Superbowl party

Sunday was my first ever superbowl party! We had our friends Kelsey and Brandon over and Bea and Ivan.

 I tried out a bunch of recipes from the most recent issue of taste of home magazine.  The chocolate dream whoopie pies were my favorite. 

The frosting on the inside was like whipped chocolate butter and the outside cookie was soft and chewy.  It was basically like a big soft and creamy chocolate oreo.

Ingredients

1 package (18-1/4 ounces) chocolate cake mix
3 eggs
1/2 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

FILLING:
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup 2% milk
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
2/3 cup shortening
1/3 cup butter, softened
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

GARNISH:
1 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips

Directions
In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, eggs, oil and vanilla; beat on low speed for 30 seconds. Beat on medium for 2 minutes.

Drop by 2 tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 15-18 minutes or until edges are set. Cool for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.

For filling, in a small saucepan, combine the sugar, flour and salt. Gradually add milk. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 1-2 minutes or until thickened. Stir in chocolate chips until melted. Cool completely.

In a large bowl, beat the shortening and butter until fluffy. Beat in chocolate mixture and vanilla.
Spread chocolate filling on the bottoms of half of the cookies, about 2 tablespoons on each; top with remaining cookies. Roll sides in miniature chocolate chips for garnish. Store in the refrigerator. Yield: about 1 dozen.

 I also made foccacia bread that turned out excellent. 
 

 
 

Ingredients

1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast
1 cup warm water (110° to 115°)
2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1-1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon each dried oregano, thyme and rosemary, crushed
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
Dash pepper
2 to 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 plum tomatoes, thinly sliced
1/4 cup shredded part-skim mozzarella cheese
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

Directions
In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add 1 tablespoon oil, salt, sugar, garlic powder, herbs, pepper and 1-1/2 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough (dough will be sticky).


Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.


Punch dough down. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Shape into a 13-in. x 9-in. rectangle; place on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. With fingertips, make several dimples over top of dough.


Brush dough with remaining oil; arrange tomatoes over the top. Sprinkle with cheeses. Bake at 400° for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to a wire rack. Yield: 1 loaf (12 pieces).


 Thomas made a rasberry fruit dip. 
 

1 8oz bar reduced fat cream cheese (room temperature)
1/4 cup marshmallow fluff
3 tbsp sugar free seedless raspberry preserves
 
Combine all ingredients.  Blend thoroughly. Serve with fresh fruit.
 
And for drinks we had strawberry party punch.

I'm not going to post the recipe cause it wasn't that great.  But little Alex liked it.  That boy loves his "agua" he calls all drinks agua.

We also had velveeta cheese dip and chips, lil smokies, chex mex, and M&M's.  YUMMMM!!!!
To have enough room for everybody we brought out the futon from the extra bedroom so everybody would have a seat.

I love hanging with friends.  Thomas and I were going for the Packers and everybody else was for the Steelers (suckers :)

Saturday night I met Thomas in Idaho Falls after he got off work to play games at my old MTC companions apartment.  It was so nice to see her again, I haven't seen her in 3 1/2 years! And I got to meet her husband.  We played a fun game called Boxers or Briefs that is kind of like Apples to Apples. 
Such a fun weekend, it went by so fast!

Fall Food

Thomas and I have tried a few new menu items this month.  This past Tuesday I was super busy with homework and so Thomas spent like an hour and a half making dinner and made wontons.  We had a recipe from the Taste of Home website for some filling for the wontons that had spicy chicken.  Soooo good! Then some were filled with cream cheese and imitation crab. Some were boiled and some were fried.  Of course the friend ones were the best :)

Thomas took this picture.  Not sure why he didn't put it on a plate :)

Boiled wontons

 I also made some pumpkin bars.  Our local grocery stores have been out of canned pumkin becuase of a pumpkin shortage last year.  They had some come in Friday and we picked a few cans up.  I got the recipe from other bloggers.  Super easy.  One big can pumpkin, one box of spice cake and a bag of white chocolate chips. We opted to make them into bars instead of cookes.  So yummy! And made a ton! So we wrapped some up to give to our friends.

These are a few of my favorite things

First of all I love The Sound of Music, that's definetly one of my favorite movies.  Ever since I was a little girl I've loved that movie.  After kindergarden my sisters and I would go over to my grandparents house and every day I wanted to watch The Sound of Music.  If my sisters would complain my mom would intervene and I always got to watch it. 
But I wanted to share some of my new favorite healthy summer snacks.  First is frozen grapes.  They are great for getting something sweet and crunchy without a lot of calories. 
Next,
Homemade Orange Julius. 

Here is the recipe:
1- 6oz can of frozen orange juice (I don't think they come in 6oz cans so I just used a whole can and then added more water to the recipe).
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup milk
1 cup water
1 tray of ice
Blend it all up and you have like 6 servings of orange julius.  We put the extra in a tupperware container in the freezer and now it's super easy to just take it out, let it thaw for a bit and blend it for a quick and easy cool down drink.
I also just tried the following recipe suggested by Peanut Butter Fingers (she has an awesome healthy eating/living blog). Chocolate Yogurt Mousse

Picture by Peanut Butter Fingers

1 cup greek yogurt
1 spoonful of chocolate pudding mix (I used sugar free and fat free)
fruit of your choosing
This totally satisfies an ice cream and chocolate craving.  I didn't like it so much without the fruit so make sure and put some kind of fruit in there.  Grapes were delicous.

Running Relief

I finally felt good running today.  Ran on the treadmill while Thomas got buff lifting weights.  I love being able to see him through the mirror while I'm running, he's so darn cute! I really like working on speed, it's the endurance that gets me.  When I work on changing my speeds up in a workout it tricks my mind into not knowing how much I'm running.  For example, today I ran 4.5 miles and the time flew by because I kept switching the speeds up:
1 mile @ 8:15
Rest .5 mile @ 10:54
1 mile @ 8:15
Rest .5 mile @ 10:54
Repeat the following 6 times:
200 meters @ 7:54
Rest 200 meters @ 10:54
Total Distance: 4.5 miles
Total time: 41:41
Incline: 1.0
I was super sweaty afterwards but felt great! No dizziness today. 
In none running related news, I'm getting excited for my birthday on Thursday.  I'm turning the big 2-4!  I honestly still feel like I'm still 21. I think I remember last year saying I still felt 19.  So I'm feeling older, but still not feeling my age.  We are going to have a little dinner over at my sister's house. My brother in law Ivan is going to barbeque some carne asada.  Thomas and I are making the homemade salsa and of course there will be beans and tortillas.  YUM! And I put Thomas in charge of the cake and he ordered it today.  I requested a Dora the Explorere cake. I'm excited to see if my request is granted.
Today we went to a taco wagon that is just a block or so away and had a carne asada enchilad and rice and beans.  So delicious! I love mexican food! I think God probably had a hard time deciding what race to make me but in the end he knew that if I were mexican I'd be muy gordita cause the food is so delish so he made me white. 

Grillin

We are loving our charcoal grill that I got Thomas for graduation.  Thomas is becoming a pro at grilling our dinner.  We have a little system, I prepare the food and he grills it. 
We have used it twice to roast smore's.  Seriously the last time we made smore's, they were the best smores I had ever tasted.  We went to a concert in the park with Bea and Ivan and had homemade pizza and roasted smores.  The performers were both Indie singers and I discovered the I really like that style of music.
We also made smores for the fourth of July at Beaver Dick park.
For dinner the past couple nights we have had chicken kabobs and turkey burgers.  So yummy! I found a bunch of healthy recipes from Safeway.com that I am loving. 

What a cutie.

Chicken Kabobs