Two Weeks of Pinterest Meals

  I'm always looking for new meals to add to the menu and I often "pin" meal ideas on Pinterest, but I had a bunch that I hadn't tried yet. So, when I wrote out my menu for the last two weeks, I went through my "Yummy Things I Need to Make" board and picked stuff out to try! I find we spend less money on groceries if 1) I write out a menu so I know what to buy and make and 2) I shop once every two weeks. We usually cut it close on produce going bad, but it works well for the budget (which Andrew likes).

  Hope you enjoy what I learned, I know I had fun and it sure was yummy! :)

Turkey Burgers

 I'm always looking for healthy food to try and these Turkey Burgers caught my eye. They called for a fresh herb and I had gotten cilantro for another recipe so I used that. I got five burgers out of my turkey, we didn't need five so I froze the extra three for another meal. I normally use frozen ground turkey but I couldn't find it at Market Basket (they just opened a new one so I shopped there for the first time and couldn't find everything I normally buy). Frozen is cheaper then fresh and taste just as good but we made-do with fresh this time.

  Andrew grilled up the burgers and I made a big yummy garden salad to go with them, as well as some oven fries (an Every Day Food recipe).  They turned out yummy, I would definitely make them again! (Funny side note - in all my excitement to try Pinterest recipes I thought I had hamburger rolls in the freezer and I didn't so we just used English muffins, which worked just as well!)

Crockpot Brown Sugar and Balsamic Glazed Pork Tenderloin

  The picture on Pinterest of this Pork Tenderloin looked so delicious that I had to pin it. I've never cooked (or for that matter, eaten) pork loin, but I'm game to try new things! The recipe called for 2 lbs of pork loin - well those things come in HUGE pieces so finding one small enough was hard. I didn't get a full two pounds but its just Andrew, Perrin and I so we made do with 1 1/2 lbs.

  I didn't read the recipe beforehand, so when I pulled out the crock-pot after lunch and looked at the recipe and saw it needed to cook for 6 to 8 hours, I was in trouble. I just ended up cooking it on high for 4 hours and it cooked well!

  I cut the meat in half so it fit in the crock-pot better and added a bit more water then it called for, since I was cooking it on high.

  It turned out BEAUTIFUL! The glaze recipe made a ton of glaze - I had enough to make the pork loin two times over. Maybe next time I will put the glaze on more than three times.
  Andrew's sister Johanna ended up joining us for dinner and we still had left overs - 2 pounds would easily feed six people.

  This recipe is a keeper! Andrew and Johanna both thought it was delicious, even Perrin gobbled it up! I served it with garlic mashed potatoes and steamed broccoli. It takes less then ten minutes to put together and then another ten to put together the glaze and then you have to baste it but nothing too hard!

It was soooo Yummy!

Corn Dogs and Baked Zucchini Fries

  You may not believe this but I've never had corn dogs before. When I saw this recipe on "Life as a Lofthouse" (one of my favorite food blogs) I wanted to try it! They seemed to take a while to make, I'm not sure if that was partly due to the fact that I was also making baked zucchini fries as part of the meal, or that it took forever for the oil to reach the right temperature (and I have a gas stove).
  Andrew thought they were very yasty, but I'd only make them for something special. They are too much work to go into the normal meal rotation (and not exactly healthy but we don't need to talk about that).

  The Baked Zucchini Fries were yucky - and I really like zucchini fries. They just tasted like bread crumbs! Maybe I need to add more spices to the breadcrumbs but more likely I need to try a different recipe. :/

Teriyaki Marinade for Steak

  Andrew's birthday fell in my two weeks of Pintrest, so I invited the family over for steak and I thought I'd try this Teriyaki Marinade out. It doesn't say in this recipe how much steak to marinade so I made a quadruple batch for my four pounds of steak. I allowed the meat to marinate for 48 hours, and it was great!
  I made potato and onion packets (a family recipe) and my sweet mother in law made a Greek salad. Andrew very much enjoyed his birthday dinner (and so did the rest of us).

Strawberry Cinnamon Rolls

  We often just eat leftovers on Sundays (since its such a busy day with Sunday school and church), so I didn't have a meal planned. I did make these yummy Strawberry Cinnamon Rolls to share with our Sunday school class. They were very good and a nice twist on Cinnamon rolls, I was even asked for the recipe (that is always a good sign that people like something).

Root Beer Chicken and Corn and Chickpea Fiesta Salad

  Root Beer as a marinade caught my eye because I'd been looking for something to marinate pork chops in, at the last minute I decide to try this with chicken like the recipe calls for. I only made a half batch of marinade and just kept flipping the chicken container over so that it got all over the chicken. The chicken turned out very moist and delicious - another win! 

  I made Corn and Chickpea Salad to go along with the chicken. This recipe serves 12 so I cut it in half. I also cut the oil in the dressing by half and it was still really oily.  I think if I made it again I'd cut the oil down to a 1/4 of a cup. The cilantro in the dressing totally made the salad!

Southwestern Stuffed Peppers 

  As a kid I hated stuffed peppers but somewhere along the line as an "adult" I had them again and liked them. These were a yummy twist on a traditional stuffed pepper with black beans, corn and salsa! I will definitely be making these again!

Grilled Cheeseburger Wraps and Grilled Corn on the Cob

  This were a nice twist on a burger, they were also from "Life as a Lofthouse" (great blog) and pretty easy to make. We also grilled corn, I've been wanted to try grilled corn for awhile and this was a perfect opportunity to try it! You start by removing the silk from the corn and soaking it for 30 or so minutes (this helps to steam cook the corn).

  Honestly the corn was kinda messy, you have the husk it after its cooked so there were bits of chard husks everywhere. It tasted the same to me, but my mother in law had joined us for dinner and she loved it! If you didn't want to heat your kitchen up on a hot summer day and wanted corn on the cob I'd totally recommend grilling it.

  Add some tomato slices and you have a healthy, yummy summer meal.

Parmesan Crusted Pork Chops

  I mentioned before that I was looking for a new way to cook pork chops and I saw this pin and thought "why not try this one?" I had all the ingredients needed for it so I went for it!
  They were pretty good! I had to cook mine for over an hour -  they were thick chops and I'm always worried that pork won't be cooked properly and we'll get sick.

  I served the pork chops with sweet potatoes and steamed zucchini, all in all a pretty good meal.

Crockpot Chicken Cordon Bleu and Easy Homemade French Bread

  I will admit I have made the Crock-pot Chicken Cordon Bleu before my two weeks of Pinterest. Its a yummy, easy meal and Andrew and Perrin both love it!  I'm not sure how much it taste like Cordon Bleu, but its a good chicken recipe. Instead of cream of chicken soup, I use a cup of milk and one tsp. of chicken 'Better than Bouillon' and pour that over the chicken, ham and cheese and then put the stuffing and more milk mixture.

  The french bread fits its name - Easy - boy is it! It took me less then ten minutes to make it - I had my Kitchen Aid do the kneading (I hate making anything with yeast if its not in my bread maker). The longest part is waiting for it to rise but honestly it takes ten minutes to make between the two risings. This is delicious bread, I have made it a few times since this - its a keeper! I'll never buy french bread again!

  See, doesn't it just look tasty - make it, you will love it!

Pear Spice Muffins and Pumpkin Zucchini

  We opened our home to a family friend so she and her bridesmaids could get ready for her wedding. I also offered to provide muffins and fruit for them to snack on as they were getting ready (no hungry wedding party on my watch). I'm always looking for "healthy" but yummy muffin recipes and these two fit the bill.  I pick them because I had ripe pears that I didn't want to go bad and my mother had given me zucchini and I had one can of pumpkin left (this seemed like a good recipe to use it on).
  Both recipes have whole wheat flour in them (and they were still light and fluffy). I substituted maple syrup for the sugar and some apple sauce for the butter - I did half butter and half apple sauce. They are both fabulous!!!! Even my sister in law who doesn't like zucchini thought the pumpkin ones were delicious! I'll be making both these again! (For some reason I only have pictures of the Pear muffins but I promise the Pumpkin Zucchini are awesome!)

Peanut Butter Granola Bars

  Somehow I never got a picture of these tasty treats! They are easy to make and yummy to eat! I had make these before this two week trial so I have made some changes to this recipe.

 I use....

4 Cups - Oatmeal

1/2 Cup - Unsweetened Coconut

1/2 Cup - Unsalted Peanuts

1/2 Cup - Walnuts or Pecans

1/2 Cup - Mini Chocolate Chips

2 Tbsp - Chia Seeds

1/4 Cup - Wheat Germ

1/2 Cup - Honey (I never could find Brown Rice Syrup)

3/4 Cup - Peanut Butter

1/2 Cup - Coconut Oil

  I throw the first eight ingredients in a bowl and mix them all together. I put the peanut butter and coconut oil in a glass measuring cup and pop it in the microwave for 30 seconds - it's a perfect consistency. Add the peanut/coconut mix to the dry ingredients and mix well. Then, put into a greased 9x13 pan and bake for 25 minutes at 350' just like she says in the blog!

  Cool completely before cutting up, sometime I even stick them in the fridge overnight before I cut them up. Once cut into bars I store them in the fridge. Enjoy!

Crock Pot Chicken Tacos

  To round off our Pinterest meals I tried this Chicken Tacos recipe, made quite easily in your crock-pot. It was just a matter of putting all the stuff together in the crock-pot and letting it cook! Then before dinner I cut a bunch of veggies to go with tacos, the best part is that it didn't heat my house up!

  Hope you enjoyed my adventures in new meals - try a few of these and add them into your menu rotation! Enjoy!

Pallet Frame

This particular project is about a year and a half overdue.  We found the letter photos in a small shop in downtown Nashua quite a while ago, and bought them on a whim to make a sign for our apartment.  Since there's a surprising lack of seven-opening picture frames out there, the letters ended up taped to the wall in our then-living room, waiting for the day when we would finally find the perfect frame.

The day didn't come, and the letters never found a place after we moved to our new home.  A few months ago, we came across them and decided that building our own frame would be a good way to get a fresh start on displaying these.  With the success of some of our other pallet projects, it seemed like a natural fit to use pallet wood to build it!

The final piece of the puzzle came during a July yard sale, when we saw an absolutely hideous poster of disturbing cherubs and sayings loosely related to angels, such as "angels keep the world safe for hummingbirds and butterflies."

While the frame and poster itself were not something we would ever want displayed in our house, the glass in front of the frame was just the right size to cover all of our letters.  We bought the whole thing for $.50, brought it home, and took it apart.

With the glass in hand to determine the sizes, I spent a few minutes breaking down, squaring up, and smoothing the boards. We picked a pallet with very wide pieces.

I used my new router table (yes, I was looking for an excuse to try it out) to carve out recesses on the inside edges of the four edge pieces.  The glass fit right inside of these.

You can see the lip this created for the glass to rest in in the photo below.  Once that was in place, I also cut some wide dadoes on the front edge of the top and bottom pieces, and the back edge of the side pieces. This let the sides meet the tops in a half lap joint (though since I was working with pallet wood, these joints weren't as precise as I had hoped due to differences in the thickness of the wood).

From the front, it looked like the two pieces just butted up next to each other, but you can see from the bottom view that there's actually plenty of gluing surface.

I clamped and glued the pieces together, making sure that the assembly was square and the glass would fit inside.

Then I applied two coats of Minwax Special Walnut and one coat of General Finishes' Arm-R-Seal to the front and back of the frame.

Samantha covered up the front of Our Angels of the Hideous Poster with burlap, wrapping the edge around back and securing it with hot glue spread with a rubber spatula.

Here's a closer view of the end being covered with the burlap.

Because I am neurotic, I spent twenty minutes finding the center of the board, calculating the precise gap between the pictures to end with every photo spaced evenly from each other and the end of the board, then marking the top, bottom, and side positions of each photo with pins.

Once we were happy with the positioning, we attached each photo to the burlap with those sticky dot things that you use to hang papers on the wall.  They worked okay, the burlap didn't stick very well but we left some heavy books on it overnight and after that it was fine.

With the photos and backing done, I went back to the frame itself and attached picture wire to the back.  After drilling a shallow pilot hole, thread in some short wood screws and then just wind the picture wire tight around the two screws.

I attached the burlap board to the back of the picture frame by stapling the two of them together, with one edge of the stable sunk into the burlap and the other point driven into the frame.  I put a ton of staples in, and haven't had any problems. If I need to take the back off, it's not too hard to pull them out and re attach them.

The lighting in the bathroom where we hung the piece is absolutely awful, but hopefully the pictures below give you some sense of how the final product turned out!  It's a little big for the space, but we're happy with it and very quickly turned to another bathroom project (more on that in the next post). Every picture we took in the bathroom either had serious glaring or some other lighting issue, so we took some other pictures in different rooms, and even a few outside.

Tool List:
Table Saw
Clamps
Sander
Router (for the half lap joint and the recess where the glass insert was - you could just attach it straight to the back)
Stapler
Hot Glue Gun

Materials List:
Minwax Special Walnut Stain
Arm-R-Seal
Glue
3-4 pallet boards
Glass / Plastic front
Burlap
Sticky Dots
Pins
Picture Wire
2 - short woodscrews

Pallet American Flag

  So, I got the idea for this project from Pinterest! I spotted this pin of an amazing wooden American flag but when I followed the pin it lead to nothing more then a picture - no plans. I asked Andrew if he thought it could make me one, he (being the sweet, amazing husband he is) said yes! I'll hand the blog over to him to tell you about the pallet prep and pick up the painting part later on.

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  Here's the actual construction part of the project: most of the work was the painting and such, but I'll share how I got the flag ready.  I picked up an old pallet from the back of a warehouse, and cut the boards free using my Sawzall and a metal-cutting blade. 

I cut a pair of pieces from prior pallet projects (say that three times fast) to a length just shorter than the combined width of the boards, then arranged them in place and nailed the cleats to the back.  We decided to leave the boards with their natural warps and angles, only smoothing the front faces enough to take paint.

I used my circular saw to roughly square up the worst of the ends, but otherwise left it alone.

Ready to turn the project over to Samantha!

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  The flag itself is 39 and 1/2 inches long by 21 inches wide. I chose to make the stripes 3 inches wide, making sure to have them start and end with a red stripe. With the help of one of Andrew's yard sticks I penciled on the lines and then used 3 inch wide painters tape to mark off the ones I didn't want painted. I just went into Michael's Crafts to picked out paint for the flag (which with a one year old in the stroller was an adventure). They have what seemed like a million colors to choose from, but since I wanted my flag to have  an 'antique' look I chose Ecru, Country Red and Deep Midnight Blue.

  I did two coats for the white stripes and three coats for the red.

    The paint dries fast so I could do one coat in the morning and another that evening.

   Next, I taped off and painted the blue section.You can see off to the right that I had to touch up some of the lines.

  The stars were a lot harder then the stripes! I started to cut out a template for them but I decided I was nuts to spend all the time cutting and stressing. I saw on Pinterest an ideas that used wooden stars, so off I went to Michael's Crafts again to find some stars.

  Honestly I didn't know what was size would look the best so I picked out a bunch and brought them home and tried them all.

  I ended up choosing to do a circle of eight smaller stars, and returned the rest. I used three coats of paint.  

  I used wood glue applied with a foam brush to attach the stars to the flag.

   Andrew always clamps anything he uses wood glue on so I used some bottles as 'clamps' to weight them down.

  Then I brought it upstairs and put it on the mantel. I have to say that I LOVE how it looks!

  

  Side note: I printed the letters for the LIBERTY banner off of Shanty2Chic, and just used Red, White and Blue scrapbook paper to back them! They actually just posted their own flag project, too - theirs is meant for outdoor use.

  We just had our first guest over since I put it up and they loved it! I'm very happy with how it turned out, and it cost less then $10 to make! Sweet!!!!

Happy 4th to all!

Supply List -

2 Bottles - Country Red

1 Bottle - Ecru

1 Bottle - Dark Midnight Blue

8 - 2 inch stars

Wood Glue

2 - Foam Paint Brushes 

3 inch Painters Tape