snow day in april? yes, please!

We've been having some weird weather here in Nebraska recently. I mean, Nebraska weather is always a bit spastic, but the last few days have really been wild. On Monday, our high was near 70 ... and then things fell apart. Monday night into Tuesday morning, we had severe thunderstorms. My town didn't get hit nearly as hard as some other towns in the area ... but still, we had high winds, hail, and lots of rain. (Yay, rain!) Then Tuesday the temp steadily dropped, the winds were strong, and it rained, sleeted, and hailed. Eventually, there was a bit of snow, but the biggest issue was the layer of ice that covered everything.

Last night, I got the "late start" call. And this morning, 15 minutes before my alarm was set to go off, I got the "school is canceled" call! Roomie and I were both thrilled to have the day off! (She's student teaching at another area school, and her school was canceled, too.)

I had so much work I could have been doing ... but I didn't bring any of it home with me because I honestly thought we'd have school today. It only takes five minutes to drive to work, so I could have gone to pick some stuff up, but really, did I want to go through the effort of showering, drying my hair, and scraping off my car? Nope! So I decided to declare today a "me" day ... and let tomorrow worry about itself.

So today I spent my day

• baking bread. I used this recipe, which I found on Pinterest. It tastes great ... but the loaves look nothing like the pictures on the website!
• washing dishes. Becasue I baked bread.
• rescuing my cats from the dog next door. Don't ask me how I feel about that dog. It's not pretty.
• catching up on NCIS, Hart of Dixie, and New Girl. Plus an episode of The OC thrown in for good measure.
• reading Siri Mitchell's Unrivaled. I had mixed feelings about it—look for the review tomorrow.
• chatting with Blendy. (Maybe if I link to her enough times, it'll shame her into actually updating her blog ...)
• napping. I never nap ... but I did today!
• watching Cool Runnings with the roomie. I kept telling myself I wouldn't cry at the end, but I did. I swear, I'm turning into my mother!

All in all, it was a fabulous, unexpected, much-needed day off! 

recipe: easy chicken pizza

Last week, I promised you the recipe for my chicken pizza. It's pretty straightforward ... any of you could have "invented" this recipe, too. It's also incredibly quick to make—from the time you turn on the oven until you pull the pizza out, you're looking at 20-25 minutes. It's perfect for those nights when you're looking for a fast, easy supper.

Easy Chicken Pizza

1 thin pizza crust (I use Golden Home's Ultra Crispy & Ultra Thin crust. It comes in a 3-pack for $2.99 at Hy-Vee.)
1/3-1/2 cup pizza sauce
1 can (13 oz.) chicken
4 oz. mozzarella cheese
Garlic powder
Italian seasoning
Fresh ground black pepper
Extra virgin olive oil

Spread pizza sauce on crust, stopping about 1/4 inch from the edge. Drain chicken and crumble over crust. Top with cheese. Sprinkle on garlic powder, Italian seasoning, and pepper to taste. Drizzle olive oil over the top. Bake according to crust package directions. Enjoy!

Some helpful hints:

• Place a pan on the bottom rack of your oven to catch any pizza drips. Trust me—I learned this the hard way!
• You can use any combination of cheeses that you want, and you can certainly use more or less than I do! I like to put a handful of grated asiago on top of the mozzarella. Cheddar or parmesan would also be good.
• You can mince two cloves of garlic to use in place of the garlic powder ... I've done it both ways, and it's way easier to go for the powder!
• The crust I buy comes in a 3-pack. The package says you can freeze the crusts for up to a month—just be aware that frozen crusts don't crisp up as well as fresh ones.
• Don't make this when you're the only one eating unless you have a lot of willpower! I have a hard time not eating the whole pizza by myself ... it's just that good!  

recipe: frosted molasses creams

Last week, I found this Pyrex set on sale at Amazon for $34.99. I bought it thinking I'd give away some pieces for shower or wedding gifts, but when I opened the box, I realized I wanted to keep it all! I also had this uncontrollable urge to bake something in one of the pieces.

Earlier this week, I had the best molasses cookies I've ever tasted at Das Dutch Kitchen in Dalton, Ohio. After I got home yesterday, I started looking for Amish molasses cookie recipes. The arrival of the Pyrex put my cookie baking on hold, but I still wanted molasses. Then I remembered my mom's frosted molasses creams recipe, which is kind of like a molasses cookie in bar form. As she wasn't home tonight to give me the recipe, I turned instead to the trusty internets. I ended up finding a recipe for frosted molasses bars that looked similar to Mom's recipe and adapted it a bit.

Frosted Molasses Creams
adapted from this recipe on Cooks.com

Bars:
½ c shortening
½ c white sugar
1 egg
½ c molasses
½ c strong coffee (hot is okay)
1 ½ c all-purpose flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
¾ tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp ground cloves

Frosting:
½ c butter
2 ½ c powdered sugar
2 T strong coffee

To make:
Preheat oven to 350°. Cream shortening and sugar. Stir in egg. Add molasses and coffee, beating for about 30 seconds. (At this point, the liquid may not be completely incorporated into the shortening/sugar mixture. That's okay.) Add dry ingredients, blending well. Pour into greased 9x13 inch pan. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes.

For the frosting: 
Cream butter and sugar. Gradually add coffee and beat until smooth. (You may need to adjust the amount of coffee.) Spread on bars after they have cooled for 30 minutes.

These are seriously SO GOOD! I had to cover them up (with a nifty Pyrex lid, of course) so I would stop smelling them—and hopefully stop eating them!

The finished bars. Keep in mind that I never claimed to be a food photographer!

These go perfectly with a cup of coffee ... which you should have on hand
since you had to make coffee to go in the bars!

a picture's worth ...

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. Since I haven't been writing much lately, I thought I'd throw up a few pictures to catch you up with my life!

I got Mom tickets to Straight No Chaser's Omaha concert for her birthday. As you can see, we were quite happy to be there! My favorite part was, surprisingly, this Lady Gaga medley.

In early October, my sisters and I ran/walked a 5K. The experience made me want to do another!

Thanks to a facebook friend, I've become obsessed with this bread. It's so easy and absolutely delicious!

In early November, I accompanied a group of students on a trip to DC. This is one of my favorite shots.

My cousin Shawna was on the trip, and I enjoyed spending time with her. Here we are outside Lee's Mansion in Arlington National Cemetery.

On the way home from DC, we stopped at the Creation Museum near Cincinnati, where I "got" to hold this snake. Pretty brave, if I do say so myself!

This picture serves two purposes: 1) To show off my new hair color. 2) To thank cousin Bethie for the Sleepy Monk coffee and Cannon Beach mug she brought me when she visited for Thanksgiving.

Yesterday, Blendy and her friend Janelle came over to help me decorate. Then we watched You've Got Mail while I wrapped all the presents I've bought so far.

a new year, a new me?

I've had some health problems lately, and my doctor told me to eat a low fat, high fiber diet. In the past month, my eating habits have changed drastically, and I've lost seven pounds in three weeks!!! I'm glad I wasn't told to cut out the carbs or sugar, though I'm sure I've eaten much less sugar recently. I've also been exercising more frequently. And ... I bought a shake weight! I love it. I don't expect to ever look like the woman on the dvd, but that doesn't matter. It's the one part of my workout I actually look forward to!

One of the things I've been doing recently is baking my own bread. I've always enjoyed baking bread, but I often am too lazy to take the time to do it. I do have a bread machine, but there's something cathartic about mixing, kneading, and shaping the dough. I take a basic bread recipe and then experiment with it--adding oatmeal, substituting wheat flour for white, adding herbs and spices. And really, is there any better smell than the scent of fresh bread?

Tonight, I'm making Wicked Cinnamon Rolls. I've been craving cinnamon rolls lately, but my favorite recipe, Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls, is quite decidedly not low fat. Not even close. I don't have the pastry flour called for in the Wicked recipe, so I just used regular flour. Right now, the dough is on the second rise. I'm hoping the flour substitution won't make too big of a difference.

Two hours later, I've just eaten the first roll. I adapted Pioneer Woman's maple frosting recipe instead of using Wicked's icing. Next time (if there is a next time), I'll use less cinnamon in the rolls. The recipe calls for two tablespoons, and I love cinnamon, so I used what it called for, even though I thought it sounded like a lot. I'm thinking one tablespoon would have been sufficient! Overall, the rolls are decent, but they aren't nearly as good as they would be with a little fat involved!

 

The flour I used for the rolls. I found it at Walmart--Wheat Montana is the place we got our amazing cinnamon rolls on our summer road trip!

 

Rising in the oven. 

 

The finished product. Not as beautiful as I'd hoped!

monkey see, monkey do

My uncle is the king of reading. My mom's side of the family is known for its readers, and he just may top all of them. Not only does he love to read, but he loves to share the things he's read with my family. My parents have received, well, probably hundreds of books from him throughout the years. And, of course, you can't forget the numerous magazines and newspapers he subscribes to. He'll often send clippings of things he thinks we'll be interested in. During my senior year of college, one of the articles he sent me inspired what I remember to be the worst paper I've ever written ...

Mass Communications was a class I'd looked forward to taking, but in the busyness of my final semester as a full-time student, I didn't give it the attention I should have. It was an easy class, and a large percentage of the grade came from two papers. The day before the first paper was due, I still didn't know what I was going to write about. Then I checked my mail. In my box was an envelope from Uncle Ken. And in that envelope, I found an article about Christian music. (Sidenote: Isn't the internet great? I just found and linked to that very article--an article published six years ago!) The article inspired my paper, unimaginatively titled "Christians in the Secular Music Industry." (At least I remembered to give it a title. So many times I turned in papers or articles without titles, and I eventually got to the point where I'd type TITLE in huge letters at the top of the page. I don't think I ever turned in a paper with the TITLE still there ...)  I pulled the only all-nighter of my college career while writing the paper--thank goodness for the internet; I found every single source, except for the article from Uncle Ken, online! I finally finished minutes before class started (I skipped my other morning class to work on it), rushed across campus, and arrived just in time to hear the prof say that she'd give us until 5 p.m. to turn the paper in!

Because I'm a nerd, I saved all of my college papers; I just reread this one, and it's not as horrible as I remembered, though it reads more like a magazine article than an academic paper. Still, I got an A!

Well, this trip down memory lane wasn't supposed to be the focus of this particular post! What I was getting at when I first mentioned my uncle was that he recently sent the food section of the Los Angeles Times, and it inspired me to bake. The front page article was about monkey bread; following the article, the author listed three variations. I'd never thought of monkey bread as being anything other than a gooey, cinnamon and sugar, pull-apart bread (which is, of course, fabulous); when I saw the recipe for an olive oil and herb version, I knew I needed to try it.

All ready to go into the oven

 

It. Was. Fantastic. I'm a huge fan of dipping bread into herb and garlic flavored olive oil, and this bread reminded me of that--except that every bite was infused with flavor, and the outside was all crusty and delicious. Mmmmmmm, good!

It was supposed to cool for 15 minutes after coming out of the oven. I waited ten!

Doesn't it look delectable?

No, I didn't eat 1/4 of it in one sitting--Steph had some, too!

If this has whet your appetite, you can read the article and get the recipes here.