grizzly bear treats

I found this recipe on Pinterest (where else?!) and decided to try them for Grizzly. They were super easy, and Grizzly really likes them!!

(I also made a few out of zucchini since I had some leftover!)

chocolate zucchini muffins

My aunt gave me a zucchini out of her garden, so I had to find a way to use it! My aunt makes a lot of chocolate zucchini bread, so I decided to try muffins. I found this recipe online, here.


Ingredients:

1/3 C boiling water
2 C shredded zucchini
1 1/2 C flour
1/2 C cocoa
3/4 C sugar
1 1/4 t baking soda
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon
1/2 C vegetable oil (canola is good!)
3 eggs
1 t vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In large bowl, pour boiling water over zucchini. Add all other ingredients and stir just until well combined. Line muffin pans with paper muffin cups, and use a 1/4 cup measure to pour batter into cups. Bake for 30 minutes. Yields 18 muffins.

Number of Servings: 18

Shredding zucchini - it was very moist and little gloopy, don't worry about that.

Mixed up batter

 I also added about 1/3 Cup of dark chocolate chips, because I had them (I highly recommend this!!)

 Muffins in the pan

Finished zucchini muffins!! Deliciousness!

date night & cowboy boots

I am loving that the weather is getting a little cooler and I can break out the skinny jeans and boots! I wore this outfit on a date night!

I try to wear the cowboy boots as much as possible...because purple cowboy boots are awesome!

$150 shopping spree - new shoes!

I got these shoes as part of my shopping spree, to replace a pair that are literally falling apart. I wore the old pair of shoes all the time because they were pretty much flats, but had a pointed toe and looked a little dressier, and were super comfortable. I went looking for a pair that were similar, and this is what I found!

These shoes have more of a heel, so they look a little dressier. I also like the color, because I could wear them with black or brown belts.

$$ Left: 39.53

more sea salt caramels!

After the batch of rock hard caramels (see the previous post) we tried again. We added the same amount of molasses, since we thought the taste was really really great.

This time, we paid a lot more attention to the head and temperature, and made sure it didn't heat up so fast. They turned out to be a great consistency!! Here they are, covered in chocolate. :)

sea salt caramels - again :)

I posted about making sea salt caramels before, and they did turn out well that time. While my mom was here, we decided to experiment a little bit with the recipe.

We tried added 1 Tablespoon of molasses to the recipe, to give it a little bit more of a caramel-y flavor.

The first batch we made got too hot, too fast, and ended up like hard candy. It tasted great, but was just too hard, and was not the chewy caramels I wanted!

This is what it looked liked - after Alex smashed it into pieces with a hammer. (A cutting board was the only casualty here!)

lazy dog!

This is what Grizzly does while I work at home. (Three pillows and his blanket on the couch!) And he's snoring!!

scallops and pork

I tackled scallops for dinner the other night. I've never made them, and I don't really like them, but Alex likes them a lot! I made scallops, pork, potatoes, and apples...all grilled on my electric griddle. They were originally meant to be kabobs, but they weren't cooking evenly on the kabob sticks!

I seasoned the pork, apples, and potatoes like I always do - some salt and pepper, rosemary, a little bit of thyme.

I thawed the scallops and let them marinate in an 'herb butter' for about 30 minutes before I cooked them. I found the recipe for the butter online, it was just butter mixed with some thyme and sage.

The scallops were supposed to be bacon wrapped, but they were too small to get the bacon around! So, they turned into 'scallops on a bed of bacon' instead!

Overall it was pretty good!

army crawling

So, I've been teaching Grizzly bear to army crawl! He's getting pretty good!!

asiago cheese bread

My mom came out to visit over Labor Day weekend, and I took the opportunity to get her to help me make a batch of asiago cheese bread! We made this using my sourdough bread starter, and it turned out great!!

It's a round loaf of sourdough bread, with asiago cheese and basil. Yummy!

salted caramels

I found this recipe on Pinterest, and decided that I had to try it. (You can find the recipe here.)

These were a success, after trying a few times. The website explains how to get the consistency of the caramels just right, but it still took me a few tries.

 

The first time, the caramels were hard candy instead of soft chewy caramels. I broke these up like hard candy and took them to work. They were a big hit, even though they weren't what I was going for.

The second time, I didn't let the caramels cook enough and they didn't have as much flavor as I'd like, even though they were very soft.

Somewhere in there I got the right consistency! I went on to cover them in dark chocolate, and they were heavenly!
 

Eldorado Canyon State Park

Over Labor Day weekend, my mom came to visit and we did some hiking.

Eldorado Canyon State Park

This was a hike that I had planned for Alex and a friend of his who came to visit, but I had never done the hike myself. The hike was 2.8 miles round trip, and was a little harder than some of the other ones we've done.

And it was beautiful!

crock-pot baked apples

I found a recipe on Pinterest for crock-pot baked apples. This looked like a fun recipe for me, as I really like to bake apples with pork. I did make a few adjustments to the recipe, based on what I had and didn't have.

The original recipe is at this link.

Ingredients

1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup walnuts, chopped -- I used a combination of pecans and oatmeal
2 tablespoons trans-fat free margarine
1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 Gala or Macintosh apples, cored -- I used Braeburn since my grocery store was out of Gala...I can't imagine that made a huge difference
1/2 cup apple juice or apple cider
2 tablespoons orange liquor (optional) -- I used orange juice because I had some

Directions

Preheat a large crock-pot on high heat and preset it for 3 hours. In a large bowl, mix brown sugar, walnuts, margarine, and cinnamon. Fill the apples with the filling and place them in the crock-pot. Pour in the apple juice or cider and the liquor, if using. Cover and cook 2 1/2 to 3 hours on high heat until the apples are soft and begin to collapse.

Here are the apples after they were stuffed:

 

Here are the apples in the crock pot after a few hours:

 

They were really good! I served them with pork chops with rosemary :)