Old Bay Pumpkin Seeds

A big flop. But only because I burned them :( Stupid oven

I carved my pumpkin last night - and that was a flop too! It broke :( But I semi fixed it and put it outside the door on the ledge - even though it started drooping worse at least tomorrow is Halloween.



I washed and dried the seeds



Then put them on a cookie sheet sprayed with Pam.



I then sprayed the seeds with Pam and sprinkled Old Bay and salt on them.



I baked them at 300 for 25 mins ( 5 mins less than most of the recipes I found online) When I took them out and ate 1 they were burnt.



Sigh. O well. The pics look good. And you should try them and check them earlier! ( I should have but I was busy making my crock-pot chili and forgot until the timer went off)

The Old Bay concept seems yummy, wish I knew - try it will you and let me know.

We were THAT family...and still are!

Kristen, We are THAT family is having her 2 year blogoversary. Her blog is great and funny - often brings a smile to my face! She is offering lots of lovely prizes - one of which is a blog makeover - which I need - BAD.

While I don't have kids of my own, I can think back to MANY stories that prove that my family growing up was THAT family.

What is THAT family?

THAT family is the one that talks their mother's best friend into babysitting (who is single and childless) and while she is taking the children to Pizza Hut for dinner - as the pizza comes K attempts to clean up all the crayons on the table and reaches for the one that fell in the lap of a 5ish year old - who screams at the top of his lungs- "Don't touch my privates!!!" then follows up dinner with a trip behind the pink curtain at the video store (where the racy videos are kept) Poor K - It is a wonder she even had children after that!

THAT family is the family that searches the whole church looking for keys  - when they finally ask the kid where they are she promptly walks to the potty and points! Because that is where they go of course!

THAT family has the kid who climbs out of the crib, up the changing table to get the Sams club size bottle of baby powder and gets back in bed with it - only to jump up and down and empty the whole bottle. What mom? You didn't want white carpet, white walls, white suits (dad's suits were in the closet - and the door was open) and a white child - all 15 mins before you were about to go out to a work function?

THAT family has a mom that will do anything to embarrass her children at all costs - Walking through the middle of Walmart she looks at me very seriously and says "Angela, do you know what time it is?" I of course unknowingly took a big bite of the bait and said "no mom! what time is it?" thinking we had to be somewhere- NOPE it apparently was HAMMER TIME . Yes - my mother stopped in the middle of the aisle and broke it down MC Hammer style. OMG! I wanted to die ( please understand - this was when the hammer was big - many years ago)

We were THAT family, but we still are.

Being a member of THAT family means that one of my teachers at school will ask me, "Hey, was your mom IN a tree trying to cut it down?" Yup she was - She is still alive too by some miracle.

There are many times I shake my head and hope no one saw what just went down in public. THIS family is great - the stories and memories will never go away and I hope one day when I have kids of my own we are THAT family too! Because if you can't laugh with (and at) your family then you can't laugh at anything!

 

Congrats Kristen on 2 years of blogging - over 1 million visitors to your site, and 30,000 comments!! WOW

Girls Night Dessert Pizza

[Printable Recipe]

I love apple pie and this recipe seemed similar. I tried making this for my family on family dinner night, and I messed it up. I wanted to give it another try. I decided to use a pizza pie pan instead of the 9x13 it called for since it was for a pizza themed girls night. Some of the pictures are from the first attempt. (for the record - I was in a hurry the first time and messed up the streusel topping - I used way too much flour- mom said it tasted ok but I wanted to do it right)

I found a recipe for apple crumble bars on the blog Dessert First. It really wasn't hard to make, I just needed to take my time. 2nd time around was much better.

Ingredients:

Filling

3 tart apples

3 tbsp softened butter

3/4 cup sugar

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp flour

1 tsp cinnamon

Crust

2 c. flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

6 tbsp softened butter

3/4 c. brown sugar

1 egg - room temp

Streusel

1/2 c. sugar

2/3 cup + 2 tbsp flour

1/8 tsp salt

6 tbsp cold butter cubed

Directions

Peel, core and dice the apples into cubes about 1/2 inch.



Make the filling first by melting butter in a pan over med heat. Saute apples until they are semi soft.

softened apples


Add the sugar, lemon juice, flour and cinnamon to apples and stir. Cook until the mixture bubbles then turn down heat to low and let cook for another 3 mins. Keep stirring.



Put in a bowl to cool while you make the crust.

To make the crust line your pan with foil and spray with pam.

Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl.

In separate bowl cream butter sugar until fluffy.

Add egg and let combine

Add flour mixture and combine.



Pour dough in pan and press into pan and up sides 1/4 inch or so



Make the streusel by combining sugar, flour and salt. Add the cubed butter and mix until crumbly and butter is really small. I used a pastry blender .

The first time around - with pecans and too much flour

Spread filling over dough and then sprinkle streusel topping over the filling

first time around in a 9x13




Bake 350 degrees for 35-40 mins until golden



Serve cooled or warm - I prefer warm.

This was very good I really enjoyed it. I took some to the David and Meredith ( who I work for) and I am pretty sure David ate some for breakfast Monday am. :-D Very good!

Oh yes it's Ladies Night

In college I had 6 roommates in 4 years - I loved 4 of them. LOVED them. Megan went to high school with me, and when we found out we were both going to UMD we decided to room together because we were scared of a random. Guess what - we BOTH got a random. YUP the 2 that requested being together got a 3rd roommate. All of our fears were realized when move in day came. Not only was the living situation rough ( we had a converted triple- which means they took a normal double room and shoved an extra set of furniture in and called it a triple - we still had 2 closets for 3 girls.) Said random and I didn't get along - her party habits and lord of the rings watching at 3am didn't mesh well with my sleep habits and apparently my homework habits at 3 in the afternoon didn't work well with her sleep habits. We fought and fought and I almost quit school. She requested a transfer for spring semester. Thank God. But that meant another random. Sometime in January a sweet girl named Ashley called me and said she was my new roommate. I put on a happy face and decided to try and give her a fair start. I am so glad I did. I love this girl- and she loved many of the same things I did. When she came in and put on some country music I knew we were good to go. She kept me entertained and we had a lot of fun. During Freshman year Carol lived across the hall. Dory was the nicest person I knew, she was a music major and was always happy. sophomore year we planned it so she lived right next door. I spent many hours in her room and her in mine. Junior year we wanted to get out of the dorms and into the apartments. So Meg, Carol and I went looking for a triple apartment. There weren't any- our only choice was to join someone already living in a 4 bedroom. I felt bad for the poor girl - the 3 of just coming in and taking over. But she hid in her room playing video games most of the time anyway so it wasn't so bad. Her only flaw was she enjoyed eating my leftovers(like from restaurants - sometimes with bites taken out of it). Weird but whatever. She graduated and moved out so senior year Meg's sister moved in. I was excited for Jillian to move in, we hung out some and she was a lot of fun. Meg, Carol, Jill and I had a blast. I can't even count the number of times all of them would end up in my room, laying on my bed talking. Sometimes I would have to leave, and come back and they'd still be in my bed.
I miss this


Love it. There were spontaneous dance parties in the living room,

Jill was on the end table. Carol on the coffee table and Meg on the dining room table. LOVE IT

shopping days, family dinners and FUN. I miss them terribly. There are many, many nights I want to go in and lay in one of their beds and just talk. But we are all in different places now. So it was so nice to have them all back together. I hope we start doing this more often. Carol - move back to MD so we can! :-D

Ok sorry for the long sentimental bit on to the food.

We made our own pizza's - Meg and Jill brought the ingredients for the pizza, I made dessert (shocker I know) and Carol brought wine and beer. So fun. We sat around the table and talked, like old times but more grown up :-D

Meg brought 2 pre made dough balls, I think she got them at Weis. She was in charge of getting them ready for the toppings - she was flipping dough all over the place :-D haha not really but she did a good job.
Tossing it like a pro


Jill got all the toppings in order.

peppers, onions, mushrooms, turkey pepperoni and italian sausage

We used a jar of spaghetti sauce(garlic basil to be exact). We just made it up as we went along for the pizza's.

Brushed the crust with olive oil


Jill and the yummy sauce - it had big chunks of garlic


some cheese and then toppings


1 pizza is pep, sausage and onion the other is everything

We cooked 350 for a while. I honestly don't remember how long we cooked them - basically until the crust looked done and everything was bubbly. (15 mins maybe? Girls do you remember?)
yummy pizzas


The food was so yummy but the company was better.

L to R: Carol, Jill, Me and Meg


Dessert Pizza recipe to come tomorrow.

Terps Cookie Cake

I love Testudo. I do. I found out you can have him come to your wedding reception and I love it. ( My parents and other may not but I think its pretty cool!)

I made a cookie cake because they are good and Matt likes them. I wanted to decorate it. So I picked Testudo. I am happy with this- it is a little sloppy in some places, but it wasn't for any occasion and I am a little tired and have other things to do before bed tonight so I rushed a little.

I used piping gel as a guide - it doesn't work as well on a cookie cake for detailed things I have decided. But it did the job. My only complaint with this is that the chocolate icing wasn't light enough for testudo. But he still rocks.

piping gel guide


Happy early Birthday to ME


Now to clean up the kitchen, pack for Hershey park tomorrow and go to bed. :-D I like nights like this.

Snickers Pie

I was totally called out for slacking on my blogging. Truth is I have been slacking on my baking too. Good news though, I have a mission these next few weeks to get the perfect sugar cookie recipe down. I have tried a couple and I just haven't been pleased. I need a good sugar cookie for our Hanukkah cookies this year. I also think I want to try to decorate cookies - Bake at 350 has some amazing stuff and I want to be like her. It will probably take me a while to figure it out before it makes the blog - or I can let you see all my mistakes and learn along with me. We will see what my pride can take when I try it. :-D So be on the look out for sugar cookies, also this weekend my favorite roommates are coming over! We are having a girls night and making homemade pizzas. Jillian said I have to blog about it - and since she is the reason for this update, I guess I better listen to her! Sugar cookies and pizza! YUM.

Speaking of YUM - SNICKERS Pie.



Snickers is one of my favorite candy bars of all time. Which is funny to me because when I was little my mom and I had a knock down, drag out fight in Walmart because I wouldn't try one. ( I said I didn't like them, when I never tried them, and she knew if I tried it I would like them - I tried them - and said I still didn't like them, even if I did)

This was for our monthly family dinner which Matt and I hosted. It was super easy - I cheated and made it even easier and bought oreo crusts. I found this from Make Life Delicious

[Printable Recipe]
Ingredients:

8 oz cream cheese - softened

1/2 c. creamy or chunky peanut butter ( I used creamy)

1 1/2 c. powdered sugar

4 regular size snickers bars, chopped ( reserve some to top pie - I forgot this and just chopped another one)

1 tub cool whip thawed

Chocolate crumb crust

Directions:

* In large mixing bowl beat cream cheese, peanut butter and powdered sugar until creamy

This is not at the creamy stage but my creamy pic was blurry and i didn't notice


* Stir in chopped candy bars

snickers





* Gently fold in Cool Whip

cool whip added


* Pour into crusts (this makes 2 pies) and top with snickers (the recipe suggest Carmel sauce drizzled on top but I didn't have that)



* refrigerate overnight

If you make your own crust you can make 1 larger pie in a spring form pan. Making 2 means you can freeze one!!

This was super easy to make and very good! It was really rich and yummy. I would definitely make this again because it was so easy and would be an easy thing to make if you had to take something to a party or pot luck.

Here you go Jill - this outta last a couple days! :-D