Fourty-Eight

I am restarting my count on my blogs. Going back to the number I had BEFORE I started with some of the recipes.
We have been busy bees. There is always something new, everyday.
My mother has finally arrived. It's nice to have another hand to help me, but sometimes hard to adjust since usually I only have one set of hands! Either way, we are glad to have her come visit. We haven't made many 'exciting' or 'adventurous' dinners while she is here, but hopefully today will change that. My mother and I are making Shrimp gumbo today. I am beyond ecstatic because I haven't had any in a LONG time and I have always wanted to know how to make it. Intriguing to say the least :)
Let me start at the beginning of this week.
I traveled to Seoul to pick mom up. After making it to Seoul solo, I rode a 45 minute subway to get the airport and get mom. After we finally found each other, we rode the subway 45 minutes back to Seoul. Once our exhausted selves finally made it to the hotel and checked in, we were ready for resting lol! Instead of resting (because of course you can do that when your dead), we went out and walked around the streets for a while. We ate at KFC (a safe place for a tourist) and waited on Joshua to get up to Seoul from work. He finally made it to the hotel around 11pm and we all fell asleep promptly after he arrived.
Saturday, we went shopping. Oh boy did we go shopping :) It was great. We walked around in some traditional Korean markets. I bought a little bit of fabric and some buttons to add to my button collection. I also got a new floppy hat. It's big and I love it :) Then we went to the shopping district. I was lucky enough to discover H&M and Forever 21. *Sigh* I haven't shopped at a 'normal' store in a long time. Normal meaning a place where they don't follow me around the store and they don't chastise me and tell me that I can't wear those clothes because they won't fit me. It was divine. And I loved it. I haven't felt so American in a long time.
Sunday was Insook's wedding day.

^^Joshua and I had bought new clothes for the big day. We had some slacks tailor-made for Joshua and I went shopping at a local Korean store and bought a dress, shoes, a belt and a jacket! We felt pretty authentic in our Korean clothes :)Anyways, back to the REAL story! Ha- Insook is a friend of mom's from church. She is Korean and came home to Korea for a bit to have her traditional Korean wedding. It was amazing. I have never seen anything like it.

^^This is Insook. She was all dolled up and looked great even though I can only imagine that she was sweltering in all the layers of clothes she was wearing.

^^This is Jim, her American husband! I can only imagine that he was sweltering, as well!
After the wedding, we went to a local wine bar and ate some little appetizers and drank a little wine and chatted with Insook, her husband and some of their Korean-American friends that came out to the wedding, as well. After a couple hours of socializing, we went and saw Kung Fu Panda 2. Needless to say, Joshua loved it. I think he laughed more than the little kid behind us Ha!
Monday, we headed home with all of my new shopping bags in tow. We had a nice time in Seoul and I can't wait to go back and visit again soon.
We are now back home and happy to be sitting in our own casa!
Welp, off to make some Blondie Brownies for the dinner tonight. Will hopefully write sooner next time :)
And I will leave you with the quote I found today. I love Julia Child :)
"Non-cooks think it's silly to invest two hours' work in two minutes' enjoyment; but if cooking is evanescent, so is the ballet." - Julia Child

xoxo

Breakfast Bake

My group of friends tend to get together about once a week or so and have coffee. Sometimes we just have coffee and other days we get to enjoy breakfast, too! This is what I bring a lot because it's so easy and fast.

7 eggs
2 frozen hashbrown patties
1 cup of shredded cheese (depends on how much cheese you want)
10 round slices of sausage
1 can cresent rolls

Preheat oven to 350F
Cover the bottom and sides of pan (or casserole dish) with the cresent rolls laid out. Make sure to press dough together so that the perforated lines aren't visable.
In separate mixing bowl, crack all 7 eggs and whisk.
Break apart frozen (or thawed) hashbrown into egg mix.
Cut sausage slices into quarters and mix in egg mix, as well.
Pour egg mix into pan or dish. Top with plentiful amounts of cheese! Yum!
Bake at 350F for 30 minutes. My oven in Korea has to bake longer because we are at such a high elevation, but basically you just want to make sure it's fairly firm in the middle of the pan (No raw eggs here) and the cresent rolls should be toasted- brown but not burnt!

Grown-Up Grilled Cheese

I don't/won't eat Kraft singles. Whoever coined the term that it was America's favorite lied! It's gross. Because I hate Kraft singles with such a passion, I tried to come up with a way to join Joshua's favorite food with my tastes. These are cooked just like a normal grilled cheese. On your stove with butter on the outsides of the bread. Basic, just with a twist. This was my recipe for it:

2 slices of bread
Plenty of butter
About 5 slices medium sharp cheddar cheese (from a block of cheese!)
A few pinches of garlic salt

It's the basic set up of a normal grilled cheese, we just use cheddar cheese slices and some garlic salt.
Butter outsides of bread. Place cheese slices (laid out in perfect symmetry, of course!) inside sandwich.
Sprinkle garlic on the side you first drop on the skillet. Once that side is dropped, then sprinkle the other side that way once it's flipped, it's already got all the salt necessary. I like a lot of salt so I just shake until I see enough.
Flip as soon as the other side gets a little crispy.
Voila! Grown-up grilled cheese. For those that have better taste than the icky Kraft! lol

One of our other grown-up grilled cheese favorites is from this link. It involves apples, cinnamon and cheese :) Delicious.

The other variation that I've discovered is using mozzarella cheese, pizza sauce and pepperonis. Yum!!

Cresent Stuffed Crust Pizza

One thing that Joshua and I eat a lot of is pizza. Frozen or fresh, it doesn't matter to us. One little experiment we tested was to roll out cresent rolls and use it for pizza dough.
Ingredients:
1 can cresent rolls
1 package string cheese per can of rolls
Jar of Pizza sauce (there will be plenty left over so get the jar kind so it can be resealed)
3/4 cup of cheddar or Mozzarella cheese
Toppings if desired: Ham, canadian bacon, pepperoni, etc.

On a cookie sheet, lay out the non-rolled up rolls. Keep them nice and flat. Lay them so that they form a big rectangle. On each cresent roll there are perforated lines, so make sure to 'seal' them up so your sauce doesn't run.
Cut each string cheese in half, longways. Place the two halves at the top of your pizza dough and roll the dough over the top of the cheese just enough so that it won't let the cheese bubble out.
Cook at 350F for about 4 minutes. Just enough to get it started cooking.
Take dough out of the oven and smother it in pizza sauce, cheese and whatever toppings you desire! Put back in the oven for another 5 minutes or so. It will be slightly brown and toasted when it's finished. It was slightly crumbly since the cresent rolls are flaky but the crumbles were delicious.

Mountain Dew Cake

For those that don't know, Mountain Dew is Joshua's all time favorite drink. In fact, it's almost the ONLY thing he drinks. If there aren't Mountain Dews in the fridge, sometimes he will drink a coke or maybe a glass of tea, but it's just never good enough for him. Mountain Dew cake is a delicious version of a lemon cake! A friend of mine from here in Korea gave me this recipe. It belongs to her mother. Thanks for the recipe, Ashley :)

Ingredients:
1 box of lemon cake mix
1 box of lemon pudding
1 12oz can of Mt Dew
3 eggs
3/4 cup of oil
Combine and bake in bundt pan for 40 minutes at 375F.
After 10 minutes, it's safe to remove the cake from the bundt pan.
When cake is only slightly warm, ice cake.

Icing:
1 cup powdered sugar
2 TBSP Water
1 tsp Vanilla
Mix together in sandwich bag, cut the tip and drizzle on the cake.

I couldn't find lemon pudding in our little px here so I just used one of the little premade cups of vanilla pudding. To supplement the lack of lemon in the pudding, I also squeezed some lemon juice from a fresh lemon in to the bowl. And of course, the cake was perfect. I couldn't stop stealing bites as I was trying to serve it to Joshua's friends! It doesn't necessarily tastes like Mountain Dew, it just has it in it. We loved it.

Granny's Pink Stuff

My first recipe to share is one of the easiest things ever. Seriously. This is my granny's recipe for 'pink stuff'. It's essentially an ambrosia salad. When I was small, they kept telling me the name of this junk and I couldn't ever remember so eventually I just kept saying "I want some of that pink stuff!"...well the name stuck. It's my favorite thing in the world.

1 can Eagle brand sweetened condensed milk
1 can crushed pineapple (make sure to drain it so the juice doesn't water down the salad)
1 small can mandarin oranges (I made this alteration- granny's originally has no oranges. Make sure to also drain oranges.)
1 smaller container of Cool Whip
1 can strawberry (or cherry) pie filling
*Optional: Coconut and/or pecans

Mix with a spoon, chill and serve!

The kids in our family (aka me and sometimes my little brother Bradley) are picky... REALLY picky, so granny doesn't use coconuts or pecans. We love pecans, but she just keeps it strictly fruit for us! And I don't mind it one bit!
When I made this, I used fresh whipping cream and whipped it myself. It turns out just as well and maybe it's a tad bit fresher or healthier, but hell- when you throw in sweetened condensed milk, you kinda throw away any healthiness. We tend to use strawberry pie filling. I'm not a big fan of the 'fake' taste of the cherry pie filling, but I've had it both ways. It's good no matter what.

See? What did I say. Easy Peasy! Just make sure to drain the oranges and the pineapple!

Fourty-Seven

I've decided that I am going to add recipes to our blog. Recipes that I love (or that Joshua loves...or that his friends and family/my friends and family love!) with alterations or notes (and possibly even pictures!) to go along with them.
I always try to make the title of the blog post coincide with the number of posts total. This is my ONE (or maybe seven) exception(s).

xoxo,
Hannah

Fourty-Six

^^This is a picture of me and a few of my students from the place I volunteer with on Thursdays. These girls are super fun.
Things have been busy here in the Delp house. I have continued my volunteer work 3 days out of the week on top of making sure that the house is taken care of (for the most part at least ;)) and making sure dinner is cooked/prep'd. I juggle all of this on top of Joshua's crazy schedule of "Oh, I have to work late" and "We go to the field in 3 days". It's quite the juggling act, but all fun for the most part.
I have been trying my hand at different foods. I've made garlic bread sticks, homemade cresent roll stuffed crust pizza (Yes, it IS as good as it sounds! Yum!), different kinds of pigs-in-a-blanket, what I like to call "grown up grilled cheese", and just today I tried my hand at homemade butter. I got my hands all gooey and buttery for the cause! It looks good although I haven't gotten the chance to try any!
Last Monday, I made homemade lasagna. It was good! And it made SO much more than I thought it would so we invited some of Joshua's friends over to eat with us the next Wednesday to help us clear the leftovers. Boy did they eat! They ate the entire 9x13 pan of lasagna, devoured about 20 bread sticks and about half a bowl of my granny's pink stuff for dessert (my favorite-and so easy to make, too!). Tonight, we are making dinner again for some of his friends. I'm making Joshua's step-mother's famous broccoli, rice and cheese casserole, fresh corn cut off of the cob (all fresh: shucked and de-silked by yours truly!), homemade butter, and some cresent rolls. For dessert, we are having a Mountain Dew cake. A friend of mine over here gave me the recipe. You use an entire can of Mt Dew so I KNOW Joshua is going to love it.
I have been on a roll lately with the cooking and I am loving it. It's such a good hobby although it is SO bad for my waistline. Eeek! Oh well. At least it tastes good in my belly before it hits the waistline LOL.
About two weeks ago, we found out that we are headed for Fort Carson, CO when Joshua's tour here in Korea ends! We are stoked to say the least :) It's not Bragg and it's not Hood, but from what everyone else had been receiving, we count ourselves a part of the lucky ones! I am just excited to live less than 1000 miles away from a Walmart!!! WOO HOO!
We are about a week and a half away from mom coming to visit. She will arrive here on the 27th and will be staying with us until the 8th of June. I am excited she will be coming to visit! She is going to help me attempt to make Shrimp Gumbo with the fresh shrimp we bought in Busan a few weekends back. Should be delicious :)
Signing off for now. Got a lot to do before all those hungry boys get here in a couple hours!

Xoxo
Hannah