Mexican Stuffed Shells

So I've been on a mission as of late to find recipes that I will actually cook. There are so many recipes out there that are just ridiculous. They have crazy ingredients that I'll never buy and that I'll never want to cook. When I look in cook books there are maybe five recipes in the whole book I would actually be interested in cooking on a normal night. I don't want to cook chiptole chicken kabobs with avocado cream sauce. I'm not going to be cooking  zucchini nachos or beef wellington with warm wilted greens. (That last recipe had literally over 40 ingredients people!) I think sometimes when people look in one of the new cook books or hop on to pinterest they can get a little bit discouraged by the barrage of "this is how I make my own homemade tortillas and almond milk from scratch" because in all reality most of us don't have the time to do that. It comes time to whip up dinner and there aren't enough decent, relatively simple recipes out there, so people resort to boxed and convenience foods. So I'm going to try and post at least 1 recipe a week that I find to be a simple normal recipe that pretty much anyone could whip up.

So long story short, I stumbled across this recipe while exploring pinterest:

http://lmld.org/2014/01/13/mexican-stuffed-shells/#_a5y_p=1826813

I made it tonight with a few tweeks. I'll put my tweeks in bolded parenthesis.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef
• 1/2 cup yellow onion, diced
• 2 TBS taco seasoning
• 4 oz cream cheese
• about 8 oz jumbo pasta shells (some may break - I used 21 shells total but cooked 25) - (I actually ended up only using 16 for the amount of mixture that this recipe produced)
• 10 oz enchilada sauce
• 1 cup salsa
• 1 1/4 cup cheddar cheese
• 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese
• (A drizzle of taco sauce)

Instructions:

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil.
2. Boil your pasta shells for about 10 minutes until cooked al dente. Rinse shells when done cooking. (Not really a tweek but for anyone who may want to know I cooked my shells until they were just almost done. Not soft. They are still firm. This is what al dente means which I didn't know when I first started cooking. The shells are going to do more cooking in the oven in the liquids they will be sitting in so they will be too soft if you cook them to long from the start.)
3. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
4. Meanwhile, cook up your ground beef and onions over medium high heat until cooked thoroughly.
5. Drain the excess grease from the pan.
6. Add in taco seasoning and stir to mix.
7. Add in cream cheese and cook over medium heat until cheese is mixed in and melty throughout. Set aside. (I got a 16 oz jar of salsa. I used 1 cup of it in the steps below and the remainder of the salsa I added to this mixture to make it easier to stir. It seemed very dry before I did this.)
8. Combine your enchilada sauce and salsa in a small bowl.
9. Pour about half of your enchilada sauce salsa mixture into the bottom of a 9x13 pan and spread around.
10. Fill each jumbo shell with a heaping 1 TBS of meat mixture and place into pan with sauce.(I did not measure out a heaping 1 TBS of meat mixture. I just took a big spoon and filled up the shells. Maybe this is why I only made 16? I don't know but that's what I did.)
11. Repeat until all shells or meat mixture is gone.
12. Pour the remaining enchilada sauce salsa mixture over the tops of the shells. (I also added a drizzle of taco sauce)
13. Wrap pan in aluminum foil.
14. Bake for 30 minutes.
15. Remove foil and top with cheeses. (I know the ingredients list has a specific amount listed but I don't measure my cheese when I use it as a topping I just sprinkle til it looks like the amount I would want on the top of my food.)
16. Return to oven and bake for an additional 15 minutes until cheese is melted and bubbly.

Tim and I both liked this! It has made it into "The Book." We have a handwritten recipe notebook and any recipes that make it into "The Book" have to be GOOD and something we want to have again/on a regular basis. I hope you try it!

Our Date Night Book

Today I decided to get a bit crafty and make us a Date Night Book. I used cardstock, plain white paper, a glue stick, book rings, scissors, 3-hole punch, some stickers from my scrap booking collection and a black pen. Here is a picture of the cover:

I did 4 different sections with 4 different colors to make it easy on me: Free (green), $20 or less (pink), $20-$50 (blue), $50+ (purple). I used a different quote on each Section Content Page:

1. Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies - Aristotle

2. Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars - Gilbert Parker

3. Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul that you never knew was missing - Torquato Tasso

4. You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams - Dr. Suess

Here is an example of a Section Content Page:

I used the book rings because this way I can add pages whenever I want to and there's plenty of room on the content pages to add date ideas. I came up with 5 ideas to start for each section.  

FREE:
1. Picnic in the park - food, frisbee, fun!
2. Board game Night
3. Go on a hike
4. Walk up to the Lighthouse at Headlands
5. Make a Time Capsule - This I'm really excited about. You each pick 5 things to put in the time capsule that you think represent you today, right now. You write each other a love letter and seal it without reading it. You set an amount of years until you open it together!

$20 or less:
1. Indoor Glow in the Dark Mini Golf - I found this website and this looks so much fun! http://www.fireflysminigolf.com/
2. Lunch or Dinner at Scooter's (we love this place).
3. Shooting Practice (this will make Tim happy).
4. Homemade Ice Cream Sundaes.
5. Make a pie together.

$20-$50:
1. Wine and Cheese at Debonne (local winery)
2. Haunted House
3. Progressive Dinner - This is where you have your appetizer, entree, and dessert all at different places.
4. Wagon Trails Safari - http://www.wagontrails.com/Home.aspx
5. County Fair

$50 or more:
1. Dinner at Vault- I've been wanting to go here since it opened! http://www.vaultsteakhouse.com/
2. Trip to the Casino (Tim has really been wanting to go)
3. Cedar Point - https://www.cedarpoint.com/
4. Camping - Anywhere really but I would love to do it here: http://www.mohicanadventures.com/
5. Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad - http://www.cvsr.com/

Then I added a page for each date. We haven't done any of this yet so I don't have an example page for that but they would each be like a scrapbook page. A title, a spot for written memories, and pictures.  I can't wait to start filling it up!

Long Time, No Blog

It has been a few YEARS since I posted in this blog. So sad :( but I'm posting again. Hopefully I'll be better about it! So where am I at in my life right now? I am married. I have bought a house. I have 2 cats. I have no children. Only one of those things makes me sad, but we're working on it! We've been trying to get me pregnant for 7 months now. Maybe 8 months will be the charm? Last time I was posting, I was trying to become a teacher. I became a teacher, and then had to go back to Drug Mart for financial and health care needs. It's disappointing, but it's life. I enjoyed my 8 months at the Day Care. I loved the children. There was quite a bit of drama with the workers, but when you get a bunch of women working together how can there not be right? I miss teaching terribly. I miss lesson plans. I miss projects. I miss games. I miss the spark that goes off in a kids head when they understand something and their whole face lights up with the new knowledge they just absorbed. I miss getting to share milestones with proud parents. I was helping my sister put together a Professional Portfolio to showcase her accomplishments as a teacher and bringing out all my old lesson plans and projects and pictures of the kids made me want to cry because of how much I miss it. If I could afford to do it for free I really would. Just writing this is making my heart break, so I think I'm going to move on before I end up sobbing in front of my computer.

I'll move on to something more happy and exciting. I got my Ipsy bag in the mail today. Ipsy is a monthly beauty subscription that costs $10/month. You get a cute little bag and 4-5 products to try out every month.

The bag:

The bag this month was really cute! It's a faux leather material and it's neon pink. It's got a cut pattern around the edges and it zips at the top.

1. 5-in-1 Bare Minerals BB Advanced Performance Cream Eyeshadow (0.03 oz) - worth $5.40 - But it Here!

I got this in the shade Soft Linen. It comes in 10 different colors. I am happy with the color Ipsy sent me. This products 5 uses are as follows: long wear color, primer, brightener, smooths, protects (SPF 15). This color matches my skin tone very well. I put it on and it would make a very nice base. I do love neutrals especially for my eye shadows. I'm happy to get to try out a cream shadow. I usually use powders so this is nice. Ipsy gave us a code to get free shipping with any $25 bareMinerals purchase: IPSYBAREFS good through 8/10/14. Also on the site I see that you can get a FREE deluxe sample Marvelous Moxie Lipgloss in Daredevil with any $35 bareMinerals purchase (offer valid 7/6/14-7/26/14 or while supplies last).

2. Clear Clinic Laboratories Vanished Clear Spot Treatment (2 mL) - worth $9.33 - Buy it Here!

The ingredients on this product are as follows: Isopropyl Alcohol, Purified Water (Aqua), Zinc Sulfate, Salicylic Acid, Glycolic Acid, Camphor, Hamamelis Virginiana (Witch Hazel) Extract, Cellulose Gum, Menthol.
I understand why this works as a spot treatment with the drying things it has in it like the alcohol, salicylic acid, etc. I personally prefer to have benzoyl peroxide in my acne products. Drying out acne is only half the fight. Benzoyl peroxide also fights the acne bacteria in the skin. This is priced at $35 for 7.5 mL. Personally I would rather spend my money on a benzoyl peroxide formula. I did however really like the applicator wand and will probably use this if I have a pimple pop up simply because I have it. You can get 20% off any purchase on clearcliniclabs.com by using the code IPSY20 through 8/15/14.

3. Pixi Beauty Mini Tinted Lip Balm (0.06 oz) - worth $8.40 - Buy it Here!

I got this in Unique Pink. It goes on pretty much clear but it is very moisturizing and smells minty. I'm not huge on colored lips so I really liked getting this product. You can get 25% off your purchase as pixiebeauty.com by signing up for an account and using the code flawlesspixi through 8/31/14. Also on their site they have free shipping for all purchases over $25.

4. POP Beauty Sunkissed Bronzer (0.25 oz) - worth $10 - But it Here! This came in shade Secret Sunshine. It looks pretty dark on the pallette but it doesn't go on that way. It looked nice on my cheekbones and gave me some actual color! It went onto my brush very easily. I will use this for sure. You can get 25% off your purchase at popbeauty.co.uk by using the code POPIPSY through 8/31/14.

5. Pur~lisse Pro-protect Essential Daily Moisturizer with SPF 30 (15mL) - worth $16.18 - Buy it Here!

I used this today as my moisturizer. It worked very well. My T-zone gets very dry if I don't use any moisturizer and this kept it nice and smooth. I LOVE moisturizers that have SPF because of my very pale skin. It has a light sunscreen smell. Not overpowering at all. It contains Vitamin E, Soy Proteins, and White Tea. You can get 30% off any purchase at purlisse.com using the code IPSYSUMMER30 through 8/15/14.

If you think Ipsy looks fun (which it is) please sign up using my link below:

Join me on ipsy and subscribe to the Glam Bag! You get 4-5 beauty products every month delivered to your door, for just $10. Michelle Phan curates the bags! Check it out here: http://www.ipsy.com/r/875d