Classic No-Bake Cookies

Here's another recipe for you. I was looking through my folder of blog photos and I found all these no-bake cookie pictures. Then I realized that I never actually wrote a post about these delicious little morsels. I couldn't possibly deprive all two or three of my faithful readers of this recipe, so here it is! I found this recipe on the Food Network website and it's the best one I've tried. And as promised, there are plenty of pictures.

What you will need:
2 cups sugar
4 tablespoons cocoa
1 stick butter
1/2 cup milk
1 cup peanut butter
1 tablespoon vanilla
3 cups oatmeal

First you have to put the sugar, cocoa and butter in a saucepan.

 

 

Add the milk, and then stir it all together. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it boil for one minute.

This is not a boil. If it looks like this, it isn't boiling. I'm talking a rolling boil.

Now THIS is a boil. When it looks like this, start your timer. 60 seconds. If it doesn't boil long enough, the sugar won't dissolve and your cookies will be grainy and won't solidify correctly, so I usually add about 10 seconds or so on to the boiling time.

After it's done boiling for one minute, remove it from the heat.

Now you want to get the rest of the ingredients ready.

Add the peanut butter and vanilla.

And mix it all together until it's smooth, like this. It shouldn't take long.

Next, add the oatmeal.

Mix the oatmeal in.

This next step is very important. So pay close attention.

Are you paying attention? Ok, good.

The next step is to grab a spoon, dip it into the mixture, blow on it so it cools off a bit, and sample the dough. Sometimes I think it's better warm than when it's cooled and formed into cookies. I could just scoop it in a bowl and eat it with a spoon.

Now you just portion each cookie with a cookie scoop or an ice cream scoop (you can make them as large or as small as you want), plop it onto a cookie sheet covered with wax paper and let it cool.

This is what your finished product will look like.

Now hurry up and eat some, because these are so good I guarantee they won't last long.

Heading South

We all made it through another week! Now, I just have to make it through this weekend...

We're headed South today... South Dakota, that is. Our new niece is getting baptized on Sunday in Pierre. The only bad thing is that Pierre is like, a six or seven hour drive from here. Ugh. So the plan is to drive as far as J's parents' farm outside of Watertown (about a 3 hour drive), spend the night there, and then drive to Pierre with them tomorrow. I like the idea of driving with them because then neither James nor I have to drive, and we can save about $70 on gas. Then on Sunday after the baptism, we'll drive back to the farm with the in-laws, spend the night again, and drive home on Monday. James and I both took Monday off of work so we could do it this way. We also plan to stop at the Olive Garden in Fargo on the way home for a Valentine's lunch. :)

Really, I am looking forward to the weekend, besides the whole driving part. I love getting Isaac together with all of his cousins. He really enjoys himself. After our Christmas celebration in January, Isaac came home saying "Kaylee" all the time because he had so much fun with his cousins. I think Kaylee's name is the easiest for him to say out of all of them.

While in Pierre, we'll be staying at a bed and breakfast called the Hitching Horse Inn. I've never stayed at one before. The main thing I wouldn't like about a bed and breakfast is that you have to eat breakfast with a bunch of strangers who are staying in the other rooms. This may appeal to some people, but not me. I'm a hermit. However, this particular bed and breakfast has only four rooms which will all be occupied by relatives: J's parents, grandma, uncle, and us. So it will be like one big family breakfast, except nobody has to cook or clean up! I plan on bringing my camera to document the whole B&B experience, and blog about it later. We'll see if that really happens. I have a feeling we'll be pretty busy.

J's sister also mentioned taking all the kids swimming at the YMCA on Saturday. I think that would be super fun! Isaac L O V E S the water.

I think I'm just excited to get away. Granted, it's only Pierre - not exactly the height of entertainment, but it'll do for now. It's that time of year when people start getting tired of being cooped up, and I'm most definitely feeling a little stir crazy.

Super Duper Easy Peasy Meatloaf

What's this? A recipe? No... could it be?

Yes. It is.

Now that I'm getting some energy back, I thought I'd start posting recipes again. I love reading recipes from other peoples' blogs. It inspires me to cook. However, I'm still the pregnant, working mom of a toddler, so I don't have a lot of time to make fancy schmancy, elaborate meals. Therefore, the recipes you will see me post over the next few months (years?) will be easy recipes with common ingredients. Unless I get really ambitious, which I doubt will happen, so don't worry.

This recipe doesn't have pictures. Don't pretend you aren't disappointed. I know you are. But fear not, my next recipe will. Cross my heart and hope to die.

The first recipe I want to share is my own meatloaf recipe. Yep, I made it up myself. Growing up, my mom never made meatloaf the same way twice (I always loved it though!), so she didn't really have a recipe. When I put my big girl panties on and was ready to cook real meals for my hubby and myself, I looked up several meatloaf recipes online, but was never really in love with any of them. So I took bits and pieces from each recipe and came up with one myself. I think I hit the jackpot! So here it is...

Please keep in mind, this is kind of a big recipe. I like to make it big because I love meatloaf leftovers. It might be kind of hard to cut this in half because of the box of stuffing mix, but if you don't mind having half a box of it leftover, it is doable.

What you will need:
2 lbs of ground beef
1 box stuffing mix (I usually use chicken, you can use whatever kind you like)
1/2 cup ketchup
1/3 cup milk
2 eggs

Here's the super duper easy peasy part. You simply smush all the ingredients together with your hands and keep smushing until it's all evenly mixed. Then form it into a loaf with your hands and plop it into a baking dish. I like to squirt some extra ketchup on the top before I pop it in the oven. Some people also like to top their meatloaf with a little brown sugar, but I think that makes it too sweet, so I don't. Now, you could use a loaf pan if you want, but I wouldn't. When you use a loaf pan, the grease and fat have nowhere to go, so it stays in the meatloaf. If you use a baking dish, the grease oozes out of the meatloaf into the baking dish. So it's actually healthier if you use a baking dish and leave the loaf pans for banana bread.

Then you bake it in a 350 degree oven for about an hour. After an hour, cut into it and check to make sure it's done. If it's still pink, just put it back in for 10 minute increments until it's not pink in the middle anymore.

Or... you could freeze it. I love making two batches at a time, cooking one for supper, and then freezing the other for a quick meal later. After you form it into a loaf, just wrap it in a couple layers of tin foil, seal it in a freezer bag, and toss it in the freezer. If you freeze it, make sure you thaw it first before you cook it or else it will take way, way longer to bake.

And that's it! Easy, right? This meatloaf is pretty hard to screw up.

EDIT: I made meatloaf earlier this week, and I took some pictures of the finished product before and after baking just so I could add them to this post. (That's me - always thinking about you guys).

First Book of the New Year: The Last Song

You might remember my New Year's resolution last year. It was to read one book a month. Not a hefty goal for a lot of people out there, I know plenty of people who aim to read 50 books each year. I could never do that, so 12 is sufficient for me.

While I didn't keep that resolution, I was still happy with the results. It encouraged me to read more, and I really enjoyed myself. Now I'm stocked with a bunch of books that I purchased at garage sales or from the Doubleday Book Club, which I joined last year, so I decided to try again this year. I don't know if I expect to make it, since this summer I will be busy with a newborn and a toddler, but we'll see.

Last year, I sort of stopped blogging about my books. I think the last one I reviewed on here was Fahrenheit 451. Since then I've read a few more, which I hope to get to reviewing soon. For now, I will talk about the books I've read so far this year.

In January, I read The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks. I'll admit, I was pretty bored with the last few Nicholas Sparks books I've read, but I feel obligated to read all of his books for some reason. Maybe because at one point in time, I had read all of his books. Then he wrote more. Damn him. So I thought, "I'll just hurry up and read all his books so I can get to reading something else." BUT, I really enjoyed The Last Song. Don't get me wrong, it does follow his typical story line: two people meet in odd circumstances, and in a ridiculously short amount of time they are hopelessly devoted to each other, only to be torn apart by some out-of-the-blue situation. Then they either get back together and live happily ever after, or someone dies. Or both.

This one is about a 17 year old girl from New York City, named Ronnie, who along with her little brother, Jonah, is forced to spend the summer with her father in North Carolina. She hasn't spoken to her father in three years because she blamed him for the dissolution of his marriage with her mother. Ronnie's father is a former concert pianist, who passed along his talent to his daughter. Ronnie, however, refuses to play anymore due to the resentment she has for her father. She tries to stay as far away from her father's house as possible, and ends up hanging with the wrong crowd. After she realizes that her new group of "friends" is no good, she starts spending more time at home and starts to mend her relationship with her father. She also meets a local boy named Will and reluctantly falls head-over-heels in love with him. Turns out he comes from an extremely rich family who doesn't approve of their relationship. Chaos ensues. Then Ronnie and Jonah find out the real reason why their mother sent them to spend the summer with their father: their father is dying of stomach cancer and only has a few more months to live.

At the end of the summer Will moved away for college, Jonah went home with his mother, and Ronnie stayed in NC to take care of her father until his passing. As her father's health was declining, he had been writing one last song, but he couldn't quite get it right. Ronnie decided that she had to finish that song and play it for him before he died, which she did. After her father's death, she decided to live up to his dream for her to go to Juilliard, where she receives a scholarship. Then, out of the blue, Will shows up and tells her that he decided to transfer to a college in New York, and they will be able to be together after all. And every one lives happily ever after. Except Ronnie's father.

Now I'd like to see the movie. I always like to read the book before I see the movie because the books are usually better. Also, I have a hard time reading a book when I already know what's going to happen. Here's the problem I have with seeing the movie: some important movie-making people made the very bad decision to cast Miley freakin' Cyrus as the female lead. I hate Miley Cyrus. But the movie is already on my DVR, so I will force myself to watch it.

All in all, this book really captured my attention and sucked me in. I was pleasantly surprised after the last few Nicholas Sparks books that I've read. Maybe he got his groove back? We shall see. Two more Nicholas Sparks books to go...

Prayers Please

Earlier this week, Isaac's friend from daycare was diagnosed with Accute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. Her name is Zoe Shillinger and she's two years old. She's such a little sweetheart! She likes to hand me Isaac's coat when I pick him up from daycare. Anyway, she and her family could really use your prayers. Things seem to be going pretty well right now, despite an infection obtained during one of her first procedures. The good news is that ALL has a 95% cure rate, according to her mom on Zoe's Caringbridge site. Here is a link to Caringbridge if you'd like to check up and see how she's doing: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/zoeschillinger/journal

My 100th Post!

I guess it took a while for me to get to 100. Probably because I rarely post anymore. Sorry. Life is busy.

Anyway, I'm 16 weeks pregnant now. Things are going well! We have another appointment on Monday, but this time it's with a nurse practitioner. We'll rotate between seeing my OB and the NP every other visit until we get closer to my due date. After this appointment, the next one will be in four weeks. That's when we'll get the BIG ultrasound. And yes, we do plan to find out what we're having.

The good news is that my nausea is finally starting to ease up. A lot of food smells still get to me, but I don't vomit as often now. I've also been feeling baby move every once in a while for a few weeks. That always makes me smile. However, I don't remember my last pregnancy being this painful. And by painful, I mean the near constant aching of my uterus. Also, when I move around in bed I can really feel my ligaments stretching. I've heard that second pregnancies are generally more painful, but I will still ask the NP on Monday at our appointment.

Also, we've named the pregnancy - Sequel. LOL.

In other news, this has been one crazy week for our vehicles. On Wednesday I finally got my long awaited remote car starter in the Rav4. Yippee! It's the Cadillac of car starters too - one mile range, two-way remote with an LCD screen that tells you if the car is running, how long it has left to run, the time, and if the doors are locked or unlocked. I think it can also tell the temperature inside the car, but I haven't tinkered with it enough to figure that out yet. I am in love.

Then on Thursday, I took the Nissan in to get new tires. I got the car in 2004 and we've never replaced the tires, so it's been a long time coming. We also had to get a new rim because it was bent from when J slammed into the curb a while back when it was icy. They also fixed the alignment. When I went to pick it up, the guy told me that we'll need brakes in about 10,000 miles. J drives the Nissan usually less than one mile per day, literally to work and back and we live very close to his office. That means we'll have to replace the brakes in about... let's see, 10,000 miles divided by 400 miles per year (and that's generous) equals... never.

I am so glad to have this week over finally! Whew, I made it to Friday!

Our First OB Appointment

Well, today was the day! We went in and chatted with our doctor (who we love!). After she gave me the full work over, she busted out the doppler and we tried to rock out to baby's heartbeat. Baby, however, had other plans and decided to be stubborn, so the doc couldn't find it's heartbeat. She said it was no cause for concern and that at this point, sometimes you just can't find it. But she said "We always want you to leave here knowing that baby is ok," so she sent us in for an ultrasound. I wasn't too worried because the same thing happened with Isaac. Anyway, we headed down to have the ultrasound done and saw that little heart just beating away! Baby is measuring 12w6d, which is prett spot on considering that I'm 12w5d today.

Here is our little peanut!