“I Bleed Blue” Cupcakes.

I’m pretty confident that every major university has a blood drive leading up to their big rivalry game with the tag line “Bleed {fill in team color here}.” How do I know this? I’ve attended or worked for — & bled for — three different universities in three different conferences.

As a freshman at Vanderbilt, I “bled gold.” As a first-time blood donor, I didn’t know you were supposed to eat a big breakfast beforehand. I walked outside to continue working on our float for the Homecoming Parade… & woke up in my dorm room bed at 6pm.

When I saw the light & transferred to BYU (Go Cougars! Beat Texas!), I “bled blue.” I was smarter by now & ate a big meal beforehand… but still bled so slowly that each of the other 3 beds went through 3 other donors before being done with me.

Then I worked for the Indiana University Alumni Association, where I “bled crimson.” Well, I think I did… I don’t have any recollection of anything weird happening, so I’m assuming it went well.

This year, I decided to let baked goods do the bleeding for me. Blue, of course. (Go Cougars! Beat Texas!)

These cupcakes are a cinch to pull together to show your friends & fellow fans your true colors. (Go Cougars! Beat Texas!) & they don’t involve needles, blood, or passing out! Juice & cookies afterwards would be a nice touch though.

• White or yellow cupcake recipe or mix (I used my all-time favorite easy yellow cake recipe, which is quite pale & works very well for this)
• 1 box (4 oz.) Jello in team color of choice (just use one or they’ll mix & not look too appetizing)
• 1 cup boiling water
• frosting

1. Prepare your cupcakes as directed. Tip: don’t use foil cupcake liners. My only other option at Publix was pink, which I knew wouldn’t go over well. So plan ahead & visit Michael’s or something for some cuter paper cupcake liners that don’t stick to the cake & wind up getting swallowed by party guests. Oops.
2. When they’ve cooled a little, poke each with a fork.
3. Mix the Jello & boiling water; stir 2 minutes or until completely dissolved.
4. Use a small spoon to carefully spoon the Jello into the fork holes in each cupcake.
5. Chill 3 hours or until Jello is set.
6. Frost as desired. I used this fabulous color swirl tutorial from Our Best Bites. Once I got the icing in the bags, it was seriously faster than my standard sloppy knife-frosting way, & so much prettier!

P.S. If you’re wondering where to get the awesome football platter, it was a fabulous $1 party-store find several years ago that has stuck with us every season since.

P.P.S. Go Cougars! Beat Texas!

TV: What they should (& shouldn’t) watch… & what you should watch after they go to bed.

TV is EVERYWHERE. I lost count of the number of TVs in the Red Robin we ate at on Labor Day (there was even one in the floor… what?!). There were TVs in the waiting room in The Munchkin’s pediatrician’s office in NJ. There are even TVs in the checkout aisles at grocery stores, above the pumps at gas stations, & on the PATH trains into the city! So how can you keep your kid under that 2-hour suggested screen time limit?

I can’t answer that for you.

What I can answer for you, though, is what we do to at least try to limit The Munchkin’s time in front of the tube, & how you can help your kids make better choices about what they’re watching in those 2 hours or less.

As well as some good choices for you too.

My good friend Lauren is blogging on TV choices as well over at her blog today; check it out!

Screen time tips

• Don’t leave the TV on. It sounds silly & obvious, but I’ve walked into too many homes where the TV is just on for background noise. When the program you have chosen for your child (yes, chosen… see below) is over, turn it off. No amount of kicking & screaming changes this in our house. Also, if you need to have news in the morning as you get ready, use the radio in the kitchen.
• Set expectations & stick to them. The Munchkin knows that she can watch in the morning while Mommy’s getting ready, & sometimes in the evening while I’m making dinner, if it’s not one she can help with. That’s it. Occasionally we will have a rainy-day movie, but it’s just that: occasional.
• Know that kids are sneaky. & take the appropriate precautions. Even at her age, The Munchkin knows how to turn on the TV & DVD player (thankfully not usually at the same time). Keep the family TV & computer in public view, & hide the remotes. (That last tactic worked wonders when I was growing up because we’d broken the power button on the TV, so no TV ever got watched until after homework was done. We never did find where my mom would stash the remote all those times…)
• No TVs in kid rooms. Period.

Choosing what to watch

When they’re young, it’s easy. They don’t have friends & commercials telling them they should be watching. Though, in the aforementioned pediatrician’s office one day, Spongebob — the Ren & Stimpy of the new generation — was on, & despite my best distraction efforts, she zoned completely. Then like a week later we were walking in front of Dylan’s Candy Bar when she saw him again & recognized him. How do they do that?! Those Hollywood ad people have no souls.

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah. I think it’s important to help your kids choose shows that you can tolerate. I, personally, want to take a power drill to my right temple every time Dora is on. So we don’t play it in our home. You can’t say “no” to everything (which I imagine will become very tempting in the tween years judging from the after-school lineup on Disney Channel), so suggest something you can say “yes” to. I have very fond memories of evenings spent with my dad & my siblings watching Rocky & Bullwinkle, followed by The Muppet Show.

The only suggestions I have are for little kids, because that’s who’s watching TV right now. Those of you with older kids, please give your suggestions!

• Sesame Street: Teaches kids stuff (The Munchkin may or may not have taught herself how to jump after an “Elmo’s World”), not annoying (except “Abby’s Flying Fairy School”), & even celebrity guest stars & jokes that parents can appreciate (I still think of the Sesame Street versions when I hear Feist’s “1-2-3-4” or Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” on the radio). But even The Munchkin got over it after awhile. Now she’s into…
• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: Okay, so the writing’s not going to be winning awards any time soon, but at least not everyone has the EXACT SAME voice with the EXACT SAME inflection (cough cough, Dora). The characters solve a problem in each episode, & I like that they’re resourceful with their “Mouseketools:” for example, they needed to transport sand somewhere, & one of the tools was a few pillows — they emptied them to carry the sand in the pillowcases.
• Curious George: Honestly, this is my favorite. (Is that weird to say?) It’s well-written & teaches kids about lots of different things. The Munchkin & I always have lots to talk about after each episode.

I think the important thing is to teach your kids (when they get old enough, of course) to be active consumers. Just because my friends were all watching Beavis & Butthead in middle school, doesn’t mean that I could turn off my brain (or stay up that late, for that matter) to watch it too. But how can you teach them that?

The main thing is to be an active & discerning consumer yourself. So we’re old enough to watch TV-MA now. Does that mean we have to? Well, that’s up to you & your family. But here are my 2 cents:

I don’t like to watch stuff that makes me feel gross, sad, or uncomfortable. We had to stop watching 24 after a couple seasons because of all the torture. The Office just wasn’t funny anymore — just awkward. The Mentalist was really good, but it just left us feeling depressed or disturbed afterwards most of the time. So if something you’re watching leaves you feeling less than desirable — or like you just murdered 85,000 brain cells by watching it — just stop watching. Here are the shows that make us happy:

• Psych: This show makes me laugh harder than anything else. Lauren should be talking more about the finer points of this gem, as well as Monk, which is sadly over but still great.
• White Collar: Another USA Network program that does a great job of keeping it clean & entertaining. The cinematography & costuming are beautiful (oh, ok, & so is Matt Bomer). Rundown: FBI agent catches brilliant con artist & gets him a “work release” from prison to help out his elite team in New York.
• Chuck: The usual nerd-boy-meets-hot-girl-&-goes-on-spy-missions-with-her love story. Brilliantly written, clean, funny, action-packed. I have yet to introduce this show to someone who didn’t immediately love it. But this is the last season, so if you’re just tuning in, start at the beginning. Please.
• Bones: The only drama on the list, this is actually classified strictly as a “dramedy” because it’s generally so lighthearted. Brilliant Smithsonian forensic anthropologist (Emily Deschanel) consults on murder cases with strong but sensitive FBI agent (David Boreanaz). Her team of “squints” is awesome too. I’m just sad Zac had to leave… I hope they write him back in eventually.
• The Middle: We first started watching this because it was about a family in Indiana (we were living there at the time), starred Patricia Heaton & the janitor from Scrubs (see below), & it looked funny. We keep watching it because it is funny. Each of their 3 kids falls on a different point in the social spectrum, & their misadventures are totally relatable. It’s a very family-friendly comedy with no social agenda, unlike the family comedy that comes on ABC after it. (I think Lauren will be covering that one, since I’ve only seen one episode.)
• Frasier: An oldie but a goodie. Still SO funny. Niles is my absolute favorite.
• Scrubs: A story of love, friendship, bromance, & what it’s apparently like to be a young doctor who reminisces to himself all the time.
• How I Met Your Mother: We just started watching reruns because they were on after Frasier, so I can’t claim to be an expert, but it’s funny. & it takes place in New York. Win! Oh, & it’s also what I watched while I wrote this post.

Chicken enchiladas with red sauce.

So delicious & so easy!

A half recipe more than filled us up, but I’ll post the full recipe anyway. I got it from Better Homes & Gardens.

• 4 1/2 cups shredded cooked chicken
• 1 can (4 oz.) green chilies
• 1 cup lowfat sour cream, plus more to serve with
• 8 oz. shredded Mexican blend cheese, divided
• 16 6-inch tortillas
• 2 cans (10 oz. each) red enchilada sauce

1. Preheat your oven to 375.
2. In a large bowl, combine chicken, undrained chilies, sour cream, & 1 cup of the cheese.
3. Spread 1 cup of the sauce in the bottom of a 9×13 baking dish. Spoon chicken mixture down the center of a tortilla, roll up, & place, seam side down, in the bottom of the dish. Repeat with remaining tortillas & chicken mixture.
4. Bake, covered, 20 minutes or until heated through.
5. Remove from oven, remove foil, & sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake another 5 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

 

Get Your Craft On Tuesdays

Skinny Veggie Ziti.

It looks like I need to adjust my schedule slightly… I usually write my Monday-morning post on Saturday evening, but I just got called to teach the 3-year-olds at church — there are 8 of them & only 1 of me — so guess what I was doing Saturday night? How did it go? Well, let’s just say that I need to prepare more than I did last week. MUCH more.

So here I am, writing my Monday-morning post on Monday night. But it’s worth the wait, I promise!

Have you visited skinnytaste.com? If you haven’t, you definitely need to head over there & browse Gina’s recipes. She’s great at replicating the tastes of favorite meals & decadent desserts, but making them lowfat & better for you! She even includes Weight Watchers points values, for those of you who have the willpower to do that (I applaude you). This is her vegetarian baked ziti recipe. It’s low in fat, delicious (a huge hit with my whole family!), & makes a TON. So as always, I make a small pan (8×8) for now — we still had leftovers! — & freeze the rest for later.

But I’ve been running into a problem lately with my beloved foil pans: as you probably know, tomato sauce reacts with the aluminum, causing the entire dish to taste like you’re eating a can. No good! For tomato-based dishes like my stuffed shells, I had been lining the foil pan in parchment paper & then adding another layer of parchment on top before covering it with foil, but I just discovered something new & SO much easier!

Paper baking pans! I honestly can’t remember who makes them — Hefty, maybe — but I just know when I saw them at the grocery store I NEEDED THEM. They seal up so nicely with their own little lids too, don’t they? The only negative is that they don’t fit into my gallon freezer bags like the smaller foil ones did, so we’ll see how leftovers fare for extended periods in the freezer, but at least there’s no more metallic taste or parchment paper lining! Hooray!

Okay, now for what you really came here for: the recipe.

• 1 package (usually they’re 14.5 oz.) high-fiber short pasta (we used Piccolini penne because they’re cheap at Costco)
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 10 oz. frozen spinach, thawed & drained
• 28 oz. crushed tomatoes
• 1 tsp. oregano
• 2 Tbsp. chopped fresh basil (I used 1 Tbsp. dried)
• salt & pepper to taste
• 8 oz. fat-free ricotta (I could only find part-skim, so I used that)
• 1/4 cup Parmesan
• 2 cups (8-oz. pkg.) shredded part-skim mozzarella

1. Preheat oven to 375. Spray baking dishes with cooking spray.
2. Cook pasta as directed on package. Drain & return to pot.
3. Meanwhile, heat olive oil on medium heat in a medium saucepan. Saute garlic until fragrant.
4. Add spinach & tomatoes.
5. Stir in oregano, basil, & salt & pepper.
6. Pour sauce into the pot with the pasta & mix well. Add ricotta, Parmesan, & half of the mozzarella (1 cup). Mix well.
7. Spread in bottom of prepared baking dishes. Sprinkle with mozzarella. Put extra dish in the freezer.
8. Bake 27 minutes (for an 8×8 pan — 30 min. for a 9×13 if you’re not freezing leftovers) or until bubbly, cheese is melted, & edges are beginning to brown.

Get Your Craft On Tuesdays

“It’s Shake & Bake {Potatoes}, & I helped!”

Anyone else remember those commercials? Well, these potatoes don’t use the Shake & Bake mix you buy at the store; you use your very own herbs & seasonings. This keeps the sodium level down — a plus! We seriously love these potatoes. The recipe first came from one of my Young Women’s leaders in — you guessed it — the ward cookbook! That thing is worth its weight in gold, I tell you what. Since then I’ve started customizing the spices to complement whatever meal I happen to be making. They’re delicious every time!

• A couple lbs. of potatoes of your choice (we like reds & sweets), cut into 1-inch cubes (peel the sweet potatoes & russets first)
• 1 med. onion, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 1/4 cup olive oil (or enough to coat)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• seasonings of choice (see below)

Seasonings: The original recipe calls for approx. 2 Tbsp. dried rosemary & salt & pepper to taste. This way is delicious! So is using dill in its place. Tonight, though, I went with Herbes de Provence Sea Salt & my Steakhouse Grinder.

1. Preheat your oven to 375. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Let your kitchen helper help you put the potato & onion chunks in a gallon Ziploc bag.
3. Add garlic & olive oil. (You can add seasonings at this point too, but I prefer adding them later to keep it even & reduce the amount I use.)
4. Let your kitchen helper shake it up!
5. This is where I sprinkle on the seasonings evenly.
6. Arrange in a single layer on your prepared baking sheet.
7. Bake for 30 minutes or until fork-tender.

Let me know what seasonings you decide to use!

Steaks & rolls on a weeknight? Oh yes, I did! (& you can too!)

I wish I could say there was some inspired reason for breaking the Sunday Dinner mold like this. But to be honest, the steak was the first thing I saw when I opened the freezer to decide what to make for dinner tonight.

The rolls? Rhodes Bake-N-Serv rolls. Just pull as many as you want out of the freezer, & 3 hours later you have hot, fresh rolls straight out of the oven! If you’re coming home from work/soccer/Brownies/etc., they even have a quick 1.5-hour way! They really are a miracle. & they’re tasty too. We get them at Target.

Once the rolls are out of the oven, I follow the Frugal Flambe’s method for Grilling Without a Grill. I’ve mentioned it before, but I really can’t get enough of it!

Stick your cast-iron grill pan in the oven & turn it up to 500 degrees. Then take your room-temperature steak & season it how you like. He suggests salt, seasoned salt, onion salt, garlic salt, & pepper. I just kind of play with it; tonight I used garlic pepper, lemon herb seasoning, garlic salt, & this yummy potlatch seasoning.

Once the oven reaches 500 degrees, pull your grill pan out onto a medium-high burner. Splash both sides of your steaks with some Worcestershire & a spritz of PAM canola oil to keep them from sticking to the pan. Sear them for 1-2 minutes on each side, then USE YOUR OVEN MITT (not speaking from experience or anything) to put the pan, steaks & all, back in the oven for 8 minutes.

Finally, pull it back out, cover it loosely with foil for a few minutes to tenderize, & treat yourself & your family to a fancy dinner on a weeknight!

This could be a great idea for someone’s weeknight birthday or other special occasion, or just because that’s what was in the freezer!

What’s Cooking Wednesday

The meal that saved the day.

It was one of those days.

It had been raining for three days straight (whoever named Florida the Sunshine State was clearly not here during monsoon season) & we hadn’t been to the park or pool in at least that long. At one point I even heard The Munchkin talking in her sleep about wearing her “other swimsuit” at the swimming pool. In her sleep, people! Clearly this child needed to be outside.

But no. It was still raining. & Mommy was running out of ideas to keep both of us sane until Daddy got home after 7.

So Mommy put some chicken breasts in the sink to thaw for yet another humdrum dinner recipe, put on Mary Poppins (desperate times call for desperate measures), & sat down in front of the computer to look for a recipe for some tilapia I’d just bought on sale. I didn’t find one I loved the sound of (suggestions please!), but what I did find saved the day.

Mel’s Kitchen Cafe’s Honey Glazed Chicken got me excited about cooking again! It got My Husband The Lawyer excited to eat it when he walked in the door & smelled it! & it got The Munchkin excited to eat chicken without being bribed with grapes for once!

It sounds silly now that I’m sitting here typing this, but sometimes all it takes is a new yummy recipe to shake things up a bit & pull you out of your it’s-been-pouring-for-3-days-&-I’m-going-crazy rut to keep you sane for just one more day.

Here’s how I made it; I increased the oven temp to shorten cooking time (this recipe was a last-minute decision) & doubled the sauce recipe for you so that you have enough for your rice too — when I made it I halved the amount of chicken (3 breasts was plenty for the 3 of us) but not the sauce, & it was deeeeeelicious. Check her blog to see the real way.

• 2 lbs. chicken breast, diced
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• salt & pepper to taste (I’ve been loving my Steakhouse Grinder lately & used it for this)
• 6 Tbsp. butter, divided
• 1/2 cup honey
• 6 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 4 Tbsp. low-sodium soy sauce
• 1 tsp. ground ginger

1. Preheat your oven to 350. Combine flour, garlic powder, & salt & pepper in a shallow dish.
2. Melt 2 Tbsp. of your butter & pour into the bottom of a baking dish large enough to fit all of your chicken a single layer.
3. Coat chicken pieces evenly in flour, then arrange in bottom of dish.
4. Bake, uncovered, 30 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan on medium heat, combine remaining butter with honey, lemon juice, soy sauce, & ginger. Stir constantly until butter is melted & sauce is well blended.
6. Remove chicken from oven & increase temperature to 375. Flip over each piece of chicken.
7. Pour sauce evenly over chicken, then place back in the oven & bake another 20 minutes, basting with a spoon a few times (twice was fine for me) during that time. The chicken will be nice & glazed & delicious.
8. Serve over rice.

Get Your Craft On Tuesdays

Oatmeal-Raisin Pancakes.

Our first Valentine’s Day as new parents was a family occasion: we went to breakfast at the highly-touted Uptown Cafe in Bloomington. There I tried the special of the day, oatmeal-raisin pancakes. They were sublime… probably the best pancakes I’d ever had.

So tonight, for “brinner” (breakfast for dinner — any other Scrubs fans out there?), I decided to make my own. I found an oatmeal pancakes recipe over at Bees Knees Recipes as my jumping-off point. The result? Well, let’s just say that if they were this tasty even with an uneven-heating electric range & my atrocious pancake-flipping skills (if you could even call them that), they’ve gotta be great!

• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 2 cups skim milk
• 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 3/4 tsp. salt
• 3/4 tsp. cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
• 3/4 cup raisins (or to taste)

1. In a large bowl, combine oats & milk & let stand 5 minutes. (I let it stand while I got my frittata ready to go in the oven.)
2. In a smaller bowl, combine dry ingredients.
3. Add vanilla, eggs, & applesauce to oat mixture & mix well. Then blend in flour mixture. Finally, stir in raisins.
4. Use a 1/4-cup measuring cup to ladle batter for each pancake onto your nonstick griddle. You’ll likely need to stir the batter up again with each batch to keep the raisins from settling at the bottom.
5. Serve with delicious butter syrup (below). For some reason, regular old plain syrup doesn’t cut it anymore for us!

Butter syrup:

Just put a 2:1 ratio of syrup (doesn’t need to be pure — we use Log Cabin) to butter in a Pyrex measuring cup & melt in the microwave. Swirl, pour over pancakes, & enjoy!

Finding balance in transitions.

photo courtesy of Microsoft Office Online

My Husband The Lawyer (yay! We can finally say that!) has been officially employed for 2 weeks. He gets home after 7 every night. Because of this, we’ve had to move dinner & bedtime back, just so he can get an hour of face time with The Munchkin. Days are long (for him & for me). Patience is short (that’s just me). The Munchkin is also starting to reject naps, choosing instead to lie in her bed & talk to herself for over an hour before finally dropping off for less than that… & then getting cranky at like 6:30. That makes patience shorter.

After the mad “Daddy’s home, eat dinner, clean up, bath, PJs, teeth, hair, binky, story, prayer, kisses, lullabye, bed” rush, My Husband The Love Of My Life & I have less than 2 hours to do the stuff we didn’t get to during the day (blog posts, emails, dishes, etc.), get ready for bed… oh, & that thing called “interacting.” (Apparently sitting next to each other on the couch with the TV on while mutely staring at our own laptops doesn’t count.)

Then Saturday comes. We try to cram in all the family time we didn’t get during the week, & are completely exhausted for church on Sunday. We may or may not get a post-church nap. We chat with family, eat dinner, go to bed…

& do the whole thing over again the next week.

So if the quality of the photos, or depth of writing, or amount of inspiration here at Make Myself at Home has been lacking over these past couple weeks, that would be why. I’m trying to find a good time to write & brainstorm, but it’s a work in progress. Thanks so much for your patience with me & for your friendly comments! It definitely helps on those days when I’m thinking I have nothing to write about. Thanks for holding me accountable; hopefully things will get back to — & even exceed — the level you’ve come to expect.

Stay tuned!

Frustration-Free Photo Hanging.

For us, one of the hardest things about settling into a new place has been getting pictures on the walls. I always want some complicated vignette, & My Husband The Gracious always agrees to go with it, until 78 nail holes & 1 frustrated husband later, we give up.

No longer, my friends!

The secret is newspaper. (Or Publix circulars, cough cough…) It’s so much easier to move around on the wall to get it just right! Observe:

I first saw this idea on one of the many design shows on HGTV that I kind of watch if nothing else is on but don’t really follow (Except Design Star — that one I follow. The next day. When I’m folding laundry.), so I don’t remember which one it was. Since then I’ve seen it used on multiple blogs, so I thought I’d give it a shot.

(P.S.: Even if you’re not doing a vignette, this is still a great idea for those annoying frames that have 2 hangers on the back & somehow never get level no matter how many times you measure. Just us?)

Here’s what you need:

• Your pictures
• Hammer & nails
• Some newspaper
• Scissors
• Pencil
• Bold marker
• Ruler or tape measure
• Painter’s tape (or Scotch, if you’re daring or just not in the mood to go buy painter’s)
• Level (if you have it)

1. Trace your frames onto the newspaper with your pencil, trying, if you can, to line at least one edge up with a precut edge to keep it as straight as possible. You may need to tape a couple pieces together. Cut them out.
2. Turn your frame over & find the hanging hardware. Use your tape measure to measure the distance from the top & sides. Find the corresponding spot on your newspaper, measure it up, & mark the intersection with a big bold “x”.
3. Now make some tape rolls with your painter’s tape & stick them to the 4 corners of each piece of newspaper. Position them on your wall & move them around until you like what you see. Now use your level on one of the uncut edges (i.e. edges you didn’t cut because they came that way) to make sure it’s straight & perfect. Oh, & make sure your newspaper is oriented right so that your “x” isn’t at the bottom or on the back!
4. Now for the fun part! Hammer your nails into the middle of the x’s, right through the newspaper! How cool is that?
5. Finally, rip off the newspaper & tape, & hang your pictures. Beautiful! & no angry husbands, to boot!

(We need to update most of the photos in the frames once we get our family pictures back, but you get the idea. Oh, & don’t you love the grey walls & random speaker thing? The joys of apartment living…)

Happy Wednesday!