peanut butter cup replacement cookies

I've been waiting to publish this post! I didn't wnt to spoil the surprise of what would be arriving in the hub's package, but he finally got it, so now I can tell you! (It's the little things.) The husband asked me to ship him something and, what kind of wife would I be if I only shipped him what he needed? There are no shipments!...only care packages! I've also been really bad at sending homemade things to him...yeah, me, the baker..has only sent two homemade batches of cookies to my man. (Counting this one I'm about to tell you about.) This recipe is one of my FAVORITES! These cookies are so yummy and they are perfect to send to the hubs because he likes peanut butter and chocolate, but those items don't ship overseas well. Solution?

Peanut Butter Chocolate cookies!!!

The cookie in the picture is lop-sided, but I'm kind of known for my imperfections in baking and cooking. (Insert sheepish grin here.) These cookies require you to get your hands dirty...so I hope you're ready...

Smush together 3/4 cup powdered sugar and 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter. Smush is a technical term.

Then roll that mixture into 1/4 inch balls (malted milk ball size) and set aside.

Mix together 1/2 cup butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, 1/4 cup peanut butter, 1 egg, 1 tablespoon milk, and 1 teaspoon vanilla in your awesome mixer that your husband bought you :)

Then mix 1/2 cup unsweetened coca powder into that wet mixture. When that's incorporated into a chocolatey goodness, I slowly mix in my dry mixture of 1 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda.

Then take tablespoons-ish of this cocoa cookie mixture and wrap it around the peanut butter balls prepared earlier. This part is messy, hence, no pictures.

rotate this picture, lady!

Then plop those cookie balls onto a baking sheet (I always grease my baking sheets). Do Not use a baking stone, as pictured above, your cookies will never bake! Then smash the spheres down into circles by placing the bottom of a drinking glass in sugar and gently pressing (or smashing) the tops of the cookies. Then put them in your preheated oven (oh yeah, I should have told you earlier to pre-heat the oven to 350) for about 8ish minutes or until you can scoop them off your baking sheets without them being mushed. The tops will start to crackle when they're done.

Cool them babies off

...and then place them in your husband's care package with his requested item and some Halloween Peeps!

Sugar High Apple Pie

Since yesterday was apple orchard day...today was, naturally, apple pie day! After I got all hunter-educated at class this morning (I'm now officially a hunter...but I still don't really want to go shoot any animals), I made an apple pie!

Most recipes call for Granny Smiths (or some other tart, green apple) but the Galas from the orchard were so small from our late spring snows, they worked perfect! They are a bit too sour to eat by themselves. I peeled and sliced some apples. Honestly, I don't know how many I peeled and sliced, sorry. Six? Seven? All I know is I bought five pounds and that was about double what I needed.

 Now what am I going to do with all these apples???

Soaked the sliced apples in some lemon juice and water (didn't measure again, sorry) while I prepared the crust.

Then I mixed 2 1/2 cups of flour, a couple dashes of salt, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and a splash of cinnamon together. Then I cut in 1/2 cup cold butter pieces and 5 tablespoons shortening with two knives (note to self-buy pastry cutter-inner). Then I added 8 tablespoons cold water and mixed and rolled out the dough.

Then I mixed 1/3 cup sugar, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon in with my drained apple slices. I dumped it into the crust, topped it randomly with 2 tablespoons margerine, and stuck it in the oven at 425 for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, back at the countertop, I cut the remaining dough into dots. Stars would have been more fun, or apples, but I don't have cookie cutters in those shapes, so I used a shot glass and made small circles...or dots, yeah we'll call them dots.

I also mixed together some melted butter, sugar, flour, brown sugar, and pecans. (Again with the no measuring.)

 

At the 30 mintue mark, I topped the pie with the dots and pecan mixture randomly. Then it went back in the oven for about 20 mintues.

And this is what I got!

I'm calling it Sugar High Apple Pie for a reason. It was tasty, but, whoa....it was sweet. Next time I need to cut my apples thinner and hold back on the sugar in the crust and pie filling. The candied pecan topping though, out of this world!

Happy Apples

Went to the Happy Apple Orchard today!

And it's the perfect time to pick out pumpkins at the farm too!



...and to pick whatever these things are! Kiddo called them mushrooms, he was a big fan!




We rode on a tractor...




...grabbed some pumpkins...



...some pumpkins were smushed...

...but kiddo pointed us in the right direction for some good ones.

Our trunkload of pumpkins!

Broke in my new boots

The apple orchard and the mountain range.

Kiddo found the licorice...of course.

laundry and Lucy at the M&M residence

Every time I plop a fresh pile of laundry on the couch to fold it, I get a little company.

Because there's nothing fresh laundry needs more than a little dog fur on it!

Tulips

I'm super stoked about my most recent "home improvement" project. For the low low price of $3.97, I hope I made a decent little improvement to our humble abode. The frugal side of me is excited to have re-used some potting soil from failed attempts this past spring, the anti-nesting side of me is glad to have thrown out some old flower pots, and I filled in some bare spots in my rock area by simply moving some rocks from one place to another. The hubs and I tried planting tulip bulbs last fall, but we put them in pots so they never took a good rooting and then he squirrels ate them this spring.

Lucy even helped.

See? She's helping.

I cleared some rocks out of the spaces between the shrubs (see those ugly shrubs above?? yuck!)surrounding our home and stuck some tulip bulbs in the ground. This is awesome because, when the hubs comes back, there will hopefully be some flowers blooming around the house to make it feel "homey"....not "homie," and I won't have to do a thing! Well...water them...but that's easy! Early May is too harsh here in CO to be planting annual flowers, so I'm hoping my early-blooming tulip bubls will do the trick!


...before....

 See that flower pot on the left up there??? I was throwing those out anyways because they're dry-rotted from our great CO sunshine. So, I dumped out the potting soil on top of my tulip bulbs. Then I drowned the bulbs and went inside.

In May, there should be flowers here!

...and here!
Ignore the green thing sticking out, I wanted to salvage a living stem
just to see if it ends up being a flower.

I'm also stoked that ...wait...let me back up. This spring, I grew some sweet pea flowers from seeds. I love growing from seeds, for a 99cent investment, you get the satisfaction of really growing some beautiful things yourself! And did I mention it's only 99 cents for a pack of seeds? Anyways, one of these sweet pea plants actually sprouted flowers plus an entire pea pod this year! So I busted out the seeds....without taking any stinking pictures to prove it, figures...and I'm going to plant the seeds next year. So I'll get back with you in June to let you know if my 99 cent investment has yielded two "crops."

Rosemary...with Chicken and Mushrooms

In my quest to eat healthier, I've been trying my hand at new recipes...

......because spinach and chicken only taste good for so long.
Ignore the amount of butter on the yam, I swear I scraped some of it off.

I guess I should inform you all that "eating healthier" for me entails not only cutting out junk, but cutting out grains and processed carbohydrates as well... This is referred to by some as "primal" or "paleo" eating.....sort of. Most of my meals get the labeling of almost paleo. (The above meal...which is one of my favorites...falls out of some peoples' paleo category with the yam.) I can never keep all of the rules straight so I've settled for "sort of" and am calling it good.

Here's how my first new recipe adventure went...I was particularly thankful that I am the only human in the house right now, because that means I'm the only one who had to suffer through this meal. I informed the hubs about what he missed out on and I'm sure he's disappointed in me for doing such a horrible thing to mushrooms.

First, I boiled chicken.

I boil a lot of chicken at the M&M residence

While the chicken boiled, I combined 4 tablespoons of olive oil, 4 tablespoons of hazelnuts, 1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder, a sprinkle of ground black pepper and sea salt,

and (ooops) 1/2 tablespoon of dried rosemary

and let it all cook together... 

there's no rosemary in there yet....trust me, you would see it.

Then I sliced up mushrooms.
 Yes, I'm aware you can buy them pre-sliced, but they are 30 cents cheaper if you slice them yourself.

Then I put the mushrooms in my rosemary-infested mixture and let everything cook together until the mushrooms got soggy. (Sounds yummy, huh?)

And I poured this over my boiled chicken. See the rosemary?

It tasted horrible! So why am I sharing it with you???? Because, had I used the correct measuring spoon to add the rosemary, it probably would have been yummy. Note to self....1 teaspoon is not the same as a 1/2 tablespoon. Four toothbrushings and six meals later, I swear I can still taste rosemary. I might try this recipe again one day without the rosemary, or maybe just a pinch.

...on a completely unrelated note. My husband called me a badass today. :) Life goal #12, complete.

some eph bombs got left out

Lucy is always left in good hands when I travel

this sums up my trip to Michigan. (much needed)

...the infamous self-portrait that our generation (the facebook generation) has mastered. This was about half way through my half marathon, on a quick water and break. I wish the entire "Army Strong" was visible, because that's what I was going for. oh well.

I am exhausted from yard sailing today. (hahaha...I wish it was really "sailing"...just selling) ...tomorrow I plan on having the best Sunday possible...well, other than spending the entire day laying around watching football with my wonderful husband. Since that's not an option, I guess I'll settle for church, studying, laundry, whipping up a good dinner, and then I'm gonna bake something.....but it's a secret I'll have to share later ;)

over here

okay okay. Starting a new blog and making anyone who cares to read it switch over and follow a new page is a pain. Yes, I’m aware. Sorry. I just wasn’t feeling the other blog anymore and I felt the need to shed off the old layers and start fresh over here. “Over here” being this new page. The other page was too heavily influenced by outside sources. I borrowed far too many ideas to call that blog my own. While the ideas were good, they weren’t always purely mine. So here we are…over here. I'm hoping this blog portrays more of the 'homey' feel I want. Not 'homie'...but 'homey.' On another note, I have also been trying to cram myself into this mold lately…I was trying to eat better and cut all sorts of crud out of my diet and cram in more workouts. Then I read something on a stupid desk calendar at work. The desk calendar is called the Skinny B!tch calendar. The day’s tip said “eat well and take immaculate care of yourself without being obsessive or neurotic. You don’t want to be a scrawny b!tch.” Hm,  true. So I’ve decided these 30-day jaunts of primal eating or whatever the heck I was trying to do or whatever are officially out the window. I’m going to eat well, limit the junk, and work out emphatically. But, when the mood strikes to bake cookies or make an apple pie from scratch, I’m going to do that too. As long as that’s not an every day occurrence, I see nothing wrong with it. J Ever seen “Stranger Than Fiction” with Will Ferrell and Maggie Gyllenhaal? I looooovvve that movie, and there’s a line in it where Anna Pasqual says “I decided if I was going to make the world a better place, I would do it with cookies.”  Well said, Anna, well said. So instead of contributing to the world by being the next Jillian Michaels, perhaps I’ll keep my contribution to society a bit more not-super-human. And lucky you, you get to follow all of these amazingly exciting adventures right here...errrr...over here, on my new blog!

Other than all that, I don’t have much to say, but have been thinking lately about how some of my favorite photos that I’ve taken in my life have been complete accidents. Completely, totally, and accidentally lucky. Shots I’ve snapped out a car window. Pictures I’ve snagged by clicking the shutter button repeatedly in hopes of catching the planes buzzing by. Something I’ve snagged twisted around facing backwards in my car at a stoplight. If I try to take pictures, I typically don’t get decent ones. Usually, I forget to even put the memory card back in my camera and end up using my smartphone to take pictures. That’s right, photography straight out of my phone. It’s not high-caliber, but I like it. I’ve learned in my life that, if you want good pictures, you must take a lot of pictures. If you take a million shots, maybe one or two will come out pretty cool. Today I’m going to share with you some of my favorite accidental photos...or eph bombs, if you will.

hiking with my love, a lucky shot against the sun glare

snapped out the window of a moving car in Blackwell, OK. (I wasn't driving, no worries)

honestly thought i captured sky. see the F15 Eagles flying by? ...and Jesse's fist

walking with my little man at the zoo. taken with an outstretched arm

if you take 500 pictures you end up with 1 cool one

caught ya!!! ...from the stairs.

another lucky one against the sun glare. snapped this one sitting on my uncle's lawn in NE

these two move quick, this is a lucky shot