Cauliflower Casserole

This recipe I found in the book, French Kids Eat Everything by Karen Le Billion. I chose to read this book for a research paper I had to write in my Food and Culture class after my mom read it and said it was amazing. I haven't gotten very far into the book quite yet, but what I've read has been great! It has great rules for eating that I want to implement into my own future family life and some fantastic sounding recipes in the back! This is one of them :)

1 Cauliflower, chopped in bite-size pieces

4 T butter

3 T flour

2 cups Milk

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1/2 cup grated Parmesan

Optional: salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon

1. Put a pot of water to boil on the stove, preheat your oven to 350 degrees and butter a medium casserole dish.

2. Meanwhile, whop the cauliflower into bite-size pieces. Add it to pot when water is at a rolling boil. Reduce the heat slightly and cook for 5 minutes while making the white sauce.

3. To make the white sauce, melt the butter in a medium pot over medium heat. Sprinkle int he flour, stir well (until the flour is absorbed), raise the heat to high, and stir for 30 seconds. Add the milk and stir constantly until the mixture has thickened, about 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in salt, pepper, and nutmeg or cinnamon (if desired). Set aside.

4. To make the topping, mix the bread crumbs and Parmesan in a small bowl.

5. To make the gratin, drain the cauliflower (which will be soft but not floppy) and place it in the dish. Pour the white sauce on top, sprinkle with bread-crumb mixture, and bake for 10 minutes, or until the top is golden-brown and crunchy. 

Kinda Food Related

I just wanted to share this :) First, cousin Steevi came up to visit for the weekend so she could go to the YSA Institute Conference with my peeps and I. When she got here a bunch of my roommates wanted to go to Bulloch Drug for some ice-cream :) Yummy! K but here's the best part, when I got home, the awesome guy that I'm dating, Justin surprised me with this huge and absolutely gorgeous bouquet of flowers :) :) I love them!! Hint for the guys. Buy her flowers! I swoon like crazy over silly things like this. 

Random Tidbit

Pizza cutters make excellent brownie cutters. Just sayin.

Lemon Raspberry and Almond Joy Cupcakes

So here's a story. Once upon a time there was a girl name Kristen (that's me!). Kristen had a best friend named Kiersten (yes it's confusing at times). Kiersten was getting married very soon and Kristen wanted to throw Kiersten and awesome bridal shower. After much thinking, Kristen decided to do a surprise bridal shower :) Kristen didn't really think about how bad she was about keeping secrets, so the next month was a challenge for her. Finally though the day arrived. Kiersten was surprised, we ate ridiculously good lemon raspberry and Almond Joy cupcakes that Kristen made, opened some fun presents, and had a surprise Chip 'n Dale show for everyone that Kristen thought of and her good friend, Thaddeus arranged for her :) Pretty much this was the best bridal shower that any of the guests, including Kristen and Kiersten had been too, so Kristen was pretty pleased with herself :) The end! Enjoy some pics.

 The raspberry frosting was super runny, so I think I'm going to try to adjust it a little in the near future. Just so you know :)

 The game Key Lime Pie is a must at these events :)

 Here come the strippers :)

 Mormon style, of course. 

Chicken Salad

Alright, so first off, this isn't my own picture. I borrowed it from my mom's blog, because sadly I ate all my chicken salad before I remembered to take a picture :P Which is especially sad, because this stuff lasted me like a week! Just not thinkin' these days I guess ha. Anyways! So, this is a super good summer dish. It's perfect for those days that you just want something cold, delicious, filling, and satisfying. I had it at one of my cousin's weddings and my life was never the same! ;)

Hello Dolly's

Sooo I love coconut. As I'm sure I've expressed before haha So for this past Friday's delicious treat, I made Hello Dolly's! The recipe is super easy, fast, and delicious! So glad I have leftovers :)

Mandarin Orange Chicken Quinoa Salad

Perfect summers meal. So freaking good and easy! Filling, too :) Ignore the horrible quality of this picture :P It's a beautiful dish!

Chocolate Mousse Cookies

Pretty much we have the coolest home teachers ever and Big Momma Tony and Michael came over and made us girls a freaking delicious dinner consisting of BBQ chicken, brown rice, cornbread, and green beans. Yummy! As a thank you, I was going to make these scrumptious things, but Tony already brought over pre-made dessert :P But the ingredients would have gone bad, so later tonight, Kiersten and I finished them up and indulged a little :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to all! So, I don't know why, because I've never had a significant other on this day of love, but I've always loved Valentine's Day :) It's such a happy day and I''m just always in such a good mood! Today was no exception :) After decorating the best sugar cookies I've ever tasted in my Family Comm class, Elese and I were very excited to start our Valentine's fun! For this amazing day we got a cupcake shaped pinata, had cheese and chocolate fondue (for the chocolate we just melted chocolate flavored almond bark in a crock pot), watched Return to Me, and spooned 2 of the best men in the world, Ben & Jerry ;) It was a freaking fantastic day, the best Valentine's day I've had ever, and I'm so glad that I could spend it with Elese and Chaliece :) 

And then Elese and I tend to get a little crazy with the ice-cream... Enjoy our trying to be seductive pictures :)

Cheesecake and Doughnuts

So in one of my classes we did an assignment where we had to split into groups, pretend that we are lost in the wilderness, and then choose out of a list what items we wanted to save our lives. One of the guys in my group took upon the title of ring leader and mostly he chose the items that we should use. Turns out all he chose were the wrong ones bahaha! So, jokingly, I said that because he killed us all, he owed me cheesecake and the rest of my class doughnuts. I was kidding, but he really brought it!! Everyone loved their doughnuts and I absolutely loved the cheesecake. It was so, so, so good :)

Banana Nut Bread

So my amazing Gramma gave me a cool bread loaf pan for Christmas and I wanted an excuse to use it, so I got her favorite bread recipes and I tried this one out :) Super, super yummy and I loved the recipe! I'll definitely use it again.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

1/4 C butter
3/4 C sugar
1 Egg
2/3 C mashed bananas
1 C flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
3 T buttermilk
1/2 C chopped walnuts

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and distribute into the pan of your choice. Bake for 40-45 minutes.

Mini Pigs in a Blanket

Or little wienees as I like to call them :) It's the Super Bowl baby!! Now I'm not a big fan of football and such, but a couple of my roommates are huge fans, so we had a party :) There was sooo much food and it was all sooo good! Here's what I made :)

And here is the rest of our deliciousness!

Buttermilk Pancakes and Cake

So once upon a time I had a ridiculous amount of Buttermilk to use, because I bought waaaaay too much for a different recipe that will be posted shortly. So I had to think of ways to use it up! So I googled for recipes and found one for buttermilk pancakes and buttermilk cake! Sounds good right? Well, they were good! The pancakes had an absolutely fantastic taste to them and were so soft and moist. The cake was too die for! it was a tea cake kind of deal, so it was really light and not too sweet. Which is perfect for a treat when you don't want to kill yourself with sugar!

Cupcake Maddness

Happy Birthday, Chaliece!! For her birthday I made some delicious cupcakes that turned out really pretty! I was super excited to use my new piping set and am very pleased with the turn-out :D

Coconut Peanut Butter Toast

Sometimes you gotta spice up you breakfast a little. Try peanut butter on toast with coconut flakes sprinkled on top. Yummm.

Chicken Broccoli Casserole

Back home in the fabulous Cedar City, so it's time to make my own dinners again! Tonight was Chicken Broccoli Casserole :) This lovely meal has been a regular at home for a long, long time! Love it :) And it's super easy! My mom's blog post for this recipe is kind of difficult to read, so I'm going to give the link and post the recipe :) Enjoy!

What you need:

1 1/2 bags frozen broccoli

Cooked chicken (enough to cover the bottom of a 9X13 pan)

Grated Cheddar Cheese (enough to cover the bottom of a 9X13 pan)

2 cans Cream of Chicken soup

Mayo (a little less than the amount of soup)

Juice of half a Lemon

Bread crumbs (enough to cover the bottom of a 9X13 pan)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Layer first 3 ingredients in a 9X13 pan. Combine next 3 ingredients, then spread over layers in pan. Cover with bread crumbs. Cook for 35-40 min or until heated through and golden. Serve over rice.

Doughnuts 'n Cake Bites

Christmas break = Delicious treats 'err day :) Thank you Beyond Glaze and The Sweet Tooth Fairy!

Cinnamon Rolls

Geeze laweeze, so I know it's been absolutely forever since I've posted on this blog. About 3 months actually! Life has been busy ha. So this first of my late posts is from Christmas. Sooo Merry Christmas!! I hope you all had a wonderful day :) It's been tradition in my family to have these Fantabulous Flapjacks for breakfast in the morn, so of course we had them and they were fantastic :) We did get a delicious can of Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls, so we popped those open, too! Here's a yummy pic :) 

And here's some pics from my fantastic Christmas :)

The traditional line-up :)

All my loot! :D