Pasta Cordon Bleu

This is the first of many things I'm making with the tasty tasty Ham with Maple and Mustard Glaze we had for Easter.

I can't remember the last time I actually had Chicken Cordon Bleu.  It's been at least 8 years.  At Least.

I used to buy those little frozen breaded things at the grocery store.  They came in individual little packets.  They were great when I was just whipping up something for myself. (I thought that was cooking in those days.)  The chicken always turned out a bit on the rubbery side.  And now that I CAN cook, I won't eat rubbery chicken even if it starts raining donuts.

Don't really know why I haven't attempted to make Cordon Bleu before.  Maybe the memory of the rubbery processed stuff has lingered in my mental taste buds?  Or maybe I thought it was too much work and involved handling raw chicken.

Handling raw chicken is super icky.  I try to use a fork when possible.  You can't really get around it if you have to stuff or roll up a piece of raw chicken. That, more than anything is probably why I've never made the darn dish.

Oh ho!  But then I saw pasta cordon bleu from Amy's New Kitchen.  There's no wrapping or anything to do with raw meats.  The recipe even uses pre-cooked diced chicken and ham.  How is that for speedy awesomeness?

As is my M.O, I did not follow the recipe to the letter.  The recipe didn't get the best reviews, but I was certain I could improve on it.  I made a few changes here and there, including nearly burning the panko and breadcrumb topping under the broiler! 

It looks a lot worse than it is.

See, you can't even tell when it's all mixed together.  And what's most important, there was zero burnt taste.  In fact, until Mrblocko looks at this post, I'll wager he had no idea how "cajun" the breadcrumbs were right out of the oven.

Pasta Cordon Bleu adapted from Amy's New Kitchen
3/4 lb. Pasta (I used penne)
1 cup Chicken Breasts, cooked and cubed
1 cup Ham, cooked and cubed
1 T olive oil
1 small diced onion1 1/2 cups Milk
8 oz. Cream Cheese (softened)
2 T spicy or Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
1/8 t nutmeg
1/8t cayenne
2 cups Gruyere, shredded
2 cups defrosted peas (I only used 1 c. but it wasn't enough, and this is me who doesn't like peas saying this.)
3/4c combination of breadcrumbs and panko
1/4 cup Butter, melted

Cook pasta per package instructions. Drain and add meat to the pot, tossing to combine.  Meanwhile, in a medium sauce pan saute onions in oil.  When onions begin to brown, add milk, cream cheese and mustard. Stir until smooth, about 5 minutes.  Add salt, pepper, cayenne and nutmeg.  Add sauce to noodles and combine, then stir in cheese and peas.  Pour into 9x13 baking dish. Combine breadcrumbs/panko with melted butter.  Evenly sprinkle breadcrumbs over top of dish.  Place under broiler for 4 minutes, watching carefully so it browns and doesn't burn.

Wool Dryer Balls

I have some plastic dryer balls. They look a little like a cross between a porcupine and a racquetball. My mom bought them for me several years ago when we started having trouble with our dryer.  The purpose of the dryer balls is to help the clothes tumble and therefore, dry faster.  I haven't done any scientific experiments, but they seem to cut down slightly on the dry times of large loads.

Once upon a time I had 4 dryer balls but one of them split open.  I'm thinking it had some sort of defect in the plastic.  Mrblocko's sweatshirt sleeves also like to eat them.  I don't know why I never notice it when I'm hanging them up, or even think to look inside them when I'm doing a second load of laundry and all the dryer balls are MIA.

Anyhow, I saw this tutorial for wool dryer balls from Good Mama and thought it would be a fun thing to try.  I got two dryer balls from one skein of 100% wool yarn from Joann Fabrics.  I can't remember what brand, just that it was half off at the time.

All you really need to do is wrap the yarn into a small ball.

As you can see here, mine is about 1 1/2 inches in diameter.

Then you stick the dryer balls in a sock or nylon of some sort, knotting the sock in between each ball.  I used a holey old knee high sock and was able to easily fit two of them in there. If you don't stick them in some sort of sock, they will unravel before the yarn gets a chance to felt together.

I tossed this weird looking sock in with the HOT washes, like whites and towels.  I would say it was about a total of four washes and drys.  I had to spread this out over two weeks as we are a small family who only does three loads of laundry a week.

Once the balls have been through the wash and dryer for a few times, add second layer.

Wash and dry them a few times and add a third layer. And, yep you guessed it, wash and dry them a few more times.

Here is what they look like after the final felting. (The blue spiky thing is one of my plastic dryer balls.)

The final product is slightly smaller than a tennis ball.

This project took me several weeks to finish simply because we don't do a lot of laundry in our house, but over all it was one of the easiest craft projects I've done in a long time.

P.S. I bet these would also make great cat toys, provided you don't have old man cats like me.

PBJ Ice Cream a la "The King"

What this ice cream should really be called is a "hunka chunka freezin' love".

A few weeks ago I accidentally bought a gallon of milk when we already had over a gallon in the fridge! Yikes. It was pretty crowded in there so I thought there was no better way to get rid of all that extra milk than to make us some ice cream. This recipe for peanut butter cup ice cream from Recipe Girl seemed like it would really hit the spot.

Hmmm...but I had a lot of other things that I wanted to use up. Like frozen bananas and strawberry freezer jam that never set up properly. (Man do I ever have lots of that stuff.)  But jelly goes well with peanut butter.  And Elvis teaches us bananas go well with peanut butter too.  So why not do both!

My husband proclaimed that this is the most disgusting looking ice cream ever. Of course he redeemed himself by saying it was also the best tasting ice cream ever.  It really was! (Gross looking and super duper yummy.)  And this coming from the man who has repeatedly said he doesn't care for peanut butter desserts.  (Maybe I shouldn't listen to him when he says stuff like that cause I know what I'm talking about when it comes to desserts.  If I know one thing, it's the goodness of desserts.  Yeah!)

Anyhow, back on track!  I didn't use any cream, just 100% skim milk.  There is so much sugar and other things going on, no one missed the cream.    If you are super picky about the texture of the ice cream, by all means, use a more fatty filled cow based mammary glad liquid product. 

As we had lots of little bunny shaped peanut butter "cups" left over from the Easter bunny, I chopped those little suckers up and used them instead of the traditional Reece's PB cups.  I probably had a little too much fun mutilating the peanut butter bunnies.  It was a good thing that no one else was home to hear my maniacal laughter.  (It's the little things that get me through the day.)  Unfortunately, I was about 1/8c shy of the required amount of pb cups.  So, I did the next best thing and chopped up a Hershey bar that I had leftover from when I made S'more Cookies last month.  They did the trick quite nicely.

I can't decide if I like this peanut butter ice cream, or the chocolate peanut butter swirl Ice Cream I made last year.  While they are both peanut butter ice creams, they are so different.  This one has peanut butter flavored ice cream with chocolatey peanut butter bits, while the other one is chocolate ice cream with peanut butter blobs.  They might seem like they should taste the same, but they are really so different.  I suggest you make both and decide for yourself!

Hunka Chunka Freezin Love - PB Banana Ice Cream with Mutilated Peanut butter cup bunnies and Strawberry jelly swirl adapted from Recipe girl
1 1/4 c creamy peanut butter
3/4 c sugar
1 large very ripe banana
3 1/4 c milk (or 1 1/4c milk and 2 c cream)
1 1/2 t vanilla
1 1/2c chopped pb cups (or bunnies if you are into that sort of thing)
strawberry jelly/syrup (if you use jelly nuke it until it is melted and liquidy - about 30 sec or so)

With a mixer, combine peanut butter, sugar and mashed banana until smooth.  Slowly add in 1 c of milk.  Mix on low for 2 minutes until sugar is fully dissolved and no longer grainy.  Add the remainder of the milk and vanilla.  Beat until smooth.  Pour into your ice cream maker and prepare as suggested by the manufacturer.   It will probably take about 25-30 minutes.  I tried to add my pb cups at the last 5 minutes of blending, but my ice cream maker didn't like that, so I poured the ice cream into a shallow freezer safe container and then stirred in my pb cups.  Once the pb cups were evenly distributed, I added in a few swirls of strawberry syrup.  I eyeballed this so I'm not certain of the amount I used.  It was probably somewhere between 1/8 and 1/4 c.  At this point the ice cream will be very soft.  It is best after it sits in the freezer for 3-5 hours.  If you should have leftovers at this point, be advised that the ice cream will be diamond hard.  I usually leave the ice cream on the counter while we are eating dinner and it is scoop-able by the time we are done. 

Winner! Winner! Cake for Dinner!

Ok. So we didn't really have cake for dinner. 

But I did win all this cake loot from a contest over at Cookie madness!!!!

The cake is not a lie.

The package contained: two boxes of Duncan Hines French Vanilla Cake Mix, Devils Food Cake Mix, 4 tubs of frosting creations, and a packet each of strawberry shortcake, orange cream, cherry vanilla and chocolate marshmallow frosting mix ins.

I haven't had time to make anything with my cake-y loot.  I can't decide what to make first.  It's hard to think clearly when you are dancing around singing a song about free cake.

Thankful Thurs #18

1. It stopped raining long enough to move the swing set over from our neighbor's yard to ours.

2. No one, person, place, or thing was injured or maimed in the moving of the swing set.

3. Prayer.

4. Crafty time.

5. The speech one of the Graduating Seniors made on Youth Sunday.

6. Getting the gutters cleaned out.

7. Chewin' the fat with my mom.

8. I didn't send Blockette to school on Tues.  (Even though I thought about sending her just to see what the school nurse would say.  Hey her eye was only a little pink right?)

9. Blockette has been really good about taking her eye drops.

10.  I rescheduled my girls beading day with my best friend that I was supposed to go to on Tues.  (Was it ever nice to be out of the house and not around a bored six year old who wanted to watch "Gnomeo and Juliet" AGAIN.)

sWiNgY sWiNgY sWinG!!!

A few weeks ago I mentioned I was thankful for a talk I had with one of our neighbors. I was sealing the fence in his yard and I just assumed, as it was during the day on a school day, no one was home.  I think we both startled each other!  Anyhow, we got to chatting and out of the blue he asked me if I wanted their swing set.  For free. 

What!?

As our backyard is such a weird shape, I told him I didn't think it would fit.  I went and got a tape measure anyway. 

OH my GOODNESS!  There was room.  Just enough room!

Blockette was going to get a swing set!  Did you know this was her life long dream?  I did because she has told me repeatedly.

It took a few weeks for Mrblocko and our neighbor's schedule to coincide, but on Saturday they moved the swing set into our yard. 

The swings were pretty rusted so I ordered some new ones online.  They arrived Monday right before she got home from school.

Monday afternoon was a singing and swinging extravaganza.

Too bad it rained all day Tuesday, and she was home from school with pink eye to boot.

I told her eventually it will stop raining, and there will be plenty more times to go outside and swing.

April Reads

A short list of reads again this month. I've been having such a hard time making time to read. I've been in a cross stitching and tv watching mode at night I guess.

1. Writing Jane Austen by Elizabeth Aston. A the first chapter of a manuscript was found that was believed to be written by Jane Austen. This author, for her sophomore novel, was bullied into completing it. The kicker is, that although she writes historical fiction, this novel is not in her area of expertise, particularly because she has never read or seen a single piece of Jane Austen's work. Slowly as her deadline approaches, after much internal struggle, she becomes entranced with the Austen world. I was surprised but pleased with the ending. I was afraid that the book would end quaint and contrived. The ending is happy, but it left me cheering instead of rolling my eyes. I think this is a great book for those just slightly interested in Austen to the diehard fan. Incidentally, the author of this book has written several novels that were a type of sequel to Jane Austen's stories. I don't really have any desire to read them as I feel Austen's stories can stand alone and I can leave the rest to my imagination.

2. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book 3 The Unseen Guest by Maryrose Wood.  This is, as the title suggests the third book in the series.  An amusing side story: My husband likes to read the jackets of the books I bring home from the library.  Oh, it's not cause he is wanting to make sure I'm reading quality books.  He just wants to find out if it's something he'd like to read.  You see, occasionally, our literary tastes overlap.  So he says to me, "That sounds like an interesting book, but did you know it is the third book in the series?"  I said, "Yes, that's why I checked it out.  Did you want to read the first one?"  And then he said, "No.  I meant it sounded interesting for you."  Well la de da captain obvious.  Isn't it grand to know that I am able to check books out for myself that I might find interesting.  What a nut!  Anyhow, back to the Unseen Guest.  The main character, Penelope, the nanny of 3 children raised by wolves, has come no closer to realizing that her employer might just be a werewolf.  She does however get to meet the wolves that cared for her charges, but this raises more questions than answers.  I'm still convinced that Penelope is somehow related to the children, and now am speculating that the family of the writer she has taken a fancy to is somehow entwined with the family she works for.  I can't wait for book four!