Review: The Best Ever Waffles

Today I woke up with a hankering for waffles. As far as breakfast foods go, I was never much of a pancake or waffle girl. I always preferred eggs in any form-- fried, scrambled, hard boiled, etc. I love eggs. In fact the only waffle I ate on a somewhat regular basis growing up were Eggos! Not that my dad didn't make us pancakes a lot-- he used to make them nearly every Sunday morning. I just liked what I liked, and that was eggs! Well, I've had to learn to be more flexible in what I eat since I've gotten married. Bryan is all about trying new foods and not just sticking with what you know you like. "How will you ever know if you like something if you don't try it?" he always says. So, early in our marriage one Saturday morning he asked me to make him waffles. Having no idea what makes a good waffle recipe, I searched 'best ever waffles.' Hint: Whenever I have no idea what constitutes a good recipe I search 'best ever ______' in bewilderment.

Best Ever Waffles

Well, this recipe has lived up to its name. I love that it has you beat the egg whites until they're stiff and fold that in. It brings a certain lightness to it. The recipe is really good on its own but sometimes I add this or that to it, usually vanilla and/or cinnamon. This morning I added both and some pumpkin pie spice, too! I even made them orange with food coloring. This is a recipe I never want to lose. I know my husband loves me.

Stuffed Peppers

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween! I can't believe it's almost time for Thanksgiving and then Christmas! Holidays seem to have a way of speeding time up, it seems. I found this recipe for Stuffed Peppers in a cookbook my mom had made me of her favorites. I made it last year on Halloween and then this year too and I'm thinking it might become our Halloween classic. I'm sure you'll see why.

Anyway, here's what you'll need. I forgot to include the tomato juice so I just popped it into the corner there.

First, slice your peppers. Then hollow out the seeds and membranes. I chose orange peppers but the recipe calls for green. Can you see where I'm going with this?

Voila! This isn't not an essential part of the recipe but if you're looking to make your meal a little festive, here you are. I got this idea from Pinterest.

This recipe makes six stuffed peppers but, as there's just us two, I make two at a time. You'll need to bring water to a boil (enough to cover how ever many peppers you're making) and then boil them for five minutes. In the mean time, brown your meat (and cook your rice if you haven't yet!).

When the meat is finished, drain it to get rid of the fat. Then return it to the skillet and add garlic powder, salt, tomato juice, and rice.

Mix it all up and bring it to a boil.

When your five minutes are up you're going to want to transfer the peppers to a baking dish. Once there, put a half a cup of the mixture in the peppers and cover with aluminum foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.

Once that's done, put a slice of tomato on each and sprinkle with salt. Return to the oven uncovered for 15 minutes.

Generally, you can throw out the tops when you first cut them off but I like them for that Jack-O-Lantern effect!

Ingredients:

6 lg. green peppers
5 C. boiling water
1 1/2 lb. lean ground beef
2 Tbsp. chopped onion
1 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1 C. cooked rice
1 C. tomato juice
6 thick tomato slices
Salt

1. Cut thin slice from stem end of each pepper, remove all seeds and membranes.
2. Cook peppers in boiling water 5 minutes; drain.
3. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
4. Cook and stir meat and onion in large skillet until meat is brown and onion is tender. Drain off fat.
5. Stir in 1 tsp salt, the garlic powder, rice and tomato juice; heat to boiling.
6. Lightly stuff each pepper with 1/2 C. meat mixture.
7. Stand peppers upright in an ungreased baking dish. Cover with aluminum foil and bake 45 minutes.
8.  Top each pepper with a tomato slice and sprinkle with salt. Bake uncovered 15 minutes.

The recipe includes that there are 225 calories so it's pretty healthy, which is something I am currently trying to be. As I typed the last word in that sentence I seriously heard the ice cream truck drive by. Must. Resist... :) Anyway, enjoy!

REVIEW: Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Even the name of this recipe has my mouth watering. Oh my goodness, I made these last night and they were so delicious and so autumn appropriate! Really, you can eat them any time of year but I especially enjoy getting into autumn by making seasonal food. Anything with cloves and/or nutmeg in it is generally going to be heavenly, in my opinion.

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

Time Out

Here at the Whitney Whisk, I'm all about cooking. I love, love, love to cook! For today, though, our post has almost nothing to do with cooking. Almost-- I have a love for cooking in aprons (I have fifteen of my own).

This summer I have been trying to get in to crafting. I've made independence day decorations and a multitude of baby toys and accessories for the three babies to come into our family! A while ago I got the idea to make aprons for two little nieces turning three who got little kitchens for their birthdays last year. Well, I've slowly been working away at them over the past two weeks and I was so excited about the final product that I wanted to share. I tried to make each apron epitomize the style and personality of the little girl it was going to-- trust me, at three they already have acutely distinct personalities.

I went to Hancock Fabrics beforehand to scope out fabric options before buying, then went home and put some ideas together from pictures I'd taken on my phone. I made a rough sketch of each apron and then made my own patterns for each. I used measurements and suggestions for both from this blog post-- the second apron follows it more closely but is still different.

Ava's Apron

Ava is a very sweet, very fun and often silly girl who loves lambies and asking questions. While definitely very feminine, she doesn't seem to care about pink or princesses. In fact, she told me just last week that her favorite color is white! Well she's lucky because I'd finished her apron by then and it definitely has a lot of white in it.

I used this apron for a base of inspiration and then put my ideas to work from there. 

Both aprons are made with velcro for the neck and waist ties, as per the suggestion of the blog tutorial linked above. This makes for easier removal by the kids themselves.

I knew I wanted a peter pan collar but the bow and stitching came last as I was finishing the apron. It just needed a little something up there and I think I definitely found that something. In the process, I learned how to tie the perfect bow so that's a plus.

What can I say, I love a good ruffle. I'm very much in to pleats and gathers and anything feminine when it comes to clothes.

When I told my sister that I was going to make Ava an apron she said she'd been thinking about making her a little chef's hat. I thought that would be the perfect accessory. I used this tutorial but I made the rim shorter and opted to go with the classic white fabric. When cutting the circle I just measured 18", found the 9" mark and the measured 9" out from that center mark around in a circle.

Ella's Apron

Ella is a sweet and quite spunky girl who loves princesses and dressing up. She asks her mom for "lips" (lip gloss) often and has her own set of 'high heels.' She is all girl and in honor of this I thought something very frilly and very pink would do the trick.

I went with a sweetheart neckline, which is not so easy to see in this photograph. It was inspired by this apron. The top felt a little empty so i adorned it with a set of pearls and a sweet little bow off to the side. I am a serious pearl girl, myself.

When I saw these frills I knew they were exactly what I was looking for.

I was trying to come up with an accessory for Ella, like the chef hat above, but I wanted something different. I made her a little headband with a big bow that I will give her but I just wasn't in love with it and then the idea of a matching oven mitt struck me and I whipped up a little pattern for it. The inside layer has minky fabric with a layer of batting in between.

Happy Birthday Ava and Ella!

Aus Jus Sandwiches

This recipe came from Bryan's Aunt Jeanette in the wonderful family cookbook she gave me just before we were married. I'd had (but never made) Aus Jus/French Dip sandwiches before. Maybe it sounds fancy and difficult but, believe me, this is very simple and quite delicious.

Here's what you'll need:

The recipe calls for one can of beef broth and one can of onion beef broth. I couldn't find onion beef broth anywhere... I added a little onion powder to one of the cans but, since it also calls for onion soup mix, I'd say the powder wasn't all that necessary.

Put your roast in the crock pot and cover with both cans of broth and the onion soup mix. There is no set size for your roast. Generally, I use about half a pound per person. Cover this and cook on low for eight hours or until the roast shreds easily. This made my house smell so, so good all day Friday.

Shred your meat. After I shredded it I poured the contents of the crock pot in a strainer to separate the juice to put it in a bowl for dipping.

Choose any kind of cheese you like for this sandwich. I generally don't like Swiss cheese but it seemed like the right flavoring to go with the meat.

Melt your cheese onto the sandwich however you would like. Most people should know this, but I'd avoid microwaving it. It'll make your bread kind of soggy or, if you've done it too long, really hard. I broiled my for a few minutes. I probably should have taken it out about a minute sooner because the corner of the bread started to burn slightly.

Put the meat in the bun, pour the juice that the roast cooked in into a bowl and dip as you go! So good. (I am obviously really lazy about vegetables so we eat salad from a bag every night...)

Ingredients:

Whole Roast
1 Can Beef Broth
1 Can Onion Beef Broth (if you can find it! good luck!)
1 Pkg. Onion Soup Mix
Hoagie Buns
Sliced Cheese

1. Place the roast in the crock pot and cover with both cans of broth and onion soup mix.
2. Cook on low for 8 hours or until meat shreds easily.
3. Shred roast in juice.
4. Melt cheese onto sliced hoagie buns.
5. Place shredded roast in bun with cheese.
6. Use the juice as Aus Jus sauce for dipping.

Ambrosia Salad

Bryan's company is having its summer barbecue today and I'm pretty excited. I love, love being a stay at home wife and not having a job but sometimes I really like to have events to go to. During the day the only people I see are strangers at the store. Thank goodness for my cat so that I have another living soul around to interact with. Translation: excited.

I'm supposed to bring a side. I was torn between a chip dip I'd found on Pinterest and this recipe that I grew up with-- my mom would take it to church barbecues as well. I was concerned that maybe it was too dessert-ish since other people are to bring desserts. Am I possibly a little obsessive-compulsive? Then my friend Ashley said, "Everyone loves a sweet salad!" So, it won. Like mother, like daughter, I guess.

See below for full recipe. Here's what you'll need:

I didn't make a neat little grid of pictures showing adding everything together like I did with Taco Salad because I just didn't have the time so you can see all the pictures below. Suffice it to say all you do is mix everything together and then refrigerate it until you're ready to serve it.

I don't even like pineapple and I love this salad!

My mom didn't have exact measurements when I talked to her so I'll just provide what I did but they are very give-or-take kind of ingredients.

Ingredients:

1/2 a bag of mini marshmallows
1 large can of pineapple chunks, drained
2 small cans mandarin oranges, drained
1 10 oz. jar of maraschino cherries, drained
7 oz. shredded coconut (I just used half a 14 oz bag)
1 lb. sour cream

1. Mix together all ingredients.
2. Store in refrigerator until ready to be served.

Wasn't that easy?

REVIEW: Zucchini Bread

Okay, so this is a quasi-review in that I think zucchini bread is a pretty basic recipe but this is my go-to zucchini bread recipe and I have always loved it.

Bryan and I planted a small garden this summer and, though my husband is not a huge fan of squash, I begged him to let us plant some zucchini. He gave in when I promised zucchini bread. Duh! That's probably why I wanted to plant it in the first place... I do like zucchini sliced and fried, though. Anyway, our zucchinis are finally coming to a stage where some of them can be plucked. I trust this recipe to always be good but I do change it up a little. Here is the base recipe:

Zucchini Bread

Sometimes I add the nuts it calls for, if I have them. I seem to almost always have coconut on hand so I throw that in along with about 1/2 C. of chocolate chips. Once I have poured the batter into the bread pans and before cooking I top it with a mixture of 2 Tbsp white sugar, 2 Tbsp brown sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon, an idea I got from Our Best Bites. It's to die for!