Cheesy Olive Bread

 So if you have ever read this blog before you already know I am a big Pioneer Woman fan! Just yesterday I made one of her pasta dishes and just to make the calories go way beyond control I made her Cheesy Olive Bread to go with it! (click link for recipe)

 However my husband is allergic to onions so I RARELY cook with them and I'm NOT a fan of green olives. They make me want to puke. I'm sorry for the visual but seriously, yuck. So if you are the same in either of those categories I HIGHLY recommend my substitutions! Instead of green onions I chopped up banana peppers and instead of green olives I went with good old tomatoes! The crunchy tangy one was substituted with a crunchy and tangy one and the moist one had a moist substitute so it turned out FANTASTIC!! I LOVED it!

Can you tell?? 

Oh and when you read Pioneer Woman's recipe in her cookbook she encourages you to try some of the mixture on a cracker first. Okay let me just say the next time I make this it will be piled in a bowl with crackers around it. Forget the bread!

I really did like it better as a cracker spread but that is not to take away from the bread and it's yummyness! 

Plus it's almost football season (as I am WELL aware since I'm married to the Fantasy Nut) so the more cheesy recipes the better! 

P.S. In case you are married to a similar Fantasy Football nut - you can refer them to my husband's very own blog: The PPR Guys. They will think you are a fantastic wife who cares so much! :)

365 of Me - Days 7, 8, 9 & 10

Wow I'm so excited I just found some fellow Project 365'ers!! Quickly I'd like to add their links in case any of my readers are interesting in joining this fun quest!

1. Sara Bowyer @ Make music from your heart to the Lord - this blog includes a link up to fellow Project 365'ers and also a button of Project 365 for your blog sidebar!!

2. Barbie @ My Freshly Brewed Life - I have followed this blog for quite some time and my jaw dropped when she included that she was also doing a Project 365 in her Miscellany Monday post!

Okay on with my photos...

Day 7

The night before my daughter's 4th birthday party I stayed up until midnight hanging paper lanterns and painting empty coke cans Tinkerbell Lime Green! Oh AND adding glitter...of course!

Day 8

My hubby can be SO stinkin' creative with the camera and I am always amazed at the unique eye he has through that lens. I wish he would do more because he really does have natural talent. Anyways enough bragging here was a "Down the Streamers" pic he captured of me right before the party started!

Day 8..still

Okay sorry but I LOVED this picture of my best friend, Julie, and I that we took after all the guests had finally left and we both sighed a sigh of relief. *Sigh*

Day 9

This picture I giggled when I took because it was me sitting in my car on the drive home from the restaurant on Sunday afternoon. But I thought, "this is interesting and unique to me -what is on my lap and at my feet in the car" So here is what is on my lap: my bible - a small cute leather one I like to haul to church because it's lightweight and well cute, and my kindle - my Christmas present from my honey!! At my feet: to the left is my new purse that a teenager and his mom from our youth group gave me for Christmas and to my right which you can barely see is a plastic bag which holds our leftover sushi and my son's chicken strips. Oh and did I mention because it was DOWN POURING for like 24 hours I had on my black and white "oh so cute" rain boots??!! OK well now I mentioned it.

Day 10

This is by far my favorite so far! I was home already (realizing it was pajama day at my work which is also my daughter's school and SHOULD have taken a cute picture of her and I at school in our jammies but with the realization that I'm not as good at capturing moments in life as I once believed and my daughter in bed I grabbed my camera and just started thinking. This is what I came up with - one of my favorite features of myself. And back off I'm not egotistical or anything like that I just know that God created every single person beautifully and creatively and that I should like His creation and appreciate it. And I do. I love the deep brown eyes God gave me and my whole family and now my children (being that brown in a dominant eye color)! And I also love close up photos of just about anything. The above picture used the Pioneer Woman Photoshop "Colorized" Action so I actually posted the original colored photo below too.

I loved the eye picture so much I will actually be doing a "first-time" post on my blog tomorrow using a similar photo I took while getting this one. Maybe it will help someone or perhaps it will just serve the purpose of keeping things completely random on this blog! Either way I'm happy!

"365 of ME" day 2

So for two hours last night and another hour and a half tonight I have been trying to upload pictures for a wonderful post of my DAY 2 Picture along with a huge feast I cooked for our Sunday Dinner with no success. So finally out of desperation I tried to JUST upload the day 2 picture and FINALLY had some success. I do not know why it is not working and I promise I will add more later (because seriously you don't want to miss the dinner post!) but here is my Day 2 picture which was taken Sunday afternoon. I am wearing a scrubs top because I work our church baby nursery a couple times a month and had worked this particular Sunday. Also on Thursday of last week I signed up for a month long boot camp at Gold's Gym - they had an INCREDIBLE deal that I couldn't pass up! Along with getting back on track with my exercise after splurging over the holidays on food, food, and more food (mainly starches and sugars) my acne has FLARED up like no other! So I started eating my Anti-Inflammatory Dr. Perricone diet again. I had done SO good all week but it was bittersweet because I had gotten the Pioneer Woman cookbook for our book dinner this Christmas (see previous post on Book Dinner). So I thought I would just look through it and write down future recipes to try. My above picture is me doing just that after church - pouring through her hilarious and well photographed cookbook! As you can imagine after a couple HOURS of pouring through a cookbook like this I could about smell the cooking buttermilk biscuits and taste the juicy steaks! So what did I do? I cooked a FEAST for dinner throwing all diet no-no's out the window! We had Beef Tenderloin, Buttermilk Biscuits with Honey Butter, Grilled Zucchini and a Mini Apple Pie for dessert! Whenever my picture upload starts working again I will let you have the visual from my decadent meal! In the meantime...I'll try to at least keep up to date on my daily photos! Ta ta ya'll!

Lemon Cakes

I lied. I know, it's wrong. However I would like to make this entire post and then at the end explain to you why I lied. And honestly I think you will agree. Yes I am justifying my sin. Just go with it for a second, it will make me feel better.

Okay to my post which is titled "Lemon Cakes". I have done WAY to much food blog-hopping lately which has resulted in a couple pounds added to my weight, as well as an explosion on my taste buds! We are talking GOOD STUFF here. I posted on my beef stew and Rosemary Dinner Rolls. A couple other things I have experimented with have been Orange Julius', Oreo & White Chocolate Chip Brownies, and...yes there were more but there was enough sugar in the last two to spare you the rest of my list. Ooh I did balance out with trying Steel Cut Oats! Which I highly recommend also! (They are also referred to as Irish oats which I found fitting with St. Patrick's Day next week) But one experiment was these "Lemon Cakes". They were SO yummy and delicious and you make them in a very unique way which is what caught my attention in the first place. With no further ado...

And I honestly planned on having the entire recipe right HERE for you to print out but my computer is playing ornery with me so instead I have a link to the blog Pioneer Woman that I got it from. It's actually cool because she gives a step by step with a picture per step for you! So go over there and TRY it! It's worth it! (Either link will take you straight to the cakes)

Okay now if you went to the link before reading the rest of this post you may have already figured out my lie. They are NOT called Lemon Cakes. Yet my argument is they should be. The name they have makes them sounds awful and NOT inviting and as yummy as these things are they SO DESERVE a yummy sounding name! These unique cakes are made with olive oil and so their true name is Olive Oil Cakes w/ Lemon and Thyme. Okay. Do you see my point? Nuff said.

Shallow Depth of Field

So I admit it! I have become a Pioneer Woman junkie! But I am not ashamed. She is a mother, lover of photography and her camera, and cooking! I mean this is calling my name!! I absolutely love her blog and have entered my first photo in her most recent Photography Challenges. I have been needing to learn more about my camera and the different functions and she does a VERY good job of explaining them so her challenges did just that for me: challenged me! I'm going to be following her blog and learning all I can about my camera and photography so that hopefully by the end of 2010 I will have improved slightly!

So of course I wanted to share my first photo entry with you:

"Worn with time"

I have a FLICKR account (that is how she does her photography groups) where you can view my description of the photo if you'd like (least I think that link will work).

We are only allowed one entry per day so the piano was my first entry. But tomorrow I will be entering another fun photo:

"Juicy"

If you'd like to read about the photography Challenge and what the goal was I encourage you to visit Pioneer Woman blog, I'm sure you will find SOMETHING there that peaks your interest!