Easy Recipe Thursday: Mom's Creamy Jell-O Salad

Sorry I've been gone for so long! I REALLY enjoyed my break and will finish posting about it soon.

Here's one of my favorite things that my mom-in-love makes. It is SO creamy and yummy. It is also delicious made sugar free. Enjoy!

Mom’s Creamy Jell-O

1 small pkg. Jell-O, any flavor (strawberry or peach is awesome!)
1 C boiling water
2 C (1 pint) vanilla ice cream (not vanilla bean)
1 C fruit, optional (do not use fresh pineapple or kiwi, or Jello will not set)
Cool Whip, optional

Stir Jell-O into boiling water until completely dissolved. Stir in ice cream until completely melted. Chill until set. (If desired, stir in fruit when partially set, about 30 minutes.) Top with Cool Whip, if desired.

This is also delicious made with sugar free Jell-O and ice cream. I use Edy’s sugar free vanilla.

Ooh, I almost forgot. If you want a zingier, tangier flavor, make it with sherbet or sorbet!

Easy Recipe Thursday: Crock Pot Ribs

This is so easy, it's embarrassing. I really do put more love and care into meals than this! (Just not every day!)

Crock Pot Ribs

- Country style pork ribs (bone-in or boneless), enough for your family (they will cook down quite a bit, so buy a little more than you need)
- Your favorite BBQ sauce (We love Sweet Baby Ray's; it's very sweet! We were on a Bull's Eye kick for awhile, but we burned out on it. We also like Montgomery Inn.)

Trim fat from ribs, if desired. Place a thin layer of BBQ sauce into crockpot. Add a layer of ribs, then enough BBQ sauce to coat. Keep adding layers of ribs and sauce, ending with a liberal coat of sauce. Cook on low for 8-9 hours. Serve with extra sauce.

Easy Recipe Thursday: Birthday Special!

Today we celebrated Hubby's birthday! We had a wonderful day together. The kids did all the planning. They made homemade cards and poems for him, decorated, and chose the meal (Daddy's favorite pizza from an AWESOME local Mom and Pop pizza place). I made the yummiest cake (I will share the recipe below). First, I wanted to share Drama Queen's poem, which was written 100% by herself with no input from me (I have added a couple of comments in brackets):

Today Is Daddy’s Birthday

Today is Daddy’s birthday
For us to celebrate.
We’ll have some cake and candles
And I can “bearly” wait! [Daddy often calls her "Little Bear"]

I love Daddy truly,
I love him quite a bunch.
I wish today was Saturday,
Together we’d eat lunch!

I like Daddy’s moustache,
It’s nice and big and brown.
Whenever he is happy
He never makes a frown!

He takes us on a doo ride [This was Pete's word for "scooter ride" when he was little]
And we have so much fun.
We drive around the country
Until the day is done!

Sometimes we have movie night
And it is very great.
Then Daddy tucks me in at night
When it is very late!

I REALLY love my daddy,
That’s all I can talk about.
I really, really love him
Inside and out!

Here is the cake I made, in all its chocolatey glory:


(Yes, this is my own picture of the actual cake I made! Ain't it fancy?)

And here is the recipe from Allrecipes.com. By the way, this recipe is wheat and gluten free! No one in our family has issues with this; it's just an awesome cake! I was looking for a recipe similar to a flourless chocolate cake we had years ago at the old Berghoff restaurant in Chicago. I've found it! This is rich, dense and fudgy. It has a nice, dark flavor. I have never cared for dark chocolate, but I love this cake. The original recipe included a caramel sauce, but I left it off because I felt it competed too much with the rich cake.

Warm Flourless Chocolate Cake

• 1 cup butter, cubed
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 1/4 cups white sugar
• 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 6 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter the bottom of a 10 inch springform pan, and line with parchment paper. (I used a 9 inch springform and it turned out fine.)

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over low heat. Stir in chocolate, and continue to stir until almost melted. Remove from heat, and stir until melted and smooth. In a large bowl, stir together 1 1/4 cups sugar and the cocoa powder. Whisk in the eggs until well blended, then whisk in the chocolate and butter. Pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for about 45 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife or toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. (Do not overbake! Set your timer for 35 minutes and test every two minutes. You can thank me later. Mine went from a runny, wet toothpick to a completely dry toothpick in 5 minutes!) Cool cake in the pan over a wire rack. Run a knife around the sides of the pan to loosen the cake, then remove the sides of the pan, and invert onto a serving plate. Remove the parchment paper. If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar and garnish with strawberries or raspberries.

Serve warm with whipped cream (Cool Whip kind of reduces it from "regal" to "redneck"), raspberry sauce or vanilla bean ice cream.

Easy Recipe Thursday: Tex-Mex Rollups

I love, love, LOVE these tangy little guys! They have my three favorite ingredients: cream cheese, cream cheese and cream cheese! Even people who hate Mexican food (read: Hubby) like these. The green chilies are mild and not "Mexican-y" tasting (kind of like green olives).

Tex Mex Rollups

2 (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened
1 (4 oz.) can chopped green chilies, well drained
1 envelope (dry) ranch dressing mix
dash garlic powder
2 pkgs. large flour tortillas
Salsa, optional

Mix first four ingredients until well blended. Spread mixture evenly on tortillas and roll up jellyroll fashion. Freeze for one hour. Remove and slice into 1/4 - 1/2 inch spirals. Serve alone or with salsa for dipping.

Hints:
- The tighter you roll them, the better they hold together.
- Slicing them thinner (1/4 inch) looks prettier.

I have a sponsor for my first "Mess of the Month" giveaway! Gather your pictures of your kids' worst disasters, and watch my blog for your chance to win a Motsenbocker's Lift Off Stain Removal Kit!

Easy Recipe Thursday

My friend Terri is launching "Easy Recipe Thursday" on her blog. I'm happy to add one of my favorites!

Ooey Gooey Monkey Bread

Ingredients:
½ C sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
3 (10-ounce) cans refrigerated buttermilk biscuits
1 C firmly packed brown sugar (but don't overpack)
½ C butter or margarine, melted

Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a 10-in. Bundt pan well. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a large Ziploc bag. Cut biscuits into quarters (I use kitchen scissors). Put a few in the bag at a time; shake to coat with cinnamon sugar mixture. Layer evenly in pan. Combine brown sugar and butter in a small bowl; pour over biscuits. Bake at 350° for 30 - 40 minutes or until golden brown. Cool bread 10 minutes in pan; loosen edges with knife and invert onto serving platter.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Time

Hooray!!! It's strawberry time! And for once I didn't miss them!

And what goes better with strawberries but chocolate?

You are going to be so sorry you learned about this recipe. Sooooooooooooo sorry. Because not only is it the richest, creamiest, most luscious, most velvety chocolatey goodness that will ever cross your lips, it is extremely easy.

Better hit the back button.

Seriously.

You'd better not look at this.

Okay, if you insist. But don't say I didn't warn you. I am hereby not responsible for your Weight Watchers bills, gym fees, or new wardrobe from Lane Bryant.

This is actually called "ganache". Ganache is a French word meaning, "super-duper-fattening, heavenly, sinful, to-die-for chocolate." (Either that, or it refers to a combination of chocolate and cream. I forgot which.) Ganache may be used as a glaze, or as a filling for cakes and truffles. (Oh my word, you have got to try it on cheesecake! No, don't. Your hips will hate me forever.)

Be sure to always use real chocolate chips as opposed to chocolate-flavored chips. This recipe calls for semi-sweet chocolate chips, but it is SO yummy with other kinds of chips. (If using anything but semi-sweet, leave out the sugar.) Milk chocolate is soooo rich. I have tried mixing part semi-sweet chocolate with part white chocolate, and that is the best! I have also had good results with peanut butter, chocolate mint, and other flavored chips. Let your imagination go wild!


Chocolate Ganache

12 oz. semisweet chocolate chips*
1 C. heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter, optional** (no substitutes)
2 tablespoons sugar, optional

Place chocolate in a glass or metal bowl; set aside. Heat heavy cream, butter and sugar in a saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Bring mixture to a boil. Pour boiling mixture over chocolate; cover with plastic wrap. Let stand 5 minutes. Stir until smooth. Serve at room temperature with fruit for dipping.

*Or, 12 oz. semisweet baking chocolate, chopped
**You can leave the butter out; it's just a little less creamy.

The next recipe is way less fattening, but is still really yummy.

Chocolate Dip

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 container (8 ounces) Cool Whip, thawed
1/2 teaspoon rum or vanilla extract (optional)

Place chocolate chips and half of the Cool Whip in small bowl. Microwave, uncovered, on high 1 minute or until chocolate is melted and smooth, stirring every 20 seconds. Fold in remaining Cool Whip and rum or vanilla extract, if desired; mix until smooth. Serve with fruit for dipping.

Here are my previous WFMW posts:

Tooth-Tugging Tip for Terrified Tots

Handy Earache Relief

Uses for Leftover Bread

Leaky Diaper/Pull-up Fix

Snack Mix Recipe (at the end of the post)

Awesome Stain Recipe (at the end of the post)

"Fun"damentals of Family Life

Removing Wite-Out from Everything

When NOT to Save Money

Public Service Announcement

For more WFMW tips, stop by Shannon's blog.

Here are some pics of my little munchkins at the strawberry patch. Because we went during the school day (we're studying plants in science right now) we had the whole place to ourselves.

Drama Queen

Persnickety Pete

Screech

Screech was actually the picture of innocence for most of this outing. I expected to be run ragged trying to keep her out of the strawberries. She did great, carrying the pail for me and saying "Thank you, Mommy," every time I tossed in a berry.


Then - big mistake - she started to put a strawberry in her mouth, and I let her. She snarfed it down, then tried to grab more. She thought the whole pail was for her. Our happy little outing ended like this:


Poor, pitiful thing. Don't worry, at home she got to eat her fill of WASHED strawberries!

Valentine Fun

We have had a ball this month with Valentine parties! It's funny; people assume that homeschoolers miss out on activities like this and actually pity them for being deprived of social opportunities. On the contrary, we have way more (and better) opportunities to party!

I remember the obligatory Valentine parties we had in elementary school. We did the shoebox thing with Valentines, ate a ton of junk food, and if we were lucky, we got to do a word search or have a contest to see who could make the most words using the letters in "Happy Valentine's Day." Yippee.

Drama Queen and Pete each went through 3 boxes of Valentine cards to have enough for all their friends and parties this year. First we went to a Valentine's party for homeschoolers at the local skating rink. They participated in a Valentine box contest, and Pete won first place for his age group! I thought Drama Queen would have a great chance, but she didn't even place. I think it's good for her, though, because I feel it's important to learn how to handle not being the winner. It also was so good for Pete to be successful at something because while Drama Queen was skating and laughing with her friends, he was really struggling, falling down over and over while his friends and his two-year-old sister whizzed past him. (More on that in a minute.)

Here's Pete's winning treasure chest Valentine box:


Here is Drama Queen's refrigerator Valentine box:


Pete spent most of the morning in this position, but seemed to take it in stride.


Drama Queen is a party girl!


Here's Screech, our future roller derby star!


Soon after we got started, I wished I had left Screech with a sitter. I strapped on the smallest skates they had, which were several sizes too big. The attendant was unable to lock the wheels. I tried to hold her between my legs and glide with her, and she screamed the entire time. My back was aching and my feet cramping from being in this position, so I was relieved to have to let go for a moment to help Pete. Immediately, the screaming stopped and Screech took off! It was kind of a half-roll, half-walk, but she was skating by herself! What was amazing to me is that I could count on one hand the number of times she fell. She could even step down onto the rink from the carpeted ledge without falling! It was really cute the way she tried to skate backwards and do spins like the other kids.

We also had a Valentine party with the homeschool group in our county. That was a blast! We played, "Honey, Do You Love Me?" (a FUN, hilarious game!), Cupid, Heart Transplant, Hopping Heart Race, and many other fun games. We had a potluck meal with a lot of yummy treats, including these cupcakes that the kids had fun decorating:


I also created a recipe for a snack mix that turned out really tasty as well as festive. Here's the recipe:

Valentine Snack Mix
1 box Kashi Heart to Heart cereal
1 1/2 cups dried cranberries
6 oz. white chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups M&M's candies (Valentine colors, if available)
1 1/2 cups peanuts or almonds (optional)

Mix together. Store in an airtight container.