Things Melanie Likes

YouTube - colour changing card trick

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:00:00 +0000

$5 coupon for Hallmark in Woman's Day magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:43:00 +0000

I received my copy of the December issue of Woman's Day magazine in the mail today, and found a $5 off $5 or more coupon in there! Free stuff, here I come!

Melanie Likes Cooking: Creamy Tomato Pasta Dish (Saturday Stirrings)

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 03:57:00 +0000

Here’s a recipe that my husband put together, based on a dish he got at Milano’s Italian Grill. It’s VERY yummy!

· 2 cans tomato soup
· 1 cup sour cream
· 3 oz. cream cheese
· 1 can (14-15 oz) of diced tomatoes of your choice (do not drain)
· One onion, small to medium, thinly sliced (as thin as possible)
· Artichokes, optional (we haven’t tried it with them yet, but Joseph wants to)
· Meat – at least a pound of chicken or shrimp, more for a group or if you like more than just a little meat with your noodles.
· Bacon – I’m not sure how many strips of bacon, I used about a cup of chopped end pieces
· 16 oz. box of noodles of your choice
· Fresh toppings, optional – herbs, parmesan cheese, more bacon, fresh tomato chunks, etc.

Begin with the sauce in a largish pot – mix together the soup, sour cream and cream cheese. Whisk well while heating on medium to blend the cream cheese in well. Once it starts bubbling, turn down fairly low and let simmer. You can add the tomatoes at this point if you like, or you can wait a bit.

Meanwhile, start cooking your bacon pieces until crispy. Remove to the side and pour off most of the grease, leaving a little in the pan to cook the onions. Cook the onion slices just until translucent; remove and either set to the side or go ahead and add to the sauce.

If using chicken or some other meat, chop into pieces no bigger than an inch, then sear off in the pan, using a little more of the bacon grease if desired or try to be virtuous with some spray or margarine. After all the meat is seared off, pour into the sauce and let it simmer for a while. (And the onions, too, if you haven't already added them.) Cover if it’s going to be very long so the moisture won’t evaporate.

When ready to assemble, prepare the pasta as desired. Drain and dump into a very large bowl. (Probably about 6 qts or so, I’m not sure how big our bowl is.) Add in the sauce combo and the reserved bacon, stir all together and allow to sit for a few minutes to let the noodles soak up some of the sauce. Top with fresh toppings if desired.

Mangé!

Recipe: Slow-cooked Pepper Steak

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:50:00 +0000

Mmmm, this sounds so good, I definitely want to try it as soon as I can get some meat on sale!

Slow-cooked Pepper Steak from Tammy's Recipes

Recipe: Spaghetti Fritatta

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:50:00 +0000

Mmmmm, this sounds SO good!

Spaghetti Fritatta from Owlhaven

A cross between 3D printing and the Star Trek replicator

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:07:00 +0000

Nifty neat: While the article title bills it as being like the replicators in Star Trek, it sounds to me like it's closer to modern 3D printers. It's still very different from what we already have, so it's kind of a mash-up between them:

Device like ‘Star Trek’ replicator is in the works

Get ready to awwwwww..... ZooBorns!

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:03:00 +0000

This is just the cutest, sweetest little blog - ZooBorns! It's all about nothing but babies born at zoos all over the world, featuring lots of quality pictures and videos. What a great way to get all fuzzy and mushy inside!

ZooBorns

Terrafugia - fly and drive the same vehicle!

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000

It's a plane! It's a car! No, it's...

Terrafugia - the plane you can drive, the car you can fly!

Recycling project: Make a vase from a plastic bottle

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:29:00 +0000

Here's a nifty little project - making a little fluted edge vase from a single plastic bottle! I bet my daughter will like this one, she's always wanting to recycle and save the Earth.

How To Make A Vase From A Plastic Bottle

Melanie Likes: Live-blogging/Tweeting Baking Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:37:00 +0000

FINAL RECAP: All in all, a very successful day! I needed to make rice to go with tonight's dinner so I went ahead and did a double batch so I can freeze some for a future meal. Most of the dishes are either clean or rinsed and in the dishwasher for tomorrow. To recap, today I made:

~~ 30 Super Power Muffins (6 eaten, 12 frozen and 12 left out)
~~ Crockpot of beans (some eaten w/dinner with some to freeze)
~~ Small batch of granola
~~ 1 lb browned ground beef (frozen for later)
~~ About 2 cups of spiced apples (frozen, for some kind of pie)
~~ Pan of meatballs (tonight's dinner, with enough left to freeze in a single meal for a lunch)
~~ One batch of flourless peanut butter cookies
~~ One sandwich bag of chopped onions (frozen)
~~ Double batch of rice (some for dinner, some to freeze)

I wish I could have done more, but for a first time effort - and with little planning - I think it went really well. It's not something I think I could do more than about once every two weeks, though, I think.

Be sure to check out all the Twitter posts and the Facebook page for other participants in today's Baking Day! I stumbled across some yummy recipes today!

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UPDATE #4: Got the Peanut Butter cookies done, and I'm about beat. I did bag up the ground beef, and chop a few onions to bag and freeze as well. This all day cooking thing is new to me and I'm not as organized nor as capable as I'd like to be. But I got a lot done!

The cookies, believe it or not, are flourless but without any of the oddball substitutes that you usually see in such recipes. They are SUPER easy to make:

1 cup peanut butter, creamy or crunchy
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. baking powder (optional)
Dash cinnamon (optional)

Mix the ingredients well. For baking, you have two choices: drop by spoonfuls and bake at 350 for 8-12 minutes depending on size OR pat out on a cookie sheet into one giant cookie (about 10" x 12") and bake at 300-325 for 15-20 minutes. If you do the giant cookie thing, cut them into squares while they're still warm, then break apart when cool.

Recipe Note: For some odd reason, even though can double this recipe, you will not get double the number of cookies. I'm not quite sure how that happens!

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UPDATE #3: Stitch removal went just fine, and we got back in time to eat lunch at home, yay!

Since getting back, I've added the following to the day's work:

Cooking down some frozen apples. My MIL had a number of quart bags of chopped apples in her freezer, some dried, some not. I took a bag home some months ago but never got around to doing anything with them. I put them out to thaw last night and got into them today. These turned out to be just chopped but not cooked. I threw them in a pot with some butter and some apple pie spice, and am cooking them down on low. I can hopefully use these for some kind of pie(s).
Browned off a pound of ground beef, unseasoned. I'll freeze this, and probably use it later this week for chili, which I can make with some of the beans that I'm cooking in the crockpot today.
Started a pan of meatballs. I make meatballs by first mixing the meat just as I would for meatloaf - spices, egg, bread, sauce (ketchup and/or BBQ sauce), onions, etc. Whatever I have on hand or feel like putting in. Then I make them into balls, put in the skillet and brown them off on all sides then pour off the grease the best I can. Cover with the sauce of your choice (BBQ sauce, grape jelly, chili sauce etc.), cover the skillet and cook on low for a while.

Now I'm about to make a batch of easy peanut butter cookies - I'll post the recipe for that in the next update. When I made the granola, I lined the pan with foil, removed the foil afterward and now the pan is clean for the cookies!

Please be sure to scroll down for my Virtual Food Drive! My birthday is this Sunday, and a full food drive is my fondest wish this year!

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UPDATE #2: All 30 of the SPMuffins are out of the oven and yummy as always. 6 of them are already gone, LOL!

I also just pulled out a small batch of granola, from this recipe HERE. I only made a half batch because I didn't have that many oats on hand. Changes that I made were: I did, in fact, used quick oats and it's fine. It might be a little toastier than it would have been with regular oats, but they're not burnt, either. I also didn't have honey on hand, so I used butter-maple syrup and that worked just fine. Lastly, I used chopped pecans as the nuts in mine.

I was afraid the granola would be too nutmeg-gy, based on the smell as it finished cooking, but you don't really taste nearly as much as you smell. But if you're not fond of nutmeg, you might want to back off or even eliminate it and either up the cinnamon or put in a different but similar spice that you like.

This is a loose granola, suitable for cereal or as a topping, it's not a clumpy, poppable snacking granola.

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UPDATE #1: First batch of Super Power Muffins in the oven! Here's the recipe as posted originally at MSM, with my notes after:

1 cup brown sugar (I don’t pack it!)~~
¼ to ½ cup peanut butter~~
1 banana~~
*optional ½ cup of apple sauce or carrot puree~~
1 egg~~
1 cup whole wheat flour~~
1 tsp baking powder~~
1 tsp baking soda~~
½ tsp salt~~
*optional ¼ cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients well and set aside. Blend everything else and then sift in dry ingredients. Spray muffin tray. Bake for 15-18 min. Makes 12 - double for 24.

My notes: Even though it says that the applesauce or carrot puree is optional, it really isn't. It's too thick to even mix without something. I don't have either of those on hand, so I'm using some of my grandmother's homemade strawberry figs jam. And I don't have any chocolate chips on hand, either, but I do have butterscotch - YUM! (Please scroll down for my virtual food drive if you haven't looked at it already, thanks!)

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This will be my post for today's Baking/Cooking Ahead Day, hosted by MoneySavingMom and FishMama. I'll be updating just this one post through the day so the blog won't be clogged with post after post about the same subject. Cooking will be scattered throughout the day today - we've got to go get my son's stitches out of his finger today and I don't know when or how long that will be.

Today started out with getting woken up an hour early by a wrong number. SIGH. On the other hand, my body clock is still mostly on old time, so to me it didn't feel quite so early and it was a lot easier to just get on up than it would be at other times of the year. So, not so bad. Plus it gave me a little bit of a jump on the day. I already have my beans in the crock pot on low for the day and didn't have to rush to get something for DH's breakfast this morning. So, yay! Now, on to a batch of Super Power Muffins (from the comments HERE), my kids will be thrilled with that!

And while we're on the subject of food - all of us who are participating in today's Baking Day are obviously blessed with food, quite possibly even in abundance. There are thousands of Americans who are not so lucky, and must depend on their local Food Bank to help feed their families. I have a personal Virtual Food Drive set up with Libbys Vegetables to raise money to go to the nation's foodbanks that need it the most. Won't you take a moment to consider donating some of today's savings to help those who are less fortunate? Thanks, and God bless!

Virtual Food Drive

Hot coupon: $1.50 off any two pounds of cheese

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:20:00 +0000

Get 'em while they're hot!

$1.50 off 2 pounds of any brand of cheese

James Dyson's bladeless fan

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:24:00 +0000

Yes, that Mr. Dyson, and yes, no blades - on a fan!

Dyson's Bladeless Fan

Far more efficient than a standard fan, easy to clean, and with no blades it will be far safer around small children. It's expensive, but sounds like a winner to me!

Music Playlist: Wicked

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:00:00 +0000

I haven't had the pleasure of going to see the musical "Wicked" but I love the soundtrack. Here's my playlist from iMeem:

Wicked

Free Birthday Parties e-book from Betty Crocker

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:06:00 +0000

Gorgeous full-color, 70-page e-book from Betty Crocker with lots of cakes and party ideas, yum!

Free Birthday Parties e-book

Great pizza dough recipe

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:11:00 +0000

Here's a pizza dough recipe I really enjoy using. It makes up really quickly, and despite having yeast in it need no rising time, so you can make it and get right to the topping thereof. For me it seems to work better if I precook it a little, but some of that may depend on local humidity levels. I hope to participate in Money Saving Mom's "Baking/Cooking Ahead Day" tomorrow (depends on how long we're at the doctor's office to get my son's stitches out) and may make a batch or two of this to stick in the freezer for later:

Quick, Easy Pizza Dough

Oh, and I like to make it a little touch healthier by trading out about 1/3 of the regular flour for whole wheat flour. It's better for you, and DH says it gives it a little more flavor and texture as well. Enjoy!

Star Trek humor

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:25:00 +0000

I'll admit it, I'm a sci-fi geek. And while not everything on ROFLRazzi is fit to see, these two from yesterday made me laugh and laugh!

Anita Renfroe's Momsense

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:00:00 +0000

I just love this mom video! Everything a mom says in a single day, compacted to just over 3 minutes, to the tune of the William Tell Overture:

Favorite website: Money Saving Mom

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 17:46:00 +0000

"Money Saving Mom" is a great website for freebies, coupons, saving strategies and more, including occasional recipes, giveaways and peeks into author Crystal's life with three small children. I check her site a few times a day, it's that good. Best of all, she never publishes morally iffy savings, such as non-authorized coupons, sneaky ways of getting deals, etc. She's a great young lady who works hard to help many people save a lot of money.

Money Saving Mom

Antibacterial - inspired by nature!

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:35:00 +0000

This so cool! I saw it in Popular Science this weekend. Sharklet SafeTouch surfaces are antibacterial - without chemicals. The bacteria don't stick to the surface. It was inspired by the design of shark skin. Parasites don't stick to sharks, and it's because of how their skin is made. A scientist realized that maybe we could do the same thing with bacteria, and it worked! SafeTouch is a film that can be applied to existing surfaces, so there's no need to buy all new items. And with no chemicals on it, that means it's not something the bacteria can develop a resistance to!

Muy cool:

Sharklet Technologies

50% off at Payless

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:59:00 +0000

Now, this I definitely like! 50% off at Payless Shoes, through tomorrow:

http://www.oprah.com/article/style/fashion/20091016-tows-payless

Apple Pecan Quick Bread

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:16:00 +0000

I love this recipe for Apple Pecan bread. It's easy and delicious. Be sure and read the comments for additional ideas - I usually add some apple pie spice to the mix. It's easy to play with and not mess up too badly:

Apple Pecan Bread @ Epicurious

Awesome Transformers (Bumblebee?) Costume

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:07:00 +0000

I don't know anything about modern Transformers (though I did watch the original cartoon, back in the day) but this is an awesome job of creativity and construction:

First post

noreply@blogger.com (Melanie) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:09:00 +0000

Just a test.