Wordless Wednesday – Beautiful Bougainvillea

Wordless Wednesday

I’ve Moved

Please visit my blog at its new location:

http://jayayceeblog.blogspot.com

See you soon … 🙂

Hoppy Easter

from the Easter Buppies!

and Happy Birthday to my MN BIL … we love you bunches!!!

Baby Hats and Big Girl Blankets

Received a baby boy announcement last week from Hubby’s cousin — isn’t he a cutie pie? Had some variegated blue baby yarn and size 4 double pointed needles handy, so just went for it. Turned out pretty cute …

Rolled Brim Baby Hat

I used Bernat Softee Baby Acrylic #3 Light weight in color His Jeans Ombre

Size 4 dpns

Cast on 88 stitches

Join and knit until  it measures 5″ from cast on edge

Decrease Rows:

(I use my cast on tail as my place marker, always keeping the first stitch at the beginning of a needle)

Next row: Knit 9, knit 2 together

Next row: Knit around

Next row: Knit 8, knit 2 together

Next row: Knit around

Next row: Knit 7, knit 2 together

Next row: Knit around

Continue decreasing in this manner until you have completed Knit 1, knit 2 together

Knit one more round

Cut yarn, leaving about 8″ to work with. Using a yarn needle, take each stitch off and close the hole by pulling snugly. Bring yarn through the hole inside the cap and weave in end. Weave in cast on tail. And it’s ready to wear!

And congratulations to my baby sister and her sweetie on the purchase of their house. All that moving and unpacking of boxes is exhausting so I made a Big Stix Afghan and sent it so they could take a nap with it.

I used skeins of Caron One Pound acrylic yarn in Black, Country Rose, Taupe and Off White. I love those Big Stix size 50 knitting needles!

What’s Cookin’ – Double Peanut Butter Cookies

Every now and again when I’ve been exercising regularly and cutting back on the sweets, I lose my mind and make things like Double Chocolate Cream Pie and these Double Peanut Butter Cookies. They are soooooooo good!

Double Peanut Butter Cookies

2 cups dark brown sugar, packed

1 cup chunky peanut butter (or smooth if you prefer)

1 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

2-1/2 cups all purpose flour

1-1/2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 10 to 12 oz. bag of peanut butter chips

Directions:

Heat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, beat brown sugar, peanut butter, butter and eggs on medium speed until creamy. Then on low speed, beat in flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Stir in peanut butter chips by hand.

I used the Pampered Chef Medium Scoop to make the cookie balls, although you could just roll them with your hands about 1-1/4 to 1-1/2″ in size. Dip the tops of the cookie balls into granulated sugar and place on a cookie sheet a few inches apart. When I was a kid, my Mom would smash them in two directions with a fork, which made that pretty criss-cross design in the top. However, this recipe spreads beautifully on its own so you don’t need to do that. And using the Medium Scoop, I got about 3-1/2 dozen cookies out of this recipe.

Bake approximately 10 minutes or until just turning a light, golden brown. Keep an eye on them so you don’t over bake. Cool on the cookie sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring to cooling racks or paper towels.

These cookies are crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside, the perfect combination. You could substitute chocolate chips or even mini chocolate chips for the peanut butter chips, or use both flavors together.

Ostrich Festival

We went to the 22nd Annual Ostrich Festival at Tumbleweed Park in Chandler, Arizona a few weeks ago. I’ve been having trouble downloading photos off my phone onto the computer until today. It’s one of those simple, annoying solutions — I have to reboot my phone while it’s attached to the computer.

Hubby and I went with YD and her BF and the Granddaughter to the festival. It’s funny, because we kind of thought an Ostrich Festival would have ostriches as far as the eye could see. I think there were six of them — several in a viewing pen and several that they raced. Oh, well. Beyond that, there was the usual great festival fare including food, carnival games and rides. It was fun, we spent way too much money and everyone was exhausted.

Here’s an Ostrich fact sheet, in case you were wondering …

There was a neat little petting zoo and it was definitely spring — lots of cute babies …

An alpaca, which is where some beautiful, soft yarn comes from …

These guys just needed some honk if you’re horny bumper stickers …

We did see an Ostrich Chariot Race …

This may be why they were running …

And no, none of us had an Ostrich Burger. Stuck with my favorite taco fry bread. And for dessert, chocolate and whipped cream covered funnel cake …

Evening carnival rides make everyone a kid again …

Wordless Wednesday – Easter Bunny

Wordless Wednesday

What’s Cookin’ – Chicken Salad Sandwiches

I got a great deal on a dozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts at the grocery store last week. Made Parmesan Chicken with 8 of them, then Hubby barbequed the remaining 4 last night. We made grilled chicken sandwiches for dinner and had 2 left over today so I got to make one of my favorites … Chicken Salad Sandwiches.

I chopped up two chicken breasts into small chunks, although you can use the large cans of chicken that are sold near the tuna fish at the store. Drained and chopped one 10.5 oz. can of mandarin oranges, threw in about 1/8th of a cup of sliced almonds, seasoned lightly with garlic salt and mixed all together with a few spoonfuls of mayonnaise. It’s that simple and is so good. It always tastes really fresh. I think it’s the mandarin oranges that give it the light, bright flavor and the crunch of the almonds is spectacular!

You can get four sandwiches out of the two chicken breasts. We pile them nice and thick on wheat bread.

He had me at Hot Dog

YD, Hubby and I decided to attend a Cactus League baseball game at Scottsdale Stadium yesterday, Spring training home of the San Francisco Giants. It was around 80 degrees and we slathered on the sunscreen, which was a good thing. There were a lot of people frying out there and will be many sorry, sunburned folks this morning.

Originally, just Hubby and YD had planned to go. I’m not so big on sporting events and I like my quiet time at home. He starts giving me all these reasons to go — I honestly can’t remember anything he said until he hit, “You can have a hot dog!” Hhhhhhhhmmmmmmmm?!?! I was ready to go in a few minutes.

The Scottsdale Stadium was built in 1992 and is in the middle of downtown Old Scottsdale. It will hold 12,000 people and I think 11,500 were on the lawn with us. Lawn seating is the cheap seats. You bring a blanket, spread it out on the grass, watch the game, watch the fans, and work on your tan. We saw people playing cards, lots of kids rolling down the semi-steep grassy hill and many babies (I guess it is Spring). I even took a small knitting project for when I got tired of people watching — a simple, rolled brim baby hat. I need a fast baby gift for an announcement we just received last week.

I had my hot dog. It was delicious! I ate it so fast, I forgot to take a picture of it. So I took one of some guy at the condiment stand juggling several dogs and fries. And my sweet Hubby tracked down a bag of Cotton Candy — or as he calls it, Polyester Candy — for me, which was hard to do near the end of the game. Supplies were low!

A good time was had by all … except for the San Francisco Giants who were beat by the San Diego Padres … 7 – 0.

Here are a bunch of pictures from yesterday, starting with this parking sign that YD pointed out to me. For some weird, unknown reason, it has a sticker of a ball of yarn on it.

What’s Cookin’ – Chicken Parmesan and Double Chocolate Cream Pie

We had our weekly family dinner Thursday night and everyone ate too much. This is another easy, delicious recipe that takes very few ingredients.

Chicken Parmesan

Serves 8

8 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

2 eggs, beaten

2 cups Italian seasoned bread crumbs

1 26 oz. jar of spaghetti sauce

1-1/2 cups grated mozzarella cheese

12 to 16 oz. fettuccine noodles or your favorite pasta

Directions:

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Spray 9 x 13″ baking dish with olive oil. Rinse chicken breasts. Put beaten egg in one dish, bread crumbs in another. Dip chicken breast in egg (both sides), then in bread crumbs (both sides), coating well, then lay in dish.

Bake uncovered for 25 minutes. Spoon spaghetti sauce over chicken. Put 1/2 cup of hot water in bottom of spaghetti sauce jar and shake it up to get every last drop. Then pour over chicken as well. Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese. Put back in the oven uncovered for another 15 minutes.

In the meantime, start your pasta water boiling. I time the pasta so that it finishes about 5 minutes after I pull the chicken from the oven. Just cover it with foil to hold the heat. Put a nice serving of pasta on the plate and lay a chicken breast over it. Spoon a little of the sauce over it as well.

It’s amazing what you find when you root around in your cupboards. When I was looking for my pasta maker this last week, I found a mini food processor attachment that goes on my Oster blender. I’ve been thinking I wanted to get one and here I’ve had it for years. I use my blender all the time, but forgot about the attachment buried in the back of the cupboard.

And the point of this is, I used the mini food processor to make my own bread crumbs for the chicken dish. We have a bread basket that is always full of drying up ends of the loaf. I took those and some too crusty French bread and ran it all through the processor with some Italian seasoning. Ended up with several containers of wonderfully Italian scented bread crumbs to use. Geez, I feel bad now about all the bread I’ve thrown out over the years.

Something else new I tried for last night is Paula Deen’s Double Chocolate Cream Pie. When I asked YD’s BF recently what his favorite kind of pie is, chocolate cream was at the top of the list. This is definitely not a low fat recipe, but it sure is delicious. As Paula said to Oprah, “I’m your cook, not your doctor!” And easy to make. I loved the real sweetened whipped cream spread over the top. We eat a lot of fat free Cool Whip (because I’m lazy and I like it) but every now and again, I’ll make a batch of the real stuff. I figured since we were already going big with 3 eggs, whole milk and 2 kinds of chocolate, what the heck? I had gotten this recipe from a website, but can’t find it now so here it is …

Paula Deen’s Double Chocolate Cream Pie

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup baking cocoa

1/4 cup corn starch

pinch of salt

3 cups whole milk

3 egg yolks

1-1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 9″ deep dish pie crust, baked and cooled

sweetened whipped cream (optional)

chopped toasted pecans (optional)

Directions:

In a heavy-bottomed 1-quart saucepan, combine the sugar, cocoa, cornstarch and salt. Stir with a spoon to mix. Combine the milk and egg yolks and whisk until well-blended. Slowly begin adding the milk and egg mixture to the chocolate mixture, blending well with a metal spoon. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it thickens, stirring constantly (about 5 minutes). When it is quite thick, add the vanilla and chocolate chips. Stir until completely blended. Pour into the pie crust, allow to cool, cover and refrigerate until ready to serve. Top with the whipped cream and pecans before you serve.

A couple of notes: I used a wooden spoon, even though it says a metal spoon. Mine took quite a bit longer than 5 minutes to thicken, which is probably the difference between cooking on a gas stove versus my smooth top electric. Whatever … it was ridiculously good!