Cooking adventures with my new Dutch oven!

Second blog of the night, WOO! This one is all about food, food, food!

My parents got me a 6.5 qt Dutch oven for Christmas. I've been pining away for one for quite some time so I was pretty excited about unwrapping it Christmas Day. I might be a total geek for it, but I love cooking stuff. I have tons of cabinet space to fill in my kitchen!

Needless to say I was chomping at the bit to test it out. I went online Christmas night in search of recipes. I pinned a few to my Pinterest for later. I was on a roll!

My first dish was a bean stew. I found a recipe for a white bean stew with chicken sausage and kind of adapted it to what I had in the kitchen. My feeling with stews is you want to use what you already have on hand. That's exactly what I did.

One thing about recipes I make up...I rarely measure anything. I just kind of go with the flow and add stuff to taste. SORRY! :(

I decided to make a bean stew using the half bag of white northern beans and half bag of red kidney beans I had on hand. I put them in a bowl and soaked them overnight. The next night I put the Dutch oven on the burner and went to town!

I heated up the pan and put some olive oil in there. I tossed in some diced onion, green and red pepper and celery and got those to sweating. While those were cooking I roughly chopped up some baby carrots (like I said, I use what I have on hand lol.) I'd guess about....3 hand fulls. Baaha! I put those in with the rest of the veggies and let them saute for a bit. Once they started to soften up I put a little bit of salt & pepper in the veggies and stirred them up a bit. I also added a little bit of Goya Sofrito.

At this point I turned on the oven to preheat at 350.

The only sausage I had on hand was a Portuguese sausage. It looks kind of like kielbasa but mine was just one long piece. I split it down the middle length wise then split those halves down lengthwise as well. I chopped them up in little bits and tossed them in with the veggies. I stirred it around and cooked them until the sausage started to brown a little. I turned off the burner and did a final stir. I grabbed the bowl of beans and stirred them in to the pot. I used what I had left of a box of chicken stock (I'd say about 2 cups or so left in there) and filled the rest with water until the mixer in the pot was completely covered. I then put it in the oven for about 30 minutes.

This is what it looked like when it was done (and I stirred it up a little.)



It...is...DELICIOUS! Oh my...I ate two bowls! I never eat that much soup in one sitting! I have tons left over and am going to take some over to my Dad this weekend.








I was already in love with the Dutch oven at this point. I was so excited to try my next recipe! I decided I would do a No Knead Bread recipe I found online. It only has four ingredients and its little to no work. YES PLEASE!

I followed the recipe and it looked like a blob of goop when I was done but that's what the site said it would look like so I figured I was doing it right. I then put it on top of the fridge with a towel over it to proof for the 6-8 hours (I let it go overnight.)

Bread Blob of Doom

Guarded by a Scottie Dog and Cow on top of the fridge

The recipe says to turn the dough out on a cookie sheet sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. I took one of my silpats and sprayed that down, turned the blob on to it and formed it in to a loose ball. I then sprayed the top with the cooking spray like the directions said to. I used Butter Crisco spray for this step. I covered it up and let it rise again for the additional half hour. This is what it looked like when I removed the towel.

Once its doubled in size...and spread out!

Big old blob! I was a little scared at this point. I've never had bread dough look like this! I thought...what the hay. Nothing ventured nothing gained. The instructions said to preheat the Dutch oven with the oven, so when the preheat timer beeped I rolled that blob into the hot pan and put the lid on. I went about the house to do other things for the half hour it took to bake. I then came back and removed the lid for the additional 15 minutes for browning. This was what it looked like in the pot when I took it out of the oven and then what it looked like sliced.

This bread is so delicious! Eeee! And easy! I knew at that point I was going to try the other recipe from that site I pinned on Christmas...Braised French Onion Chicken with Gruyère.

I'm a bad girl and didn't follow these instructions to the letter, but I was close enough. I did as they suggested and used two skillets to cook the onions and brown the chicken before hand.

I put the butter in the pan and tossed the onions in and let them start browning. I love the smell of sauteed onions! Oh my word! I just used a little salt and pepper in with them to get some flavor in there. I let them go for about a half hour to get nice and caramelized. This picture was taken about halfway through the process. Once they were close to being done I tossed in some Herbes de Provence to go with the "French onion" theme. I didn't use the exact seasonings the recipe called for. Again, I kinda do my own thing when I cook.

Once they got nice and caramel coloured I added about a cup of chicken stock. I used my little spatula to scrape up any lovely brown bits and stir it in. I let it simmer for a little bit longer then poured the mixture into the Dutch oven.

Now while the onion party was happening on the stove I decided to clean up the boneless skinless chicken thighs I had. I trimmed off some fat, washed them and patted them dry. I put them in a dish and coated them with Hawaiian sea salt and some fresh ground pepper. I kind of massaged the seasoning into the chicken to make sure it was evenly covered. I then put another skillet on the stove and got that heated up. The recipe calls for browning the chicken on each side, so I did that.

Wee browning chickens! It took about 3 or 4 minutes on each side. I did three or four pieces at a time. I was able to tend to the onions at the same time so this process all went pretty quick for me. Once you are done browning the chicken you put the pieces on top of the onions in the Dutch oven. You then take an additional cup of stock and put it in the chicken pan making sure to scrape up any of the browned bits in to the stock and reduce it for a bit. You also add some balsamic vinegar and Dijon mustard to kind of thicken it up a bit.

Once you are done reducing the stock (I used Swanson no salt stock, I like to add my own seasonings to things so this was a nice find!) you pour it over the chicken and onions in the Dutch oven. It looks kind of like a watery mess when you put it in but you are braising the chicken...so the liquid is needed. You then put the lid on the sucker and stick it in the oven.

I took this time to clean up a bit then grate the cheese. The recipe calls for Gruyère. I can't remember if I'd ever tasted it before but I'd heard of it. Mom and I went on a mission to find some and I found some Boar's Head smoked Gruyère. Fine with me! I tasted it, kind of reminds me of smoked Gouda. It grated very easily. The recipe calls for 2 oz of the cheese but I used half of the block I had, which would make about 4 oz. I wrapped it in wax paper and put it in the fridge until I needed it.

The chicken cooked in the oven for about a half hour. I took it out of the oven and thought, ugh this looks so ugly! It smelled good though so I plucked the chicken out and set it on a plate and put the plate in the microwave to keep it warm.

At this point you are supposed to take it out of the pot then sprinkle the cheese on top and stick it back under the broiler for 5 minutes or until the cheese has melted a bit and browned.

My mouth started watering as soon as I took the melty cheesy oniony goodness out of the oven. I used a small ladle and dished out some of the soup into a bowl and added a small piece of chicken on top. I then sliced a chunk of the bread I made earlier in the day to eat with the soup. Here is the final product..

I was making all kinds of lip smacking sounds when I ate this. I know that's horrible to say but it was SO GOOD! The chicken was cooked perfectly. The flavours all melded together perfectly. The bread sopped up the soup nicely too. This is a definite do again recipe for me!


~Robin

Kiss® Nail Dress - The Verdict

Hello again!

As I mentioned in my last post, I received some Kiss® Nail Dress nail stickies in my Influenster Holiday 2012 VoxBox for review. I was not paid by either company for this review.

Well I took my Kiss® Nail Dress stickies off last night. I had demolished them beyond my liking so went back to "normal" polish. I am extremely hard on my nails. I type a lot. I cook a lot. I wash my hands constantly. I also use cuticle oils and balms. All kinds of things that can cause a lot of wear and tear on any type of nail polish or product. With that being said, I was really impressed at how well they stood up to my constant banging around.

I posted a picture and video of what they looked like the first day. I think I did pretty well applying them considering it was my first time using any product like that. Here is a photo from day 2:

Minimal wear and tear. There wasn't really any lifting of the stickers at this point. Moving on to day 3:

You can start to see some wear at this point, especially on my middle finger. I was still pretty happy with how they held up at this point.

I was out with my mom all day on day 4. We went to the base, I was putting groceries away, I cooked that night, etc. Here is the photo from day 4:

Please ignore the crack in the leather on my couch -.- But...as you may or may not be able to see...there was some lifting on the tips. My pointer had a full corner lifting off. I tried to get a zoomed in shot but the camera on my phone wasn't having it. I removed the nail stickies later that night.

Removal was extremely easy. You just lift an edge and peel off. Then you gently rub your nail to roll off any of the remaining adhesive on your nail. There was no damage at all to my nails. I washed my hands and ran some nail polish remover over my nails to make sure I had it all off before painting my nails. Easy as pie!

All in all I was very pleased with how well these worked. They didn't last the full week for me, but as I said I'm very hard on my hands. I generally change nail polish every 2-3 days...so it lasted a little longer than normal polish for me. I even went to Walgreens and bought another set of them to try at a later date. I happened to find a style that was 50% off that I really liked and might even try them for New Years if I go anywhere:

Final verdict: Kiss® Nail Dress gets a thumbs up from me. Thank you to Influenster for selecting me and thanks to Kiss® Nail Dress for putting your product in the box.

~Robin

Kiss® Nail Dress

Hello hello again! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday yesterday with your family/friends/loved ones/pets/etc. My day was lovely...got to sleep in, go over to my parents' house and have a wonderful afternoon and dinner with them, then come home to my fur babies and have some fun putting on the Kiss® Nail Dress nail stickers! I received them for review in my Influenster Holiday 2012 VoxBox. All opinions on this product are my own and I have not been paid by Influenster or Kiss® Nail Dress for my reviews.

I wanted to take off the Christmas polish I had on as soon as I got home. I broke a nail while helping my dad do dishes and needed to get that filed down. I decided to test out the Kiss® Nail Dress stickers I received in the Influenster box the day before. Here's the video application of the stickers:

The application was beyond easy. I just suggest having patience, an orange stick, some good music, and some cuticle nippers (I used them to get stray little pieces off after filing the edges off.) The adhesive sticks to your nails but its not like superglue when you first put it down. As you can see in the video you CAN move them if you put them in the wrong spot. Now I wouldn't try doing this over and over but a few mistakes are easily correctable. The total application time was about 15-20 minutes. WAY shorter than painting your nails. Best thing...no top coat and no drying time. You can put these on and go right to bed and not have to worry about sheet marks showing up in your nails.

I took a picture of the final product as well:

So far so good! I haven't had them on 24 hours yet but I have done some dishes and washed my hands several times. Even took my makeup off last night with baby oil, cold cream and used Noxema to wash my face. They are still sticking on like little troopers! They are supposed to last about a week - I'll take pictures daily and create a final blog post when I take them off.

If these work out well I think I'm going to get a few of the designs listed in the box. They are really easy and if I take a little more time I'm sure I can get them to fit my nails better. I was just so excited to try them out and it was my first time ever applying any product like this. They are also reasonable, average of $7 a box isn't bad at all. 

The official website for the product is http://www.kissnaildress.com/ - they do have their own official application video on the site.

You can click this website - http://www.kissusa.com/625/Where_to_Buy - to find out where to buy the kits. 

Influenster Holiday 2012 VoxBox

Happy Christmas Eve lovelies! I'm posting this blog to talk a little about Influenster. Now...I had never heard of Influenster before. I probably live in a hole and that's why I hadn't heard of it...it seems there are plenty of people on YouTube who have been a member for a year or more. 

Now, what is it? Influenster is an online community of people who basically love to try new products and review them. I like trying new things. I like free stuff. I like giving my opinions on things. Win, win, WIN!

Its pretty easy to join. It is 100% free to you. They give each member a little code to "advertise" the site...my link is here.  

Now...you don't have to do anything on the site if you don't want to. The amount of participation you do is entirely up to you. There are quizzes you can take, connect your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blog, etc. You can do reviews on products that are listed on the site. Its all pretty darn easy. I didn't do a whole lot in the first day I was on there. I created a profile. I connected my Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Foursquare and Instagram. I also reviewed one product. That's it. I got an email a few days later asking if I wanted to do a survey to possibly be selected for the holiday box. I did, and here we are. 

I am happy to say I received my very first VoxBox from Influenster this afternoon. It was a lovely gift to receive in the mailbox after a day spent baking away for my little family gathering tomorrow. I'm also pretty dang excited about the products in the box!

Here's a quick snapshot (snagged from my Instagram) of the contents of the entire box:

Pretty beautiful, right? I'll give you a little rundown on each product inside the box.

• Quaker® Real Medleys Oatmeal+ - I got the cherry pistachio flavour. Direct link to the product is here. Retail value: $1.79/cup
• I'm not the biggest oatmeal fan but I do sometimes crave it on cold days. I'll try anything once, especially if cherries and pistachios are involved. 
• NYC New York Color Liquid Lipshine - I got the shade Nude York City. Direct link to the product is here. Retail value: $2.49
• I tried to take pictures of it on my lips and the cell phone camera does not do it justice. The shimmer in it is outstanding! I like that its a nude shade. I like the natural colour of my lips so this just adds a little punch of sparkle to them. It doesn't feel sticky at ALL. The scent is pleasant enough - kind of a vanilla berry scent. I have a feeling this will stay in my purse until it is completely used up.
• Kiss® Nail Dress™ - I got the leopard print, the number is 56708 or KDS10. Direct link to the product is here. Retail value: $6.99
• I...love...nail stuff! I've been growing my nails out but I do miss the nail art I used to get on my acrylics. This might be the type of thing I need to spruce up my nails when I'm feeling the need to go all mega girly. I'm contemplating putting these on for NYE. Not that I'll go anywhere...but I'll look pretty damn fly wearing them while drinking my wine at home!
• EBOOST® - got the pink lemonade flavour. Direct link to the product is here. Retail value: $28 for box of 20 effervescent powders, $39 for box of 30 effervescent powders, $39 for a box of 12 shots. I received one packet of powder.
• I'm not one of those girls who lives by the energy drinks. I like my coffee. Most energy drinks make me sick unless they have juice in them. Red Bull literally makes me throw up. This doesn't have sugar in it and uses green tea extract for the energy boost so maybe it will be easier on my system. I'll try it one day when I get in to work and see what it does for me.
• Goody® QuikStyle Brush - Paddle Styler. Direct link to the product is here. Retail value: $11.99
• This thing is really cool looking. There are microfiber bristles mixed in with the normal bristles of the brush to help dry your hair quicker as you are styling it. Anything that will speed up my morning routine is A-OK with me! I've already brushed my hair with it and I will say it is very comfortable in the hair. I have long-ish hair and it glides through easily without tangling. It is also soft against my head. I am not tender headed in the least bit though so I might not be the best judge of how comfy it is for everyone.
• Sole Society - $25 off first purchase code. The website is www.solesociety.com. The code, which they said we could share, is INFLUENSTER25 and expires on 1/31/13. 
• I'm not sure if I will use this code. I did sign up for the site and there are some pretty cute shoes. The ones I like are mostly sold out in my size :( The prices start at $49.95...the flats I was looking at are that price. The boots were a little more, $69.95. The prices aren't bad...especially considering they are materials like genuine suede. I might break down and get a pair just to test the service.
• Montagne Jeunesse Face Mask - I received the raspberry-mango Fruit Smoothie mask. Direct link to the product is here. That page is from Wales, but it is the "official" product page. You can also buy these at Ulta and Walgreens. I'm sure you can other places as well. Retail value: $1.99
• I like facial masks. I'm also a sucker for mango. This particular mask is supposed to leave your skin feeling refreshed and softer. Sounds like something to try while I am on my little holiday vacation. :) Its all about rest/relaxation/renewal. 

So that is the rundown of the products in the box. I will be testing them out and reviewing these products and you all can come along for the journey. I'll blog about it on here with photos, I will also try to create video blogs when warranted. My main video camera is on my computer though so I might try to use the phone or iPad to make some live from my bathroom! Ooo how exciting!

I did make a YouTube video of the unboxing check out my channel here. The videos are also listed on the side of the page. 

Let me know if you have any questions about any of the products I received in the comments. I'll try and answer them as best I can. :)

Have a wonderful Christmas all!

~Robin

Here we go again...

I'm about to start this badboy up again! Woo! Go me.

So, things have changed. CJ, the person in the post I made in 2007, is now in the Air Force and living in an other state. No more cupcake parties :(

I am still in Vegas working for the same place. There are a few changes since 2007.

• I own a home now
• Finished my M.Ed in Special Education
• Was an adjunct professor for about a year. Didn't like it. I don't do well trying to teach adults anything. Especially teachers. (They already think they know everything. Kind of like what they complained about the kids in their classes.....hmmmmmmm)
• Bought a new car

There are other changes since 2007. My father was diagnosed with cancer on Valentine's Day 2011. My maternal grandmother passed away about a month after that. There was a possibility of being laid off from work (I wasn't.) 2011 was a rough year...but I got through it. 

Now makeup is my escape. It used to be food...but I was getting a huge arse. Even huger than it already was. 

The makeup addiction started with Lime Crime eye pigments and I've now moved on to other brands. I'm a Glamour Doll Eyes FANATIC! I'll have to do a photo tour of all the shadows I have. Its a bit insane. I realized I have some dupes the other day, oops! Oh well. I use them.

I'm also a nail polish fiend. I used to get acrylic nails done every two weeks. Was like clockwork for about 5 or 6 years. Things changed and I took my nails off. Got tired of the upkeep I think. And making appointments. And keeping appointments. They took up a huge chunk of my Saturday! So now I'm growing my nails out (with the help of Qtica Natural Nail Growth Stimulator!) and changing my polish every few days. I want to build a polish rack from the display board. I have most of the supplies - just need to find my glue gun and borrow an X-acto from Dad. Maybe I'll actually get that done on my winter break. (Don't hold your breath!)

So....what is this blog going to be about? Probably a lot about makeup and nails. And my cats. Subscription boxes. Stuff I cook. I still love cooking even though I don't eat nearly as much. I'll probably post about coffee too. Can't live without the stuff! 

I'll also post reviews from any Influenster boxes I receive. My first one is on the way, soooooooo excited!

So, with that...I bid you adieu! 

~Robin