Bloggin' It

I'm Jessica and I married Andrew Blaylock on June 8, 2012. This is my account of our newly formed marriage!

SPOILER ALERT, it's going to involve a lot of food.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

AAaaaand back again :)


This is a strawberry Jell-O cool whip pie. And it didn't last long enough for me to take a "before" picture :)

Lighten Up

So. This is difficult to say. But. I've been cooking rather...inhale...heavily. And get this, Andrew asked if we could have a salad for dinner :) And I obliged...
There was a really simple recipe for this salad in a healthy cookbook we received as a wedding gift. All it is is lettuce, mandarin oranges, chicken, grapes, sliced almonds, and balsamic vinaigrette. It was nice and refreshing! It's all apart of intuitive eating. Balance :)

Monday, July 30, 2012

Throw some biscuits on it!!

For dinner, I made this Chicken and Biscuit Casserole. I love any type of casserole like this. I like to throw in extra things like broccoli (which I did this time). Here's a picture.
I recommend rolling the biscuits out so they'll cook better. Man, I liked this one! Good stuff!!

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Bizzzay

We've been busy. Andrew's family spent the week at Aspen Grove (a family resort place). We visited them for two days and I didn't need to cook dinner. I didn't cook Friday night either because we saw Wicked in Salt Lake City (amazing!). I have made three meals this week: tacos, lasagna, and homemade pizza. It was a nice break (break is not a good word since we've been so busy). And I start working at Vivint soon so things are going to get bizz-ay-er. Aaaand I'm loving it :)

Brownies: an opportunity to unload one's pantry

Lindsay came over and we made a dessert (we tend to do that). I had a brownie mix so we made it! And we wanted toppings so we made them!! I saw some pretzels in my pantry. I mashed them up and threw them on top. I saw some marshmallows in my pantry so I threw them on. I had some caramels in my pantry so I microwaved them with a little chunk of butter and a splash of milk, poured it into a plastic bag, snipped off an edge, and threw it on. There you go. Marshmallow Pretzel Caramel Brownies. Good thing we didn't have tuna in the pantry.

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

This one time, on Pinterest...

I saw this recipe on Pinterest: Pretzel snacks, our favorite Christmas treat. And I thought, hmph, that would be a delightful Christmas treat! But then, the out-of-control craving centers of my brain said I WANT IT NOW. So I made some changes....
First I put a little square of caramel in the middle on some and a little slice of a Snickers candy bar on others.
I put it in the oven at 225 degrees for 4 -6 mins, until it's soft and a little melty. Then I added some chocolate chips.
I put it back in the oven for 2 mins, or until the chocolate is melted. Then I took a knife and smoothed the tops a bit.
Boom. Turtles that are square and pretzel-crunchy. Andrew even ate them (and he doesn't like pretzels). Which begs the question, who doesn't like pretzels?!


Root Beer Flotation Device

They're flotation devices because they're putting a ring of fat around my middle, which may or may not keep me afloat.

I blame Mike and Jenna Blaylock. In early June, they gave Andrew and I gigantic, delicious root beer floats. I didn't think aaaaanything of it until we were having company over in early July. I said to myself, Self, let's have root beer floats. Now this seemingly innocent concoction has HIJACKED the pleasure centers of my brain. What do I want after dinner? A root beer float. What do I want after lunch? A root beer float. What do I want after breakfast?!??? Chocolate pie and THEN A ROOT BEER FLOAT. This can only end poorly.....

Chocolate dreamy creamy pie

This isn't a recipe themed post, mind you. All this pie takes is a baked pie crust, chocolate pudding (pie filling directions) and some Cool-whip. SO easy it's crazy. 

My lovely assistant, Mr. Andrew, is modeling the pie slice above on our wedding cake server :)

The point of this is.... I like desserts. And I like them enough to make a special post for a 3 ingredient pie. And YES, I did have this pie for breakfast the next day and it was GOOD.

WORLD'S BEST LASAGNA!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS!!! World's best lasagna, wow! You did it, guys!
The name of this lasagna recipe is.......World's best lasagna recipe. Yup.




And now the reality....
        It was pretty good. I mean, I don't have a lot of lasagna taste testing experience. But it had a weird tinge of a flavor that I could never pinpoint. Half way through my portion, I decided it was weird. LOL I don't know if I did something wrong....I don't think I did. I followed the recipe exactly except I used hamburger instead of sausage and dried parsley instead of fresh (which I, of course, reduced the amount since it was dried). So it's a mystery! I think Andrew liked it but I'm not so sold on the world's best lasagna. 


Monday, July 23, 2012

Buried Cherry Cookies

I had some left-over cherry pie filling in my fridge so I decided to put it to use! I made this Chocolate Cherry Cookie Recipe but made a few alterationssssss, like always. I rolled the dough into balls, made a thumbprint in each, and placed a small scoop of the cherry pie filling in the middle. After baking, I drizzled melted chocolate over the top.
These cookies are NOT for the faint of heart! Or the heavy of heart, actually, (meaning the high cholesterol or high blood pressure hearts out there). They were R-I-C-H and D-E-L-I-CIOUS (I got tired of typing the hyphen; hyphens are taxing). Make sure you have a big glass of milk nearby. And enjoy pure chocolate ecstasy....

Taco Stank

Tacos make your house stink, I found. I also found something else...a bag of oranges in our cupboard that had gone bad. So I cut them up and boiled them with a dash of cinnamon and crushed mint leaves.
DON'T eat it. And it's going to be hard to not eat it when you smell it. So just go and poke it with a stick and it will remind you that this is something that you won't want to eat. It worked. It banished the taco stank.

TACOS

You're thinking, Jessica. This is dumb. I don't want to read how you made tacos for dinner but guess what you're totally reading this and looking at the picture and you're still reading this. How do I know? Ha. Well....trust me.
And the tacos were muy delicioso btw :)

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Curry Hurry

Last night, I made a Japanese golden curry. Here is the box:
I know it doesn't look Japanese, but I promise, it is. The back had tons of Japanese :)

It's so easy. You just chop up some chicken, onion, potato, and carrots. Boil them up with the curry mix and serve over rice.


Boom
Delicious. And it holds up excellent for leftovers :)

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Whhhat I'm I going to do with all this cake?!??

On Sunday, I noticed that we had a yellow butter cake mix and it sounded delicious. So I made it, and ya, it was delicious, but then I didn't want the rest of the whole cake. Now I've got this cake...what I'm a gonna do??? So I made cake pops :)

It's easy! Here's the website I used: Cake Pops 

The cake was already baked so that step was done. I made a little icing recipe (4 oz cream cheese, I cup powdered sugar, 2 tbsp butter, splash of milk). I did a half recipe since I only wanted to use half of the cake.  Once the icing and cake is mixed, I threw in some food colors and had a blast!!! Raaainbow :)
I froze them for a couple hours (I put the sticks in half way through). Once they're cooled and sturdy, I dipped them in semi-sweet chocolate and sprinkles.

Cake pops are usually fully-covered and typically covered in a candy-based coating. But I only had chocolate and I wanted the cute colors to peek out of the bottom. I was gooooing to take them to a relief society activity......but then I didn't ;))  but now, I'm like Whhhhat I'm I going to do with all these cake pops??!?!?

D'yaknow what's delicious?!?

I found this recipe on pinterest and it looked very interesting: sopapilla cheesecake
I wanted to try it but I realized that it was more of a single dish that you cut into parts thing and I wanted a hold-in-your-hand cheese danish like thing. So I made a few alterations. I made the cream cheese mixture (4 oz cream cheese, 1/4 c sugar, and a splash of vanilla) and put it on individual cresent rolls...
I rolled them up, brushed them with melted butter, sprinkled them with cinnamon sugar, and baked them at 350 degrees for about 12 minutes.

And Boom. Delicious. :)   ...(and our place smelled so lovely)

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

spegy n merbls

Easy as Tuesday evening. Andrew and I are just chillin out, eating spegy, feeling goooood

I made homemade meatballs and let them simmer on low heat for 3 hours. I bought a loaf of french bread at the grocery store, made my own garlic butter, and toasted it. (It's like a dollar cheaper than ready-made garlic bread). And we had a cute little salad to complete the meal! DEELISH-ous-NESSss

Aahmburger

We had a fun bbq style Sunday dinner.
Half of the burgers were cheddar and half were swiss. I like my cheese in the middle! I just make a ball of cheese and tuck it into a ball of raw hamburger, smash it, and fry it! (It's too easy, I probably shouldn't have written out the directions but then I was like.....writing them....and ehhh, well it's written, now I'm not going to erase it pssshh lol)


Sunday, July 15, 2012

FREEEEDOM!!!

I'm off baking restriction!!! And I'll probably get so excited that I'll go overboard and Andrew will put me right back on ahaha. This morning I made applesauce cookies to celebrate!
They're sitting on my counter right now. I haven't tried them but I think they will be DELICIOUS! If you want the recipe, you know what to do, COMMENT!

Pizza and Redbox

Andrew and I made a goal to have a date night once a week. We usually do it on Saturday night and this Saturday, we decided to have a relaxed date night in. :) So I made personal pizzas for the two of us. I previously purchased a little pizza crust mix and it made everything super easy and quick. I brushed melted butter onto the crust and sprinkled some garlic powder. Then after they were cooked (and after I took the picture, unfortunately) I sprinkled on some pizza seasoning (which has oregano, etc).
Andrew had pepperoni and I had fun putting together my ham-pineapple-green-pepper pizza. I threw together a quick salad so we didn't feel too unhealthy. We had a free rental at Redbox so we rented Iron Man (since I hadn't seen it). All in all, it was GREAT!

Friday, July 13, 2012

A Tale of Two Dinners

Our friends, Lindsay and Kelsey, came over for dinner! Little did we know it would turn into two dinners!
Here's dinner number one:
Lindsay and Kelsey made the salad and lasagna roll-ups, which we saw on Pinterest. It has the traditional lasagna fillings but rolled up in a lasagna noodle, and it ROCKS! Lasagna Roll-Ups Recipe 
I made homemade Olive Garden breadsticks. Here's the recipe: Olive Garden Breadsticks Recipe

Then Lindsay (during dinner) mentions "Oh by the way, you know how Chick-fil-A has that one day where you get free food if you dress up like a cow? That day is TODAY". We all threw our forks down and yelled! Ok, we didn't do that. But I came close!

Lindsay said that "dressing up like a cow" is kind of a loose requirement so we decided to make paper cow masks and head over to Chick-fil-A!!
from left to right: Kelsey, Lindsay, Andrew, and Jessica
The girls only wanted fries and a soda BUT Andrew! impressively! put down a whole chicken sandwich, fries and a soda after dinner one!! ahaha I love that guy.

My cow mask is ridiculously challenged. As I mentioned on facebook, I look like a gas-masked-pink-bank-robber. 

What a fun night!!!


Andrew gets his first hair cut!

Well, his first hair cut by me :) I've never cut men's hair before so I was pretty scared. I looked up some youtube videos for help. They helped a bit but I'm not gonna lie, I was still scared. 
Here is the before (in a cute superman cape):



After:



I used clippers on the bottom and I trimmed the top with scissors. I think it turned out alright! And the best part, we saved 8 bucks. That's like....8 slurpees :)

MOFRO!!!

Andrew and I were watching Psych, the TV show, when he pops up and pulls out his computer. All of the sudden we were looking at an ad for the Twilight concert series in Salt Lake and MOFRO and JJ Grey was playing!!!! You're like...whatever...but I about wet myself.

I refused to believe we were actually going, even when we were driving there. My dad was in town, fortunately, and he loves Mofro too. So we went and we sweated and we jammed! with a bunch of middle aged, crazy people!! ahaha
JJ Grey
  
Ya, that's a beach ball
I'm so glad we got to go! It was a blast. I was almost about to form a Mofro fan support group because I feel so alone in Utah. There are so few fans here. tsk tsk. But! I am not alone! And Andrew thought it was fun too :)

Thursday, July 12, 2012

You win some, you lose some

I made this meal quickly since we had a bunch o' stuff going on. I should have spent a little more time on it LOL

I made this cheesey chicken thing I saw on pinterest, here's the page: http://tastykitchen.com/recipes/main-courses/cheesy-chicken-and-rice-bake/


I made some changes (which is what I do) and it wasn't the best. First of all, I couldn't for the life of me throw rice into the whole thing. It was too weird. I don't know! I'm just weird! It seemed like a big pig trough or something. So I cooked the rice separate. The rice was soggy and the casserole was soupy. So! If I did it over again, I would have added less liquids but still cooked the rice separate (cause it's still weird!).

The casserole is actually pretty good as a chip dip, ahha.

Orange Chicken

On Tuesday we had the following... I made orange chicken and rice.
I tried to make some homemade fortune cookies (you know I'm telling the truth about the homemade thing by just looking at those sad lumps). They turned out weird. The ends turned dark fast and the middle was soft. Maybe I need to flatten them out more but the batter wouldn't spread out. Hmmm.... trying to decide whether it's worth pursuing or just buying a stinkin bag of already-made fortune cookies....

The chicken was really easy. I followed this recipe:

Ingredients:
·         1 lb boneless skinless chicken, chopped into bite sized pieces
·         1/2 egg
·         3/4 teaspoon salt
·         1/2 to taste white pepper
·         1/2 to taste oil (for frying)
·         1/4 cup cornstarch, plus
·         1/2 tablespoon cornstarch
·         1/8 cup flour

Directions:
Place chicken pieces in large bowl.

1.    Stir in egg, salt, pepper and 1 tablespoon oil and mix well.
2.    Stir cornstarch and flour together.
3.    Mix flour mixture and egg mixture.
4.    Add chicken pieces, stirring to coat.
5.    Heat oil for deep-frying in wok or deep-fryer to 375 degrees.
6.    Add chicken, small batches at a time, and fry 3 to 4 minutes or until golden crisp.
7.    (Do not overcook chicken).
8.    Remove chicken from oil with slotted spoon and drain on paper towels; set aside.

Which was my own variation of this recipe: http://www.food.com/recipe/panda-express-orange-chicken-103215?scaleto=3&mode=null&st=true. I found some Panda Express orange sauce at Winco for about 3 bucks, which I used instead of making my own. WHICH was nice :) It was a good meal and definitely switched things up for us!

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

D'yaknow what's delicious?!?

I saw this on pinterest. It's a grilled mozzarella cheese sandwich with a side of marinara sauce! I think the pin even said "genius!" and I AGREE!!! It's like a pretend pizza party in your mouth.

To make it, you just act as if you're making a regular grilled cheese sandwich. But then, out of nowhere, you add mozzarella instead of cheddar WHA?! I sprinkle mine with some garlic powder and butter both sides of the bread. I tried to make "homemade marinara" and it stunk. I do not recommend it. The western family brand marinara sauce was fairly priced and delicious. I've had this for lunch two days in a row haha

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Sunday Dinneh is serrrved

I like to make Sunday dinners a little more special. This Sunday we had chicken cordon bleu, broccoli, asparagas, and rolls. The rolls were pre-made and frozen. After I baked them, I brushed them with butter and sprinkled them with garlic powder and parmeasan cheese (that's my favorite!).

The chicken cordon bleu was pretty easy! I pounded out several chicken breasts until they were pretty thin. Then I placed a slice of ham and a slice of Swiss cheese on each thinned chicken breast and rolled them up. I rubbed each with a little bit of flour, dipped them in egg, then in Italian seasoned bread crumbs. I baked them for 30-35 mins at 350 degrees. I placed a little bit of swiss cheese on the top and returned it to the oven until it melted. And BOOM! Sunday dinner at the Blaylocks!!

Goodies lockdown


Andrew put me on baking restriction ;(

See, I'm frowning because I'm sad I can't bake but I'm winking because it's kinda a joke...kinda. I made pink lemonade cupcakes, pink lemonade cookies, pina colada pie, pineapple jello pie, strawberry cream cheese bars, pistachio ice cream sandwiches, peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, Golden Grahams smores bars, cinnamon sugar pretzel bites, and I can't remember the rest. And that's just the sweets!

Pistachio ice cream sandwich, pineapple Jell-o pie, and a pink lemonade cupcake
I'm off baking restriction when I can get rid of most of the goodies. I've had to resort to giving friends plates full of treats and they give me crazy faces haha! I pass it off as "service" and it works because they're doing me a great service by taking it off my hands :)

If you want any recipes mentioned above, just leave a comment and I will happily post it!

Sunday, July 8, 2012

The Fourth of July

Pinterest makes my eyes water and my lips quiver cause it's so AWESOME.
For the fourth, I made some American flag rice cripsy treats.
It was easy. I made the traditional rice crispy treat recipe and split it all into three different bowls. I died one-third red, one-third blue, and left the last third white. Then in a bread loaf pan, I put down a white layer, followed by a red layer. Then I formed a blue square on the right side and continued putting down layers to the left. When it was cool, I took the brick-of-a-treat out and cut it into slices. An American treat for an American family :) Oh, and they tasted good :)

Andrew and I went to a BBQ at Levi's place (holla, Levi!) and hung out with Lindsay Chandler (sup, Lindsay?). Afterwards, we searched Provo to find a nice place to sit and watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks except all of Provo was flippin' packed like a crazy son-of-a-ding-dong. Then we realized, hey! We live right next to the stadium! So we went home and watched the fireworks from our street corner.

Lindsay, Andrew, and I lit some of our own fireworks in a sketchy parking lot. While we were walking back to our car, we looked up and saw our car getting towed. Oh my squirming guts, that's a terrible feeling. Luckily we got to it before the devil-dressed-up-as-a-tow-truck-man drove off and we were able to drive away $100 bucks poorer :( Some devil tow truck men have no patriotism.

My First Bloggy Post


It had to be done. It was only a matter of time before I would give in and create a blog. It all started with our engagement pictures. I fell victim to the scrap-booking bug. Michael and Joann became my dear friends. I was on a slippery slope to becoming a typical Mormon housewife. And then Pinterest! Come on, Pinterest. I fought so hard against it but I lost... and I continue to lose and pin frequently. I'm so far down this steep slope, that at this point, I can't even pretend... it's time to start a blog. So here it is! 

I love to bake and that's what I intend to focus on in my blog. I'm also going to include "Jessica and Andrew" news for the family.  I hope you kinda like it!