Weekly Pinspirations

I happen to be completely addicted to kettle corn. I've been buying Popcorn Indiana's Kettle Corn for a while, but not only has it gotten more expensive lately, it's also become very hard to find around here. In the interest of saving money and time searching for it, I decided to make some at home. I tried making kettle corn about a year ago, but I did something wrong because the sugar was burnt and the whole batch tasted like burnt sugar - not good. This time I decided to consult Pinterest and I decided on this recipe:

To be honest, this pin is a little vague and I mostly just used it for the proportions of the ingredients. When I made kettle corn before, I think my problem was that I added the sugar too early which caused it to burn. This time, I decided to add the kernels and the sugar at the same time = success! I also used coconut oil which adds a little natural sweetness even if you don't want to add the sugar. Here is what mine looked like:

lol I didn't notice until now that even my bowl is the same color as the picture in the pin. My kettle corn came out seriously awesome and it filled this entire bowl! The best part of this is how much it cost to make. I bought the corn kernels a long time ago on a buy 1 get 1 free sale and got 2 bottles for $5.99. It only took 1/2 a cup for this recipe which was maybe 1/8th of the bottle so that's $0.38. And a rough cost for the 1/4 cup of sugar is about $0.14 right now. I received the coconut oil free to try, so this batch cost me about $0.52 plus a few shakes of sea salt and the power it took to make it. That's a pretty big difference from almost $5 for a small bag of Popcorn Indiana which is what my local Walgreens has it priced at now. I think I may become not just a kettle corn eating addict, but a making addict as well :)

My second pin was encouraged by my family :) My favorite cookbook is the Our Best Bites cookbook and they have a recipe for Brazilian Lemonade that I have always wanted to try out and I mentioned it to my mom and sisters a week or so ago. We went over to my parent's house on Sunday for a birthday/going away party for my new bro-in-law and my mom had a bag of limes waiting for me. She said she figured I could make it for the party :) I didn't have my cookbook with me, but luckily this is one of their recipes they also posted on their website, so I was able to access it and make it up.

This was my version. Isn't that the perfect pitcher for Brazilian Lemonade? Even though it's called "lemonade" there are no lemons. It's made using limes and I mean the whole lime! You chop it up and throw all the pieces in the blender with sugar water, then pour it through a strainer to get the chunks out. Then you add sweetened condensed milk. Mmmm... I will say, I had to add a bit more sugar than the recipe calls for, but that might be because our limes weren't fully ripe yet. It was really tasty though :) I also highly recommend adding a little bit of sprite to it - delicious!

So those are my pins I tried this past week :) Have you tried anything good lately?

Great Intro To Canning Post at Our Best Bites

Even though this isn't something I'm writing myself, I just read the Introduction To Home Canning post over at Our Best Bites (who I love) and I really wanted to share it. This post is chock full of links and info on how to accomplish canning for yourself at home. I've done freezer canning a bunch of times, but I've never taken that step over into anything but jam lol. I've been thinking about canning for quite a while, but this post has really sealed the deal and I plan on taking the plunge :)

So head over here to see what I'm talking about and get ready to can!

Weekend Update: Food and Paint

lol Those items were not used together, just so you know. This weekend was all about getting sh*t done. I cleaned the kitchen thoroughly, did like 7 loads of laundry, cooked, sewed, hung hung stuff up, and painted. I'm sure I could list something else too, but that makes me sound busy enough, right? Right.

Let's start with the exciting things - the food :) I had a bunch of strawberries waiting to be eaten, and I got it into my head to make strawberry shortcake from scratch. I used the Basic Baked Scones recipe from Our Best Bites for the shortcake and I have to say, they came out perfect. I just sliced up the strawberries with a little sugar (to get some juices flowing) and topped the scones with them. MMmmmmm...

Doesn't it look delish? I will confess, we ate them with ice cream too. The pic above was my breakfast scone lol.

Last night, I decided to make a nice dinner - a rare and difficult occurrence for us, trust me. I had run across the Creamy Baked Chicken Taquitos recipe in my Our Best Bites cookbook the previous day and thought it would be a great way to shake up our dinner routine. The taquitos weren't hard to make, though I did have to go out and buy a few fresh items that we don't usually have around - so worth it. The cookbook recommends you use their Cilantro-Lime Ranch Dressing to dip the taquitos in, so I made that too lol. It's really zippy but really good. I rounded off the meal with some yellow rice - also with fresh cilantro (I was on a roll).

The best part about this meal is that it wasn't crazy fattening like you would normally think taquitos would be. The taquitos are baked and I used light mayo for the ranch dressing, so it was nice and light - total win win! I would honestly recommend their cookbook to anyone - it's one of my favorites and I've never made a single thing in there that wasn't delicious.

I'll post about the other goings on of the weekend shortly. You can just salivate over the yummy food photos until then :)