Yeah. It's that good.

But seriously. This is the most delicious sandwich ever. Apart from my variation on Ree Drummond's Marlboro Man sandwich.

Slow cooker barbeque chicken plus swiss cheese plus french bread rolls I picked up from the store.

Recipe for chicken goodness to follow. Because I'm too lazy to do it tonight. I would have to get up and go all the way into the kitchen and get it out of my recipe binder.

Oh, and I'm watching Doctor Who with my dad and it's the end of season two and if you've seen it, and if you feel as strongly about Rose Tyler as I do, you understand why I have to see it through. 

The Tragedy of the Caramel Apple Sticky Buns

Those words should not even be strung together with "tragedy" out front, but alas, such is the case.

I tried to make these glorious sticky buns the other day and it was pretty much a great and terrible disaster. I got the recipe from The Pioneer Woman and I don't know why her creations were so beautiful and mine were so terrible.

Actually, I do know why. I tried to cram way too many delicious little fat, fluffy rolls into too few pans. So then they were just sad. I baked them as instructed and the ones in the center were totally doughy and raw--not even a little bit cooked--and then when I popped them back in the oven they all got sort of charred and scorched and the caramel burned and the apples were all brown and dry and all in all, it was not one of my more successful ventures.

But I will not be thwarted! Well, not for eternity, anyway. When I'm brave enough I'll try them again. But with some changes:

1. You know the rolls are going to get real fat. Prepare for that. Maybe you won't get to have the buns in a nice circle shape like the PW because you do not own nearly enough cake pans to make that happen. So give them more room to live! I imagine more space will also prevent the innermost rolls from being too insulated, so they can actually bake. It's hard to say.

2. Any time you're going to be baking with caramel in the bottom of the pan, do yourself a favor, and line the pan with foil first. Everyone will be happier that way. (I usually line the pan with foil when I do cinnamon rolls because it makes the cleanup suck so much less, but for some reason I didn't think that through with these puppies. Even though the recipe has you pour the caramel DIRECTLY ONTO THE PAN. Sometimes, I am not as smart as I like to think I am.)

3. Give the sticky buns a chance to cool a little before you turn them upside-down. The caramel ran straight all over every surface it could find because I think I flipped them way too soon (but I wanted to eat them so bad!) and the caramel sauce didn't have a chance to thicken. So give the babies some time to congeal. The rolls will still be warm, and the caramel will stick be sticky, even after waiting a bit, I bet, so it will still be able to drizzle and cascade over the rolls.

So. Now we know. Or at least, now I hope I am better armed for when I go about this in the future.

Because seriously. Who doesn't want these in their mouth?

Pioneer Woman, you are a cruel mistress.

Taquitos!

So tonight I made delicious taquitos. It was kind of a surprise how well they turned out because I did that thing where I decided what to make and then realized I only had some of the ingredients and then kind of patched it together. The original recipe is here at Six Sisters' Stuff which is one of my favorite places to find delicious things.

Pictures to follow, when I stop being lazy and download them from my camera. Oops.

But these are really easy and I'm a big fan.

Baked Beef Taquitos!

Ingredients:

 1 lb ground beef
 Minced garlic (I used...approximately one clove? Two? I get mine from a jar at the store)
2/3 cup of chopped onion
1-2 tablespoons of oil (you'll also use oil to glaze the taquitos before baking)
1 cup green salsa
10 soft taco sized tortillas (I think 10 inches in diameter)
A cup of cheddar cheese. Or more. If that's how you roll (that's how I roll)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Unless your oven is hot like mine and then only do it at 350.
2. Heat the oil on medium high in a skillet, and add the garlic. Cook thoroughly, but don't overdo it. Add the meat, and the onion, and cook until the meat is browned. Add the salsa, and mix everything all together so it's heated evenly. 
3. Remove from heat, and spread about a fourth of a cup of meat on each tortilla. Top with cheese, and then roll them up and place them on a cookie sheet covered in tin foil, with the seam on the bottom.
4. Glaze with oil, and pop in the oven for 8-12 minutes, until tortillas are brown and crispy and delicious. Serve with sour cream and more salsa, although I think they're pretty good just plain. Or with just sour cream.

The way I did this, I got somewhere around 8 taquitos. Mine seemed awfully fat. But sooooo good. 

Chicken Alfredo (and rolls!)

From Mommy Hates Cooking.

Pictures to come. I used rainbow noodles because I could. And because that's all we had. I served it with the most yummy rolls the world has ever seen. Or eaten. But we'll do that part next.

1 lb spiral pasta
3 chicken breast, cooked and cubed (the original recipe calls for two, but I did three)
1 8oz block of cream cheese, softened
1 tbsp butter
1 cup milk
1 cup grated parmesan cheese (I just used the kind you buy in the shaker thing at the store. I didn't measure it or anything. I just used however much I thought would be delicious)
Garlic salt to taste (which obviously means, again, however much is delicious, which also means A LOT)
Parsley flakes (uh, this time around I forgot the parsley, so...you don't HAVE to use it)

1. Cook the pasta as instructed on the package, drain, and leave in the strainer for now. 
2. In the warmed up stock pot--and it's easier if you use a stock pot. I did a skillet before, and there wasn't nearly enough room to work in. In the warmed up stock pot you cooked the noodles in, add the cream cheese, butter, milk, and parmesan. Keep the heat on medium and whisk that goodness together with a gravy whisk until it's silky and delicious. 
3. Add garlic salt. I like to add it to the sauce itself because if I don't, I'll forget it. Because by the time we're done with the next step I'm ready to move on directly to EATING. 
4. Add in the drained pasta, and the chicken, and stir it all up so everything's coated in yummy sauce. 
5. Serve!

I found my sauce didn't quite coat everything like I wanted it to, so next time, I'd probably add another half cup of milk to thin out the sauce and stretch it a little farther. I did add a whole other chicken breast, so I'm assuming that was part of the disparity.

And you have chicken alfredo! And it wasn't even very hard to make! I mean, if I could make it, a monkey probably could. Which means you definitely could.

Oh, and the bread! I try to make rolls whenever I'm also making a main dinner dish. Because if there's anything in this world I love, it's bread. In fact, I think I'll probably go get one of those bad boys and eat it right now while I'm blogging about them.

This recipe came from my sister-in-law who somehow knows how to make the most delicious breads in the world. She does the best cinnamon rolls (like, we're talking Cinnabon cinnamon rolls), and apparently has an intimate knowledge of the workings of Crazy Bread.

So, Crazy Bread. Here goes the beginning of the rest of your life.

2 cups warm water
2 tbsp yeast
1/3 cup sugar
3 tsp salt
1/3 cup shortening
2 eggs
6 cups flour

1. 
   
2. If you have one, you definitely want to use a stand mixer for this because I recently tried to do this recipe by hand and it was way hard. Or, I would recommend halfing the recipe if you're going to do it by hand. Put water, yeast, and sugar in your mixing bowl and let sit for a few minutes until it gets sort of bubbly and fluffy. 
3. Add salt, shortening, eggs, and two cups of your flour. Mix until it's all blended and soupy. You'll want to scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula after this, to make sure all your flour gets mixed in. 
4. Add remaining flour and knead for 5 minutes. Sometimes the dough is still kind of sticky after this, so you can add more flour, or you can just deal with it. I usually just deal with it. 
5. Let rise for twenty minutes. 
6. Here's where it gets fun. You can do pretty much whatever you want with this dough after you're done--breadsticks, pizza dough, crescent rolls, whatever. I like to cram twelve little rolled-up balls into a 13x9 in pan. This way, they're extremely large and they get all squished up and they're delicious. It also takes them a long time to bake, so be prepared for that. 
7. Allegedly, you can bake them at 400 degrees for twelve minutes. But my oven's way too hot so I usually do them at 350 degrees for ten minutes. To cram a dozen of them into one pan, you'll want to cook them longer and at a lower temperature. I probably did them for more than fifteen minutes, but after the initial ten minutes, I lowered the temperature of the oven to about 325 because I really didn't want them to burn. 

So...good luck with that. But apart from weird baking issues, and discrepancies in timing, they're really easy to make. And hardly have to rise.

Punkins

So this year I tried my hand at designing my own pumpkins to carve them. The Horseman and Ichabod took some study. I carved them last. Strangely, they were the only pumpkin of my three that grew two different kinds of mold before Halloween even got here. 

My other babies. A little skull face, a little dirigible (from a drawing I'd already done, which can be found HERE on my other blog). In the back and on the right is a sweet guy slaying a sweet dragon sweetly. Actually, I wasn't terribly pleased with how that design turned out, but since it was the first one I did, and it was for a friend's pumpkin...we'll just pretend it was good..

And these are the last batch. I did not carve or draw any of these, but my friends did. I think they turned out gloriously.

Halloween

Is invariably my favorite holiday second only to Christmas. So this year I made an amazing costume. I also blackmailed my dad to take me to dinner, which he did not appreciate very much. But we ate and it was delicious and I was the prettiest girl at the prom. In a manner of speaking.

This is my original thread I was using. I did, in fact, use it all. Which was too bad because it was exactly the right color.

So, a little background. I love steampunk. I also love to dress up in ridiculous ways that maybe are not necessary to whatever occasion I happen to be dressing up for. ("Hey, cool Batman mask Carli." "Oh thanks." "Uh, you know it's Valentine's Day, right?" "Oh yeah.") So as it happens, I had pretty much everything to put together a glorious steampunk outfit, except for the actual outfit. Goggles? Check. Bullets? Check. Any number of swords or large toy guns? Double check. Leather jacket? Check. White, sufficiently Victorian blouse? Check. Boots? Check and check.

But I wanted to have a glorious, luscious skirt. So I found a pattern and some fabric and cut it out the Saturday before Halloween. And then started sewing it on Tuesday. Remember how Halloween this year was on Wednesday?

It was essentially a long skirt with a sweet ruffle on the bottom, and a bustle. I didn't have enough of the green fabric to do it all one color, so I swiped some brown crepe back satin and made some adjustments.

This is the bustle in a state of almost-completeness. I took this on Halloween, while I was finishing up the bustle. And by "finishing up" I mean "actually getting it all put together because I had procrastinated too long and it was hardly even begun yet."

So there were some grand adventures. Mostly, I did a lot of gathering, and a lot of pinning, and used loooooooots of blue-green thread. And then brown thread. But! I think it all worked out in the end.

Ta-da! Ruffles and satin and boots oh my!

From the back! The bustle just ties on, which is really nice, because when it got wonky it was usually a pretty easy fix.

Shockingly, everything I wore on my torso I already owned. Also, thanks to Molly the dressform for being my model.

Le bustle again. I was rather proud of it, once all was said and done. And I hadn't had to work on it again.

So that's what I did for Halloween. I suppose eventually I'll try to get a real picture of it on my body, with my hair and makeup all properly done, but that might have to wait for next year (YES I am wearing this next year when I go back to school).

Life-changing French Toast

No really. It's life-changing. I thought my original amazing French toast was amazing, but this caramelizing business has taken it to the next level. 

I got the idea from Allrecipes, of course, because they don't mess around. But this is my most glorious French toast recipe that makes you feel like you're eating dessert for breakfast. But in a good way.

Batter:
4 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
1/2-1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tablespoons sugar--for the caramelized version, I used brown, but for just plain FT I just do white
Cinnamon--lots. I start with a tablespoon, probably, and periodically add it when the batter looks yellow again and not brown

Egg bread works best, and this makes about enough batter for eight pieces. I like Texas Toast, but if I was really awesome, I would make challah or brioche. We'll see if I ever decide to work that hard.

Ordinary bread works too, just be careful when you put them in the batter, because if you don't just do a quick dip on both sides, the bread gets soggy and gross and I don't know about you, but I really do not like soggy bread.

1. Whisk together batter ingredients. Done and done. 
2. I do my toast on a griddle, but if you're doing it in a skillet you'll want to melt a tablespoon of butter or margarine on medium heat. 
3. Coat either side of a slice in batter, flop it on the griddle, and give it about three minutes on each side. Cook until golden and cooked though. Mostly I like mine golden brown. Mostly brown. 
4. Transfer to a plate so they have somewhere nice to wait until you eat them. 

Now for the good stuff. This is really quite a delicious French Toast recipe as it is, but I promised caramel sauce and I intend to deliver. If you don't want to move on to the caramel part, shame on you, but serve it anyway with whatever yummy toppings you like.

How can you even say no to this baby right now?

Caramel Sauce:
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 (more) tablespoons butter
1/4-1/2 cup of milk, depending how thick or liquidy you want your sauce
1-1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in a skillet on medium-high heat, but closer to the medium end of the scale.
2. When the butter's sufficiently melty, add brown sugar. Stir them together, coating as much of the brown sugar as possible. 
3. Add the next 2 tablespoons butter, mixing it up with the brown sugar. It should all be very melty and brown and delicious. 
4. Add milk and vanilla, stirring them in evenly. 
5. I let my sauce cook for a little bit, until it got all bubbly. I don't know if this actually did anything, but it made me feel nice. And it smelled good. 
6. One cooked slice at a time, dip one side into the caramel sauce and transfer to another plate. I coated my bread pretty heavily with the caramel, and used tongs to flop the bread around. It's pretty sticky and heavy, so you might have to wrestle it a little bit, but trust me, it's worth it. 

Now! Serve hot and delicious. This toast needed no toppings, in my opinion, but I guess you could sprinkle powdered sugar and more cinnamon on them, or whipped cream, or whatever people do on delicious caramelized toast.

There's pretty much nothing that can't benefit from more cinnamon, in my humble opinion, but as I said, this French toast really needs no other toppings.

Enjoy!