Spicy Steak Fajitas

Here's an easy mexican favorite: Spicy steak fajitas. I would say this is a 30 minute meal. Its technically a recipe that uses leftover flank steak, but we just bought the meat and cooked it.

1) Warm tortillas wrapped in foil in a heated oven (375) for about 7-9 minutes.

2) To cook the steak, pat-dry with paper towels. Season with salt and pepper on both sides. Cook in a frying pan with 1tbsp OO for about 8 minutes on each side. Slice thinly against the grain.

3) Heat 1 tbsp of OO over medium-high heat. Add 2 yellow bell peppers, thinly sliced, 1 red onion,halved lengthwise and thinly sliced, 4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced, 2 jalepenos(remove seeds if you prefer less heat) thinly slice and then dice, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1/2 tsp ground coriander, and season with salt and pepper. Cook until veggies are tender and browned 7 minutes. Add cooked steak and cook for about 2 more minutes. Add 2 tbsp fresh lime juice.

4) Serve beef mixture on tortillas and assorted toppings. Our favorites are sour cream, salsa, and fresh lime wedges.

The New Mac and Cheese

Our friend Kellie gets the credit for this recipe. She found it online and then made some changes to make it her own and fortunately, she shared with us :) Its basically just a twist on regular mac & cheese but its so much better in its own way! Here's what you will need

1/2 lb sausage (we prefer the hot italian sausage)
 1 can diced tomatoes (undrained)
1 cup of water

1 12 oz pkg of Annie's Creamy Deluxe shells and cheese
2 cups of broccoli

1 tsp italian seasoning
Brown sausage, stir in tomatoes, water and seasoning. Bring to a boil, add shells. Reduce heat to medium-low and cover. Simmer for 7 minutes stirring a couple of times. Add broccoli, cooking another five minutes. Lastly, stir in cheese and serve. We like to eat this with some hot french bread or garlic bread. Oh, also, you will NEVER have left overs. We doubled it last night for 5 people and it was all gone! Enjoy!

Banana Oat Smoothies

Smoothies are one of our favorite things to make. Especially in the mornings after we go to the gym, we add in our muscle milk protein powder to almost any smoothie. I found this recipe and wanted to try it since it was so unusual and different from the basic fruit and yogurt. Its also a great use for bananas to avoid throwing them away every week. Here's the recipe....Also, I added ice because I cant stand really liquidy drinks, it has to be thick.

1/2 cup old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)

1 cup plain yogurt

2 ripe bananas, plus a few extra slices for the topping

1 cup milk

4 teaspoons honey

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in a blender and puree until smooth. Serve immeadiately, top with slices of banana.

A Lighter Chicken Potpie

This was a yummy dish to pick for such a cool night. We changed up the chicken, using a rotisserie chicken instead of baking chicken breast halves, so our time was cut in half and made the whole cooking process a little less busy.  Also, we decided we had had peas in potpies before so we would make it like the recipe called for, but next time we want to change that by adding broccoli or something else. We had the leftovers for lunch and they reheat so well!

Pumkin Walnut Bread with Cream Cheese Frosting!

We love making bread! Kellie and I had found a pumpkin walnut bread at Williams-Sonoma but it was 10 bucks. We ended up getting it but wanted to find a recipe that wouldnt cost more than a few dollars and that was equally delicious. I found this recipe online and it turned out to be wonderful!

Pumkin Walnut Bread Recipe:

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup sugar

1 tsp bakng soda

1 cup pumpkin puree

1/2 cup olive oil

2 eggs beaten

1/4 cup water

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp allspice

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Method: Preheat oven to 350. Sift together salt, flour, sugar and baking soda. Mix pumpkin, oil, eggs, water and spices together. Then combine with the dry ingredients. Do NOT mix too thoroughly! Stir in walnuts.  We doubled this recipe and that worked out well! Pour into a well greased loaf pan. Bake 50-60 minutes.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

8 oz cream cheese

3 tbsp salted butter

2/3 cup sugar

3/4 tsp vanilla extract

Blend until creamy and smooth 2-3 minutes.

Homemade Applesauce

This is a fun treat for the cool fall weather. The tempurature is dropping and this applesuace tastes great warm as well as cold. Its super easy, just a bit time consuming with all of the apple peeling. All you need is about  8 cups of apples. We used the Gala and Granny Smith apples, 4 of each. An apple slicer works great if you have one, but cut into about 6 pieces, and peel the skin off. It didnt come to mind at all when I was making this, but use an apple peeler too to help with the time. That would have been so much easier!  Put into a microwave safe bowl. Pour 1 cup of sugar on top of the apples along with 1 tsp cinnamon, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 2 cups of water. Then, you put it in the microwave for 10 minutes, then stir, put it back in for 5 minutes, then stir and finally 5 more minutes then stir one last time and mash apples with a potato masher. Who would have ever thought? Those things are so useful! Cool in the fridge for a couple hours and you have applesauce! It sure beats any store bought applesauce and doesnt have any added junk to it.

Chicken with Tomatoes, Onions and Olives

We ended up cooking a lot this week on our days off. I wanted to make a few things since its been awhile and we came up with this recipe along with a few others that we made. For this recipe, it only took about 30-40 minutes. All the ingredients were very simple and it seemed to turn out like a mediteranean dish. I added some cilantro into a basmati rice and juice from maybe about half of a

lime for our side dish. this one was a keeper! Yummo!





October Surprise Date Night

We've decided that once a month, we are going to take turns planning a date night. This month, we went to one of the parks off Ken Caryl to play a couple of rounds of frisbee golf and then went out to dinner at
 Pei Wei- thee best asian "fast food". Although its not technically fast food but for those of you who have been to Noodle's, its basically the same style. Order, sit down, grab drinks and they bring your food out within 5-10 minutes. Its pretty awesome stuff and Ryan has never been there. Ive been wanting him to
 try it for awhile now and we finally got the chance. Its a pretty scarce restuarant around here so I was pretty excited to find one not so far away! Here's what we enjoyed for the night :)

Zucchini Breads

This morning Kellie and I spent about 3 hours in the kitchen making two different kinds of zucchini bread which turned into about 6 loaves of bread! She had gotten this insanely large zucchini and needed to do something with it before it went bad. The first one we made was the same as grandmas chocolate banana bread only instead of the bananas we substituted zucchini. The second one we did was Ryans moms recipe....

Jackie's Zucchini Bread:

3 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup olive oil> mix well

add 2 cups of grated zuchinni (cheese grater works perfectly), 3 tsp vanilla,

3 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp baking powder, 3 tsp cinnamon,

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional) also, we added about
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips for fun! (optional)

Grease two loaf pans & flour them so that the bread won't stick.

bake at 325 for about an hour. We baked at 375 for about 35-40

minutes because of the high altitude. Cool 10 min before removing from pans.

Homemade Pizza

This is mom's recipe for pizza dough. We always bought the Pillsbury dough in a tube but nothing compares to homemade!!!

For Two Medium Pizzas:

1 1/2 cups water

3 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp salt

2 tsp sugar

4 cups flour

4 tsp quick-rise yeast

Let rise in bowl for one hour. Then cut into two pieces and roll out with floured rolling pin to fit the size of each pan. Grease pans with olive oil (the Misto sprayer is our new favorite kitchen tool for olive oil), and sprinkle with yellow cornmeal. Then lay dough onto pans and layer with pizza sauce, cheese, and your choice of toppings! Our favorites are pinneapple, pepperoni, sausage and mushrooms.

Halloween Sugar Cookies

These cookies can be made for any holiday such as valentines day with hearts and easter with bunnies but I think they have always been a fun halloween treat :) This year, mom had found an owl recipe and wanted to change from doing just the normal pumpkins. Michaels sells a three pack of Wilton cookie cutters for about 4 bucks that includes an owl, cat, and a pumpkin. We used a candy corn for the nose and mini chocolate chips for the eyes! This is the perfect treat for any sweet tooth!

Flank Steak, Green Beans with Tomatoes and Wild Rice

This was Ryans meal to make. He loves his steak so he chose this recipe which turned out quite well. The green beans had onion and tomato in and didnt give much flavor so we decided we probably won't make them again but everything else was delcious!

Date Night at Yardhouse

These are just pictures of what we ate at the Yardhouse for our date night this month. It's an upscale grill and brewery and Ryan had planned to surprise me with all of our plans for the night! We went to Red Rocks, The Colorado Mills Mall and ended eating dinner here :)



Panko Crusted Tilapia- Fish Sticks

If you need an easy lunch, this is it. Im not at all a seafood fan, but when I saw the recipe for this I was excited because I love fish sticks! All you do for the coating is add 2 cups of Panko bread crumbs, 2 tbsp evoo, and 1 tbsp Bay seafood seasoning.  Whisk one egg together with salt and pepper, and dip each piece of tilapia in the egg mixture. This helps the bread crumbs to stick and makes the crunchy breading to the fish.  Lay onto a baking pan and  bake at 425 for 12-15 minutes. Enjoy with tartar sauce and serve with lemon wedges.

Grandma Dianne's Chocolate Chocolate Banana Bread

This recipe is my grandma's and has been in the family for as long as I could remember. I was looking for something chocolate and could never come up with anything that we liked and then I remembered that my mom had a recipe from grandma for the perfect banana bread :) My father in law Mike requested this specially for his birthday on wednesday instead of cake! Happy Birthday!

Tex-Mex Turkey and Bean Chili

Most Chili's consist of beans, tomatoes, and meat. This one is unique because of the ground turkey, bacon, and cocoa in it. Who would have ever thought to add chocolate to a chili!?! It works so well, and it doesn't over power any of it. I was looking for something that was not like any other chili and this is it. It's a keeper!

Serves 8, Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes

Here are the directions:

1.) Heat a dutch oven or heavy stock pot over medium. Chop 4 slices of bacon into 1/2 inch chunks and add to pot until crisp about 8 minutes. Turn heat to high and add 3 lbs of ground turkey cooking until no longer pink.

2.) Add 4 onions coursely chopped, 4 garlic cloves, minced, and 2 jalepeno chiles, minced. Cook until soft about 5 minutes. Then 3 tbsp chili powder, 3 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder, and 4tsp ground cumin. Add to meat and stir in for about 1 minute.

3.) For the tomatoes, it called for 2 28oz cans of whole peeled tomatoes but I would suggest using just regular diced tomatoes-then you dont have to cut them up. So you add in two cans of whichever tomatoes you prefer along with the juices. Add in 2 tbsp molasses, and 1 cup of water. Season with salt for taste. Bring to a boil, and cover for 30 minutes.

4.) Add beans, continue cooking until turkey is tender, and liquid has thickened about 30 minutes more.

5.) Serve hot with sour cream, cheese, and jalepeno slices. Buon Appetite!