{Recipe} Fiesta Lime Chicken

Do you have that ONE dish at that ONE restaurant that you always have to get? Even when the restaurant has added new things to the menu? But you've been looking forward to that favorite dish for SO LONG that you can't bring yourself to deviate from the tried-and-true dish?

For me, at Applebees, that was Fiesta Lime Chicken.

Eventually, as I became more adept at cooking, I got tired of going out to a restaurant just for that one dish. So I learned to replicate it at home!

Recipe after the jump!

Birthday Cookies!

I tortured my Twitter followers on Memorial Day with my constant pictures of the goodies I was baking for my brother.

He's turning 22 on June 5th, and his girlfriend is already sending him baked goods but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to fill up one of those APO boxes with cookies, cookies, cookies!

Does anyone else do this when they bake? I like to keep a list of the ingredients and their amounts at quick eye level. 

I did three different cookies: Chocolate Chip, Double Chocolate Chip, and Blondies.

{Dinner} Saltimbocca

Everyone has that one food they will probably never try.

For me, that food is veal. There's nothing appealing about veal to me. It's just one of those things.

So whenever I see a delicious-looking veal recipe, I automatically adapt it to either chicken or regular beef.

{Baking} Memorial Day Cake

This cake was equal parts impressive and infuriating.

The task was simple: provide a festive dessert for my family's Memorial Weekend barbecue. Due to scheduling conflicts, we couldn't do it on Memorial Day itself, so we did it on Saturday instead. And it turned out for the best, since we are currently being hit by a tropical storm.

And it started out simple enough. I wanted a white layer cake with dyed layers. I combed through recipes and finally landed on one that turned out to be a bust. I didn't read the fine print and it required a meringue method... which totally goes against the concept of colored layers since you can only fold in egg whites.

So that batter went into the trash.

Last Week in Instagram

I'm a Twitterer first and a blogger second. It's just how I am--when I find interesting things, or snap a quick picture with my phone, I send it out into the Twittersphere before I remember that I have a blog. But I DO have a blog, so my new mission is to try to do a round-up of DIY/cooking-related tweets and pictures in weekly or bi-weekly posts.

After the owner of our house (who lives in AZ) got a letter from the Homeowner's Association declaring us to be "in violation" of the rules due to the huge dead spot in our grass, Mr. Cheddar didn't hesitate. We have a lawn treatment service that is money down the drain, because they have only helped the dead spot grow bigger. So Mr. Cheddar bought grass plugs and filled in the spot as much as he could. He would've just left it to fester if it didn't bug him so much that the spot was there. We've been keeping an eye on it for the week and it seems to be taking.

A Sad Day for Mr. Cheddar

On Tuesday, Mr. Cheddar expressed concern over the state of his zucchini plants, worried that they looked like they were dying.

Yesterday, he went outside to find that they were, in fact, irreparably damaged.

Much as he hated me running inside to grab my camera for this sad process, I felt it should be documented for posterity. 

At least Lucy was there by his side... on the other side of the fence... for the process.

{Recipe} Holy Cow Cake

I don't know where this recipe originated. I did a bit of research and some people indicate that it's a Duncan Hines original, but I haven't bothered to pin it down. This is one of those recipes that transcends its originator and becomes all about who perpetuated it.

In this case, this was the cake my mother-in-law used to make for parties, meetings, birthdays at work, or holidays. None of us have had it since she passed, but since we were having a barbecue on Sunday for my whole family, I decided there was no time like the present.

I ended up tweeting that the shopping and baking process was a lot more emotional than I had anticipated, but I survived and everyone loved the cake.

Warning: this cake is DECADENT. Ridiculously so. It's one of those cakes you should only make, like, once a year, for a huge group. It's rich, it's delicious, it's sinfully fattening. But once in a while, it's totally worth it.

Yes, the ingredients really ARE this simple.

{Recipe} Chicken Marsala

I love Italian food, but I can't handle how heavy some of it feels. Going to Italian restaurants is basically a pasta smorgasbord, and I'm pretty sure most Americans really do believe that the Italians are simply incapable of making light dishes. Even the Olive Garden version of this recipe is very breaded! It's not true, Americans! Don't believe the hype!

This Chicken Marsala recipe is such a favorite of mine that I used to make it nearly once a week. I've made it so many times that it's not very precise anymore, but I'll provide close estimates.

{Recipe} Angel Food Cake

Or as geometry enthusiasts might like to call it: "Angle Food Cake."

If you've ever made an Angel Food Cake from scratch, then you know there is going to be a lot of ONE THING in this post:

{Recipe} Nutella Cookies

My brother-in-law bit into one of these, stared at me as he chewed, then asked, "Do you know what heaven tastes like?"

Apparently, it tastes like these cookies.

Recipe included after the jump!

It's Just Those Rainy Days...

Today, we finally had our first batch of thunderstorms for this year. We've needed the rain for a while, so even though it meant muddy paws on the dogs, we were willing to deal with it if it meant greener grass in the morning.

Our garden also welcomed the extra nourishment!

Mailing Cupcakes

Ah, the United States Postal Service.

On the one hand, our local post office is uncommonly friendly. Apparently my mother sends so many packages to my sister (at the Air Force Academy) and now my brother (Kuwait) that one of the clerks recognized my maiden name and described my mother and younger sister in detail to me.

And when I went to send these cupcakes last Tuesday, the lady who was ringing up the packages cheerfully told me that I was sending cupcakes ALL WRONG and that I needed the long mailing box and not the tall flat rate box. That resulted in me waiting until Wednesday to send them, but it also meant the cupcakes would get less jostled in the mail, so, worth it.

On the other hand, even when they ask if there are baked goods or perishables inside, they aren't very gentle with it after it leaves the facility. Perhaps there is no perfect AND cheap way to send cupcakes, but this method worked well enough, and with a few tweaks next time, maybe my brother will actually get cupcakes that don't look smashed. 

Now, I am no baker. When I make baked goods, my first priority is taste, not appearance. I even took that stance with my wedding cake, turning down bakers who made gorgeous cakes that tasted like cardboard until I found my dream cake (and it tasted AMAZING). So when I was sending cupcakes, my first priority was freshness, and appearance took a backseat.

{Baking} Espresso Bars

Is there anything better than a gooey chocolate brownie?

Well, for coffee addicts such as myself, YES! A gooey chocolate-espresso brownie!

Except I cheated and used instant coffee, put into a coffee grinder until it was a fine powder. Oh great, now you know my secret!

{Baking} Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

Yay! A successful baking endeavor!

I told my friends I was going to be getting my KitchenAid out of storage and asked if anyone wanted cupcakes sent to them. This was for two reasons. One, I have less people in my immediate vicinity to bake for. When we lived in Tallahassee, we lived next door to some of our closest friends. As a result, our condo was constantly overrun with hungry men raiding the fridge and pantry. Baking was a cinch, because I knew I could put out a cake or cupcakes and they would be gone in a matter of hours, and I wouldn't be the one eating them. 

Second, my younger brother is now in Kuwait. He likes cookies just fine, but he'll get those in excess from my sister (who specializes in snickerdoodles and nothing more) and knowing I'm a baker, he expects a little more from me. So I wanted to send cupcakes domestically to see how they would hold up against the good ol' USPS.

Four of my friends responded in favor of receiving cupcakes, so I broke out my new Williams-Sonoma cookbook and baked their Chocolate Orange Cupcakes.

{Baking} A Depressing Souffle

I used to bake quite a bit. Mr. Cheddar's mother used to work across the street from a wholesale kitchen outlet store, and for my 23rd birthday, they bought me a refurbished KitchenAid mixer, something that had been on my wishlist for the better part of three years. Unfortunately, when we made the move back home, my KitchenAid along with my four-years-running collection of baking accessories went into storage, and my baking days became a thing of the past.

A few days ago, I broke down and got my KitchenAid out of storage. And because I never do anything half-baked (haaa!) I thought it would be a good idea to kick off its homecoming with a very difficult meringue or souffle. 

Veggie Tales!

It's been about a month since we planted everything.

Mr. Cheddar is really proud of how his veggie boxes are going. The plant on the left is a habanero pepper plant and the right is jalapeno. They were doing fine until a particularly windy day, where they started bending over, so Hubs hightailed it to the gardening center to get some stakes.

Organizing the Kitchen Counter... Desk... Thingy.

Fair warning: This post is bordering on "mundane" because it's really just about cleaning. But it's one of those things that irks you for weeks that stretch into months and then suddenly you can't handle it anymore. And that's how I felt about this space:

Recipe: Jamaican Smile

Remember on "Friends," when Monica was making casseroles for her mother's party and Phoebe exclaims, "It's hard to believe that just a little while ago, this was nothing but ingredients!" I don't know why, but that always pops into my head whenever I cook. 

Yesterday was a dreary thunderstorm-y day here in North Florida, but that never stops us from having fruity blended beverages! So I threw out our old leaky blender, took Hubs to the store, and came home with a brand new blender, yay! On our honeymoon in Jamaica, we enjoyed a local drink called a "Jamaican Smile." I had probably five per day:

 

They are pretty much amazing, and when we got home, we immediately researched how to recreate these bad boys.

Vegetable Garden, and the Adventures of Lucy the Labrador!

The night after we were done repainting the guest bathroom (in late March) Hubs said he wanted to tackle the disgusting patch of mulch in our back yard:

 

Once upon a time, the owner of the house had a metal playground there. The tenant before us had it removed (except for the spikes, which were fun discoveries for Hubs!) and then we inherited this giant eyesore. We mainly used it to store the branches that fell off our behind neighbor's tree during thunderstorms, which Lucy would then break off and drag through the yard at top speed. So, in essence, we had turned it into an accidental dog playground.

Painting the Guest Bathroom

What better way to kick off a home improvement/DIY/cooking blog with a painting project! Better yet, we're kicking it off with a painting project that seemed like it should be simple, but it wasn't!

Our guest bathroom doubles as mine and Hubs' main bathroom because of our complicated living situation. It's hard enough to keep it clean for guests, but my two-day paint job stretched into a five-day paint job, and that made it pretty darn impossible. It ended up taking more time than I planned because we live in a rental, which has very gorgeous, deep, expensive paint that was unceremoniously slapped onto the walls. The trim was a mess. And I learned that when the trim needs to get re-touched, you should do the trim FIRST, let it dry for a day, then tape it up and move on with your real painting job.

But it's done now, and without further ado, I present a side-by-side representation!