Hunger Games Movie Night with Hunger Games Themed DInner and Dessert!

So Gary and I are a bit nerdy and I am not ashamed to admit it! Sometimes it is nice to be a kid at heart and not act "mature" all the time. One should try to make life fun when one can because life itself brings many troubles and problems on its own!

Last night we decided to watch Hunger Games again and this time eat a themed meal with it! On Pinterest I found a recipe for Peeta's cheese stuffed rolls, and a recipe for an apple tart. The main meal was harder to find since in the book they speak of eating squirrle, rabbit, lamb, or a huge pig roast. We decided to go with sausage since it was the easiest and quickest thing to make that was part of a pig. :) 

There is a funny story that goes along with those cheese stuffed rolls. Gary was measuring out the ingredients while I was mixing them together. When we added the flour we couldn't understand why the mixture wasn't thickening and becoming dough like. The recipe said we should start Kneading after the flour was added, but ours was still in liquid form. After much mixing and still nothing, Gary finally mentions "this is flour, right?" and points to the clear container that I have powdered sugar in. So yes, we tried making our bread with powdered sugar the first time around :)

Thin French Apple Tart

For those of you who don't know we named our two cats after Hunger Games characters. We have a Katniss and her sister Prim Rose...Here is a picture of Primrose checking out Peeta's cheese stuffed rolls. Katniss came over later to check out Peeta's rolls but I didn't get a picture.

Here is the recipe for the Thin French Apple Tart:

• 1/2 (15-ounce) package refrigerated pie dough (I made a homemade pie crust but this is what the original called for)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 pounds Golden Delicious apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced ( I only used two)
• 2 1/2 tablespoons honey
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 425°.
2. Place dough on a lightly floured surface; roll into a 12-inch circle. Place on a 12-inch pizza pan. Combine sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon sugar mixture over dough. Arrange apple slices spokelike on top of dough, working from outside edge of dough to the center. Sprinkle apple slices with remaining sugar mixture. Bake at 425° for 30 minutes. (I only needed mine in 25 min)
3. Combine honey and vanilla in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave at high 40 seconds. Brush honey mixture over warm tart. Serve warm.

If you want to make the Homemade pie crust that my mom taught me how to make, Here is the recipe for that:

1 cup all purpose flour

1/3 cup crisco

pinch of salt

cold water

combine flour, crisco, and salt until crumbly. I just used my hands. Make a well in the middle of the crumbly mixture and pour a little cold water into the center. Mix together until the dough is all wet. If there are any dry parts, take out the wet dough and repeat the process with the water with the dry dough. Try not to Knead too much. Place on floured surface and roll out with a floured rolling pin.

 

Here is the link to the Original recipe:

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/thin-french-apple-tart-10000000592298/

Link to Peeta's Cheese Stuffed Rolls:

http://www.yammiesnoshery.com/2012/08/peetas-stuffed-cheese-buns.html

Dinner and a Project

With the wonderful help of Pinterest, Kydan and I have been a lot more crafts/projects. Here is one of them that I thought I would share since I thought it was really neat and they came out pretty nice!
It was quite simple to make and cheap since most of the supplies can be bought at the Dollar Tree!
What is needed:
Frames-dollar tree
clear see through stones- dollar tree (can also use beads or buttons)
Hot glue- walmart, I know you can buy the glue sticks at the dollar tree, or any craft store
Elmer's clear glue- I got this at walmart

1.you take out the back of the frame and glass. Put hot glue around the edge of the frame and place glass back into the frame and wait till the glass dries in place.
2. Take the clear elmers glue and place a big blob onto the glass and spread around with a sponge brush.
3. place the rocks, beads, buttons, or whatever onto the glue.
4. I put more clear glue on in between all the rocks because I wanted to make sure they would stick!
That is all! It took almost 24 hrs to completely dry.
The website I got the idea from they also out a leaf in one of their frames....Kydan and I might do this some other time. Here are close ups of the pictures...sorry I didn't feel like taking the time to find out how to flip the pictures :)
This one kydan did:

this is the other one Kydan did:

this is the one I did:

Here is the website I got the idea from:
http://playathomemom3.blogspot.com/search/label/Clay%20and%20Crafts?updated-max=2011-12-18T15:12:00-08:00&max-results=20&start=12&by-date=false

Also this past week at Gary's work they through a back to school party and this is the dish I decided to make....Wolf Pack Sliders! It was very yummy!

2 lb ground beef 

2 lb sausage (the original recipe called for spicy sausage but I am not a fan of spicy so I just found something without a lot of spice. I literally stood there looking for sausage for about 5 min. because they have like a dozen different kinds of sausage!

1 lb velvetta cheese

1 onion (optional) I added it

1 green pepper (optional) I didn't add this but I might next time.

steak sauce

sliced cheese (optional)

Brown the beef and sausage with onion and green pepper....drain.

add in the velveeta until melted. Place onto buns or wraps.

I liked these better the day after. I think because it gave the velveeta time to sink in to the meat.

The original recipe didn't call for steak sauce but I thought it was a little bland so after I placed the meat onto the bun I put a few drops of steak sauce on and added a slice of provolone cheese. It was delicious!!!! this will be my go to recipe for big gatherings where you need to bring a dish. So simple, makes a lot, and tastes great!

here is the website I got the recipe from:

http://www.ncagr.gov/markets/gottoberecipes/jan12.html

and the picture from the website (much better looking than my picture!):

Cake Mix Cool Whip Cookies and Weight Loss

Cake Mix Cool Whip Cookies!

These are sooo simple to make! I wouldn't say there is anything special or WOW about the taste but they were simple to make and don't need a lot of ingredients! That makes these cookies a great cookie to make with a young child like my son :)

The recipe calls for one cake mix of any flavor. I gave Kydan the choice between white, yellow, or chocolate and surprisingly he chose white!
1 egg
and one 8 oz tub of cool whip (we used the lite version)
Just mix the ingredients together, preheat oven to 350, form dough into balls (optional you can roll in powdered sugar, but we didn't have any on hand so we skipped that part) and bake 10-12 min.

With a child you need to make things more interesting than that so I let him choose sprinkles to put in the batter...He chose brown and blue sprinkles. The picture of the cookie at the bottom left is the cookie following the recipe...pretty plain if you ask me. So the next batch we added M&M's to one (top right if you couldn't tell :) some caramel topping with a Hershey kiss on top (bottom right) and some biscoff aka cookie butter (top left). I personally enjoyed the M&M one because I just love M&M's in cookies, you can ask anyone whom I used to work with at Subway. But I also loved the Biscoff one because Biscoff is just awesome with just about everything! It even deserves to be capitalized :)

So after Kydan was born I was fortunate enough to have lost all 40 lb of weight that I gained within about 2 months. Mainly because I was just too tired and in too much pain to get up the desire to go and make food. However, when Kydan turned a year old that year I slowly began to gain weight. At this time I was going to the Dr every month due to health problems, and every month the scale would go up a pound or two. Before I knew Kydan turned two and I gained 15 pounds! Yikes!
Pregnancy can do weird things to a women's body. Since having a baby I enjoy foods I have never enjoyed before. I am constantly mentioning to my husband how something taste good, that I used to not like before pregnancy. Also having a picky toddler around, you just can't let that food go to waster, so you eat it. Being a stay at home mom, boredom can set in, not to mention stress when the terrible twos and three's hit!
But back in May I decided I was tired of the extra weight. So I started exercising. Considering before I was pretty much a sloth, any amount of exercise would help in the weight loss department. Sure enough the first couple pounds came off somewhat easily!
Then I cut back on the sweets. I am trying to make "healthier" sweets with only the occasional really bad sweets. Also at dinner instead of eating seconds right away, I wait two hours and eat seconds this way I am not eating extra sweets in the evening. During the day I try to eat healthy snacks in between meals like apples, gold fish, or stick pretzels.
As of right now I have lost 8 pounds! only four more to go to reach my goal weight! So those of you who follow me on pinterest...no I don't make all those yummy looking desserts although I wish I could! But when I am cutting back I get my sweet "fix" by looking at yummy things :) You can always tell when I am cutting back because I pin like 10 desserts in one day!
Anyway, I am not a bug health fanatic, but thought I would share because those who know me best know that I have very little self discipline and I am sooo happy that for once in my life I have been able to discipline myself in something long enough to actually see results! Now I just need to start the self discipline in reading the bible more and praying...

hear is the link to that recipe
http://www.food.com/recipe/e-a-s-y-cake-mix-and-cool-whip-cookies-147496