Ready for some greens

I don't know about you but I'm ready for something a little greener in my diet. As much as I love all the traditional favorites at Thanksgiving it always leaves me a little weighed down feeling in the food department. So this is a salad I whipped up to serve with the turkey leftovers and lighten the load.

Romaine Lettuce
Baby Spinach
Crumbled Blue Cheese
Dried Cranberries
Toasted Walnuts
Raspberry Vinaigrette Dressing

Toasting the walnuts is totally optional but it really does add an amazing crunch and makes them extra flavorful. All I did was place them in a cold skillet and kept the heat on low. Every couple of minutes swoosh them around the pan and once you can smell them when you are at the stove they are done. Don't try to rush them and turn the heat up because they will scorch and that just isn't yummy at all.

Dorm Cooking EP:2

Well as promised, here is episode two of my dorm cooking! I decided to make a casserole. With only a microwave!

Recipe:

Leftover Colcannon (mashed potatoes and cabbage)
Canned veggies
Mushrooms
Rice (I used rice a roni chicken rice, you'll want something that has a creamy texture to it otherwise it will be bland and flavourless, unless you had some cream and herbs to make your own sauce with butter and whatnot)
leftover chicken bits
Cheese

Prepare the rice as directed in a microwave bowl. While rice sits to finish after cooking, add canned veggies drained with mushrooms into a bowl and cover with water then microwave about 5 minutes and drain, Add to rice and mix, warm chicken bits briefly in microwave to warm then add to rice mix, top with cheese and return to microwave until the cheese is melted and gooey.

the finished dishes complete with tea biscuits and blackberry jam

How it looked in the pot, my cheese wouldn't melt >.<;

YUM!

Dorm Cooking EP: 1

ohmigosh it has been soooo long since I have posted anything. Recently I have been perfecting the art of dorm cooking and wanted to share with you my first dinner that turned out amazing!

Now to let everyone know, I recently moved to PA to live with my boyfriend and have been doing a lot of living on campus, he finally just recently got a mini fridge so we can now keep some things cold, but the Kitchen is broken so, I decided to try to make homemade meals anyway, using our neighbors microwave. And here are the results:

Dinner: Chicken, boiled carrots with butter, and colcannon.

The first dinner I made was my take on a homemade irish potato leek soup, I'll post pics of the leftovers when we warm them up on a later post.

Now the chicken part was super easy, I just bought a rotisserie chicken and cut it to bits taking off the wings and legs and breast and warmed in the microwave with some butter on it. Followed by sliced carrots in water, which I put in the microwave to boil/steam, when I took them out I added more butter to them ^^ and last but not least colcannon, I microwaved the cabbage and potatoes together in water, when the potatoes were done so was the cabbage, I mashed them together with butter (if you have cream, add it for an extra yummy).

recipe:
rotisserie chicken
4 peeled and sliced carrots
3 peeled and diced potatoes
2-3 leaves of cabbage washed and diced
butter(we used Irish butter because its delicious)
salt and pepper

slice up the chicken and put onto a plate with butter set aside. Put the sliced carrots into a microwave safe bowl with enough water to cover, cook for about 15-20 minutes or until the carrots are cooked all the way through (alternately you can out the carrots cabbage and potatoes in the same bowl but you have to dig the carrots out after) add the potatoes and cabbage to a microwave safe bowl with enough water to cover. cook 15-20 minutes or until the potatoes are mushy tender. Drain the carrots and the potatoes. Add butter to carrots, cover, and set aside. add a good glob or two of butter to the potatoes and cabbage and mash, I didn't have a potato masher but I had purchased, the day before, a soup ladle, so I just used the back of it to mush the potatoes. You can do the same thing with any large spoon, or if you are daring use a small plastic spoon, just know, it will take you longer. Before you mash the potatoes put the chicken in the microwave and nuke for about 3-4 minutes just check it to make sure it doesn't get all dried out. The butter will help with that.
Plate it up and you have a delicious Irish inspired dinner, home cooked and better for you, and better tasting than take out, or cafeteria food. Happy Dorm Cooking!!

~Alisha

The finished dinner, this is my boyfriend's plate, I ate the breast meat. If you put a glob of butter in the middle of the colcannon, dip each bite into the well of butter instead of mixing it in, it's more traditional and waaay yummier.

This is my prep space ^^

And the tiny crummy microwave we use, it's my boyfriend's suite mate's. It's nice of him to let us use it though.

DIY Laundry Soap

I was speaking to a girlfriend of mine one day about making something and she told me that her mom makes her own laundry soap! I found that fascinating, we go through an unbelievable amount of laundry soap. So girlfriend's mom emailed me her recipe and photo dude and I made it one night. It goes together very quickly and works beautifully. Actually the weekend that we made it my poor nephew had a bloody nose and this laundry soap even got the blood out without leaving that brown stain on the white part of the shirt (we did get to it quickly and stain stick it first just so you know). So here you go and photo dude will hopefully put all the cost break down up tonight when he gets home from work.

Here are your supplies
Arm and Hammer Washing Soda I found mine at ACE Hardware
Borax
One bar of soap grated (any kind will do I chose to use Castille soap)
A big bucket that will hold over three gallons of water


Throw your grated soap into about four cups of boiling water. You want the soap to dissolve. It doesn't take very long at all. When our soap dissolved we were amazed that the water was clear! Kinda' crazy huh?

Pour your dissolved soap mixture into your bucket. This bucket came from the donut shop down the road you don't have to buy a new one just make sure it is clean.


Add 1 C. of washing soda and 1/2 C. of borax to the bucket and stir well. Let sit for a day before using so that it can incorporate.

This whole project took us probably half an hour from start to finish. I think we figured that it is going to only cost us about five cents a load! You can't beat that price.