Thursday Things

Posted on 9 May, 2013 by natalie

As it often does, life latched onto me hard for the last couple weeks leaving me no time for blogging as I was busy landscaping, remodeling, and working… I’ve barely had time to bake, let alone blog!

When the house is a mess (even from a small project) my whole groove is off and I can’t focus on anything until the house is back in order. Like the clutter just messes up my whole rhythm, messes up my feng shui or something, I don’t know quite how to explain it…

Does anyone else have that problem? Or am I just a crazy person?

It’s probably better if you don’t answer that…

Although we did manage to get thing put back together last weekend, and I even managed to make some stuff, but I still had no time to sit down and actually write a post, and no time for our Thursday Things. But I promise, I haven’t forgotten about you.

In fact, I actually kinda missed you guys…

So, despite my Cinco de Mayo roundup, our taco plans fell through and I ended up throwing together a last minute Chipotle Burger for Cinco de Mayo dinner…

They are similar to this recipe from awhile back, but with spicy colby jack cheese – yes that’s a thing apparently – and chipotles and adobo mixed straight into the beef.

Super tasty.

And yes, that’s a store-bought bun. Wanna know the secret to making a store-bought bun extra delicious? Grilling it! Seriously, try it out next time. Brush it with some butter or olive oil, or (in this case) chipotle mayo… and grill it. On a piece of foil though, or else a lot of the bun will stay on the grill…

I’ve been mostly making quick things, like I discovered these chicken tenders in the frozen food aisle at Trader Joe’s and recreated BF’s favorite buffalo chicken sliders from a local restaurant. Cost at the restaurant: $10.25 for 3 tiny sliders vs $7.49 for a WHOLE BAG OF TENDERS… yeah, clearly this is the way to go.

For these I just took regular dinner rolls, split them, made some quick cole slaw (for crunch) and tossed the cooked tenders in buffalo sauce – It took literally like no time. I think like 20 minutes for those tenders to cook and the rest was done by the time they were out of the oven.

Seriously, this chicken works for so many things, and I love that it’s so fast and easy that even BF used it to make some chicken parmesan one night!

Anything that gets the BF to cook dinner is a win in my book!

Then I used the leftovers and made an assortment of french bread pizzas (including a buffalo chicken one!) – left to right is

1. Bolognese pizza – Bolognese sauce and cheese

2. Buffalo chicken pizza – Chopped chicken tenders, buffalo sauce, and cheese

3. Spinach/Kale white pizza – TJ’s new spinach/kale dip and cheese

Also, since I’ve banned myself from buying cereal (because we have no less than 10 boxes of cereal, all different flavors, all opened), I’ve made it my mission to finally finish off what is left… so that I can buy more flavors (it’s almost an addiction, really, DID YOU KNOW THEY MADE CHOCOLATE CAPTAIN CRUNCH!? I NEED IT!).

My most recent success was this peanut butter chocolate cereal using chocolate Fiber One (which is actually not as bad as you would think, although I don’t think it tastes like Cocoa Puffs like the article I read claimed) and delicious Peanut Butter Toast Crunch! Chocolate and peanut butter for breakfast? WHO COULD SAY NO TO THAT?

Not this girl, that’s for sure.

I’m also trying to get back to my gym routine, I went a little overboard at my first attempt a week or two ago and ended up pretty much unable to move for a whole week. So, I decided to ease myself in this week, and I’ve been going every other day (for, ya know, 3 times) and it’s working out pretty good.

In other news, slightly less food-related news, I did a happy dance when I opened my email the other day and saw this:

Yes, I realize it’s just twitter, which I mostly just use as another outlet to assault people’s eyes with my instagram pictures, and that it’s probably not even her and just some PR intern… but I still got warm fuzzies inside.

Just sayin’.

If you don’t know about Aida, she’s kinda a big deal, and I’ve been crushing super hard on her blog lately which is filled to the top with some actually pretty nutritious (and very delicious) recipes, like this super tasty avocado toast.

thursday things

Posted on 7 March, 2013 by natalie

The other night the sky looked like it was on fire. This picture truly does it no justice. One day I will use the real camera to take a picture, but until that day you are stuck with phone photos.

The ladies over at Some Kitchen Stories have released their March calendar, blood orange is the theme this month. So head over to their site and put some beautiful on your computer screen. I promise they don’t endorse me and they really don’t even know who I am, I just really love their desktop calendars. I can’t help myself. They have some lovely recipes as well, just sayin.

The bf has a serious issue, he cannot keep a gift from me to save his life. So, as an early birthday gift, he gave me one of the best gifts ever. Apparently he took note of my obsession with red pandas and, since apparently we can’t actually own one, he “adopted” one for me for my birthday! So our beautiful Sita has our support (well, his support on my behalf) for the next year!

Check out Red Panda Network and support your own red panda! I wish we could actually adopt her for a year, but she has two babies to raise (according to her bio) so that wouldn’t be very nice, although we would happily take all three!

He’s also trying to kill me by bringing these home.

Don’t buy them. Ever. I don’t know what the official serving size is (because I refuse to look) but I’m pretty sure it’s significantly less than one bag. Which means I am in deep trouble. Evil. Pure Evil.

I snacked on a lot of this last weekend…

because nothing says “classy” like prosciutto and ritz. Nothing.

Except maybe this classy toothpick holder. Because everyone needs an adorable hedgehog to hold their toothpicks, right? And it might distract people from your expensive cured-meat on cheap delicious cracker addiction. And, more importantly, steer them away from your prosciutto toward the olives instead, leaving more delicious prosciutto for you. Win-win.

And we did find our new winner of the Wee Eats Giveaway – Congratulations to Mabel Chan from Beverly Hills, California! You will soon be enjoying your very own copy of The Art & Soul of Baking!

And now, it’s hilarious video time.

If you like to laugh, you absolutely have to watch this video of Conan O’Brien reviewing the new Tomb Raider game. Whether you like video games or not, I promise you that it is hi-freaking-larious.

I’m also DYING over this video of Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” … the goat edition. Trust me. It’s only like 30 seconds long so you can afford to watch it, and you won’t be sorry that you did. Promise. If you’ve already seen it, you should probably watch it again to improve your day.

And as much as the BF’s lover for Jennifer Lawrence makes me want to hate her, I can’t. Because she’s pretty freaking amazing. And for those of you who live under a rock and didn’t get to see the video of her meeting Jack Nicholson for the first time, please watch it as soon as humanly possible.

If you’re looking for something to bake this weekend, here’s some inspiration from the blog’s recent posts…

thursday things (& THE WINNER IS…)

Posted on 28 February, 2013 by natalie

I can’t believe that February is over and that March is looming right around the corner. Like, RIGHT around the corner. Like, TOMORROW around the corner. I’m so not ready. Soon it will be spring, I will be another year older, and next thing I know I will blink and I’m planning Thanksgiving and Christmas menus… Oh my!

I found a new instagram cat to be obsessed with. Well, he’s not really new, but I haven’t shared him with you yet. His name is Roku, and he is amazing. To prove to you how amazing he is, here are some of his pictures.

Oh, and he even has his own youtube page.

I saw these wall decorations on sale at Homegoods the other day and immediately sent a pic to the BF to tell him how badly we needed them.

I wanted to get all of them and have an entire family of manatees on the wall of our living room. I mean, who doesn’t need a whole wall full of manatees? No one, that’s who. No one doesn’t need a whole wall of manatees. (It’s a double negative, it totally works.)

Oh, and BF got me these super cute puzzle erasers the other day, paired with the dino erasers from before, I now have like a whole eraser entourage on my desk at work. It’s medium ridiculous.

Also, after weeks of tireless searching (ok, maybe more like a few days of taking a slightly-out-of-my-way trip down the chip aisle) I finally found one of the new Lay’s flavors to try.

I was bummed that this was all I found, but then I stumbled upon a whole container full of mini bags of all the flavors at Walgreens (of all places), so I promptly bought a bag of each… you know, for science. After minutes of serious empirical testing, I am happy to announce that I have figured out what the best flavor is! Have any of you tried these yet? What do you think? What’s your favorite flavor?

Now, since I know that this is what you guys are really here for….

THE GREAT GIVEAWAY WINNER IS………

JANET RESH FROM KALAMAZOO, MICHIGAN!

Thank you, Janet, for reading Wee Eats and participating in the giveaway!

Janet, please e-mail your mailing address to wee.eats(at)gmail(dot)com to claim your prize.

If I don’t hear from the winner by midnight EST on Sunday, March 3rd, a new winner will be selected at random to receive the book.

Pardon my dust… & A GIVEAWAY

Posted on 22 February, 2013 by natalie

While I remodel…

In the mean time, enter this giveaway!

So to celebrate lasting two years, and as a huge thank you to all of my readers old and new, I have decided to have my first ever giveaway. The winner will receive their very own copy of The Art & Soul of Baking.

This is a great book for new and experienced bakers, it offers a ton of tips and tricks, as well as a great array of basic baking recipes with a variety of adaptations for each. You may remember my favorite oatmeal cookie recipe, which was inspired by this amazing book.

It also gives great step-by-steps for a lot of its recipes. If you’re trying to learn or master new techniques, this book will give you the guidance and confidence needed to do so.

They aren’t paying me to promote their book, and I didn’t get this book for free, I really just love this book and its recipes. Like the recipe for these scrumptious home made ding dongs that I made to celebrate my blogs 2nd anniversary. Consequently, given that Hostess has recently found itself um… nonexistent, this may very well be the only way to get your ding-dong fix!

I will be posting that recipe in just a few short days here, but for now, without further ado, THE GIVEAWAY! Use the form below to enter, you can gain extra entries by doing different things like commenting, liking the Wee Eats Facebook page, or following @wee_eats on Instagram. The winner will be chosen at random from all of the entries in time for next week’s Thursday Things.

Best of luck to all of you!

Note: The giveaway is open to United States residents only.

Hopefully, in the mean time, I can wee-eats back to it’s normal functioning self <3

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thursday Things – Happy Valentine's Day!

Posted on 14 February, 2013 by wee eats

It’s Valentine’s Day and that is the card my wonderful, loving boyfriend got me. It came all the way from Europe. It’s extra hilarious because the one that I got him looks like this:

Same thing… pretty much. Right? Right.

I also found these super cute owl printables that I gave out to the people at work (because I’m 5 years old). Seriously. So cute.

And then there’s Rachael over at Movita Beaucoup who posted a link to this pretty amazing love letter to carbs. I can totally relate.

The BF and I usually don’t do gifts for Valentine’s Day (dinner at our favorite restaurant is enough of a gift), but this year he surprised me with physical gifts, too! Of course, since he has no self-control, I received them as they arrived. :)

Gift 1: Miracle Berries!!!

Have you heard of these things? They make sour sweet and sweet sour. I can’t wait to try them!

Gift 2 & 3: An adorable owl bank. I’m medium obsessed with owls (in case you haven’t noticed yet). BF also got me these nesting owl measuring cups :) Aren’t they the cutest thing ever!?

AND… if you’re still scrambling around for Valentine ideas, or if you’re planning celebrating late because Thursday is seriously a pretty lame day for Valentine’s Day (BF and I are actually celebrating tomorrow)

Or if you hate Valentine’s Day and I wasn’t able to change your mind… Here are some delicious recipes to make and share, or eat alone (no judgment from me!)

Valentine’s Recipe Round-Up

For dinner…

How about some super easy chicken parmesan? Even the BF who used to “hate chicken parm” LOVES this recipe (and it’s the only chicken parm he will eat!)