Cheater Chili

Remember back in November when I set out on a search for the perfect chili? Well, um... I haven't exactly been diligent in my searching. We haven't made chili since. Whoops.

A couple of years ago, we went to our friends' house for a Super Bowl party. They made chili for us, and it was really good. After our "meh" experience with the chili we tried in November, I remembered our friends' chili. So, the next time we saw them, I asked for the recipe. They had just had a baby, she was going back to work, etc., so weeks went by before we actually got the recipe. And once we had it in our hands, I had to laugh--it was cheater chili!

What do I mean by cheater chili? It's from a kit!

But you know... sometimes, there's really no reason to make things more difficult than they should be. Do I still want to find a good, more complex, truly "homemade" chili? Yes. With that said, there are times when "cheater chili" is more than appropriate.

We bought the ingredients for this chili several weeks ago, but something came up and we bumped it off of the menu for the week. We wanted to make it before it gets too warm out, so we decided to give it a go this weekend. Saturday was absolutely gorgeous and so NOT chili weather, but Sunday, although warm, was rainy and gloomy, and chili was a good fit.

Off of our friend's recommendation, we used the Carroll Shelby's Chili Kit. We only used about half that salt packet... it seemed like a lot of salt! And we certainly didn't miss the other half of it. For the record, I had a really hard time locating this kit in my grocery store. I ended up asking a stock person, and as it turned out, it was located with all of the gravy mixes. Go figure!

We "made it our own" by adding two cans of kidney beans, a green pepper, and an onion (in addition to the ingredients listed on the back of the box--ground beef, a small can of tomato sauce, and water). We also served it over brown rice.

Cheater Chili

(Source: Carroll Shelby)

Ingredients:
- 1 lb. ground beef
- 1 (8 oz.) can tomato sauce (we used "No Salt Added")
- 2 (8 oz.) cans filled with water
- 1 large onion, diced
- 1 large green pepper, diced
- 2 cans red kidney beans
- 6 cups brown rice, prepared
- shredded cheddar for topping

Directions:
1. In large skillet, combine ground beef, green peppers and onions. Cook over high heat until meat is browned and vegetables are soft.

2. Pour meat/veggie mixture into stock pot. Add tomato sauce, water, and beans. From the kit, add seasoning packet, salt, and cayenne pepper. Stir until combined. Simmer for 15 minutes.

3. For thicker chili, combine masa flour packet (included in kit) with 1/3 cup water. Pour into chili. Simmer for an additional 5 minutes.

4. Serve chili over rice. Top with shredded cheddar.

Could it be any easier?

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Big Saturday Plans

This weekend has been nice. No plans, nowhere we need to be, nothing we need to do.

Today we took Tessa on a couple of walks, ran a couple of errands (used them as an excuse to be out in the beautiful weather), had an awesome dinner... And now we are settling in with a DVD rental.

We are enjoying the peace and relaxation while it lasts!

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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Lazy Friday Night

Michael is out with a couple guys, so Tessa and I are at home lazing on the couch with season 1 of Grey's Anatomy on DVD. Ahhh... This is the life.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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Oh Deer!

For about 10 minutes every morning, I sit on the couch, eat my cereal, and watch Saved by the Bell television news. This week, I've mostly stuck to CNN's American Morning, because every time I flipped to Today, it was either on commercial, or Lester Holt was on. I didn't think anything of it, just that the usual crew was out this week.

This morning, I apparently turned the channel to Today at just the right moment, because 1) I saw that Matt Lauer was in a sling, 2) People in the crowd outside were all wearing deer antlers, and 3) They showed a clip of Brian Williams leaving a "get well" message for Matt and an animated deer suddenly hopped across the screen.

And since I didn't have any other TV time left, I was left to simply wonder... what.the.hell? I was wondering if the people on this show had finally lost their marbles.

Now, several hours later, I just remembered to Google. And now I know what happened to Lauer!

From Newsday:

Matt Lauer nearly collides with deer while biking
March 24, 2009

NEW YORK - A deer got the best of Matt Lauer.

The 51-year-old "Today" show host separated his shoulder while bicycling on Long Island over the weekend when he slammed on his brakes to avoid a deer and went flying.

Lauer missed Monday's show and became the butt of good-natured jokes by his colleagues. Executives say he should be back later in the week. Meanwhile, "Today" weekend co-anchor and NBC "Nightly News" anchorman Lester Holt is filling Lauer's slot.

Lauer, an avid bicyclist who took a practice ride at the Beijing Olympics, was wearing a helmet at the time of the Saturday mishap.

While this has been on my list of fears as a cyclist, it is also some really funny shit. Made even funnier by the fact that it happened to Matt Lauer, of all people. I actually don't even really like him--I just think he's kind of a tool--so I'm not sure why I even watch Today. (I don't care for Meredith Vieira, either. I'm "meh" on Al Roker. You know what? I like Ann Curry. When I was in NYC in 2004, she was super awesome to my grandmother. So, Ann Curry? You're the reason I watch Today.)

Anyway, I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh a little. You know, since he wasn't seriously injured and all. Apparently, all of his coworkers were getting a big chuckle out of it, too.

In the spring/summer/fall, we often ride our bikes along a canal trail that goes through some pretty heavily wooded areas. And we have seen deer along the trail. There have been more than a few times when I've been speeding down one of the hillier portions, and I've thought to myself, If a deer ran out in front of me right now, I'd be in so.much.trouble.

So thanks a lot, Matt Lauer. Thanks for the laugh (and for being a good sport about all the crap you're getting). Oh, and for helping to confirm my fears. Yikes!

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Ready, Set... BAKE!

Once again, you have a mission (please accept it!): Brighten the day of a soldier serving overseas. Our soldier for Round 7, Jennifer, is on the other side of the world, and she's had some rough times lately. And you can help cheer her up.

How? Well, it's simple. Packages from home. From YOU.

If you're a regular reader, you probably remember my post about Operation Baking Gals in December. And then you probably remember the post about Round 6 in February. Well, now Round 7 is officially upon us, and we need to get started. So many of you participated last time, and I'm hoping you'll all be willing to do it again.

There is a new organizer over at www.bakinggals.com, and for some reason, she wouldn't let me have two teams this round. So I guess that means Jennifer will be receiving a LOT of packages, right? RIGHT?? :) Once again, I hope you'll knock my socks off with your willingness to help our "Heather Drive" soldier.

All you have to do is go to www.bakinggals.com, sign in (or create an account if you don't have one--so easy, it's free, and you won't get spammed by a ton of e-mails, either), and then register with Team Heather Drive - Rossin. You'll do this by clicking on "Join a Round 7 Team Here" (you must be signed in to do this).

You will find the shipping address information for our soldier under "Round Seven Info - Meet the Teams." There is an article in there for our team that contains details about our soldier, her story, and the address for where to ship your packages.

DON'T BAKE? No TIME to bake? Well, that's NO EXCUSE. :) There are plenty of store-bought things that the soldiers can use and enjoy. Please visit the Baking Gals FAQ section for a list of acceptable items to send.

Ship dates for Round 7 are April 1 through April 10, so you can basically bake and send starting this weekend. So preheat those ovens and start whipping together those baked goods!

Be sure to include a bit of "yourself" in your packages as well. Cards, letters, pictures... anything that will give Jennifer a little bit of an idea of who you are, and let her know how thankful you are for the sacrifice she is making for all of us. You may even want to include a link to your blog, or an e-mail address. Last round, I know some people received e-mails from the soldiers they baked for!

If you are baking, there is important information for you in the FAQ section, too, including tips on how to ensure that your baked goods get there in good condition. Additional info about the organization and my experience with it so far can be found in my original post from December.

Remember, the best thing to use is a large Flat Rate box from USPS. You should be able to pick one up at your local post office (the box is free). Take it home, pack it full of as many goodies as possible, and then take it back to mail it. You'll get a discounted rate for sending it to an APO/FPO address. Normally, it costs $12.95, and I think it's $10.95 to send to the soldiers.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. E-mail me at roadtotheaisle@gmail.com, or leave a message in the comments. If you do that, though, just make sure to check back, because I will answer you in the comments as well.

Also, if you participate, I want to hear about it! If you have a blog, post about your experience--Pictures of your baking, you with your package, etc., maybe post the recipe for the goodies you made. Then send me a link to your Baking Gals blog post, or leave a link in my comments section. Only one or two people did this for me last time, so it wasn't too much of a success, but if I get a big enough response, I'd like to compile everyone's pictures and stories and post about them later in April.

So come on, baking gals! Get baking! :) And thank you so much!

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Dirt Cake

For the baby shower, in addition to the cookies I made for favors, I also made a bugs-themed cake--you know, for dessert. :)

I used my big jelly roll pan (10.5 x 15.5") and made a gigantic chocolate fudge cake. And OK, I'll admit it. I cheated. The cake was from a box. Good ol' Betty came to my aid yet again. (It was good stuff.)

Once it was done, I did cut it into two layers. The filling? Oreo buttercream. Then I frosted it with vanilla buttercream that I colored bright green. I put a couple handfuls of Oreos through the food processor to make "dirt," and then spread that around on the top of the cake in a big rectangle. Then, using one of my Wilton piping tips, I piped all of that awesome looking grass onto the top edges and the sides. It was a bit of a pain in the ass, but it was worth it in the end. I absolutely loved how this turned out.

To finish it all off, I placed several gummy worms on top, then made a little sign with a quote on it that tied the cake back into the "baby boy" shower theme. "Boys are meant for kisses and hugs, for watching rainbows, and catching bugs."

Perfect!

We didn't stop with just a "dirt and grass" decorated cake. No, sir. On Friday night, when were doing the food preparation at my mom's, Marie and I also threw together a "real" dirt cake. And we served it right out of a bucket!

It was the cutest. Vanilla pudding, cream cheese, cool whip, butter... all mixed together and then layered with... you guessed it, more "dirt." The dirt for this dessert was made up of about 1.5 packages of Oreos. It was a lot of dirt!

Topped it off with more gummi worms and stuck a small bunch of fake flowers in it. Also made another little sign with another quote on it that related to boys and dirt. "Trucks and dirt and shades of blue, little boys are angels, too." Put together, and with the rest of our decor, it was really quite adorable.

Here is what it looked like once it had been mostly devoured. It was a huge hit! (Such a hit, in fact, that Kara's 6-year-old cousin told me she wished I was her mommy! *gasp* It was really sweet, I just wish she hadn't said it right in front of her real mommy!)

I wasn't sure how many people were going to want to eat the dirt cake AND the chocolate cake, but everyone wanted both. Since the dirt cake was kind of like "cookies and cream," it went really well with the chocolate cake--it served as a good ice cream substitute. In case you're interested in trying this out, I'll share the recipe that we used.

Dirt Cake

(Source: Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

- 1/2 cup butter, softened

- 1 (8 oz.) package cream cheese, softened

- 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar

- 2 (3.5 oz.) packages instant vanilla pudding mix

- 3 1/2 cups milk

- 1 (12 oz.) container frozen whipped topping, thawed

- 32 oz. (2 packages) Oreo cookies

Directions:

1. Chop Oreo cookies very fine in a food processor. The white cream will disappear.

2. Mix butter, cream cheese, and sugar in a bowl.

3. In a large bowl, mix milk, pudding mix, and whipped topping together.

4. Combine pudding mixture and cream cheese mixture.

5. Layer in flower pot or bucket, starting with cookies, then cream mixture. Repeat layers.

6. Chill until ready to serve.

7. Add gummy worms, artificial flowers, and trowel. Enjoy!

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Bug Cookies

I spent much of last week working on baking and decorating bug cookies for the baby shower yesterday.

The process was even more time-consuming than usual because I was making so many different shapes, and each of them was so detailed. I was pretty happy with how they came out, so in the end, it was worth it. Everyone at the shower loved them, and I think it was a pretty nice favor for each of them to take home!

Here are some photos of the cookies. One of the whole group:

And then each cookie individually:

The caterpillar

The bee. The details on his wings are difficult to see, but there was a pattern of lines on the tips of his wings, and then polka dots toward the middle.

The ladybug. I think these ones were my favorite.

The snail. Cute, but the swirl of the shell was really hard to do well.

The dragonfly. Probably my other favorite. I used a toothpick to combine two different colors on the wings, and I loved how it turned out.

This is how the favors were put together. Everyone got one big cookie, and then a small bee. I put them into cookie bags, and tied them with curling ribbon, and added an "It's a Boy!" charm.

As always, I used this recipe for the sugar cookie cutouts.

Tomorrow, I'll share more details about the cake!

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Bugs Baby Shower

You may (or may not) have noticed my lack of every day blog posting this past week. I tried to stay on top of it, but I missed a day here and there because I was just too busy! I spent the entire week preparing for Kara's baby shower, which was this afternoon. As you may recall, Kara is my brother's girlfriend, and they are expecting a baby boy in just eight short weeks!

My other brother's fiancee, Marie, and I hosted the shower, with help from my mom (and well, um, the use of her HOUSE, which needless to say, was pretty important). The party went as planned, everybody showed up, everyone had a good time, and the mom-to-be was, of course, appropriately showered with gifts.

I posted a photo of the invitations back when I designed them in January, but here it is again so you can see how it ended up fitting in with the theme. Marie and I made and mailed the invitations back in February.

I did my best to take a ton of photos so that Kara wouldn't have to worry about it. I found out I did a pretty good job when I came home and uploaded nearly 200 photos to my computer. Anyway, I just e-mailed over 100 pics to Kara, and figured I'd share several of them here, too.

Before the guests arrived, I went around and took photos of our setup.

This is my mom's dining room, where we set the table up for a buffet. I didn't get pics once the food was set, but we served Italian bread, salad, baked ziti, and meatballs.

We set up the cake and the buckets filled with favors (bug cookies) in the dining room as well, on a table next to the windows. (I made these, but we'll talk more about the baked goods later!)

Cake and dirt cake (again, more on that later--probably a post tomorrow!)

Close-ups of the favor buckets. I bought these felt bug buckets at Michaels. I was in there one day for something else and happened upon these. I couldn't believe my luck--they fit in with our theme perfectly!

In the kitchen, we set up the island with the snacky stuff. We kept it simple because we wanted people to still be hungry enough to eat the lunch we were serving. Cheese, crackers, chips and dip (an absolute necessity at any function in my family), and a veggie platter.

On the kitchen table, we put the diaper cake I made. This was my first crack at one of these, and I was really happy with how it came out. I just realized I didn't take close enough pics to show this, but the diapers? They actually had bug designs on them. That was another coincidence that completely worked in my favor.

I purchased Target diapers to use for the cake, and as we were walking to the checkout, I noticed through the sides of the package that there were designs on the diapers. At first I thought, "I can't use these!" because I wanted them to be plain white diapers. But as I looked more closely, I realized that the designs were bugs. Could it have worked out more perfectly?

For the diaper cake items, I bought a 6-pack of baby socks, a 3-pack of little teethers, a 6-pack of baby spoons, a 2-pack of pacifiers, and the little frog rattle/teether toy for the top. I made the little wooden sign with the baby's name (Hunter) on it to lean on the front. The colors and theme of the sign match the baby's nursery. I figured they could reuse the sign by hanging it on the nursery door (which they plan to do).

Drink station. The punch was spiked with a bit of champagne, so the mommy-to-be had to avoid it. Everyone else enjoyed it, though!

Marie took care of coming up with and putting together a few games to be played throughout the shower. This was the setup of the baby food game. The baby food containers were unlabeled, and everyone had to guess the contents (without tasting or smelling).

It was cute: Instead of just numbering the containers, she labeled each one with a letter from Hunter's name.

Before we knew it, Kara arrived, and the guests started coming shortly after.

The mommy-to-be, Kara.

My 20-month-old cousin, Mia. She was so well-behaved!

Shower hostesses! Marie and me.

We had prepared the pans of ziti on Friday night, so we put them in the oven to bake shortly after people started arriving. Once all of the guests were there, we still had a bit of time for the ziti, so we decided to keep everyone busy with a game.

Marie had planned a "Price is Right"-type game with baby items. We split everyone up into teams of 4-5 people, then gave them sheets of paper Marie had prepared with a list of 10 baby items. On the bottom of the sheet was a "bank" with prices listed, and the groups had to work together to try to match the correct prices to the correct baby items. Apparently it was pretty difficult, because most of our teams were awful at it. :) Our winning team only got 4 correct!

Marie had purchased some really awesome prizes (Tote bags filled with different types of goodies. One was movie-themed, with a Blockbuster gift card, tons of candy, and popcorn. Another was wine themed, with two bottles of wine, wine glasses, and a wine stopper. The last was beach themed, with a beach towel, manicure/pedicure set, flip-flops, etc.). Because of this, we only planned to give three prizes away. As a result, we knew from the beginning that we couldn't have the whole team of people win the "Price is Right" game. Instead, we had the members of the winning team move onto a bonus round.

The bonus game? They had to properly diaper a baby while blindfolded. Whoever did it correctly the fastest won. Even though Kara wasn't on the winning team, we thought it was only fair that the mom-to-be got to participate in the bonus round, too. And guess what? She won! Good to know she is prepared for those late nights changing diapers in the dark. :)

Mia sitting quietly and reading with another of my little cousins, 4-year-old Kiara.

After lunch, we decided to keep moving things along and got Kara situated in the living room to begin opening gifts.

One of my favorite gifts that she received. It was from my mom, and it's a bib that says, "cute but messy... just like daddy." Given that daddy is my "baby" bro, I can tell you from experience. SO APPROPRIATE. :)

GO BILLS!

Big gift from my dad--the travel system.

From Michael and me... the pack 'n' play!

After gifts, we wanted to wrap things up with dessert. Once everyone ate the tasty treats, people began to head out. Successful baby shower, for sure!

The parents-to-be. My brother, Trevor, showed up at the end to thank everyone and start loading gifts in his Jeep to take back to their apartment. I love this photo of them; it's so cute!

After we had cleaned up most of the shower mess, I stopped back to Trevor and Kara's apartment to see how the nursery looked with all of the furniture set up in it (since we painted it last weekend!). I realized that we hadn't gotten a photo of Kara and me, so we took one while we were there.

I'm so relieved to be done with all of the shower planning! Marie and I had a great time doing all of it, but it was a lot of work (especially this past week), so it's nice to know that it's done and it was a success. I was so happy to do it for Kara and Trevor, and of course my little nephew. I can't wait to meet him!

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Nine Months

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