The Most Amazing Chili EVER!

I am NOT a chili fan. I have had one other kind of chili that I though was "good".  But a week ago Mr. Amazing, the twins, and I were invited over to our favorite friend's house to enjoy some chili. I went into the evening hoping it would be "good" chili. I was so shocked and surprised to find it was AMAZING CHILI!!!! I asked her for her recipe right away, it was truly the most delicious chili I ever had in my life!!!! So whether you're a chili fan or not, give this a try you won't be sorry!!!! It's super simple to make and the taste is out of this world!!!!

Ingredients:

2lbs of Ground Beef OR Ground Turkey 

4TBLS Chili Powder

3TBLS Sugar

1tsp Salt

1tsp Oregano

1 Finely Chopped Yellow Onion

1 Finely Chopped Green Bell Pepper

1 - 15 oz Can of Diced Tomatoes
1 - 15 oz Can of Rotel

2 - 8oz Cans of Tomato Sauce

1 Cup of Water

2 - Cans of Red Kidney Beans (optional, Mr. Amazing says beans have no place in Chili, I think they're delicious)

Directions:

Brown the two pounds of meat in a frying pan on the stove. (I have had it both ways (ground beef and ground turkey) the chili taste is so rich in flavor I couldn't taste a difference in the meat.Ground Turkey does take off some calories of course.) Drain the meat very well, you don't want to add that grease to your recipe. 

In a Crockpot add all ingredients EXCEPT the beans. Cook all ingredients on HIGH for 6 hours. Then add the beans and cook for two more hours. Whether or not you add the beans, cook on HIGH for 8 hours total. 

When the Chili is done turn your Crockpot down to warm. Serve with Sweet Yellow Cornbread. Store leftovers in the fridge in a tightly sealed container for up to five days. 

ENJOY!

Crab Stuffed, Bacon Wrapped Mushrooms!

Crab Stuffed, Bacon Wrapped Mushrooms!

Okay y'all I know you're about to say we just used all those ingredients on the Crab Stuffed Wanton Shaped Crescents. And that is true! I made both dishes on the same night. But I wanted to try two different ways! So now you can too, because in the last recipe I said you'd only uses half of the package of Crabmeat and two of the Green Onions, so this recipe you can use the other half of the Crabmeat and two more of the Green Onions!



Ingredients:
1 Package of Stuffing Mushrooms, Stems Removed
5T Cream Cheese, Soften (Feel Free to use the Whipped or Fat Free to cut Calories)
4T Mayonnaise (use Fat Free, Lite, or Olive Oil Mayo to cut Calories)
1/2 Package of Chopped Crabmeat (again, I didn't spend a boat load of cash, I used Imitation)
2 Green Onions, Chopped
1lb Package of Bacon
1/4 Tsp Tony's
1/4 Tsp Black Pepper

In a bowl you'll want to mix your Cream Cheese, Mayo, Chopped Green Onions, Crab Meat, Tony's and Black Pepper. Mix it up really well making sure you don't have any lumps of Cream Cheese in the mixture. After you've made your mixture, take out the stems from your Mushrooms and discard them. Dust the dirt off of your Mushroom caps, do not wash them off. When you wash Mushrooms the soak up the water, and then they're all watery and mushy, not yummy at all no. 

Alright y'all now it's time to stuff your Mushrooms. Spoon the mixture into each Mushroom cap, fill them until you have a nice mound of mixture on top of each Mushroom. Then take one piece of Bacon and wrap it all the way around the Mushroom cap and secure it with a tooth pick. 

Clean your grill really good so you don't have any nastiness on your grill. Then heat your grill to medium low heat. Place your Mushroom caps on the grill filling side up. Yes you're going to turn them but the filling will be secured by the Bacon.  5-8 minutes on each side, on medium low heat. Then finish on high heat for desired level of crispiness, allowing them to flame up a bit. (We used a propane grill) 

Add a couple of Mushrooms to a small steak and salad for a delicious meal!

Crab Stuffed Wanton Shaped Crescents

Hey Y'all!!! So happy to announce Mr. Amazing and I have a new baby on board. Our little Poppy Seed Muffin is due to arrive in late May. We couldn't be more excited or blessed! However with a bun in the oven comes crazy cravings!!! This happens to be one of them, and they turned out amazing!!! Have you ever gone to a Chinese food buffet and had the "crab bake". It's crab meat and a delicious sauce and green onions baked and covered with cheddar cheese. Delicious!!! This tastes so much like that it's crazy delicious, minus the cheddar cheese. Give it a try for your next party or just for the family. We enjoyed it very much. The twins who hate everything both loved it!!!

Crab Stuffed Wanton Shaped Crescents

Ingredients:
1- Tube Crescent Roll Dough (you can use the Reduced Fat Tube to cut Calories!)
5T Cream Cheese, Soften.  (Feel Free to use the Whipped or Fat Free to cut Calories!)
4T Mayonnaise (use Fat Free, Lite, or Olive Oil Mayo to cut Calories)
1/2 Package of Chopped Crabmeat (Dare I say I used Imitation Crabmeat! Shocker, but Still Delicious!!!)
2 Green Onions, Chopped
1/4 Tsp Tony's
1/4 Tsp Black Pepper
Pam Olive Oil Spray


Preheat Oven to 375.

Add your Cream Cheese, Mayo, Chopped Green Onions, Chopped Crabmeat, Tony's, & Black pepper to a bowl and mix thoroughly. 

Spray your cookie sheet with your Pam Olive Oil Spray. Spread out the two halves of your Crescent Rolls and pinch your seams together. Then use a sharp knife to slice each half into six equal pieces. Then put a spoon full of the mixture on each piece. 

Pull each end of the Crescent Roll Dough to meet up in the middle and pinch together, then pinch the ends together. 

Bake on 375 for 12 minutes. Makes 12 individual servings. Great for parties! 

Tater Tot Casserole!

Oh Nelly! Tater Tot Casserole is the most amazing thing to walk out of my oven according to my two year old twins! Give it a try! Is it healthy? Nope absolutely not, but it sure is tasty!

Ingredients:

1 Small Bag of Oreda Tater Tots
1 Can of Green Beans
1 Can of 98% Fat Free Cream of Chicken Soup
1 Can 0f 98% Fat Free Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 Cup Fat Free Evaporated Milk
1 LB, Lean Ground Beef
1 Small Can of mushrooms
1/4 of an onion
1 (2cp) Package of Cheddar Cheese
Seasoning of Your Choice, I used Tony's, Black Pepper, & Garlic Powder
Pam Cooking Spray

9x13 casserole dish


Directions:

PreHeat your oven to 350.

Chop up your onion and toss it in the frying pan with your ground beef. Cook on medium high heat, season as desired, cook until beef is completely cooked. Drain the grease from your beef.

While your beef is cooking in a separate bowl pour in your Soups & Evaporated Milk, whisk them together until smooth. Then add your Mushrooms and Green beans and fold the veggies into the mix with a rubber spatula, if you use your whisk you might break the veggies, (you can also add corn and carrots if you like). Season your Soup Mixture as desired.

Spray your casserole dish with Pam all over the bottom and the sides and start layering in your ingredients. Put the Beef Mixture on the bottom. Top the Meat Mixture with the Tater Tots.  Then top the Tater Tots with the Soup Mixture.

Bake uncovered for (1) One Hour.  Pull the Casserole dish out after one hour and top with Cheddar Cheese and bake for (5)five minutes more!

Let sit for 5-10 minutes then serve.  I'm sorry, you can't make this beautiful, but you sure can make it yummy!!!!!

Too freaking hot to light my oven Lasagna

Too freaking hot to light my oven Lasagna

Also known as crock pot lasagna! Have you ever wanted to make a delicious cheesy lasagna but you didn't want to make the house as hot as the west Texas plains? Well here is another way. You can make the same delicious lasagna in the crock pot, it's just a little messier when you get it out of the crock and plate it. But it tastes exactly the same as my oven baked lasagna! So worth it. And think if you have a propane oven as I do then you don't have to use your propane either!!!

Ingredients:

1lb of Italian Sausage

1 Package of No Boil Lasagna Noodles

1 Large Jar of Prego Traditional Spaghetti Sauce (it really is the best tasting sauce!)

1 Medium Onion (OPTIONAL)

2 4oz Cans of Mushrooms (OR) 1/2 a Container of Fresh Mushrooms (OPTIONAL)

1 Tbl Butter

1/4 C of Milk

1 Large Container of Ricotta Cheese

1 1Lb bag of Mozzarella Cheese

1 Egg

1/2 C Parmesan Cheese

Non Stick Cooking Spray

Whisk together your Egg & Milk, then fold in your Ricotta Cheese, Mozzarella Cheese, & Parmesan Cheese. The mixture will look like the picture on your right. Place the mixture in the fridge until it's time to use it.

Now it's time to saute your Onions in the butter. Cook them all the way through you want them to be soft, they will not soften up in the crock pot enough. If you chose to use fresh mushrooms then you would want to saute them at this time as well. Set aside in a new bowl your Onion & Mushroom mixture, do not mix it into the Cheese mixture. Then brown your Italian Sausage until it's completely cooked all the way through, no pink. 

 Next mix your Onions, Mushrooms, Sausage, & Spaghetti Sauce then set aside. 

Now it's time to layer your Lasagna. Spray the entire inside of your Crock Pot with Non Stick Cooking Spray. Then start layering. First use your sauce mixture and pour a half inch or so layer on the bottom, then put in a layer of noodles, three per layer, then cover the noodles with your cheese mixture. 

Lather Rinse Repeat! 

 Your crock pot will be very full when completed!

Put your lid in place, set your crock to high for one hour, then low for up to four hours until your noodles are soft. Your crock pot lasagna will stay solid like when you make it in a pan in the oven, so you can try to get a solid piece out of the crock instead of a spoon scoop of lasagna. 

ENJOY!

Fitted Crib/Toddler bed sheets

Fitted Crib/Toddler Bed sheets

Have you ever noticed how expensive crib sheets are? Depending on where you purchase them they are quite pricey! Then if someone makes you a beautiful baby quilt or toddler bed quilt, you have to try and match a store bought crib sheet to the quilt, & usually end up with a huge variety of choices, white, pink, or blue!  So now you'll be able to make crib sheets from fabric you can purchase, to match any blanket or quilt. So lets get started y'all!

Items Needed:

70x45 inches of fabric (two yards, cut off a standard 45 inch bolt

4 feet of thin elastic, 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch

Thread

Pins

Scissors

Rotary Tool

Cutting Mat

Measuring tape

Strait Ruller

Sorry these two pictures are upside down. My blog sometimes uploads them funky and I can't turn them once they are in there. 

First measure out your elastic and cut it to four, twelve inch pieces. 

now this next step you can cut each corner one at a time or you can fold the fabric corners up and cut all four corners at one time, which ever works better for you! So now you need to cut a nine inch square off of each corner of the fabric, 

This is how each corner will look when you've cut the nine inch square. Now that you have cut your square off of each corner, essentially each corner has no corner, each has now two corners, so match up those two corners and this is where we'll sew. 

Okay now you've got your two corners lined up where you cut out your nine inch square, sew this together. 

Okay y'all this is what your corner looks like sewn together. 

Fold your first piece of elastic in half and find the center. Place the center of the elastic on the seam of the corner of what you have sewn. 

Now you'll pin the middle of the elastic on the seam you have just sewn. Then measure twelve inches away from that and pin the edge of the elastic, you'll do this on the other side as well. So you'll have a bunch of fabric between your two pins. 

Now when you go to sew your elastic, use a zig zag stitch and you will have to stretch the elastic out so it lines up with the material, if you don't then you won't have a stretchy corner to go over the edge of the mattress.  

When you let the slack back in the corner you'll see how it will pull back together, now that the elastic is sewn to the fabric.

Now you can be done at that point or you can give your sheet a more finished look, this is what I chose to do, because I give my sheets as gifts with baby quilts. In order to do that you'll need to edge the sheet. All the way around you'll need to fold over a quarter or half inch of the sheet and sew it together. When you get to the corners you'll need someone to hold the elastic parts open so you can fold over the fabric and pin the edging. Which is what the picture shows you below. When you sew it again to give it the edge you'll need to again stretch out the elastic. When you've sewn all the way around the sheet, remove your pins and you're done! 

This is one of my sheets on my cousins baby crib, I also made the skirting and the quilt. I don' have a picture of the camo sheet because I don't actually own a crib sorry! It's a baby gift. 

I hope this tutorial makes sense, and you make some super cute crib/toddler bed sheets!!!!

Dirty lenses? Clean them up!

Hey y'all! So if you're anything like me then you have never had a new vehicle, new to you sure, but never spanking new, slap your mama, off the lot vehicle.  So what I've come to realize over the years is no matter how many times I ask Mr. Amazing to change the bulbs in my headlights, they always do not give off enough light at night to make me happy. I feel like I'm driving in the dark, okay so I am driving in the dark, but you know the dark dark, I want brighter headlights, without having to purchase new headlight covers! Or heaven forbid depending on your vehicle the entire headlight!  So I have discovered via a friend an awesome way to clear up your head lights!!!!  

What you'll need:

1 medium sized tube of Tooth Paste
2 old wash rags
(I say old because no matter how many times I've washed my washrag it still smells a bit like Crest)

Note when you get to the bottom, you'll notice the headlights look better, not perfect but a heck of a lot better, and we tested our theory last night and drove over to Niagara Falls, and the sight is much better, the lights are much brighter. If you're lenses are very bad like mine are you're not going to be able to get all of the scratches to clear up, but it makes a significant improvement.

So this is my headlight cover on the front of my pickup right now. Isn't it beautiful!

So put a small amount of toothpaste on your rag.  

I have found that it does a better job when going in a circular motion, instead of a back and forth scrubbing motion. Just think wax on wax off wax on wax off.

See it's looking better already! Now that you've completed the whole lens and it's covered in dried on tooth paste, get another rag and wet it down and wipe the whole lens cover down.  

So like I said it't not perfect, but a vast improvement if I do say so myself! I hope you get even better results!

Since we are up here in New York for work we meet all sorts of people from all over the world. Currently there was a lovely couple from Corpus Christi Texas, about 400 miles from where we live in Texas. This couple was super sweet as they walked their four tiny yappy dogs all over the RV park.  They stopped to chat when they noticed our Texas plates on the pick up.  The man was super interested in what I was doing sitting in front of my pick up in my lime green lawn chair scrubbing my headlights. But he was super impressed to see the difference it had made and gave me a little advice of his own. A man he met back in Canada told him to put RainX on his headlights every once in a while, especially when you're vehicle is new so that it will never get to this point. He said that it will repel everything coming at it in the future. He also said that he's never had to replace a headlight lens since he started using it. So I think now that I'm done here, I'll go get a little RainX!

I apologize for the pictures from my pickup y'all, that sucker needs a bath! That's 1500 miles from Texas to New York bugs sitting right there. GROSS! 

Cajun Chex Mix!

Hey y'all, lets make a spicy cajun treat! 

Ingredients

2 tbl of Butter or Margarine

2.5 tbl of Worcestershire Sauce

1 tbl of Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning

1/4 tbl of Onion Powder

1/4 tbl of Garlic Powder

Chex cereal or Crispix cereal, in any flavor of your choice, feel free to mix & match

(you can also add pretzels and nuts if you'd like, my family prefers just the cereal so that's all I made tonight)

either way you go you'll need eight cups, weather it's eight cups of just cereal or a combination of cereal, pretzels, & nuts, you need eight cups worth. 

First set your oven to 300 degrees

Then pour your cereal OR your cereal, pretzel, nut combo into a 9X13 baking dish.
Sorry about Mr. Amazing, he was digging in before it was cooked.

Then add your butter to a microwavable safe container and heat for about 45 seconds, add your spices and your Worcestershire Sauce, mix thoroughly and pour slowly all over the cereal mixture. Then turn repeatedly until evenly coated. Pop in the oven for twenty minutes, pull out and mix again, then pop back in for twenty more minutes, take out to cool, DONE!  

Once your mix is done and completely cooled scoop it into a gallon ziplock back and close up OR put into individual baggies for take along snacks. Remember it's spicy, not so great for little ones.  This recipe makes about half a one gallon ziplock bag.  Enjoy!

Creamy Bacon Chicken & Rice

Hey y'all!  I hope you're ready for another delicious dinner, super quick prep, then put it in the crock pot for five hours and bam! dinner is done!  I hope you enjoy this as much as my family does. 

Ingredients

1 Package of Thin Sliced Bacon
1 Package of Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast (about a pound)
1 Can of Cream of Mushroom Soup (roasted garlic kind)
1 Can of Cream of Chicken Soup
1 8oz Container of Sour Cream
1/2 Cup of All-Purpose Flour
1 Small Onion Chopped
Salt & Pepper to Taste
1 Small can of Mushrooms
Rice or Pasta of your choice

(keep in mind if you are not a fan of Mushrooms & Onions you can leave them out, or substitute them with other veggies of your choice.)

Lets get cooking!!!

 First mix in a separate bowl the cream of chicken soup, cream of mushroom soup, the flour, & the sour cream, salt & pepper to taste. The sauce will be really thick, you might think you need a mixer but a good sturdy whisk will do the job!  Next fold in the onions and mushrooms to the sauce mixture.  Set the bowl of the sauce aside and we'll now work on the chicken & bacon.  (I personally do not salt anything when using and Campbell's Soups, because I find them to be really salty already)

First cut your chicken into thin strips, cut them as long as the breast is long wise, then about one half to one inch wide. The thickness is entirely up to you, this just happens to be how I cut it. 

Next we're going to wrap each strip of chicken with a piece of bacon.

After you've wrapped each piece of chicken with a slice of bacon place them neatly in the bottom of your crock pot. All of mine fit in the bottom without having to double any layers.

Next you'll pour your sauce mixture over the top of your chicken bacon wraps. After you've got it all poured over the chicken, get out a rubber scrapper and push the chicken away from the sides a little so you can get some of the sauce all around the chicken.

Place your lid on  your crock pot and set it to high for one hour, then turn the crock pot down to low for three hours, check your chicken temperature at that time. Your chicken's internal temperature should be between 160 and 170 degrees. Now if you have an older crock pot you may have to cook your chicken for five hours or more.

Honey said he thinks he'd like the bacon precooked, so you can try it that way also, it was wonderful!

Lastly you'll want to make up your rice or pasta at this time. I think this chicken goes great over Jasmine rice or Egg Noodles. Eat up and Enjoy!!!