Chicken Wild Rice Casserole

So I really REALLY disliked this recipe. My boyfriend has some kind of weird love for casseroles so I thought I would try and find an interesting one (*sigh* men...). Well I guess I was successful in that this was interesting...but it was SO incredibly bland. It's full of green beans and rotisserie chicken along with water chestnuts and wild rice. It hardly tasted like anything and it made wayyy too much for the two of us. I hated it and I was forced to eat this slop for four days straight because I hate wasting food. Just don't make this, okay? If you really want to make chicken wild rice casserole, try going to allrecipes.com. They're awesome and there's tons of reviews to make sure you don't get disgusted like me.

Here's the recipe if you still feel obligated to make this: http://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-and-wild-rice-casserole-358223

Valentine's Day

I know I'm a little late in posting this, but for Valentine's Day I made a couple recipes from our dear little friend Pinterest. I attempted to do everything heart-shaped and unfortunately the heart cookie cutter I ordered didn't get here in time for V-day :(. So bear with me! I cut all of the dough by hand. So let's start with breakfast.

Breakfast was a really simple recipe for me: buy some pre-made orange rolls and re-roll them. The site I got the recipe from was for cinnamon rolls, but my boyfriend and I just love orange rolls too much so I opted for that.

For dinner, I decided to make pepperoni calzones that were (of course) heart-shaped. I also took the easy road for this one and bought pre-made pizza dough instead of making my own (hey...I had class that day!). These were really delicious - I just wish I would've added more pepperoni to them! Yum.

Along with this main course, I made the avocado/tomato/mozzarella salad from my previous post because it was just so dang good. Also, we had ginger ale with ice cubes made of maraschino cherry juice (so when the ice melted, it made a Shirley Temple).

Finally, dessert! The best meal of the day. For this, I made my boyfriend's favorite: cherry pie...and of course it was heart-shaped. Duh! This was delicious (how could cherry pie not be delicious?) but I used low-sugar pie filling so it lacked the sugary taste a little bit. It was yummy nonetheless.

So happy belated Valentine's Day! (or not if you're single...in that case I apologize for my silly heart-shaped culinary delights. I hope they did not depress you) Good bye now.

Here's the links for these recipes:

Cinnamon Rolls: http://pinchmysalt.com/heart-shaped-cinnamon-rolls/

Calzones: http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/02/recipe_calzone_hearts.html

Cherry Pie: http://www.meetthedubiens.com/2011/01/heart-shaped-cherry-pies.html

Godfather's Cinnamon Streusel Dessert Pizza

Alright so I grew up eating Godfather's pizza and EVERYONE knows that the dessert pizza is always the best part of the meal! So when I found this recipe, I ignored the fact that only two people would have to eat a full size dessert pizza alone and I went for it! The first good thing about this recipe is that I had pretty much all of the ingredients - they're all really common. The only thing I bought was some pizza dough (I'm too lazy to make my own). The pizza ended up being soooo delicious. Next time I think I'll add some kind of pie filling to change it up. My boyfriend said he thought it tasted "too sugary" but for me, there is no such thing! Blasphemy. But if you are like my boyfriend, you should probably try it with pie filling because the icing on this tastes like pure sugar and nothing else. But enough of my mindless rambling...I am in love with this recipe. The end.

Here's the recipe: http://sorumblyinmytumbly.blogspot.com/2011/06/godfathers-cinnamon-streusel-dessert.html

Toilet Paper Roll Wall Art

I was really afraid to make this project because I knew it would take lots of time and it might just end up looking like a project done by a 2nd grader. You know the ones... the art project that mom hangs on the fridge to make you feel special. Well I wanted to actually display this in my living room so it seemed a little sketchy to decorate with toilet paper rolls. I think it turned out great, though! It took a VERY long time for me to come up with enough toilet paper rolls to make it as big as I wanted it to be (the end product of the largest one is 2 feet in diameter). I got a couple weird looks from my boyfriend when I told him to save all of the rolls that he had, but that's okay...he's dating me so he should know all about my random crazy projects. So this is what my final product turned out like. Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself!

This is where I got the idea: http://themayberryhomejournal.blogspot.com/2011/09/diypregnant-brain.html

Follow me on Pinterest! http://pinterest.com/allisonj30/

Redo

Okay so my first attempt at crock pot orange chicken was just plain embarrassing. I decided to give it another try but watch it more carefully. It turns out that the chicken really only need 2 or 3 hours on high in the crock pot instead of 6 (like the recipe says). It turned out fine, but I really didn't enjoy the sauce. It was really tangy and did not taste like any orange chicken I've ever had. Next time I want to make orange chicken, I won't take the easy way out by making it with orange juice instead of real oranges. So I probably won't make this recipe again, but at least I redeemed myself a little as an amateur cook. -_-