Tuesday, October 28, 2014

North Georgia Fair 2014

Last month we made our annual trip to the North Georgia Fair with my parents, in celebration of my mom's birthday. I mostly took picture of the kiddos ~

N Ga Fair '14, 12

N Ga Fair '14, 13

N Ga Fair '14, 16

N Ga Fair '14, 17

But I did lag behind a few times to snap shots of the long trail of colorful sky buckets.

N Ga Fair '14, 2

And before we left I requested a few minutes with the one thing I really wanted to photograph ~ the swing.

N Ga Fair '14, 18

N Ga Fair '14, 19

N Ga Fair '14, 20

I could happily take pictures there all day!

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Garlic Miso Chicken Wings

I'm always on the lookout for a good chicken wing recipe! This time we tried the Garlic Miso Chicken Wings from Just One Cookbook. If you've never cooked with miso you are missing out. I love that stuff!

Garlic Miso Chicken Wings

The flavor was good, but a little more subtle than I would like. If I made them again I would probably reserve part of the marinade to brush on at the end (or mix up something similar). But I'll probably just keep trying new recipes for the fun of it!


Last week the whole family had a miserable cold and we're still recovering. I lost my voice for 4 days! And cooked a lot of soup. One night my son got a fever, then my daughter got it the next night, so it seems like they caught something else on top of it. A few days later and now she's barfing from a stomach bug... I can't wait for everything to clear up! This is my son's first year at school and he's definitely been bringing something home about once a month.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Chicken & Bacon Pastry Pockets & Japanese Custard Pudding

Friday nights we always have a family "Snack Night" and watch a movie. The food is usually an assortment of frozen snacky things that we heat in the oven, but I occasionally use it as an opportunity to try out some new appetizer recipes.

Last week I got a little adventurous & tried two new recipes! The first were these Chicken & Bacon Pastry Pockets from Our Best Bites. Every recipe of Sara's that we've tried has been a resounding winner! Unfortunately we haven't had as much luck with Kate's (2 women run the blog), but about half of hers were keepers too.

Chicken Puff Pastry, 1

I've never cooked with the pastry sheets before & thought they were a little pricey until I saw that they really made a lot of food. Of course the puff pastry crust turned out delicious! I wasn't sure about the 'chive' flavor in the sauce, but nothing was overpowering & it tasted similar to what you'd expect from a creamy pot pie sauce. These were very good!

Chicken Puff Pastry, 2

My one warning about the recipe ~ she said to use 2 tsp. of filling for each pocket. I tried that at first & ended up with about 1/3 of my filling left! I pried open the seams of the pockets & shoved another teaspoon in each one & that seemed like a much better amount. So ditch the teaspoon and just use a tablespoon of filler for these (3 tsp.).


For desert I turned to my other favorite recipe blog, Just One Cookbook. I've been itching to make this Custard Pudding for a while now, especially since they use such common ingredients like milk, eggs, & sugar.

Japanese Custard

Unfortunately every time I try to make anything caramel it ends up a burned mess, and this was no exception. They were not very sweet & would have benefited from the caramel topping, but I had to leave it off. We were not a huge fan of these & found them a little too eggy, but it's always fun to try something new!

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Salt & Vinegar Potatoes

Salt & Vinegar Potatoes

We tried these Salt & Vinegar Potatoes as a side recently. The recipe's photo looks so good, but they were *painfully* tart. I'd like to try them again, but next time instead of boiling them in pure vinegar, I'll try half vinegar & half water to see if that mellows them out a bit.