Aggies Do It Better

Take the stopper out of your soy sauce bottle and put it in the hot sauce bottle! No more hot sauce gushing out :) Wash and reuse the soy sauce bottle for something else!

Hey Yall! This post has been in the works for a few weeks, I've been adding pics as I go from my phone and it's just been sitting there waiting for me to edit! This is one of the most simple things you can make for dinner. It's cheap, easy, and there's so much more you can do that just eat the chicken and veggies and be done with it.  There's a lot of pictures so I'll try not be too wordy!   Start with a small roaster chicken. This one was maybe $6-8. (although, we are fast becoming a 2-bird family! It would be no different to just roast 2 at a time if you have a big family or want more leftovers). This is a large cookie sheet, commercial type, I got from Sam's. I use it for eeeeeeverything. I love the high rim so it catches juices, etc. My method for small chickens is the same for large Thanksgiving turkeys. Rinse, pat dry, and slather with olive oil or softened butter (the real stuff, people) depending on my mood. Cover inside and ou...

Here is a summary of the very small amount of cake-making I did last year. Balancing a newborn in the mix of everything else here did not allow for much! (See: No Blogging) But I did manage to eek out a few things.   First up is a small cake and cupcakes I made for a baby girl shower. The cupcakes were vanilla, chocolate chip cookie dough , and cinnamon latte.  The cake was carrot. These are little chocolate dipped marshmallows I made for Halloween. Franken-mallows!       This was the first  birthday cake I made for the baby. I've been wanting to make a cake covered in sprinkles for a while! Keeping in mind it was only 2 tiers of 4 and 6 inches, it didn't take me as long as I thought or as much sprinkles as I thought. I have lots left over!     The oldest turned 7 and request a Cowboys stadium. With the doors open, Mom. I didn't have much time to work on it and I would change a few things, but it turned out ok!     Another ...

I can't even remember how I stumbled on this on the Internet. Probably browsing Pinterest.... But I saw several posts on making your own coffee cream. I'm a big coffee drinker and I do use creamer. I usually buy the standard non-dairy flavored creamers. They are filled with all kinds of questionable crap, but like most of us I just do the ol' cover-my-ears-and-sing-LALALALALAAA. The recipes suggest using a mixture of sweetened condensed milk (which is FABULOUS In coffee by itself) and milk. I'm not exactly "dairy free", but I tend to not tolerate milk that well (hence the creamer). So I made this with coconut milk, although if you want to just use the same amount of regular milk. I did choose the sweetened coconut milk, which has cane sugar already in it and some other stuff.   Into a large measuring cup (or right into your storage container, you could reuse your creamer bottle. I used a quart size ball jar) pour out 2 cups milk. Add one small can sweetene...

Okay! If you're a chocolate person, this is gonna rock your world. It is exactly like the "restaurant stuff", and is not even comparable to the Hershey's syrup, oddly enough. It's great for chocolate milk, desserts, and coffee. The ingredients for this are crazy simple....the only thing you may have to run and get is some unsweetened cocoa powder. I use Hershey's, but you can use some fancier stuff if you have it (i.e. dutch process or whatever). I like Hershey's, it tastes great, is versatile, and you can get a monster thing of it at Sam's. :) The only other thing you need is sugar, water, and vanilla. Pretty sure everyone has those! I'll give the amounts at the end. Step 1: Combine the sugar and water on the stove and bring to low boil over medium high heat, very much like making the simple syrup we made for the Pumpkin Spice Syrup . Step 2: add the cocoa power and salt and whisk to combine....let it boil for about another minute while ...

(apologies for the terrible picture quality. I'm thinking even my camera was salivating over these) Peanut Butter cup mini chocolate cupcakes! Wait until you see what's inside.... Can we just get a moment of silence? These are from one of my food network mag's from a while ago. There was a whole section on cupcakes imitating candy bars. These were made for some birthdays at my husband's work...he did a secret poll to see which of the candy bars was the favorite (among nestle crunch, butterfinger, snickers, almond joy, etc) and Reese's was the winner by a landslide! These are chocolate cupcakes with a peanut butter topping made from peanut butter chips and milk chocolate candy shell. They taste exactly like the real thing. Can I getta AMEN?!?! The sad part is, my husband doesn't even like Reeses cups....and I still married him!

This was for a little girl having her party at one of those salons for young girls...something I know nothing about so I had to do a little homework! They have different themes they can choose from....like sock hop, princess, and "glamour girl" like this one. The girls dress up and get their hair in "up do's" and then have a little fashion show on a runway. Fun!

Now that we have a child in "big boy school", aka Kindergarten, we are being introduced to school fairs and festivals (again). Tonight my son, who's school mascot is the "Lizards" is having their fall festival. They are having a "cake walk", and asked for donations of baked goods. So I figured I'd make a cake! This is smaller, 6inches round. The main dilemma I had was deciding on what type of lizard to use. They use 3 different kinds that I've seen so far! The one on the logo looks, to me, like a friendly version of the dinosaur from Jurassic Park that flares out his neck thingy. The car stickers I've seen have gecko shapes on them. And they have horned lizards in tanks in the school! How am I supposed to know what to use??? Haha. Quite the dilemma. And of course, I don't have cookie cutters for ANY of those types of animals. Nor could I get my hands on one in time. I was all set to start hand cutting out some geckos, and I thought I...

This is something I've been wanting to make since last year, but finally now have the motivation to do it. Most people have probably heard of "apple butter", but really there's a whole slew of fruits you can make "butters" out of. It's not really like actual butter, it's more like a really thick applesauce consistency. And very sweet! As I'm going through the jars of jam I made, I am planning on making batches of this over the winter. First up? Apple-pear butter. This is from Martha's Everyday Food from Dec 2010. The recipe is on her website. 2.5 pounds each apples and pears. Each peeled, cored, and cut up. You bet I used my food processor for this! Fast forward 20 minutes to this.....apples on the bottom, pears on the top, some dark brown sugar, and a cinnamon stick. Stir it all up and cook in the crock pot for 4 hours. After 4 hours, it looks like this: YUM already. Take out the cinnamon stick and blend it up in food processor and return ...