Vanilla Yogurt Bread

This Vanilla Yogurt Bread - is a very moist, soft, delicious and an easy recipe! This is one of our favorite's, it's simply one of the best yogurt bread recipe out there :) What's the secret? It's actually the same exact recipe I use for banana bread, except one time I didn't have bananas, so I tried yogurt in total place. Wow! Did it ever surprise me. This makes for a breakfast, snack or even dessert...yep it's that good!

Strawberry Apple Fruit Leather

Strawberry Apple Fruit Leather! I was so excited to finally try it (with strawberries finally [almost]in season. I made these with my food dehydrator and they turned out very tasty!! They are a great snack (especially for lunches or hikes.) Fruit leather is also very healthy if it's sweetened by natural sweeteners :)

Medium-Rare Steak

Steak! This is one of my husbands most favorite dinners...steak, asparagus, potatoes and a dinner roll. We get our steak from Safeway and have had nothing but great tasting meat from them :) This steak is done on the grill which makes it exciting to make (I love to grill around here, especially with summer coming!)

Honey Oat Bread

Honey Oat Bread - this bread is perfect for sandwich making, toasting for breakfast, grilled cheese...just about any bread need :) The sweetness (in our opinion) is superb. It uses honey as the main sweetener, so the flavor is great.

Boston Cream Doughnuts

Boston Cream Doughnuts - is almost definitely in every dozen of doughnuts from the bakery section. You know...where you go to the bakery section and see a case of doughnuts on shelves behind glass doors...and you just grab any you want? :) They're even better homemade.

This was my first attempt to make any homemade doughnuts and without a thermometer or deep fryer, well, they're not too bad! They do take a good chunk of time to make, but it was well worth the effort and time that went into these doughnuts.

Key Lime Cheesecake

Key lime and cheese cake: what a great combo! This very tart with a hint of sweet makes the perfect dessert right at home or if you're bringing it out for a gathering. Around here, anything citrus-y is worth making because we love it.

Being my first time making this scrumptious cheesecake, I sure did have fun. The crust was a bit tricky but I managed :)

Chicken Fingers with Honey Mustard

Chicken fingers!! The ultimate finger food (other than french fries) made with some very scrumptious honey mustard. You can't go wrong with these, it beats going out and spending too much money on them :) living frugally is what we do best.

Here is how I set my work area up. Everything next to each other for easy maneuvering.

Having some sort of tongs handy will really help the dipping and setting on rack procedure, a lot faster.

Pineapple Cranberry Muffins

These pineapple cranberry muffins are a great snack, breakfast, dessert or if you just want to have a little treat! They satisfy any snacking craves ;) The buttermilk that this recipe calls for makes these especially moist! I froze them for an easy breakfast and they freeze great, and are still yummy when reheated.

Curried Cream of Corn Soup

After buying a soup cook book, I was extremely excited to try one! We sure do enjoy soup around here because it makes for a light dinner (most of the time.) This one especially goes good with some sort of sandwich because it is a light soup. Here I made it with a ham and cheese sandwhich, and was it ever good!

Turkey Soup with Homemade Dumplings

Turkey soup: this is one thing you can do, with that thanksgiving leftover turkey. Although, this doesn't have all the ingredients that make a turkey meal, this does have ingredients to make you feel less guilty while you indulge in this turkey soup.

I always look forward to a big turkey meal, but often find myself enjoying it too much! So a nice light meal after a big dense meal is quite satisfying for me :)

Turkey Stock

What to do with left over Turkey? Turkey stock! This year was the first year I tried this and we loved the stock. It has a very homemade taste (which is a bonus!)

Cinnamon Rolls

This recipe is an in-law family recipe. For my first Christmas with the in-laws, my sister in-law gave me a recipe book of all her favorite/family recipes!

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Here we come Ireland! Well, not really but I wish :) Since we can't there, we'll bring some Ireland here. This dish, my dad introduced to me. He brought over the already seasoned corned beef and told me how to make it and said "you will love it!" With lots of enthusiasm. So, I had to try it and not to my surprise, this turned out wonderfully!

The meat is tender and sort of salty. But not too salty! :)

Lemon Buttermilk Sticky Buns

These are very moist, and very delicious! Around here, we love to try recipe's that have anything to do with lemons! (So if you have any awesome recipe's that call for some sort of lemon juice/rind please leave a comment about it!)

Grilled Cheese With Tomato's

I never used to like tomato's so much until I met my husband! These sandwiches are like your ordinary grilled cheese, but with a twist: some tomato's on top. And they are scrumptious (they're also super quick and easy for those last second dinner's.)

Orange Crepes

The first time I made crepes, I did not have a clue what I was doing (because I was trying to copy-cat some amazing orange crepes I've had before (but I did not have the equipment they used) and I goofed up the batch. The second time (this time) I made them, I looked up different ways to do it without any special tools. And only 3 turned out worthy of taking pictures of! 

These crepes are very good! We love oranges, so these are a perfect Saturday morning (or brunch) breakfast :)

Teriyaki Sauce with White Rice

Rice: what a comfort food to us! Something I never feel bad for eating too much of (nor can I since it seems to be so filling.) Then to add teriyaki sauce makes it even more of a comfort food.

Making teriyaki sauce is so easy...if you use the cornstarch correctly. The first time I made teriyaki sauce, the recipe called for cornstarch and I followed as directed but the sauce was still just as runny as water. That left me puzzled with one question; why? After I "googled" some information on how to cook with cornstarch, I soon realized that it's a delicate ingredient to work with. I read; if it's too hot or cold it won't thicken properly, wait to put it in until the last few minutes of what ever you're putting into, it thickens 3 times more than flour, you need to put it in cold water before you add it to the recipe...etc etc. So, with all this in mind, I tried it once more. And it worked!

Homemade "Rasins"

My very first blog entry! These little "raisins" were something I tried making but almost turned out to be a disaster. My husband and I called them "sour skins" rather than raisins. But, none the less, they are good.

I had been planning on using the food dehydrator for a while...and I finally did. I was so excited to make these but when I realized that they did not look at all like raisins I knew I had done something wrong. How do you go wrong with homemade raisins? Well, somehow I managed to do it! But, I did not give up yet, after tasting them I thought they might be good with cereal.

I went to our stash of cereals and decided to try it with some Honey Nut Cheerios. Success! These were great in the Cheerios. It was a sour sweet taste, which I do like (but others may not.)