Christmas Nieghbor Plates

Here are my Christmas neighbor plates I made this year. The candy I make every year, it just reminds me of Christmas. My mom made them every year for Christmas and now I'm making it a Christmas tradition with my own kids. The reindeer cookies are new and were super cute! Just a little heads up I got really busy while making these and I forgot to take as many pictures.

We'll start with the peanut balls. You melt some butter or margarine. I'm a margarine girl personally.

 Add a little peanut butter.

 Some powder sugar and blend it all together.

 Once it's all together you roll them into small balls. The smaller the easier to eat.

 My army of peanut butter balls. Put the peanut butter balls in the fridge for an hour so they're easier to dip.

 Melt some chocolate and dip the chilled peanut butter balls in.

Here they are! My husband is a huge fan of peanut butter and loves these. I added a little white chocolate on top by melting some white chocolate in a sandwich bag and then snipping the corner of the bag and squeezing it on top.

Next I started on my almond joys, these are my favorite because they're fantastic. Start with some coconut.

Make some instant mashed potatoes, add some powder sugar and some almond extract then mix them all together. Form balls (this part for me is always sticky and messy so be prepared) and put an almond on each one. Let them sit for an hour then dip them in chocolate. I only ate a few and was disappointed I didn't have very many left over. I'm tempted to make more.

For the reindeer cookies I started off with dipping the pretzels in chocolate. This was hard for me since I wanted to have wholes in the tops, these are the reindeer's antlers so they had to look nice. Once I had what I thought was enough of them I started on the cookies.
I made some peanut butter ones but you could do ginger bread as well. Once they were cooked I put the face and antlers on. For the nose I used red hots that I bought in the bulk section of WINCO and some mini chocolate chips. You're welcome to use anything that would work. I found it easier to put everything on while the cookies were still on the cookie sheet. They cooled too quickly on the rack and things didn't stick as nicely.

 

I hope you have a great holiday and that they recipes inspire you to get out there and bake!

Almond Joy Candy

3/4 cup mashed potatoes
4 cups coconut (unsweetened)

4 1/2 cups powder sugar

1 teaspoon almond flavoring

Let stand one hour in covered bowl. Make into balls and dip in chocolate. Put whole almost on top.

Peanut Butter Balls
2 cups powder sugar
1 1/2 cups peanut butter

3 tablespoons melted butter

Mix together and make into balls and chill for an hour. Dip in chocolate.

Avocado Chicken Salad

I love avocado's. I never had them as a kid, my mom grew up in rural Pennsylvania and she grew up poor. Whatever they couldn't grow themselves they really didn't eat so my mom didn't really branch out when it came to food. (My Grandmother would spend one day a week making bread, loaves and loaves of bread. She's my hero!) She cooked comfort food and avocado's just didn't fit.

I went out and bought some avocado's and decided to make this avocado chicken salad for dinner. I do have to say that when my husband came home from work and saw this for dinner he said it looked like diet food. It may look like diet food but it tasted fantastic.

 First I got my fresh cilantro and cut it up. I love the smell of cilantro. Try saying cilantro, it's so much fun. See? Isn't it fun.

 Next I cut up my onion.

 Got out my fresh avocado and scooped out the insides.

Chopped those up. This is where cooking got funny for me. My daughters were sitting around the table like seagulls, waiting for any handouts they could get. I let them have some of the avocado and my twenty month old said, "I like it!"
Makes me happy I'm training my girls to love Mexican food flavors. They will not take after my husband.

 Next I reached for my chicken breast and tried to chunk/shred it. I would have been happier if it had been shredded but whatever.

 Then I put in some miracle whip and some lime juice. Stir and serve, easy!

Ingredients:
2-3 tablespoons chopped onion
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
1 avocado chopped
1 chicken breast shredded
2 tablespoons miracle whip or mayonaise
2 tablespoons lime juice
Salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients and serve with chips or in a pita pocket.

Rudolf Pancakes

So I found these really cute pancakes on pinterest and knew I had to make them. I couldn't wait! How festive and fun for kids to wake up to Rudolf on their plates.

I used sausages on mine but the one I saw used bacon, I say use whatever you like. I used what I had on hand and it happened to be sausages. I bakes mine in the oven since I'm not a fan of the smoke and the mess of frying them. I also do my bacon in the oven, much easier. I will do a whole package and then when we're done with breakfast I freeze the rest. When I need some bacon or sausage I pull however many pieces I need out and throw them in the microwave, this process just seems to work for me.

Alright enough about how I make breakfast meat. You're here for the pancakes. I used my whole wheat apple pancakes for these. I had some frozen strawberries left over from my smoothies and I got a few out thawed them and put them on for Rudolph's nose. You could use anything red and roundish, raspberries, candy. For the eyes I grabbed a couple chocolate chips and used them.

I made some small pancakes for the ears but I also thought bananas would work as well. Just cut a couple slices and there you go, ears. I didn't have bananas so small pancakes it was.

I made the first one and thought, ok this is not a reindeer, it's a bear. Then I had to go look at the picture to figure out what I was missing. It's obvious now but I just could not see it then. But my slight brain loss was just fine since I discovered, hey I can do a bear no matter what season.

I took two sausages and cut them in half. That way they're not running around. Put two slices on whole and then cut the ones left in half to get the branches. I loved how cute they were, just be warned it was a lot of pancakes. If you have little ones make these guys small.

A Rapunzel Birthday Party

My daughter turned four and all year she's wanted a Tangled party. She never wavered once even when we offered different choices she hung in there with Rapunzel. I think it was mainly due to her friend having a Tangled party, maybe she thinks everyone has to have one. I had to admire her commitment to the cause though and we reluctantly followed her wishes. That was until I got online and found all the cool stuff there was to go along with the party. Like floating lanterns. These took a while to make. I found some battery operated tea lights at Michael's (they actually sold them at Sam's club for cheaper and more) got some velum and then built a base for the candle to sit on out of card stock, taped the velum to the card stock. I taped some fishing line (should have punched a hole in the velum) and then hung them from the ceiling with the fishing line to create the illusion that they were floating away.

We strung lights on the ceiling to imitate twinkling lights and added some leaves to the line on the wall to pretend it was a vine.

These were so fun. It's just blue jello with orange slices and then I took a tooth pick and some purple construction paper to make a sail. In the movie they sail out onto the water.

In the movie Max loves his apples so we sliced some up and served it in a frying pan. Why a frying pan? Well Rapunzel keeps one around at all times for her protection, interesting though that she doesn't have it at the end when the bad twins get her. Hmmm...

The duck says, "Are you eating my apples?"

Since the movie goes to a pub we bought some root bear in the classic glass bottles.

This photo, not great. It's the stairs leading up to the living room with Rapunzel's hair draped on it. Didn't turn out as cute as I wanted but the idea was worth mentioning. I also printed wanted signs of Flynn Rider and hung them around the house.

We had a pinata that was made out of a paper bag and filled with candy that had Flynn Riders smoldering face glued on it. We then duck taped it and hung it from a pole. We couldn't go outside since it was about twenty below, could have been a little warmer, I can't remember. It was Alaska in December, so cold. Everyone laughed at the pinata and said it wouldn't last but surprisingly it lasted seven kids three rounds with a thirteen year old hitting it. We ended up denting the frying pan we were using to hit Flynn Rider. Eventually the kids got a tear in the bag and the candy came rushing out, the kids dived in and chaos ensued.

It ended up being a cute theme for a birthday party and my four year old loved it all. She especially loved the cake that my awesome sister in law made.

I was amazed at how awesome she made the cake, the little red headed girl is my daughter.

A close up.

Flynn Rider

Rapunzel hanging out her window.

I made some Princess crowns with a candy mold and some white chocolate. The girls loved them and even though I made plenty they were mysteriously all gone after the party.

Thanksgiving Turkeys

So it's obviously been a while. But with National Novel Writing Month in November and a two week trip to the North Pole I didn't have much time. I know you're probably thinking the North Pole really? Yes . . .

. . . Here's the proof.

My husband is from North Pole, Alaska and we actually met up there working at a gold mine.

We took our kids up to visit for Thanksgiving. When I got up there my mother-in-law whom I'll now refer to as mil, surprised me with a pie baking marathon but I'll talk about that another time. While looking for a recipe we came across these really cute turkeys. Thinking they would take no time at all mil ran out to the store and bought the stuff we needed. Mil came back with all this stuff.

Unfortunately in North Pole they only have one grocery store and for some reason they had no candy corn. May be seasonal up there who knows. She already had the Oreo's, they're in the cookie jar, we used mint and chocolate Oreo's.

Alright so the recipe we looked at said buy the store bought frosting. Easy, I can do that. Then you put together your turkey, easy, I mean look at it, not hard. We were so wrong. It ended up taking most of the morning. We started off by putting frosting on the Oreo to glue the feathers on. Since we had no candy corn we went for Reese's Pieces.

No problem, those stuck just fine. Alright now for the hard part.

Here's where I went wrong. I didn't put the right Oreo on top. Putting this thing together backward obviously took more brain power than I was able to give it.

Cutting a mini Reese's peanut butter cup? No problem, I can do that. Eating the extra pieces? Even easier.

Here I go, doing it completely wrong. If you're still with me, don't do it upside down.

Once again, wrong. See the head? It should be up by the feathers. Oh Mr. Turkey why are you so messed up?

I fixed it and left it upside down to dry.

Obviously I didn't leave it upside down long enough. Thankfully we decided more than half way through to scrap the store bought frosting and made some royal frosting which if you don't know is sort of like cement in frosting form.

Here is our army of headless turkeys made right side up with royal frosting. Much easier.

Here it is all done. For the beak I cut up a Reese's Pieces into fours. Thankfully with the help of royal frosting they pulled through. The kids ate theirs before Thanksgiving started and they turned out to be a big hit.

Homemade Smoothy Mixes

It's been a while and I can assure you it's because I've been writing my annual novel. Every year I participate in National Novel Writing Month. It's a lot of fun but also a lot of work.

Recently my husband has been eating smoothies for breakfast. It's a healthy way to start the day and I'm all for it. Trouble was he was buying those expensive Yoplait Smoothies. I decided we could make them ourselves I mean it's just yogurt with frozen fruit. I can do that.

So first thing was first, I went to Sam's club and bought some frozen fruit. True I could have bought the fruit and frozen it, which is what I did with the bananas, but we just don't have mango's here in this frozen place.

For the bananas I cut them up into slices and put some wax paper on a cookie sheet and then froze them. The bananas stuck to the wax paper but it wasn't hard to get off and I couldn't think of any other way to do this. Any better ideas?

Next I went to Fred Meyer's and bought some yogurt that was on sale. Then I took my ice cube tray and froze my yogurt.

Here's some all done up. The problem with doing this, I forget the yogurt is done in the freezer. I blame kids, I think they take brain cells every time. Plus I was spacey before this so I had no hope.

Then I put half a cup of one fruit or mix in and half a cup of another fruit or mix in. I also added 3-4 cubes of yogurt.

You seal the bag and put it in the freezer. The nice thing is I made a lot and still have a lot of frozen fruit left over. Sometimes I'll add milk to the smoothies but they're best with some juice.

I added some wheat germ to a smoothy, I put some in the blender blended the germ so it wouldn't be as noticeable and then added the rest. Best part was, you didn't know it was there. These are a great way to start the day or end the day with a sweet not fattening treat.

Update February 12, 2012:
So I've been making smoothies for my husband most mornings around 4 mornings a week. I haven't had to make another batch of smoothie mixes since this original post. I think that's amazing. Although we are getting low so I'll be needing to make more soon.
I've also wondered how to add vegetables to the mixes. My husband doesn't care for vegetables and usually avoids them. I wanted to add some vegetables to his morning smoothies but not have him notice. That way he gets a little vegetables everyday. I turned to my friend cauliflower. It's such a great vegetable to sneak into food. It's fairly bland with a wonderfully easy color to hide.
Here's how I get cauliflower into the smoothies. You can't leave it in it's fresh form, it ends up making the smoothie grainy. My husband is interesting and can't handle chunks or grainy in his smoothies. I bought fresh cauliflower, cooked it until it was soft and then put it in the food processor with the water it was cooked in. It's important to add the water, you need it to make the cauliflower a smooth mix. Blend it until it's smooth and creamy. Then I take the ice cube trays and put the creamed cauliflower and freeze it. Once it's frozen pop the now cauliflower pops into a freezer bag. Throw one or two into the smoothie and I promise you or who ever you're making it for will never notice.
I've also added in frozen spinach, just be careful to not add too much or you get a green smoothie.
Next time I make my cauliflower pops, I'll take pictures.