Corn!

Today, has been a fun and a crazy busy day! I started my morning by mopping my floors, doing laundry, paying bills and accomplishing a million other things that a keeper at home does. :) I also decided that I needed to work on the corn that was ready and waiting for me in my garden. I went out and picked ear after ear after ear of corn, then sat down in a comfortable lawn chair and began to husk the cobs. I had fun throwing the husks into our firepit. I know why they call it sweet corn - by time I was done husking my hands were so sticky!

My husband loves frozen cream corn and since I had never frozen corn before, my wonderful mother-in-law came over to help me with the process! First we boiled the ears of corn, then we placed the corn cobs into a sink full of cold water to cool down before we started the process of cutting the corn.

My mother-in-law had a wonderful little tool that I had never seen or used before, but I'm totally getting it for next year! It's called a corn cutter and creamer and it looks like this:

You slide the cob across the blades and "ta da" the corn falls into the bowl beneath and you don't have to spend hours using a knife to cut your corn off the cob. You can get them off of Amazon for $7-10 - totally worth the money! :)

After we had all the corn peeled we scooped the corn into freezer bags and placed them in the freezer for a later date.

Here are some pictures from our morning:

Cappuccino Muffins!

The finished product - YUMMY!!!!

Yikes! It's been a while since I've posted anything on this blog. I just haven't felt the greatest lately so grocery shopping, cooking/baking and anything to do with food just hasn't been very appealing. You see, I'm pregnant!!!


I'm almost 12 weeks along and I'm finally starting to feel less queasy. My monthly grocery shopping trip was pure misery as the sight of any food made me feel so sick, but I managed to get through it and spent less than $150! Yay!

I'm blessed to live close to my parents and younger siblings and my in-laws. My youngest siblings have been such a blessing as they helped me cook up my meat, boil noodles and help make several freezer meals which have come in very handy over the past several weeks. I totally agree with whoever came up with the idea of preparing ahead of time when you're in your very early weeks of pregnancy - because having something to just pull out of the freezer when you're not feeling is totally WONDERFUL!

Yesterday, I felt really good and actually managed to do some baking! I was quite pleased and very happy with myself since it had been weeks since I had even wanted to see a recipe book. I made cappuccino muffins from off the Taste of Home website (I love their recipes!).

You can go here to get the recipe: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Cappuccino-Muffins
(for some reason I couldn't copy/paste the list of ingredients without my computer freezing up on me, so I decided to do it this way instead).

If you enjoy coffee or have coffee-loving friends or family than you must try this recipe!

Here are some pictures:

This is the cream cheese spread which smells like Starbucks!!!! They say it tastes good on bagels, so I'm going to give it a try as well! I'm sure they'll taste delightful! :)

This is a picture of the muffin batter - I bought one of those little boxes that have 8 little individual packets of instant coffee instead of buying an entire jar of instant coffee since I know we could never use that much instant coffee and it worked out quite well. I still have enough packets to make another batch of muffins.

Enjoy!!!

Summer Time Treats!

It's summertime and life around here has been full of Father's Day get-togethers, family gatherings, birthdays, and so much more! I'm busy working on my monthly menu for July at the moment and it's currently a slow process since I'm going through new recipes and looking for easy, yummy, and cheap summer meals!

Here is a recipe for some wonderful cool and refreshing ice cream cakes!

Ice Cream Cake

Here is the easy and delicious ice cream cake recipe....

Ice Cream Cake

1/2 gallon vanilla ice cream(I used the oreo cookie (cookies'n cream) ice cream for the reg. flavor cake, Bryers Sarah Lee cheesecake flavored icecream for the strawberry cheese cake flavored cake, and a peanut butter/chocolate swirl icecream for the peanut butter cake).

1 package Jell-O vanilla or cheesecake flavored pudding mix(I used chocolate pudding mix in my peanut butter flavored cake and vanilla and cheesecake flavored puddings for my other two cakes - puddings are optional and fat-free and sugar free puddings work fine too).

1 package Oreo cookies(Depending on what type of flavor you plan to make you can choose from the many different flavored cookies. I used the peanut butter and chocolate oreo cookies for my peanut butter flavored cake, I used the vanilla oreos for my strawberry cheese cake ice cream cake, and then used regular oreos for my orginal flavored ice cream cake).

1 container cool whip

1/2 stick of butter

Directions:Set ice cream out to soften. Crush Oreos and mix with about a half a stick of butter (sometimes more) and press on bottom of 9"x 11" pan. Mix softened ice cream with pudding mix. Spread over top of oreo crust. Top ice cream mixture with cool whip and put in freezer for a few hours.

Extras:

Regular flavor - nothing extra (you could drizzle some chocolate ice cream topping on it)

Peanut Butter - I drizzled carmel ice cream sauce on top of the finished cake.

Strawberry Cheesecake - I added strawberry ice cream topping and fresh strawberries.

Be creative and create your own unique flavored ice cream cake!

ENJOY!!!