Monkey Bread

I grew up begging for this on Saturday mornings and it's still one of my guilty pleasures for breakfast on a weekend.  It is sooo delicious!  My "non-breakfast eater", "no sweets eating" husband has definitely jumped on board with this one too.

Here are the ingredients you'll need:

2 cans of biscuits
cinnamon
sugar
pecans (optional)
butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Make your cinnamon and sugar mixture.

Chop pecans (if you want them) and add them to the mixture.

Take the biscuits out of the can and break each biscuit into 4 pieces.

Roll the pieces into a ball and cover in cinnamon and sugar.

Lay them in the bottom of a greased bundt pan.

After the first layer sprinkle some of the cinnamon/sugar/pecan mixture in there. (Why not?!)

After the 2nd and last layer, heat one stick of butter.  Mix some cinnamon and sugar into it and pour it over the biscuits.

Bake it for 35 minutes until it's golden brown and not "doughy".

Flip it over onto a plate and you have Monkey Bread, easy cinnamon rolls, whatever you call it - delicousness..

Monkey Bread:

Ingredients:
2 cans biscuits
cinnamon
sugar
pecans (optional)
1 stick butter

Directions:
Make your cinnamon and sugar mixture.  Chop pecans (if you want them) and add them to the mixture.  Take the biscuits out of the can and break each biscuit into 4 pieces.  Roll the pieces into a ball and cover in cinnamon and sugar.  Lay them in the bottom of a greased bundt pan.  After the first layer sprinkle some of the cinnamon/sugar/pecan mixture in there. (Why not?!)  After the 2nd and last layer, heat one stick of butter.  Mix some cinnamon and sugar into it and pour it over the biscuits.  Bake it for 35 minutes until it's golden brown and not "doughy".  Flip it over onto a plate and you have Monkey Bread, easy cinnamon rolls, whatever you call it - delicousness..

Enjoy!!

Buddy likes it too :)

Brussel Sprouts can be good?

If you were to ask my parents, they would say I hate brussel sprouts.  If you asked my husband's parents they would  say he thinks they're "cheese carriers".  So, who knew that we now eat brussel sprouts all the time and actually like them!!

I have to give a big thank you to Dave's sister for sharing this recipe with us!

As we try to eat more healthy, these are a yummy vegetable with great flavor and no bad  stuff on it!
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Start with some fresh brussel sprouts.

Then cut off the ends.

And slice them in half.

Then heat up the teeny-tiniest little bit of olive oil in a pan. 

Place the brussel sprouts face down in the pan.

Add fresh rosemary (a couple sprigs)

And salt.

(they'll look like this with the oil, brussel sprouts, rosemary, and salt)

Then - you'll get them nice and "brown".

Dump them onto a baking sheet. And, bake them for 10-15 minutes until you can pierce them with a fork and they're tender.

Then you have delicious Brussel Sprouts!!!  They're crunchy on the outside and tender, and perfect.  And oh-so good for you!

Enjoy!

Ingredients:
Fresh brussel sprouts
salt
rosemary
olive oil

Directions:
Cut brussel sprouts in half.  Heat olive oil in pan.  Place brussel sprouts face down in pan. Add rosemary and salt.  Once brown, put everything onto baking sheet.  Bake for 10-15 minutes.

Remembering the Engagement Party

Since we got engaged 2 years ago this week, I thought I'd remember our engagement party!  Dave's family has a beautiful ranch.  We dreamed of getting married on it, but timing didn't work out with job schedules.. so, we had a big engagement party intead!

The theme was a country outdoor theme.  How cute is this "trolley" to come in to the party?!  Anyone could use the same ideas for a wedding.

We had all of our friends drink lots of beer, quite a problem right?! :) and then took scrapbook paper and covered the bottles and cartons with the paper.  It turned out so well!  A big thanks to my mother-in-law for all of that!  We put them on checkered tablecloths, with bandanas.  Then added some pictures of us around the room.  These became perfect centerpieces!

Did you know that you can borrow, yes borrow cowboy boots from Cavenders?  I looked everywhere for cheap cowboy boots (at thrift stores, walmart, etc) .. they don't exist!  Then I called Cavenders and heard that they have "mismatched" boots.  You leave your credit card with them and can borrow the boots for a few days.  When you give them back, there is absolutely no charge.  Amazing!!!!!!

The location was perfect.  It started with a wine tasting.  It doesn't hurt to have family wine right?! And hey - people like it!  It's actually award winning.. check that out here.  It's the My Three Sons wine.

People then went on a hayride, I'm terrified of the buffalo.  I can't understand why these people don't seem scared?! 

It was then time for some dinner and dancing.  How cute is the chalkboard?  There are ways to save money on these things.  Instead of catering the meat, we bought the meat and had friends cook it.  We then just catered the sides.  It's amazing how much more fun that is too! 

After dinner, dancing and smores.  My father-in-law made this fire pit out of an old barrel.  I think it just added to how fun everything was!!

At the end of the day, I still don't know who I think is cuter... our ring-bearer?

or my husband?

All in all, a great time with friends and family!

And definitely beautiful scenery too..

Spanish Review Game

I don't know about any other teachers out there but when other students are on Spring Break and your students are in class, it's always a time to make sure that "spring fever" doesn't hit.  So I started thinking of how I could review students for a test that would make them enjoy it and not be so bored while studying for Spanish.  Well, I found a way!

This game isn't very loud, doesn't take much space, and gets the kids moving and speaking Spanish!!

I used this bean bag toss that we received in a White Elephant Gift exchange at Christmas time (so it was free to me!).  For some students I used the subject pronouns one and for others I used the Spanish I vocab words.

The subject pronoun one (on the right) was perfect for:

• Spanish I - stem changing verbs (poder and dormir)
• Spanish II - preterite stem changing verbs

 The chores one (on the left) was perfect for:

• Spanish I - affirmative commands (Lava el coche!)
• Spanish I - present progressive (Estoy lavando el coche.)
• Spanish II - present perfect (He lavado el coche.)
• Spanish III - future tense (Lavaré el coche.)
• Spanish III - future perfect (Habré lavado el coche.)

I used the little cube with hand written subject pronouns in it to help make a sentence for the chores side.

You could easily make this for any subject and out of plywood or something if you don't have this specific game.

Here were the rules:

Miss the board - 0 points
Hit the board - 1 point
Make the hole - 3 points

If the student missed the board I asked them to make a different sentence or some other review question.  They had so much fun! If they hit the board, then they had to correctly conjugate the word in a sentence.  If they made the bean bag into the hole, they just got the points!

Of course, try to make as much of it in the target language as possible!

In the end, instead of giving out candy to sugar them up, I gave out these Spanish pencils.  High schoolers are just happy to play a game!

Cooking the Perfect Artichoke

Have you ever met a 5 year old that loves artichokes?  Well, I was that girl, along with my sister.  We begged our parents for artichokes, such weird kids right?!

I've been so excited lately because artichokes are really cheap right now in Texas so we've been eating them at every meal! 

Here's the trick to the perfect artichoke.  I had to learn since I'm not near mom and I'm not near the Plaza Art Fair in Kansas City where I really loved them!

Cut off the stem, and cut off the top of artichoke. You can trim the leaves down if you like.

Start your water boiling (enough water to cover the artichoke), and add:

salt

Juice of about half a lemon.

1-2 bay leaves

Then let it boil away for about 20-30 minutes, until you can pierce it with a knife easily, (like a potato).

It comes out perfect!!

As for the dipping sauce(s):

I make two.  The first one is just melted butter, how can you go wrong with that?!

The second one is this amazing concotion that I found here.

3 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/8 tsp garlic powder
few pinches cayenne pepper, to taste
pinch sugar or two drops agave nectar
pinch salt

Enjoy!!

We have been!!



And after you're all done with the leaves, don't forget to scrape out the fuzzy stuff and eat the artichoke heart, it's the BEST part!!