Cinnamon Roll Extravaganza!

The baking fun continues! I had always thought that it would be fun to have a bread maker but I never realized how much I would LOVE having one! I've only had it for two weeks and as of this morning it has already been used 6 times, let's just say we've gone through quite a bit of flour :D

After I tried my hand at a loaf of bread I made dough in the maker and then used it to make cinnamon rolls. I found a recipe online, they were good but probably not my favorite that I have ever made---a little too dry for me.

(notice the pretty new placemats that we got...Janet's sister made them for us!)

Since this I've also tried making a quick bread (an hour instead of 3), it wasn't my favorite and I think that I will avoid it generally unless I don't have a choice and I also made dough again to make scones with honey butter the other night---delish!

Next Challenge...

I'm always thinking about new recipes to try, I'm thinking that one of these two may be my next "challenge." Both are from Favorite Family Recipes

Thai Peanut Saute

Orange Chicken

Sww-eeee-tttt PORK!

I'm sure that this picture looks familiar to many and to those that it doesn't you are really missing out. Here is Utah (and it's beginning to spread elsewhere) we have a wonderful restaurant called Cafe Rio. They have many wonderful tasty delights to make your mouth water when you smell. One of my favorites is the Sweet Barbacoa Pork (yum, yum, yum!). Though it's one of my favorites and you get a lot of food Cafe Rio is still a little on the spendy side (from my poor college student point of view that is) but I have been craving it for the last couple of weeks, which left me at a quandary...what to do, what to do? I know! I'll make it myself!

That's just what I did, if you search Cafe Rio sweet pork recipe in google you can find thousands of results. I looked at many of them and decided to just pick one, and boy am I happy with the recipe that I chose. I only spent a little over a dollar for all the ingredients in the recipe, the rice, and vegetables (with tortillas it's a little more expensive) and so far we've gotten 10 burritos out of this and there is still more left in the fridge!

Sweet Pork

2 pounds pork (we use boneless pork rib meat)

3 cans Coke (NOT diet)

1/4 c. brown sugar

dash garlic salt

1/4 c. water

1 can sliced green chilies

3/4 can enchilada sauce (I use Old El Paso brand, medium spiciness but any will work)

1 c. brown sugar

Put the pork in a heavy duty ziploc bag to marinade. Add about a can and a half of coke and about 1/4 c. of brown sugar. Marinade for a few hours or overnight.

Drain marinade and put pork, 1/2 can of coke, water, and garlic salt in crock pot on high for about 3-4 hours (or until it shreds easily, but don't let it get TOO dry) or on low for 8 hours. Remove pork from crock pot and drain any liquid left in the pot. Shred pork.

In a food processor or blender, blend 1/2 can Coke, chilies, enchilada sauce and remaining brown sugar (about a cup, you can add a little more or less to taste..). If it looks too thick, add more Coke little by little.

Put shredded pork and sauce in crockpot and cook on low for 2 hours. That's it!

P.S I got the recipe from HERE

She also has copycat recipes for Cilantro-Lime Rice and Black Beans and the Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette for Salads. Plus many other yummy recipes

Wanda's Birthday

Last week was Wanda's birthday and we went out to dinner for pizza at Red Brick Oven...we had a yummy BBQ Chicken Pineapple, Hawaiian, and Supreme.

Brea and Darrell...one picture is funny by himself but it's even funnier when you look at all three together.

Kimberly...classic picture

Homemade rootbeer

My cute new shirt! (and me texting Kyle about the masquerade that he was at)

The birthday girl! (while we were there we heard at least 2 other people get sung to for their birthday and I had two other friends too!)

Good Addilyn...sleeping away :D

Popsicle Fun

Last Thursday was my last time having my tutoring group. It has been getting warmer and so I decided to get ice cream to share with all of my tutoring students (which was really bad as I discovered something really yummy---mango on one side and milk/ice cream on the other side!). I allowed the girls to have some time at the beginning of the class to eat theirs.

Kristy decided that she didn't want hers so she gave it to Missy (who ate both in the same amount of the time the other two took to eat their one :D)

I love the little bit of ice cream on Amy's nose :)

Cute Rose!

Missy wasn't too excited about me taking her picture, so it was a bit of a struggle to get a good one.

Hot Cross Buns

I would have to say that one of the things that I am going to miss the most when I go home is the bakeries. We love to go to the bakery almost every day or other day and get freshly baked yummy treats, we usually try something new every time- sometimes we like what we try and sometimes we don't. I especially love the bakery that we go to, they always greet us with a smile and will almost always give us our food cheaper than they say that the food should cost.

A Month of Lunches

I have had a couple of people ask about what we eat at the school and I realized that this might be something that I wanted to remember anyway, so I decided that for my last month here I would take a picture everyday of what we eat. I will take a picture of the table with all the food and then a picture of my bowl after putting it all together. You will always see--main food, soup, and fruit.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Monday, June 7, 2010

Friday, June 4, 2010

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Monday, May 31, 2010

Mango's Come In a Glass

We got to Far East a little early and we were both hungry so we decided that we would try one of the little stands downstairs in the food court. I ordered a mango yogurt smoothie...

...I might possibly be willing to go back just for that, because I ordered it with something else it only cost me $20 NT or less than a $1 US! It was so delicious, it really tasted like mango's, was icy, cold, yummy, milky---all the things a good smoothie should be!

For my main course I ordered tortilla wraps. Basically it was tortilla's deep fried with meat, cheese, lettuce, and pineapple- it was actually quite tasty. It also came with chips and "salsa" definitely did not taste like salsa but it wasn't enough to deter me from the rest of the meal :D

6 Course Fancy

Two weekends ago Andrea and I were able to go to Taipei with Yuling and Joseph to go to the Temple. After our sessions we had several hours still until our return train so we went exploring around Taipei. We were starting to get hungry when we walked past this fancy place, it was a steak restaurant and Andrea had mentioned wanting steak. It seemed a little on the fancier side but we figured that we were in our Sunday clothes and we weren't going to get much fancier.
There were 6 "courses"

Course 1: Bread (yummy!)

Course 2: Soup (I had sweet corn and Andrea had French Onion)

Course 3: Salad (I had a green salad with a yogurt dressing and Andrea had tomato and asparagus)

Course 4: Main Course (I had a yummy pasta with cheese, meat, and peppers. Andrea had steak)

Course 5: Dessert (Ice cream with fruit cocktail and a dollop of whipped topping)

Course 6: Drinks (I had lemon juice and Andrea had kiwi) (they don't generally drink during their meals which is why the drink is considered a course)

This is what I get for ordering fresh lemon juice, I was thinking lemonade, on the sweet side- yummy and delicious! Nope, I would say that there was absolutely NO SUGAR! added to my "lemon juice" and so you get this lovely

face :D

The meal was really yummy and only like $12, not that bad when you consider all that we had. It was kind of fun to eat at a multiple course restaurant, I have never done that before and it's kind of neat to mark that off on my experiences.