Pinterest Review: Grandma's Country White Bread

Happy Saturday, my friends! We're all sick here... again! I was hoping the sickness would go away with January, but no.  The husband is down for the count.

Meanwhile, I've been a busy lady and have a pin review for you today!  I'm reviewing the recipe for "Grandma's Country White Bread" found HERE and seen all over Pinterest.

The finished product...

Folks, this bread is delicious.  Make it!  I made it Thursday night while my parents-in-law were here and my Mother-in-law and I each enjoyed a nice, warm, fresh-from-the-oven slice with butter. Oh my lanta.  GOOD.  I let the bread sit out awhile and cut a warm loaf (the recipe yields two loaves).  The cuts were weird and crazy and I could only get 8 (HUGE) slices out of the thing which created 4 point* slices.  Ew.  Not good when I'm used to spending 1 per slice!

I covered the other loaf with a towel and left it out all night.  In the morning I was able to slice it to 16 slices and they are 3 points* each, but 5 points* for 2.  Not great at all, but the bread is still pretty hearty and thick (I wish I could have sliced more slices, but it's tricky and I'm learning!).

Oh, hey cute bread making helper!  :)

A few tips...

-- Let the loaves sit out overnight to cool before slicing or you'll have funky slices.  This is seriously the most important tip of all.

-- When the bread rises in the bread pans, it'll take another hour so account for that (she didn't say how long this would take in her recipe).

-- For me, the baking took 30 minutes, not 25.  It probably could have gone another 3-5 minutes, but I was afraid of burnt/brown bread.

-- Next time, I'll be doing wheat.  Unbeknownst to me after 4.5 years of marriage, my husband loathes white bread so he didn't really enjoy it simply for that fact.

And one point...

Where can you buy cheap flour?  I bought a bag at Target of the recommended flour and it was $2.50.  It took me half the bag of flour (7 cups) to make the bread making the two loaves flour cost $1.25 IE $.75 per loaf.  This is still GREAT savings, but not $.39 per loaf with all ingredients factored in.  So if you know where to buy cheap flour, please tell me!

All in all, I LOVED this bread and even if it's still $1 a loaf, I'm still saving my family money, saving us from preservatives and chemicals, and it feels really stinking good to slice up some bread and say, "Here, I MADE this for YOU.  Enjoy your toast!"

*All Weight Watcher points configured by plugging the ingredients into the recipe builder on my etools on weightwatchers.com.

Crock Pot Chicken Stroganoff

Lately, my little one, E, has made it impossible to cook dinner.  At 12 months, he's hit that age where he straddles toddlerhood and babyhood and wants to be independent until he really needs you to pick him up especially if you're doing something because he's a toddler and is curious! Whew!  It was the worst when it was time to make dinner so I resolved to browse through Pinterest and find a lot of crock pot dishes to try because ladies and gents, when you have a toddler (or even if you don't) and especially if you have more than one busy toddler, the crock pot is your bestest best friend.  Anyway, in my hunting, I've had a lot of hit and miss recipes we've tried, but two have risen to the top and been added to our "go to" dinners.  I've tweaked both recipes but because I found them through Pinterest I've given the original blogger credit because without them, I would not have had created such delicious, CONVENIENT dinners.

So today, chicken stroganoff originally from Chef-in-Training found here.

Below, is my version... (which is 9 Weight Watcher points for 3/4 cup)

Ingredients:
- 1 lb chicken breast
- 1 packet dry onion soup (2oz)
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup
- 8 oz light sour cream
- coriander seasoning (optional)

This is SO simple, friends.  Just take your raw chicken breast and toss it into your crock pot.  Then, mix the two soups together in a bowl and cover the chicken with them.  Next, sprinkle on a pinch of coriander, set your crock pot to low and walk away for 3.5-4.5 hours.

Thirty minutes before you plan to enjoy your dinner (or whenever you're down to 1 hour before dinner and your children are momentarily distracted), add the 8 oz of sour cream to the crock pot (I also went ahead and shredded my chicken. Shredding it removed the process of cutting it all up at dinner for me!).  It's best not to add creams or milks to your crock pot in the beginning of cooking because the food will break down too much and you'll lose a lot of that rich, creamy flavor and you could also scald the dairy product.

And that's it! 30 minutes or so later switch your crock pot to warm or serve up your chicken stroganoff over some yolk free egg noodles with a side of green beans (my recipe here is good!) if your kids will continue to be distracted long enough for you to cook a side.  But just so you know, this is so good you don't HAVE to have egg noodles.  I opted out when I wanted seconds to save myself the extra Weight Watcher points.  ;)

Enjoy!

Pin Review: Cheesy Enchilada Casserole

I pinned this casserole awhile ago and shortly thereafter my good blog friend Melissa commented on the pin and said her family had made it and loved it.  And then I waited a really long time to make it because life happens and I was changing things up much.  But now, I am!  I made 3 new recipes just last week and this by far was our FAVORITE of all.  It was so yummy I got the ingredients to make it again this week.  I also didn't take a picture of my casserole because I was too busy stuffing my face so the photo credit goes to Jonna.

source

When I first penned this casserole onto our menu I knew I had to figure up the points plus values then for Weight Watcher purposes or I'd cook it and have a "meh!" moment where I mentally declared it to be 5 points for half the dish (just kidding - kind of!).  The whole casserole was a lot of points so I immediately halved it and resolved to bake it into a 8x8 dish.  I then made some minor modifications that brought the total down to 10 points per 1/4th of an 8x8 casserole OR 7 points for 1/6th of a 9x13 casserole.  You could lighten it up even more by using a fat free cheese, but I just can't bring myself to enjoy fat free cheese so I use the real stuff.  You could also use less cheese but I don't because cheese is yummy.  And healthy.  Right?

So the modified recipe is...

1/2lb lean ground beef
1/3 onion finely chopped
1 1/4 cup salsa
1/2 can kidney beans (drained)
1/8 cup italian dressing
1T taco seasoning
1/8t cumin
2 low fat (I use Mission) flour tortillas (corn would also be less and you could use more)
1/2 can of corn
1/4 cup sour cream (light)
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

For cooking instructions I'd like to refer you back to Jonna's site so I'm not hoarding the recipe here, but again, I'd like to stress this is indeed very, very good!

So this pin is definitely two thumbs up!  Thank you, Pinterest!  And Jonna!

Oh, and also, my almost-2-year-old loved this too and it was not too spicy for him.  A meal an almost-2-year-old inhales that isn't pizza or chicken nuggets is always a win in my book!

Pin Review: Copy Cat Chipotle Guacamole

So the majority of my pins are food.  I have two food related pin boards: recipes and Weight Watchers recipes.  But here's the honest truth... in the 24 weeks I've been on Weight Watchers, I've cooked off the regular recipe board more often and have just made sure to always plug recipes into my e-tools and modify what I can to lighten things up a bit.  That being said, the majority of these pin reviews will probably be food.  If you didn't already know, I LOVE to cook!  :)

We love Chipotle.  Love it!  Our standard operation is to get J a quesadilla kid's meal he can't finish so the husband finishes it for him, to split a burrito, and to order chips and guacamole.  Half a burrito, 7 chips and a little guacamole is definitely worth the points spent (usually around 18 of my 44 daily).  If you haven't tried Chipotle, you should.  It's amazing.  And organic!  Bonus!

I also love avocados.  Seriously.  I'm obsessed.  I bought 6 for this week at the grocery store Friday.  I eat them on sandwiches, toast, plain... and in guacamole which is something Josh loves too!  So I found this pin for copy cat guacamole.  This was my FIRST copy cat recipe to attempt and I seriously had my doubts.

So here's the pin image:

source

And the pin link is HERE.

And here's what my guacamole (and the mess of making my guacamole and the fact that it's not pretty...) looked like:

The verdict: Josh LOVED this.  He thought it was incredible and has made it for himself since.  He also believed it tasted JUST like Chipotle's guacamole.  I did not love it as much as I love the guacamole recipe I've conjured up (which is also amazing because I can whip up a batch in under 5 minutes - recipe coming!) because I tend to not like strong, crunchy vegetables in their raw form and this has red onion and jalapeno and those are definitely strong, crunchy vegetables when raw!  I'm making this guacamole again despite that, however, because my husband does love it so.  We LOVE fish tacos (recipe coming soon) and I plan to whip up a batch on fish taco night.  My intent this time is to use a little less red onion and a little less jalapeno and to chop both finer.

SO I definitely recommend this guacamole recipe especially if you love Chipotle's guacamole!  Two thumbs up!

Pin Review: DIY Miracle Pan Cleaning Solution

So it's been awhile! I'm always trying to find that balance of making time for things I enjoy - like blogging - and the other things I have to do every day (changing 8-10 diapers, feeding kids, cleaning up messes constantly, never ending laundry, playing with the babies... you know, life stuff!).  That being said, I started this blog as a creative outlet and I'm ready to get back on track!  I've tried a few new recipes, done some new DIY projects, and have reviews of a few pins ready to share with you guys!

Today I will review a pin.  This is a new concept for this blog, but as someone who loves Pinterest and is always anxious to try new things out, I'm always leary of investing time or resources into something that may not work or a recipe that may not be delicious or a craft that may not be so easy.  I'm always skimming comments for reviews (if you've tried any of my recipes so far and have time to review, I'd love for you to leave a comment on the recipe you tried to review it!) before I do something but sometimes that's just not available.  So, I'm starting this new "series" called where I talk about doing something I pinned (because I do TRY to do some of my Pinterest pins - especially the recipe ones!).

So here we go!  For my first time doing this, I want to bring you a pin review of a pin I didn't like.  The link to the pin is HERE.  And the pin's image looks like this:

(source)

I decided to try this pin out last night after the Thunder game because I was riding the high of our win and wanted to... clean.  I'm crazy like that.

Now I didn't take a before picture of the pan I used because I didn't think about this starting this series until this morning.  Whoops.  I will say the pan I used didn't look a whole lot different than it does now which is why I'm giving this pin a negative review.

I don't doubt AT ALL that this blogger's pan ended up looking like that and that this worked for her, but it didn't work for me.

I did just what she said: I dusted on baking soda (pretty thick), layered on hydrogen peroxide and then coated in more baking soda.  It sat out from about 11pm-7am so a full 8 hours.  I was excited to scrub it off this morning (and I was all about scrubbing - she said she did NOT scrub) with a dishcloth but it hardly looked any different to me.  There were a few spots that were cleaner and the film on the pan was gone (which is definitely a plus!) but my pan didn't look like that all.  It looked like this:

If you look closely at the pan you can see a circle around the Chefmate imprint that looks lighter than the rest of the pan.  That's about all the change I noticed aside from the film being gone.  The areas that were really bad (like towards the back of the pan) stayed pretty bad.

SOOO... In my experience, the tip in this pin did NOT make my pans look new or cleaner, but it DID lift the film that can be so tricky to get off from layers and layers of PAM.

So I'm curious, have you tried this?  Did you let it soak longer or use a scrubber to take off the soda/peroxide mix?  If you had better luck, please share with us all!

Next time I do a pin review it'll be for something I DID like.  Because no one wants to hear over and over again about how things don't work, right?