UGA play MSU with some of my girls and we had a blast! We drove up on Saturday for our girls' weekend and met up with my bestest's cousin, Amanda, who had driven up to Athens Friday night. Danielle, Kat, and I met up with Amanda right before the game and I stupidly didn't bring any sunscreen since I forgot that it would get hotter than 50 degrees in the stadium. We were in the State section in the corner of the endzone and we all got burned, but I definitely have a great sleeveless shirt burn. Whoops. I guess that's what happens when you haven't gone to the beach in over a year nor been able to get to any sort of pool this summer. Lovely.

Danielle, Kathryn, and me

The score wasn't so great for MSU, but Amanda who went to UGA was happy. We ate at Mellow Mushroom after the game so we could watch the Auburn game and then did a little shopping where I found an awesome gameday dress! War Eagle! We met up with Kathryn's cousin for a bit and then headed to the hotel to rest and watch some more football.

Amanda, Danielle, Kathryn, and me

  After having a great time and laughing our heads off (so glad our neighboring hotel guests didn't report us as they could hear us through those thin walls), we got ready to go downtown for the night. We went to a few different bars and we all just laughed how different it is now that none of us are in college anymore. We had a great time and finished off our night at Pita Pit since the gyro restaurant that Kathryn and I had originally wanted to go to was already closed for the night. I miss having a gyro every week from Pita Pit! It was a nice way to end the night and it was a quick, fun trip!

It's All Greek To Me

  Okay, today is fall in Atlanta. I took Wrigley on a walk after I ran 2.61 miles at the gym while still wearing my shorts and t-shirt and about halfway through our little stroll, I realized that I was a little chilly. Now I know some of y'all think this is not cold at all, but sadly, I have turned on my heat. Our house gets really cold (it was 67 degrees when I got home from work) and the blanket and sweatpants weren't quite enough. Good thing my house heats up nicely!!View 24-Hour Storm Report for Atlanta Area

	Tonight	Tomorrow	Tomorrow Night
Cloudy	Showers	Cloudy	Partly Cloudy
62°F	58°	70°	57°
Feels Like: 62° Get FREE weather on your desktop	Low	High	Low
Past 24-hr: Precip: 0 in Snow: 0 in	Chance of Rain: 40%	Chance of Rain: 20%	Chance of Rain: 10%
Wind: From SSW at 8mph	Wind: SW at 10 mph	Wind: WSW at 7 mph	Wind: WNW at 7 mph
Through 2am: Cloudy with temperatures steady near 61F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph.	Rain showers early becoming more intermittent overnight. Low 58F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.	Cloudy skies. High around 70F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.	Partly cloudy. Low 57F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.

  I'm finally getting around to posting my Greek recipes that you must try! I have a favorite Greek restaurant in Jackson called Keifer's and I miss it so much! I wish I could open one here in Atlanta because I often crave their amazing gyros with tzatziki sauce, marinated cucumbers, and hot cottage fries. One of my friends, Megan, shared these recipes with me and I am so delighted she did!

Feta Dressing

  Fair warning though, if you make either the feta dressing or the marinated cucumbers, you might want to half the recipes at least because both of them make a ton. You can keep the feta dressing for a while in the fridge, but I wouldn't eat the cucumbers for much longer than a few days.

Marinated Cucumbers

  Keifer's has grilled pita with feta cheese or mozzarella cheese (pita with feta or pita mozz) and I have to say, this is pretty dead on!!

Pita with Feta

Printable recipes:

Yogurt Feta Dressing

Marinated cucumbers

Pita with Feta

Yummy Recipes from Last Night

  I'm working on redoing how I put recipes on my blog, so it will be easier to print out; please bear with me as I decide how I want to do this! Update: I finally figured out a way to do it, hence the late update! Hooray!! Last night (August 23), Kate and Allison came over and we enjoyed a delicious dinner! I had an amazing time with these ladies; they are such great company!! We accompanied our dinner with a couple of bottles of Chianti (yum!) and visited for several hours.

  I was impressed with myself as I had prepared most of the food before they even arrived (pretty rare as I always think it will take me less time to cook than it does). If you only try to make one of these recipes, I would highly suggest the homemade yeast rolls. OH MY GOODNESS!! They were delicious! I mean, three girls devoured 6 of them!! :) And, I had two with my leftovers tonight! However, the poppyseed chicken rocks too!! Actually, on the other hand, I think you should just recreate this dinner because it was pretty spectacular.

  I've made the Poppyseed Chicken Casserole before for Patrick and we both thought it was delicious. I decided to make it again since I was a little wary of the recent e. coli outbreak in beef across Kroger and Publix. I don't think I served it over rice the last time, but neither Pat nor I could remember. Last night, I did serve it over rice (like the recipe suggested) and it was great.

  The majority of my "cooking" time was waiting for my homemade yeast rolls to rise. But, man, oh, man, these suckers are worth every minute!! I am ecstatic to find a roll recipe that is simple and so perfect! These pretty much taste just like Sister Shubert's yeast rolls and they are bigger!! Thank you, America! Since Pat missed out on these, I do believe I will have to buy some more bread flour and bake them again on Sunday.
  Allison brought over ingredients for salad and we made a Caesar salad with the delectable Weight Watcher's Caesar salad dressing that Erin and Stephen introduced me to. I also sauteed some green beans in a little EVOO and minced garlic with some grape tomatoes to add a little color to the plate.
  Lastly, Kate brought over a pie that she had made and it was deliciously rich! By the way, Kate, please send me the recipe so I can showcase it here! Nom, nom!! Enjoy!!

Printable Recipes:
Yeast rolls
Poppyseed chicken casserole
Sauteed green beans
Kate's dessert