Foodie Friday: Cream Cheese Buffalo Chicken Taquitos

I found a recipe for something along the lines of cream cheese & buffalo bacon and chicken taquitos. Um... can you say yum? I had high hopes for making these little boogers but in the end decided that I wanted to wing it and make a super simple version of them. I wont even reference where I found the inspiration because a) I can't remember and b) they are nothing like the recipe. That being said, these bad boys were stinkin' amazing (and spicy!) and I definitely plan to make them again.

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Cream Cheese Buffalo Chicken Taquitos

Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 15 minutes

Yields: 4 servings

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds chicken breast, shredded
• 1/3 cup Frank's Hot Buffalo sauce
• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• Salt & pepper to taste
• 8 tortillas (I used flour)
• Oil for frying (I used vegetable)

Directions:

If you don't use canned chicken, you can do what I did and either boil, or throw your chicken in the crock pot for a few hours and quickly shred with a fork. Combine shredded chicken, buffalo sauce, cream cheese, and s&p into a large bowl and mix together. Spoon mixture into tortillas and wrap, securing with a toothpick. Meanwhile, heat your oil over medium heat. Once hot enough, drop each taquito into oil and fry, turning for an even cook (about 45 seconds-1 minute). Lay on a paper towel to soak excess oil and cool. Serve with desired toppings, dipping sauces and enjoy!

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Meet My Celebrity Friends

If you're here from Ruthie or Britt's blogs, hello & thank you so much for stopping by! I do hope that you want to stick around a while because I like to have fun over here... and well from the evidence of this post my family and I are constantly requested to do photo shoots and we have a lot of celebrity friends. And who doesn't want to know someone that knows someone?? Seriously, just let me know and I'll put in a call to my girl Ellen or my main man Leo. But don't even bother trying to get in touch with Gerard... he's mine.

JT, Me, Ellen

Aunt & Uncle w/ Mad Men Cast

Aunt Amy as Sienna Miller

Aunt Chris as Sienna Miller

Gaga, Cousin Allison

Mom as Cinderella

Grandparents as Elvis & Ann

Me, Mom, Aunt Chris, Cousin Allison, Cousin Ryan, Aunt Amy, Brother Lucas

Clair & Brother Lucas

 

Grandma & Leo

Me & Gerard

Dad as Knight

Entire Family in 'Lost' pose

Cousin Allison as Snow White

Alright... so maybe these aren't really our friends. And maybe (just maybe) we don't really get bombarded for photo shoots... but my mom sure can photoshop can't she? A few years ago she and my father spent countless hours cutting out our faces to make an entire book (I'm talkin' magazine thickness) for Christmas. Every picture is either us with/as celebrities, or us in place of whatever celebrity was posing as a Disney character. The entire book was so freaking awesome and I wish I could share the entire thing with you all, but I've already photo dumped the heck out of this post. Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed meeting my highly attractive family and our friends. Be sure to stop back by sometime!

Just Call Me Katniss

Hello & happy Monday, friends! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. Our weekend here was filled with a whole lot of... not a lot.

Friday night was the usual for us-- Raymond's softball game. They beat the team they were playing by quite a bit, which made for a happy boy. One bad thing about games at 9:00 pm? No time for dinner between work and game time, so we ended up hightailing it to get some grub (and drinks) at 10:30 at night. So bad, but so so good.



Saturday was spent running a few errands, doing a few things for the blog, and cleaning out our closet and dresser helping R clean his motorcycle. I wasn't in the mood to sit inside the house, so my crazy self marched downstairs to the oh-so-hot garage and polished away on the chrome of his bike. By the end of it all, I was in desperate need of a shower and water! I don't recommend volunteering to clean anything ever if you don't have to.

In other random news, I posted this picture to Facebook and my grandma said "Katniss Sheridan?" (Sheridan is my last name for those of you that don't know, and Katniss is obviously the main character from The Hunger Games.) I didn't even think about it when I braided my hair that morning, but I wont lie and will admit that I am totally digging the comparison. Just call me Katniss! I also got Tomb Raider from an old friend (Hi Kyndal!). I'll let you all decide for yourselves:

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I am not a big fan of Angelina (Team Jen!), so I'll take Katniss over Lora any day of the week, as if it really matters haha.

Moving forward from my obsession, Sunday was spent grocery shopping, and making phone calls to the surgeon's office. I had my stitches removed over a week ago and I noticed Sunday morning that my wound was starting to re-open. Totally gross, I know, and totally LAME. Now I've got to drive another hour and a a half both ways just to have it looked at. I'm not excited at all and it totally ruined my plans to finally go swimming and get back to working out today.

Luckily my sulking was overshadowed by a Sunday Funday we had planned to meet some of our newer neighbors. We ended up having a blast BBQing, letting the dogs run wild, and chit chatting for hours.

Another great weekend in the books, and now it's time to sail through this short week before we head out of town on Friday for a family reunion!

See you all on Wednesday!

Foodie Friday: Crab & Potato Soup

Over the rainy weekend all I could think about was how excited I was for fall and all of the warm, comforting meals that come along with it. Being the impatient person that I am, when the craving for a warm, heavy soup came along, I had to have it. Turning to my pantry, I pulled out a few ingredients and threw them into a pot. Out of no where-- poof! bam! thank you, ma'am! came this delicious hearty soup that will now be a staple in our household for years to come.

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Crab & Potato Soup

Prep Time: None

Cook Time: 5 minutes

Yields: 2 servings

Ingredients:

• 2 cans Campbell's Cream of Potato Soup
• 1/2 can diced potatoes
• 1 can shredded crab meat (drained)
• 1 cup water
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Throw all ingredients into a pot, stir, and cook over medium heat until warm. Enjoy!

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The Heart Attack That Wasn't

My family (on my father's side) has a history of heart attacks. His grandmother died when she was 47 of one, and he had one last year at the age of 48. I can happily say that my father is fine, and healthier now than he was before, but it was definitely the scariest thing my family has ever experienced. While my dad was in the hospital, his doctor told my brother and I that we both needed to get ourselves checked out just to be safe, seeing that this type of thing runs in our family. You're never too young to prevent. Naturally, I didn't take his advice. I'm only 23 for Heaven's sake!

Sunday night as we were laying down watching TV before bed, I noticed that my vision started blurring. Everything that I tried focusing on was a blur yet I could see everything to the sides of said thing just fine. I chalked it up to watching too much TV over the rainy weekend. After closing my eyes and vowing to stop looking at the TV, I explained my issue to Raymond and sure enough, while I was looking at him, his mouth and nose were blurry. At that point I insisted that I just needed sleep. So with the beginning stages of a small headache I took some Ibuprofen and drifted off to dreamland.

Just short of an hour later, I woke up with a splitting migraine on the right side of my head that lead into my jaw, neck, and shoulder. Growing up I was used to getting migraines, but I have been lucky enough to not have one in almost a decade. That being said, this pain I was having was not how I remembered a migraine to be, and immediately thought something was a little off. Shortly after, I started feeling shortness of breath, dizziness, and nausea. Once again, something just wasn't right.

After a few trips to the medicine cabinet, I gave up and tried to go back to sleep. The pain on my right side just got worse, and I started to notice a tingling in my fingertips. Within minutes, my entire left hand and arm were numb and that's when I freaked out. After googling heart attack symptoms in women with one eye closed and a noodle-like arm (not easy by the way), I woke Raymond up in tears, sure that I was having a heart attack. He assured me that I wasn't and sat there patiently with me rubbing my arm, and finally calmed me down enough to convince me to take a hot shower. After a long 30 minutes, I had feeling in my arm back and was calm enough to lay down again. Finally around 2 AM I was able to drift off to sleep.

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Monday morning I called my dad to inform him and get his expert opinion (dad's know all, duh) on the situation, and in the end we concluded that I indeed did not have a heart attack, and it was just an anxiety attack. Apparently my mom started getting anxiety attacks when she was the age that I am now, and my dad also gets them from time to time. Just another thing to thank the 'rents for passing down to me! Thanks, mom and dad!

But really, I am thankful that I am ok, and that I wasn't having a heart attack. Now I need to go make myself an appointment to actually get checked out. And if you read all the way to this point, thank you and I'm sorry.

The Most Handsome in All of the Land

Happy Monday, friends! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend.

We spent our two work-less days doing a whole lot of nothing, and it was awesome. Saturday morning after making breakfast we took Guero to the lake across the street from us and walked along the trail to give him some exercise. Luckily rain was near-by and kept the skies overcast and the temperatures not too high or in other words-- bearable.

On our way back Raymond insisted that we let Guero ride in the back of the truck. Obviously I was completely against the idea in fear that he would jump out while we were driving. My argument lost and we drove slowly back to the house while the baby had a blast eating wind (and an old piece of bread he found... don't ask me why it was back there). Now, I might be a bit biased, but I cannot lie when I say that our dog is the most handsome in all of the land. I am in awe of these beautiful pictures I snapped of this stud!

For being such a good boy we came home and snacked on popcorn while watching the rain storms on the balcony.

I also got a chance to throw together a new yummy recipe that I think you guys are really going to enjoy, especially for these colder months coming up! You're just going to have to wait until Foodie Friday to catch a glimpse of it, though! Until then you can check out the other two installments here and here to hold you over!

I kid you not when I say the rest of the weekend was spent on the couch watching old western movies and of course non other than The Hunger Games. I love the books and saw the movie in theatres and was so thrilled that I snagged myself a copy of it!

What did you do this weekend?

Foodie Friday: Crockpot Chocolate Cake

Hooray for the second installment of Foodie Friday! I told you all it'd make a return... eventually. A few weeks ago I was browsing none other than ol' trusty Pinterest and came across a recipe for what was pinned as "the most moist cake ever". It's no secret that I'm a cake/cupcake lover, and am all about delicious, moist cake. Bring it on!

I slightly tweaked this recipe and it came out so, so, so good. As for the look of it... we will deem this 'The Cake That Looked Like Booty but Tasted Amazeballs" or "The Ugliest Cake I Ever Ate".

My recommendations are to wait until the cake cools completely before trying to dump it from the crockpot. Obviously I was much too excited about the results of a freakin' cake from a crockpot (!!!!) and couldn't stand to wait. I would also wait to eat it until it cools as well. While it was absolutely delicious piping hot with melted frosting oozing down the slice, I had another piece last night and it was so much better at room temperature.

Normally I am all about completely sealing a cake in tupperware to keep it fresh, but with this cake I just wrapped foil around the plate it was sitting on and left it out. Two days later and it was just as moist as the first day.

Because of the texture of this cake, I think it would be absolutely perfect to use a white cake base and make your own sponge/Angel Food cake with. I think I've got a new idea!

Now for the moment you have all been waiting for...

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Crockpot Chocolate Cake

(Adapted from Mom's With Crockpots)

Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 2-4 hours

Yields: 24 servings (or 5 in our household)

Ingredients:

• 1 box chocolate cake mix
• 1 package instant chocolate pudding mix (small box)
• 12 ounces fat free plain Greek yogurt (I love Fage brand)
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup unsweetened apple sauce
• 1 cup water

Directions:

Spray crockpot with non-stick cooking spray. Mix all ingredients together and pour into crockpot. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 2-4 hours. (Mine only took 2.5 hours, but my crockpot's 'high' is really hot!)

Enjoy!

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