Cookie Madness

Well here we are again, another Monday...This weekend was awesome though! Our good friends came over on Saturday and helped me clean my house to get more baby ready. It was so fast and nice to have the help. Now to just magically have my toddler know to keep everything clean and not throw his food on the floor, that would be a totally cool!
But this momma still over did on all the projects and ended up all swollen and unable to walk the next day. HAHA I skipped church! Yeah I know I'm going to hell. But anyway...I stayed in bed all day until my swollen legs and feet went down properly and by evening time I was in the mood for cookies.

Earlier in the week I had made peanut butter cookies from the JIF peanut butter cookie recipe you find on the back of the jar. I have yet to perfect it. They totally bombed and were not tasty at all. So yesterday I decided I wanted something I knew wouldn't go nasty on me and be the yummy in my tummy bliss I was looking for.

A big thank you as well to my husband who let me be lazy and sit in a chair so my legs wouldn't swell up again and tell him everything he needed to do in order to make these lovely cookies!

So without further ado, here is my version of the Ghirardelli Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

1/2 cup of shortening
1 stick of butter or margarine, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
2 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 bag of chocolate chips
1 cup of chopped pecans

Preheat oven 375 degrees F.
Beat shortening, butter, sugars, vanilla, and eggs until creamy.
Add flour, baking soda, and salt. Mix altogether with mixer.
Then mix in chips and nuts by hand.
Cookie dough should be a dull, non-sticky texture. Not wet looking nor super sticky.
If you do get a wet looking texture add a bit more flour and mix it in with your hands
so you can judge the texture better.
Drop tablespoon sized balls of dough onto a very lightly sprayed cookie sheet. Bake for 9 to 12 minutes or until golden brown.

If you would like the original recipe I will link it here and up above.

If you have any ideas or requests on different recipes to try please don't hesitate to leave a comment below or email me!

Breakfast for dinner-

One of my fond memories growing up was always that every Saturday morning (well almost every Saturday) my Dad would make his old fashioned pancakes. This recipe has been in my family for quite awhile and I must say was the first recipe I made sure I had a copy of when I moved out on my own.

It is a tummy filler and budget friendly!  Nothing simpler than pancakes and eggs.
A great thing about this recipe as well is that it makes a big batch of pancakes. Great for big families or if just for a little family like ours, I like to freeze the leftovers and then we have homemade ready made for the next pancake and egg meal. Which is always an awesome time saver for days when you just don't feel like doing anything or just wanna sleep in.

Here is tonight's dinner adventure: breakfast for dinner!

Dad's Pancakes
 2 eggs
1/3 cup of veggie oil
1/4 cup of lemon juice
2 1/2 cups of milk
3 cups of flour
1 tablespoon of baking power
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt

You will have lumps, but you want lumpy! We always have fried eggs and I make homemade maple syrup as well. Make for a cozy full feeling. Comfort food at it's best, I think. So if you're looking for that old fashioned cozy feeling it's all right there.

*next cooking project: Apple Butter

Apple Pie

Betty Crocker possessed me and I got all the energy this pregnant lady could muster and made apple pie from scratch. The pie dough actually worked out for me for once. It was flaky and uber yum. But the apples did not quite do what I was plannings on. It all turned out pretty dry but very lovely to behold. At least my sweet and sour chicken (which I made from a sweet and sour pork recipe just pan fried chicken breast instead of deep fried pork) that I made for dinner that night was fabulous! Even if the was pie wasn't up to snuff.

There are still many adventures to be had in cooking and baking for me. I might know how to make it taste or look good but sometimes it doesn't turn out with both. Like my potato soup. If I had bacon or leeks it would have been not as boring as just potatoes and onions but what can you do when all you have is potatoes and onions?

Which brings me to my greatest depressive. The lack of money and ability to have on hand those awesome things that make a meal spectacular.  With being positive for gestational diabetes not only is more money going out for pre-natel cares, but now diabetes office visits, diabetes supplies, and now diabetes medication. Our paycheck is being eaten alive by medical woes that seem to just become worse. If only...And that is what is depressing most of all. If only...
But one happy thing, we did get Bubby payed off today. All of our hospital debt from Bubby is payed off. So there is $120 extra a month that is going to be going to diabetic stuff. :P
Only 10 weeks more of pregnancy, if we last that long that is.

Hopefully next paycheck we can get Bubby a pumpkin to carve for Halloween. We're still working on his costume. Trying to figure out how to make a sonic screwdriver out of things we already have. It's becoming quite hard to figure out what to do, but I'm sure we'll figure something out. We're still really excited for Halloween! I sure if Bubby knew what it was all about he'd be super excited too.

TARDIS Treat Bag

Our wee lil' Doctor has his TARDIS and is all (well almost) ready! Just need a sonic screwdriver now!

This weekend was TARDIS weekend. So, we got up this morning and ran over to my husband's parents house to use their printer to print out awesome police box iron-on slips then! we ate a $5 lil' cesars pizza(It was a high blood sugar kind of day.)...then!  We had naptime....
then! I cut out and sewed our awesome TARDIS together.

It turned out way better then I thought it would and my sewing machine was actually good today and did all that I wanted it to. Most often it will be a pain and mess up everything I'm trying to do.... It has nothing to do with me...it's the machine's fault....really...

If you're interested in the tutorial that I used I'll link it here. I did change it up and added things to it. We figured the add ons that we put in would help with the costume to make it have more of that nerdy awesome factor.