Super easy, fast, and delicious: Guacamole!

James and I eat a LOT of mexican food... and I'm positive that I could eat it for three meals a day and not get sick of it for a long time ;) On that note, as much as I love guacamole from our local Whole Foods/New Seasons Market I love homemade guacamole SO much more. I usually go the lazy route and have James throw some together but lately it just hasn't tasted the way I want it to so instead of telling him things to add/take out i decided to just make it how I used to do it :)

Ingredients:

3 avocados
2 roma tomatoes (the picture has three but I only ended up putting 2 in)
1 large clove garlic plus 1 small one minced (I only say those sizes because that's what I had on hand instead of 2 medium ones haha)
lemon and lime juice (i use stuff from the bottle out of ease but you could easily use 1/2 lemon and 1/2 lime for this)
a pinch or two of cumin
a pinch or two of ground California chili pepper
a pinch or two of salt
a pinch of two (see a common theme here? haha) of ground black pepper
1/4-1/2 chopped onion (I used about 1/3)

To prepare the avocados I cut them lengthwise in half, pop the seed out with a sharp knife, then cut the "pulp" into cubes while it's still in its shell (careful not to stab yourself through the skin!). Then I take a spoon and scoop it all out in to a bowl.

Next I just eyeballed the amount of lemon and lime juice that I used (I like using both for a different flavor but you could certainly use just one of them), but it was probably about 1/2 lemon and 1/2 limes' worth of juice. I tossed the avocado chunks around in it, finely minced my garlic cloves, put them as well as the salt, pepper, cumin, and red chili pepper into the bowl.

 Next I just mashed it all up and made sure to mix it well. I then chopped up my tomatoes (I usually de-seed one of them so there's not a lot of tomato juice in the finished guac but I've found that if i do that on both then it's not as good) and thew them in, as well as about 1/3 of an onion (more or less to taste). I'm a huge fan of tomato chunks in my guacamole and although I love the flavor of onion in it, I wasn't in the mood for big onion chunks today so i did smaller ones. Mis well and let sit for at least an hour if possible (I was up super early this morning so I just made it, covered it in plastic wrap, and put it in the fridge until dinner time tonight)

Look how delicious that looks!!! YUMMMM!!

Enjoy! 
-B

Decorative Chest

James and I found this awesome basic pine wood decorative chest at Michael's crafts quite awhile ago and decided to stain it and then add a handle to it. Our original plan was to then use it as a card holder at our wedding but since then we've pushed the wedding date back to next year sometime (probably) and are focusing on moving this fall. Therefore the chest will be used to hold ______ (insert anything really lol) until the wedding date.

We bought the chest for $7 (after a 40% off coupon)
The 3" drawer pull was $3.48 from Home Depot
The stain used was Minwax Wood Finish is Jacobean for $4.98 at Home Depot
The finish used was Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane- Clear Satin for $6.78 at (you guessed it!) Home Depot

I absolutely love the knots in the wood of this chest!
Before:

How we did it:

The first thing we did was gather the tools needed which were gloves, a screwdriver, a drill, and medium-grit as well as fine-grit sand paper (I used whatever we had on hand). We then removed the hinges from the chest  and drilled pilot holes for the handle later.

 We sanded the entire thing down really well using the medium-grit sandpaper and then again with the fine-grit. 

 We used paint-brushes to apply the stain to the wood in sections so that it wouldn't drip down the sides

  IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure you're significant other removes the label sticker BEFORE staining the chest or you'll have an adorable odd colored spot later (which really isn't a big deal since it's on the bottom, but still).

 There were some spots on the chest that literally wouldn't absorb the stain as well as the rest of the wood did... they didn't feel like glue spots or anything so we just applied the stain a little heavier in those spots ( you can see some of them along the bottom edge of the chest (top part of the picture)).

 After 2-3 coats the Jacobean stain was the PERFECT color!!! :) I am SO happy with how it turned out!! So after waiting a week or so (out of laziness and nothing else haha) we finally applied the Polyurethane finish as directed. I think we ended up doing 2 coats of it.

After that was completely dry we put the hinges back on and then put the handle on the front. Finally, we bought a piece of black felt for $0.29 at Michael's crafts and i used a hot-glue gun to secure it to the bottom of the inside of the chest.

 

 The light is hitting the chest weird so it's giving it a yellow-tint... but it's very true to color with the other pictures of it stained.

A quick Before and After look: 

OH MY GOODNESS I am absolutely in love with how this turned out!! :D 

-B

 

Easy homemade fire-starters

James and I LOVE to camp... so we do it often. Last summer we went camping through the beautiful states of California and Oregon and had the time of our lives. HOWEVER, we also learned a lot of very valuable lessons:

1. Carry a gun. You never know when you might need to protect yourself from other people or animals.
2. Carry bear spray. Better safe than sorry and we had a handgun which wouldn't help much from a pissed off bear so this was our plan if we had issues with one
3. Don't camp in such a remote camp spot that there is no one else around you, you're next to a RUSHING creek (so noisy you almost have to yell over it), and are in such a heavily populated bear area that you had to sign a waiver to not sue if there was a bear attack when you're not armed (common sense kicked in at about 9pm and we packed back up and left. Forget that. lol!)

Note: we did two separate almost week-long trips... the first taught us to carry the gun and spray. for the second.

4. Buy a griddle for a bbq and use it over campfire pits for ease of cooking food like french toast, meats, and veggies.
5. Carry several lighters, lots of paper products to burn, and fire-starters to use if all else fails (wind was our biggest enemy that trip)
 6. Pack all of your camping supplies in large Rubbermaid type totes. It is a lifesaver when it rains since you don't have to worry about cardboard boxes getting soaked.

I'm sure we learned several other things but those were the biggest. We both have extensive camping backgrounds but there are "little" things that you learn through experience.

SO on to how we made fire-starters:

Supplies needed:
Cardboard egg container (we used one from an 18ct pack of eggs)
Shredded/ fine cut paper
Dryer lint
Wax

Directions:
We had extra wax left over from when we made candles for our wedding so we used that wax here. We melted the wax in a double burner while getting the rest of the supplies ready.

We didn't have any shredded paper for some reason so I cut up scrap paper from the recycling bin

I put a little bit of paper in the bottom of each egg carton cup followed by dryer lint (no joke, I work at a hotel and went and collected the dryer lint from the laundry facility we have on site for guests for a week since we didn't have enough at home hahaha..... also, I shed hair a lot so you can see my lovely blonde strands sticking out from the lint. Since hair burns anyways, I wasn't concerned lol). 

I packed the dryer lint in the best I could and when the wax was finally all melted i used a cheap throw-away ladle that we had on hand to scoop and pour wax into each container.

NOTE: put containers on paper towels as the wax WILL go through the cardboard. 

I let them cool in the garage overnight by the camping totes so that we wouldn't forget to put them in there. When we needed them the next time we went camping, we just broke off one at a time and light it with a lighter (one of the days was really windy so i threw three in to make sure we maintained a steady flame and at first I felt bad for "wasting it" but then I remembered how cheap they were to make so I didn't feel bad anymore ;) haha.

Enjoy!
-B

Roasted Apple Rabbit Recipe

Hey everyone! It's been awhile since I've blogged which is a good thing I suppose since that means I've been staying busy ;) Recently my fiance James and I have been trying to try out some rabbit recipes to see if we like the flavor. At first I did a basic google search and found a rabbit stew recipe but it had red wine in it and since I'm not a fan of red wine at all I wasn't a fan of the recipe. James liked it I think but mostly for the meat. So we tried to find other recipes and we just couldn't find anything that really sounded like it'd taste great. One afternoon a few months ago we were visiting with his grandparents and they said that all they do is cook it like they would cook chicken (basically a straight swap of the meat), and after thinking about it I realized that I wanted to try it with this fantastic Roasted Apple Grille Sauce by Stonewall Kitchen that we get for pork chops at our local New Seasons Market. The sauce has roasted apples, maple syrup, brown sugar, onions, garlic, apple cider vinegar, etc so it creates this flavorful sauce that works well with any meat really :) You can buy some online here if you don't have a New Seasons Market near you. Anyways, here is the recipe that I made up and loved:

1 rabbit (we purchase ours from local butchers) deboned and rinsed
2/3ish jar of the Roasted Apple Grille Sauce (i just sort of dumped it in until there was as much as I wanted)
Wildtree's California Style Garlic Pepper (to taste... I sprinkled it on all over)

As a side we had steamed broccoli and cauliflower and sauteed onions that were also seasoned with the Garlic Pepper.

Steps: 

 Ingredients all lined up (note: after this picture was taken that garlic clove disappeared and I can't find it anywhere in the kitchen! haha

 Better view of the oil and seasonings (I use Grapeseed oil because it's a light oil that's really good for you like Olive Oil is but it has 1/2 of the saturated fat as Olive Oil!)

 My delicious onions sauteing in a small pan.

I simply sliced them all up, threw them in a lightly oiled heated pan that was on medium heat, tossed in the minced garlic clove, sprinkled with Garlic Pepper and then cooked them on medium and low heat until they were the consistency that I wanted.

 My fantastic fiance deboned the rabbit for me so all I had to do was make sure it was rinsed well and then toss it into a heated oiled pan over medium/medium-high heat. I then sprinkled it with Garlic Pepper, stirred it around and added a little more to taste.

 When the meat looks white all the way through (and not pink anymore) I dumped in the sauce and simmered it until it hit 160 degrees F (well, since I had a blonde moment and used the thermometer wrong (Seiously, how hard is it to use a stupid thermometer?! haha) it was almost 200 degrees, but whatever ;) Like I told James: The meat may be a little tough, but we won't die from it being undercooked!! :) :)

YUMMY!!!! 

We used paper plates for easy clean up ;)

And there you have it folks! My super simple and somewhat quick recipe for Roasted Apple Rabbit. 

-B