Lasagna Crock Pot

Deliciousnesssss 

Ingredients

• 1 Pound of ground beef
• 1 (26 oz) Jar of spaghetti sauce
• 1 Cup of water
• 1 (15 oz) Package of ricotta cheese
• 1 Package of shredded mozzarella, divided
• 1/4 Cup of grated Parmesan cheese, divided
• 1 egg
• 2 Tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley
• 6 lasagna noodles, uncooked

Directions

1. Step One

   Cook the ground beef until it is brown; then drain all that grease. Stir in spaghetti sauce and water. [This is in one pot]

2. Step Two

   Mix ricotta, 1 1/2 c. mozzarella, 2 Tbsp. parmesan, egg and parsley. [Mix these in the other pot]

3. Step Three

   Spoon 1 cup meat sauce into slow cooker; top with layers of half each of the noodles, broken to fit, and then cheese mixture. Keep repeating this process and layer it lastly with cheese on top!

4. Step Four

   Cover and cook on low for 3 hours.
   
   
   Then dish it out and serve!
   
   
   

   

   
   
   
   
   Update On The Wehles:
   
   
   Matt and I have been doing well in Rexburg..with a few problems. It has been quite a crazy month being here at the apartment! The pipes in front of our apartment ironically enough broke about 4-5 times since we have been here. The last time it broke was on Wednesday and it flooded our whole apartment, it came in through our light fixture in the kitchen and it broke the light fixture and shattered on our floor. I grabbed all the electronics on the floor and placed them in random spots around the room, my neighbor heard me scream and luckily she had TONS of towels! [thank you Jill!] and helped me get all the  water up! 
   
   We also have not had A/C this whole time and it has been about 2 weeks now, the lovely sand flittering in through the water all the time is an added bonus. All of these other problems happened but I do not want to vent! [too much] So Matt and I are moving in with a friend of the family and they are so nice to help us out! We really are grateful for the help and we will be living there until January when we come back for winter semester. Then we will move to another complex and we are excited for all the moving we will have to do! [we are becoming pros at it] 
   
   
   
   
   
   So we will be moving this week and we are excited to have a mini party every day with our friends! I hope you all enjoyed the recipe because it was fantastic! [i got a lot of compliments on it and it doesn't take too long to do! ]
   
   89 days until VA for Christmas, but until then..we will celebrate Halloween! Matt has already decided our costumes! People probably wouldn't get our costume unless they know Matt and I but it is pretty awesome...I will post pictures of our costumes when it is Halloween time! 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Until Next Time!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Take That Pocket Kitchen!

Updated the background, do you all like? I miss the trees, so I wanted to put a little green in my life via background!

Anyway so as most of you know [or for those who didn't know] We have moved back to Idaho! We are here for just a few months while Matt finishes up school! We are in a nice little apartment really close to campus and we are doing great!

The apartment is at a great location, and for a great price for the time being we took it! The downside, is there is no kitchen.

I have a pocket kitchen. For those of you who do not know what that means it literally means I have

1. fridge
2. stove burner that plugs into the wall
3. microwave
4. and a sink

So! I came up with a solution....the crock pot!

 Take that pocket kitchen! So now I love my pocket kitchen because the crock pot is awesome!

It has been working great so far, I have found a few websites that have recipes for crock pots and they make tons of food and we have left overs! So here is just one that I have done that takes 24 hours! It really does, but do not worry it is SO EASY and it is well worth it!

Behold The...

Beef Vegetable Stew Recipe!

Oh my, doesn't that just look so good! Anyway this soup is to die for!

First here is what you will need

• 1 Pound of Lean beef stew meat
• 1/3 Medium onion, chopped into large pieces
• 2 - 3 Medium potatoes, peeled and cut into bite size pieces
• 2 - 3 Carrots, peeled and cut into bite size pieces
• 2 Cans of Tomato sauce
• 1 (14.5 oz) Can of Green beans, drained
• 1 (7 oz) Can of Whole kernel corn, drained
• 1 (8.5 oz) Can of Sweet green peas, drained
• 6 - 7 Beef bouillon cubes

Step 1:

First you will want to cook your meat, just to get it a nice brown color! You can add pepper and salt to it if you so desire. [I personally didn't because I wanted that full meat taste!]

Step 2:

After cooking the meat, drain all that oil and fat out and just place the meat in the crock pot! Along with those carrots, onions, and potatoes. [I kept my potatoes peeled just because I love skin potatoes!] Then add the tomato sauce, and water. [add as much water as you want but be WARNED the water will evaporate over night, I noticed this and added more to it than I thought I needed to. it was perfect! I would suggest adding enough water so that you can not see your ingredients as much]

Stir all the ingredients you placed in the crock pot and let it sit on HIGH for an hour.

Step 3: 

After the hour is up, put the crock pot on low for the next 24 hours! [I know crazy right? but TRUST ME, best thing ever! The meat with just melt in your mouth and pull apart because it has been sitting in that crock pot for 24 hours!]

Step 4:

About an hour before you serve this delicious dish, add the rest of your ingredients to the crock pot, [green beans, peas, corn, bullion cubes] stir it in and put it on high for the last hour. Wait until the cubes are dissolved and bam!

delicious crock pot beef vegetable soup! 

Matt was very happy with my creation... too bad it was horrible timing, our A/C has not been working this three day weekend and so naturally why not make the soup. We ate it slowly and over a period of an hour just because we were getting so hot!

Hope this recipe was useful and you all enjoy it and try it for yourselves!

I do love posting recipes I just need find more time to do so, I will post some more soon.

Matt and I were teasing saying that we have been so good about going to temples lately, here is a few snap shots of when we went to these weddings!

Mike Hortman's wedding in Salt Lake

David and Elise's wedding at the Manti Temple [new sister!]

One of my best friend's Courtney Themer got married to this sweet man Steven Porter, right before we left!

Love you guys!

Aww the joy of weddings

So as of right now Matt and I are living it up in Idaho for the next few months, but we will be home for Christmas! Thank you frequent flyer miles! Defiantly helped us to get home, but we still need to get tickets back to Idaho! [haha ooppss?] 

My sister Alanna has a count down of when we return for Christmas, as of an hour ago it is 102 days!

But as of right now, Matt and I are enjoying being married and settled into our little apartment! He loves the tv in here [ of course it is HD ] and we are enjoying hanging out with all of our married friends up here! It is so great to be apart of the married club! Marriage is a great thing and to have that constant support and companion in someone, I am truly blessed. 

I love my husband!

Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend!

Until Next Time! 

Catching Up

I am so sorry to anyone who actually read this I have not updated in quite sometime!
The time I was going to update we got a storm that came out of nowhere and knocked our power out for 4 days!

There is just one of the trees that I saw as we were driving down the main road in our city of Stafford. It is so crazy that pretty much everyone was without power for days, and even weeks!

Luckily we all got our power back in a few days and we were able to save our food and nothing got destroyed!

Now around that time I was surprisingly still cooking and my mother in law was one of those people that did not even have to go without power! So we were over there often helping with cooking, cleaning, and helping those who didn't have power put things in the fridge and store at their house for the time being. Around that time I decided to tackle this peanut butter cookie recipe, with a Hershey kisses in the middle!

My Aunt Sharon can tell you that these cookies are my favorite, and I only cherish them around Christmas time. I feel as though I can not make the cookies as good as she can so I just have never tried, well this time I really thought I would give it a go! Let me tell you, I think I did a pretty good job! They turned out great and eventually within the first hour or so of making them they were pretty much all gone too! 

Also around this time ironically enough, Beau and Teri were moving out with all this heat and no power and we were moving down in the basement. It was a bit bitter sweet just because I had gotten so used to just running down stairs and seeing the kiddos and them whenever I felt like it. Now I can't do that,now I have to travel 5 minutes to their house, and Matt and I are in the basement! We love being down here and having all this space, but once again irony will not let us live this down. We are moving back to Idaho...in 2 weeks!

Yes we will be traveling back hopefully for the last time! Matt has to finish up his last year at school and so we will be in Idaho until April. Although I am trying to have a positive outlook on things, we will be back in Idaho but we will be married now! No more rules I have to follow as a single student, and this way I can feel a little more grown up living in an apartment with just Matt and I! I am excited to be on my own with Matt for a bit and being newlyweds out in Idaho. We might come back for Christmas, but that is still up in the air! [Yes plane tickets are expensive! Especially when you pay for 2 people now!] We have a cute little studio apartment close to campus and not out of the way of anything, it was newly remodeled this past year so everything is new! It is also furnished which is great because I was worried about getting furniture out there! So whew, thank goodness for that! 

By the way a lot of other things have happened that have kept us busy, including giving a talk in church last week! As a newlywed couple, gosh I was nervous but I am pretty sure it went well! We went to Youth Conference to support my cousins, brother, and brother in law as they danced and sang in this performance! My niece Eliza Ann [age: 3] gave her very first talk in primary yesterday and she did such a great job we are all so proud of her! 

Now here is me in action! My mother, Matt and I just spent pretty much our whole day in Wegmans on Saturday! Pretty much the best grocery store there is out there, although you will get lost and just add more stuff to your cart than you thought you would! We also had the missionaries over for dinner yesterday and we had a seafood buffet! It felt like Christmas Eve! [Although it was a quarter of the food we actually serve and make that day!]

My family and I are seafood people, and we have tons of seafood recipes passed down in the family line. A lot of them I actually will not post the recipes because they are just that good ;) but I will share with you what I made yesterday which is always a big hit and very easy to make!

Marinated teriyaki sauce bacon covered scallops! Now the actual recipe calls for all sorts of things, but I am going to give you the easy version on how to make these delicious appetizers! 

First grab one of these...

This pretty much has all the ingredients that we usually put on the scallops anyway so we just used this for a quick serve! First grab your scallops and depending on how big they are you can cut them in fourths, or just halves. [I usually do fourths because it is hard to wrap them up!] Next you will have to pour ALL [yes I mean all, dump that whole bottle] into a bowl and place the scallops directly into that bowl, then place them in the fridge for about 2-4 hours to marinate. Once they have been all marinated you take them out of the fridge and get your bacon! If you buy a half a pound of scallops cut them into fourths, one package of 12 bacon strips should be fine.

Then as shown in the picture cut the bacon strips in half so you can roll about 22-24 scallops. Take out the scallops one by one and start to roll them up in the bacon. Place a toothpick in the middle to keep it from falling apart and running away from you! Then dip the bacon in the teriyaki sauce and place it on a tray [Covered in foil! This is important or it will be VERY hard to scrub] After placing them all on the cooking sheet covered in foil, place in the oven on BOIL, and let it cook for about 8-10 minutes or until they start to darken just a bit. If they burn a little that is quite alright they will just be a little crispy!

Then yummy dinner is served! Hope that this recipe was useful and easy to understand! I will try and post every week again the power outage kind of threw me off a bit but I am back! This has been a great couple of weeks and this coming week we will be heading to water country usa! I am so excited and I also hope everyone is enjoying the summer Olympics my family and I are all really into it this year! 

Go Team USA!

Until Next Time!

Father's Day/Beach

This is a father's day post, and a quick cooking post too!

First of all this is the nice card that I made my dad for father's day.

My dad has always been a great example to me in my life, I love him so much and he is so great! He is a great example to what I expect in a father, and he is so great and provides and protects our family.

Happy Father's Day Daddy! 

Also even though my husband is not a father yet, I know he will be a great one someday! But he is a great provider and protector already and I am so grateful for him! I love you hubby!



We went to the beach this weekend, cause that is what my dad wanted to do for father's day :) During this weekend though it was red flag, and there was such big tides and bad winds that we didn't enjoy the beach as much as we normally do. So instead, we watched the waves and then I took pictures because there was so much action with wave after wave.

I am not a photographer obviously but I love this shot, and I really wanted to take pictures! Man I love the waves and all that!

I made dinner about a week ago, and I will have time again this week to do such a thing. 

So we took out pork loin from the freezer and put it on high for about 4-6 hours, before putting it on low for 1-2 hours. I then cut up some watermelon and melon for a nice side dish. Then cooked some corn, and made gravy in a side dish from the meat in the crock pot. Then I also just did a dish for a mashed potato and butter, easy easy! So this dinner was not anything special, but I did make cookies from cake mix.

I made these chocolate chip cookies from cake mixes, and it is way easy! The instructions are on the box itself, and then bake these cookies in the oven! 

Super easy no time at all, and even though this post is short, next week will be longer and with a more detailed recipe! 

Until Next Time! 

Cooking Frenzy

So I have been a creeper as of late looking at other people's blogs and such.
I need to make mine cooler somehow and I am not sure how to do it, if anyone has any tips of advice please let me know! I would love to update this more!

Now for this week, nothing too exciting happened this week except Matt got his boating license!
Which is great because when we got to the Marina about 6 cops were there checking on licenses and other things! It was insane, and that has never happened ever until now!

Spending time at the lake with the Ballous, and my parents it was way fun! It was a bit choppy that day, so we stayed in one spot most of the day but we took the kids out on the jet skis and let them swim. This time I wore sunscreen, so no sunburn just tan baby! But I thought I would share this footage of Mel with him tubing and his awesome wipe out, but for some reason it won't upload!

So this week I decided to try my Aunt Sharon's Baked Ziti recipe, and then toll house pie from Teri Sue. [Oh yea that's a story]

Ingredients

Turkey Sausage [I used hamburger instead]
1 Hunt brand 4 cheese, or basil/garlic sauce
1 Hunts original sauce
1 Box of ziti noodles
1 can of parm. cheese
1 mexican mix shredded cheese
 1/2 cup of sugar
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 leaves of basil

Bake hamburger until brown, and then add basil leaves shredded up and sugar with some olive oil. Mix this all together until it is nice and evenly mixed! Also at the same time cook pasta until it is cooked, and then drain out the water. Then in a pan had the pasta, sauce, and meat all together. Then add the bag of Mexican cheese and parm. cheese, stir this all together until it is well mixed.. The rest of the cheese add on top and place it into  the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

I also attempted at making garlic bread, and my mother showed me a simple way of how she does it. She puts in the tub of butter in the microwave and then used the garlic press to mix in the garlic into the melted butter. Use a cooking brush and brush it onto the french bread that I bought for the dinner and place it in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

Ta-da! Easy garlic bread, and then once it comes out just cut it into little pieces! 

Then my amazing husband who loves me very much asked me if I could make toll house pie for him. I told him we did not have the ingredients, but since my mother in law was over he asked if she had them..and she did. So off to her house to bake some more! This is Toll House pie recipe that I have gotten from Teri and it is amazing.

Toll House Pie

1 unbaked pie shell

2 large eggs

1/2 cup of flour

1/2 cup of sugar

1/2 cup of brown sugar

3/4 cup [1 1/2] sticks of butter softened

1 cup chocolate chips

You take all of the ingredients listed above and beat them with beaters, or just your fabulous kitchen aid until it is all smooth. Then you add the chocolate chips last and place them in the already made for you pie shell. [if you are lazy like me, although I had to make the top of the pie since she had only had the bottom shell which is fine, and it was really easy!]

Place it into the oven at 325 for 55-60 minutes, and then bam!

 Yummy toll house pie!

So that was the busy weekend we had, and me just cooking up a storm yesterday. Today is also my cute little niece Savannah Lynn's birthday today! She is 5 years old today and I can not believe it! I remember when she was born and I got out of school early to be there! I love you so much miss Savannah Lynn you are such a sweethart! Hope you enjoyed your day out on the boat with everyone for your birthday and your strawberry shortcake, cake.

Happy Birthday Cute Girl! 

Until next week, thanks for reading! 

Cake Pops?

So this week was an interesting one indeed, and you all thought I wouldn't post.

Wrong.

I am doing this goal, I am keeping up with it! This week was filled with me nannying and now Matt getting a new job out of nowhere and he loves it. [I am now married to a painter] So his hours are not bad, and it is flexible because he lets Matt take off so he can do his homework.

Well in between all of that, we spent 9 hours out all day on the boat for the first time this summer! Just because Matt hasn't gotten Saturday's off this summer yet we were finally able to do that!

Downside.

I am pretty sure I either got sun poisoning, or just really really bad sun burn.

I felt like that this whole weekend, and Matt being the great husband he was, was reapplying aloe vera, helping me with just little things you don't think about because I have never been burnt this bad! Matt was making fun of me because he kept on asking me, "You have never been burnt this bad? Ever?" Ummm yea, no I would have remembered and be better with my sunscreen! But he was so helpful and it is getting better and soon I can cuddle with him.

Well this week was a lot harder to cook dinner because I had long hours nannying this week but I managed to put in my two cents, for today as I made cake pops for the first time!

I got a cake pop pan from bed bath and beyond with one of our wedding gift cards! It was one of our splurge items and I decided to use it today! First of all I tried to do my research and see what would be the best way to cook these things, and the ingredients you use.

So here is the end result.

That was all that was left, and I am not sure if it was because everyone was super hungry... or they liked it, I got mixed reviews. First off I know they do not look too pretty and it was my first time making it, annnnnd I forgot about the sprinkles! 

I Know, How Dare I Forget The Sprinkles...

Cake Pops [Recipe I used, and because I have the pan I didn't make them into balls]

1 Cake Mix [Whatever you desire, Matt wanted funfetti so that is what I used]

4 eggs

1/2 cup water [not milk]

1 Pudding Mix [Whatever you want]

1 bag of chocolate chips [I used milk chocolate]

Sprinkles [if you so desire]

This is my added addition 

1 icing mix

1. Make cake batter with one standard box of cake mix, follow the instructions on how to make the cake on the box EXCEPT, no milk and add one more egg. Also when adding water instead of milk use half of the amount it asks for. Then add the pudding mix to make the cake denser for a nice effect. Mix all ingredients together until smooth.

2. You spray the top and bottom of the cake pop pan, and then place the cake mix on the bottom portion of the tray. Then place the top portion over it and into the oven at 350 degrees, for 25-30 minutes. [I did mine for 22 minutes]

Then it is all suppose to be fine and dandy when you take them out, let them sit for 10 minutes and melt the chocolate and serve.

Well here is the reality people. 

I am not a pro, and so when it told me to dip the tip of the stick into the melted chocolate and then stabbed through the hole of the cake pop so it acts as a "glue" so when it dries and you add the melted chocolate it is easier. They are so wrong [at least for me]

First of all they were not sticking to the little stick they had given me, and even after I put them in the fridge to cool them down and harden it did not work the chocolate was too dense and sticky it usually took them off the stick anyway!

Added Bonus: My family the ones that said they liked it, added this 2 cents to it.

They didn't like the chocolate as much! I was totally shocked since that is all you see on the cake pop tutorials.

So instead I pulled my husband aside and told him to have the cake pop dipped in this..

He said it tasted soo much better, and just made the cake pops that much smoother. So in my family that is  what worked for me,  putting icing around the cake pop in the end instead of melted chocolate chips.

If anyone knows how to make this process easier, or if there is a secret way to add something so it has a better kick let me know. Although in the end this was my first time and I was proud of at least trying to be creative and make these cake pops! 

Also one more thing my mother did surprise me with this...

I got two news books one on baking, and the other is called best of the best. [which is a book I looked through and it scares me but I am ready to tackle it!] In the center is a cook book that my mom also got me and it helps me organize things better and really gets me excited to build up my cook book!

So I am really doing this people, I am thinking about posting videos of me cooking so you can see my reaction to making these things, or just how weird I am? 

If you have any recipes you want me to try just let me know and I will try it out for sure!

Thanks for reading until next time :)

Goal

Alright first I would like to state I have set a goal for myself, to post on this blog at least once a week.
As a journal, or an update of some sort, and even to make me continue on my cooking spree.

First of all our photos came!

One of my personal favorites right there!

So I have been looking at all of them, 5 discs worth of pictures and I am so glad we have them all to remember our special day together!

Some things besides that has happened this week, secondly of all I finally got my diploma in the mail so I am an official graduate!

I am an Alumni now, so weird to think that just a few years ago I graduated high school.

Matt got his computer fixed and it is working fine for now, it crashed this past week due to the state drive...I believe. If I listened correctly? So he was stressing out about finishing his school work and doing his job. I on the other hand have been doing my nanny job this week, so far it has been going great but let me tell you kids are exhausting even just one of them. Besides I feel as though we both are trying to get to know each other, and she is trying to see what she can or can't do. 

Other than that this week as been great, nothing too exciting is happening in our lives this week. I know that there was a few things I wanted to mention in this blog but of course I forgot, I should have written it down before...oh well.

This week I made dinner for the Ballous, Keilwert's and our small family of Wehle's. [and get this my husband helped me too!] So on Monday Matt suggested I make the recipe that was inside one of our dishes we got as a present...and the dish is...

Bean Casserole! 

Of course this has a funny story behind it, and a dumb blond moment.

So in my mind when you say casserole I think, "alright so it has some sort of meat, and veggies, and all I have to do is side dishes right?"

Wrong.

First of all this dish is easy to make, and it only took 30 minutes all together.

Ingredients 

1 can [10 3/4 oz.] Cream of Mushroom Soup

1/2 Cup Milk

1 tsp. soy sauce

Dash of pepper

4 cups cooked cut green beans

1 1/3 cup french fried onions [tried to measure it..just ended up using the whole container..oppss! but everyone still loved it!]

Mix soup, milk, soy, pepper, beans and onions in your casserole container. [I just did a deeper set container because that was all I could find at the moment, the bean casserole is in the white one in the picture.] 

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes, and then take it out add the rest of the onions that are left in the container [like me cause it is delicious] bake for 5 more minutes, and tada! all done!

While getting the ingredients for this bean casserole believe it or not, I have never had this for thanksgiving like everyone says I should have. So while getting the ingredients and calling my husband about 5 times to make sure I had written all of it down right..I realized I was making just a vegetarian dinner. 

Sweet Corn on the Cob, Salad, and a Bean Casserole.

Way to go me.

So in a panic I called my husband down handed him some chicken breasts from the freezer, and told him to fire up the grill to add some protein in our meal. He smothered the chicken with bbq sauce and grilled it, then once it was done added some more at the end. 

Then a successful dinner was made, with the added protein. Oh goodness. 

Good thing he loves me!

Anyway I have been sick yesterday but I was too excited about my pictures so I posted them, until next week!