The Rogue Meatball.. MAMA MIA!!!

Most people are used to your traditional italian meatballs, ground beef, breadcrumbs, an egg and maybe some parmesan cheese, right? Well i'm sick of this trend! There are so many things you can do in meatball form! Don't get me wrong, i love me some Italian meatballs, but sometimes i just need more! I want to show you guys some new ways to make meatballs, not just with plain old ground beef. The two recipes i am going to show you are one i made up myself and the other I found on Pinterest.
The recipe i made up myself, is a recipe for Buffalo Chicken Meatballs. They are so yummy and go great on a roll with some ranch dressage, or even paired with alfredo sauce and pasta!
Heres how you make them:

1 lb ground chicken
1/2 packet of dry ranch mix
1/4 cup Franks red hot sauce
1/2 cup of panko
1 egg

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees first! Mix all these ingredients in one big bowl, make them into meatballs, any size you like and place them on a cookie sheet to bake for 20 minutes! Its that easy!



The second recipe i found on Pinterest, which i made just last night, is Teriyaki Turkey meatballs. This recipe is absolute fantastic and goes great served over white jasmine rice. This recipe has a few more ingredients then the Chicken meatballs, but it is eel worth it. If you are trying to save some money on ingredients you don't think you will use again, you can substitute sesame oil with vegetable oil and forget the siracha and soy sauce, all you need is the Teriyaki sauce i the brand the recipe suggests and you are set!

Below i posted the link for Teriyaki Turkey Meatballs:

http://www.lifesambrosia.com/2009/01/teriyaki-turkey-meatballs-recipe.html-recipe.html

Top 5 Recipes for Halloween

 Halloween is my absolute favorite holiday. i love all the spooky decorations, costumes and fun parties that happen. I wanted to do short blog on my top 5 favorite Halloween Recipes. These are perfect for a fun Halloween party that everyone will love!


#1- Mummie Hot Dogs-

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/mummy-hot-dogs/print/


#2- Eye Ball Deviled Eggs-

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Halloween-Eye-of-Newt/Detail.aspx?evt19=1


#3- Chocolate Covered Strawberry Ghosts

http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/strawberry-ghosts


#4- Witches Brew-

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Witches-Brew/Detail.aspx?evt19=1



#5- Dirt and Worm Cup-

http://www.kraftrecipes.com/recipes/dirt-cups-57763.aspx

Essential Oils

I work at a Wellness Center in which they are very into all natural things and living a healthy lifestyle. They just recently started running an essential oil diffuser in the lobby of my office. I have learned a lot about essential oils over the past few weeks, since they started running the diffuser. Each week my work lets a new essential oil diffuse. Essential oils are used in many ways to help promote a healthy lifestyle, from cleaning your kitchen to acting as a natural sickness remedy. I think these oils really are amazing! I'm not really into things that just are popular for now, but my coworkers have all been using these essential oils for years. I think us using these essential oils in your kitchen is an amazing idea. Now essential oils can be a little pricey but last and are worth the investment. A diffuser can run anywhere from $50-$150 depending on the quality and brand. The oils themselves can run anywhere from $5-$15 dollars per oil.

This essential oil called Thieves, is an all-purpose type of oil. You can use this for home purifications and sanitations, as tooth paste, acne treatment, to relieve a sore throat and to cure pain from a bee sting. The oil can be used on its own or in many different products, as shown in the image on the left.



     

This essential oil, is called Peace and Calming is perfect for those stressful days. Place it in your diffuser when you are feeling anxious, stressed or just need a little relaxation.  Its helps to open you up and allows you to breath and helps you stay calm.

There are many essential oils that can be used for a numerous amount of things. Above is a picture of the most popular essential oils and the ways they can be used to help you live a healthier lifestyle. 

Below I included a link to an article that talks about how essential oils can be used in many ways in your life:

http://www.floracopeia.com/About/how-to-use-essential-oils-effectively/

Falling for Pumpkins: Part 2

In my last blog post, I talked a little about decorating you kitchen with pumpkins. Like I said before most people just throw a pumpkin on their counter or window sill and call it a day. Come on people!!!! You can do better, there are such simple things you can do with a pumpkin to use it as a decoration piece. A great place to start for pumpkin decorations is Pinterest. I LOVE PINTEREST! It really is the best place to find anything and everything. I found a lot of these ideas from Pinterest and some even just off of google images.

Glitter Pumpkin:

Its so easy! All you need is glitter, modge lodge (or glue), a paint brush and a pumpkin of any size color or shape you can. All you have to do is mode lodge the entire pumpkin and sprinkle glitter all over the pumpkin.  You can even add small gems for decorations. Let the pumpkin dry and there you have it, a beautiful glitter pumpkin!

Pumpkin Vase:

This is also very easy to do! First select your pumpkin, preferably a bigger, taller pumpkin. Then remove lid and hallow out your pumpkin. Then Pick the flowers you would like in your pumpkin, fill pumpkin with water and place flowers inside. Its really that easy, and takes no more than 10 minutes to make! 

Below i added a video to demonstrate how to turn a pumpkin into a pumpkin vase and center peice! 

                                          

Falling for Pumpkins: Part 1

Fall is one of my favorite times of year! I love all the dark colors, changing leaves and fall fords and pumpkins. I think that pumpkins can be one of the most underrated decoration! So many people just throw a pumpkin on their counter or window sill and call that decoration. I think this is just crazy!!!! There is so much that you can do with a pumpkin, not only for decoration in the kitchen but decoration with food!
I came across a recipe on Pinterest the other day for pumpkin pie dip. I thought this sounded so amazing, but when I looked closer I found something even more amazing. Instead of using a halloween serving bowl for the dip, these people had the genius idea to use a small pumpkin for a serving dish. I absolute love this idea, I think it is so festive for the fall! They had hallowed out a small pumpkin costing about $1-$2 and filled it with the dip, surrounding the dip with graham crackers, apples and vanilla wafers to dip with.

This is the end product of hallowing out a pumpkin and using it to place dip inside!
Such a great idea for a Halloween or Thanksgiving get together.

In my next Post I will be taking about pumpkin decorations for your kitchen, so stayed tuned!

Even Better Than Olive Garden

This weekend I was really was craving some pasta and alfredo sauce. I thought about going to Olive garden, but i thought to myself, that would be too easy. So me and my boyfriend got together for dinner, and decided we were going to make homemade alfredo sauce. It only took us about 20 minutes to make the sauce and pasta, and cost about $15 dollars for all the ingredients. So in the end we ended up spending less money then we would if we went to Olive Garden.   The sauce is made with 5 ingredients which makes its super simple and easy to make. The sauce is also absolutely delicious!!!! It's extremely creamy and tastes so cheesy. I would say that this sauce is ten times better than Olive garden's alfredo sauce. The secret to this sauce is cream cheese, it gives the sauce that extra flavor and texture that makes the sauce better than Olive Garden.

So heres how you make the sauce,
You will need:

1 stick of butter
1pt. of heavy cream
1 cup of parmesan cheese (fresh/grated)
2 tbsp of cream cheese
1tsp pepper
1tsp garlic powder


To start the sauce, melt the stick of butter in a large sauce pan, once the butter is melted add the heavy cream. Then add pepper, garlic powder, and parmesan cheese to the liquid mixture. Allow the sauce to simmer for 15 minutes on medium heat. Don't for get to boil your pasta while making the sauce so it is ready when your sauce is ready. Add sauce to your pasta with a little parsley on top, and serve!

WARNING: This may not be the healthiest of recipes, but its well worth it! This sauce is going to make you want to keep eating and eating, so don't forget to wear you loose pants for this meal!

You say Wonton, I say Ravioli?????

Today i was really craving some butternut squash ravioli. Why you ask? Well its fall and that is one of my favorite fall squashes, and it just so happens that my boyfriends dad just gave me a butternut squash from his garden the other day! So like i said i was really craving ravioli, but then i thought to myself, they are so hard and time consuming to make. I then hoped on the internet to do my research. As a college kid, the internet is everything to me and really helps me out with quick kitchen shortcuts. I happened to come across a fantastic Guy Fieri recipe for butternut squash ravioli in wonton wrappers instead of pasta dough. I think that this is simply genius! Its a super easy and quick way to make ravioli. Wonton wrappers usually are located in the Asian food or produce aisle of the grocery store, ranging from 3.50 to 4.50 for a package of about 50 wrappers. I recommend getting your butternut squash at any local farmers market in your area, they usually are cheaper and taste fresher to me. Butternut squash usually run from 39-50 cents a pound, some grocery stores sell them at one set price though. I served my squash ravioli with some brown sage butter, which is also so simple to make! Just throw some butter in a pan, add some sage and wait for the butter to brown. Yeah, its that easy for a delicious, cheap fall meal, and its even MADE FROM SCRATCH! You can make all sorts of fillings to fill these wontons with, from cheese and meat to even fruit like apples and cherries as a dessert ravioli. I recommend if you are filling the wontons with fruit, you first boil then and then fry them in a little butter, and sprinkle with powdered sugar to finish them off.


To make the ravioli in wonton wrappers all you have to do is lay on wrapper down on your table, wet the edges with warm water, place the filling in the center and top this with another wrapper and press edges to seal.Then i place the ravioli in boiling water for about 3-5 minutes till they float to the top.
Below i attached the recipe for the filling i made for my butternut squash ravioli.


http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/butternut-squash-ravioli-recipe2.html 


The video below also
shows you how to make a butternut squash ravioli a little differently from Guy Fieri's recipe.

Kitchen Decoration

I love having a kitchen thats fun and colorful! I don't like walking into someones home or apartment and seeing nothing on walls, no flowers and nothing on the counters. Color is everything to me!!! I like to see at the bare minimum flowers on the kitchen table or counter, or maybe even just a nice candle. I know, you may be thinking, who has time to buy flowers every week or so, THATS CRAZY! Well, my way of getting around buying flowers every week, is to invest in simple fake flowers. Yes, I said it.... Fake Flowers, but they work so well to add color to your kitchen. I often just go to the dollar store in my town and get a bunch of fake colored flowers and i just stick them in a mason jar. I like to combine different types of flowers and colors together in the mason jar to add diversity and color. Candles are also easily found at the dollar store, but i prefer, if I'm buying cheap candles, I prefer to go to Walmart for a small candle that cost anywhere from $3.50 to $5. For example right now in my kitchen I have a medium size candle from Walmart called Harvest Leaves, which is a nice light green color and a mason jar filled with fake white and orange flowers.

This is the Harvest Leaves candle I have in my kitchen.
 Its perfect for Fall time!

The flowers on the right look like the ones
I have in my kitchen right now! 

My favorite way to save money on flowers is using local fresh flowers. I like to stop at farm stands and farmers markets and buy flowers there. I actually find that flowers from farms are cheaper and last a week longer than store bought flowers. Farm flowers usually range form $5-$8 dollars a bouquet, sometimes even less. in the winter time, when its winter time, i know its hard to find fresh flowers so sometimes i look for alternatives like leaves on long steams and even pine branches for a Christmassy look and smell in my home.


I think mason jars are the perfect cheap decoration for a kitchen. You can do so many things with a mason jar. You can fill them with flowers, paint them, put glitter on them, wrap them in burlap or lace, and even place things like pasta, candy or a candle inside. Mason jars cost about $10 for 12 of them! Thats under a dollar for each Jar, so its extremely affordable. Some stores even sell mason jars separately, so you don't have to buy a ton. Below i posted a slide show of some things you can create using mason jars.

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog! I hope that you are a fellow foodie just like me and hopefully even a college student as well. All readers are welcome to enjoy though! My blog is meant to help share some of my favorite local restaurants and recipes that are fun and easy to make at your college apartment or at home! I also want to share some ideas i have to keep your kitchen decorated in a cute way for cheap. As well as telling you about natural remedies i've learned to use in the kitchen, and substitutes that could help promote a healthy lifestyle.  

Let me tell you a little about myself. I am a senior college student who is constantly on a budget, especially when it comes to going out to eat and buying groceries. I like to save money and find deals but also enjoy the food while doing so! I love to make delicious meals for my family and friends including both baking and cooking. I like to dive into all types of cooking styles from Mexican to italian and even healthy organic cooking. 

I hope you enjoy my posts to come!