Down South....

Hey there, I'm down in Memphis from now until Thursday morning visiting the parents!! It was a long drive, but now that I know that there is snow up in Indy, I'm kinda glad I'm down here! So, don't know how much blogging I will get to do, but I will be back!

Chicken and Brocolli Alfredo- Taste Test Tuesday

For tonight's meal, we had Chicken and Brocolli Alfredo. I got this recipe off of the Campbell's soup website. They have a lot of great dinner ideas along with a lot of other recipes! This recipe was really easy to prepare...anyone can do it!

Here are the cast of characters:

Ingredients: Chicken breasts (I used 2 chicken breasts), Frozen broccoli, cream of mushroom soup (I only had cream of chicken), parmesan cheese, fetticine, milk and pepper.

You can make this more healthy if you use whole wheat pasta and reduced fat cream of chicken soup!

Here's the recipe:

Chicken & Broccoli Alfredo
From: Campbell's Kitchen
Prep: 10 minutes

Cook: 20 minutes

Serves: 4

Linguini is mixed with pieces of tender chicken and broccoli flowerets and coated with a rich, satiny Alfredo sauce featuring Campbell's® Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup to make a quick and fabulous dish.

Ingredients:
1/2 of a 1-pound package linguine

1 cup fresh or frozen broccoli flowerets

2 tbsp. butter

1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces

1 can (10 3/4 ounces) Campbell's® Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup (Regular, 98% Fat Free, 25% Less Sodium or Healthy Request®)

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

Directions:
Prepare the linguine according to the package directions in a 3-quart saucepan. Add the broccoli during the last 4 minutes of cooking. Drain the linguine mixture well in a colander.
Heat the butter in a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken and cook until it's well browned, stirring often.

Stir the soup, milk, cheese, black pepper and linguine mixture in the skillet. Cook until the mixture is hot and bubbling, stirring occasionally. Serve with additional Parmesan cheese.
Tip: You can substitute spaghetti or fettuccine for the linguine in this recipe.

I know you love action shots, so here you go!

Why am I wearing two separate shirts you may ask?? Well, I first spilled on the green shirt and needed to throw it in the laundry before it stained. Then the second shirt I had on got applesauce all over it because I grabbed the applesauce and the top flew off and hit me in the face and splattered applesauce all over me! Wes was nice enough to get me another shirt. He also took all of these pictures, by the way!

Mmmmm.....good, as Campbells would say. We did like this dish, but the chicken in it could have used a little more of something! Maybe some italian dressing or something! But it was good! And so very easy. I think it took less than 20 minutes from start to finish.

Did Preston like it?? Yup!

My 1st Annual Christmas Cookie Swap!!

I am so excited to embark on a new adventure for this Christmas season....a cookie swap!! I got the idea from an ad for Domino Sugar. (I know, I'm a sucker) The idea is for about 8 women to get together on a weekend night or weeknight and bring 8 dozen cookies to share with the other 7 women that will be there. When you go home...you will have 8 dozen different types of cookies to impress your friends and relatives with!! How fun is that??

Here's what my cookie swap info: The first 8 people to respond to me that they want to come will be at the cookie swap! I will email an invitation out to you once we come up with a date. I was thinking of a weeknight instead of a weekend night since those tend to get busy. This is a girls-only event...a great chance to get out of the house and have fun and fellowship with other girls. Sorry...no kids allowed unless you're breastfeeding. :)

We can exchange our cookies and then I was thinking it would be fun to watch a holiday chic flick to get us in the mood for Christmas. And of course, you can feel free to eat some of your new cookies!!

Another exciting idea that Domino had was to bring a small donation that we can donate to the Great American Bake Sale which feeds hungry children. Because times are tight for almost everyone, I thought it would be neat to just bring all of the spare change that you can find around your house and donate it. If we as a group reach $35, Domino Sugar will send a free gift of an apron and a Sandra Lee cookbook to show their appreciation. I was thinking we could do a drawing to raffle off this free gift to one of the lucky girls!

If you want more details on the cookie swap, visit www.dominosugar.com/cookieswap and you can get all of the details.

So, if you're interested in coming to the Cookie Swap....email me at stacylcook@gmail.com. If no one responds, I will make 8 dozen cookies and eat them myself!! :)

What I wake up to in the morning.....

When you're complaining about how bad your hair looks like in the morning, here's some pictures to give you comfort. Someone's hair has it worse than yours!! When I look at these pictures, I realize how blessed we are to have a chipper morning riser who has time before he wakes up to put his finger in the electrical outlet!!

These are his two sleepytime pals....Gar and Bear. If one of them is missing, he will say literally a thousand times Where Bear or Where Gar until we find them........

Overheard: While I was writing this post, I heard Wes downstairs say to Preston "Preston you can't just drop stuff on Daddy's head!" Haha. It must be hard to not be born with any manners!!And then Preston said "Wowwy," which is sorry in little people language. How cute.

Show your Support and Vote!!

I just put up a new poll concerning what we should name Baby #2. Wes and I haven't quite decided so I thought it would be fun to get some input from you guys. A few rules though so that Wes doesn't get the idea that trusting our friends and family was a huge mistake.

Rule #1: Don't bash the names....or we will never speak to you again. ;)
Rule #2: Feel free to add another name that you like in the comment section... just make it serious!
Rule #3: The results of this poll may or may not influence the decision of what Wes and I will name the baby! No holding us to it!!

I think that's it! Thanks for your input!

Creamy Chicken and Noodles- Taste Test Tuesday

This is Stacy's mom and she asked me to do a guest spot on her Taste Test Tuesday. She has already set you up to see some amazing recipe that I have created. Unfortunately, I worked today and just got home. In case you don't know, I work at a meal preparation business where I make 40 to 60 entrees a day. The last thing I wanted to do today was make more food. Sorry. But I thought it would be fun for you to take a peek into my world. Today one of the meals that I prepared was Creamy Chicken and Noodles. We'll start out with the following ingredients:

20 cups cooked boneless pulled all-white chicken
20 cups cream of chicken soup
10 cups sour cream
2 1/2 cups milk
1 teaspoon black pepper
12 cups shredded cheddar cheese
20 cups uncooked egg noodles

Mix all the ingredients up in a large tub

Lay out ten 5x13 pans and fill each one with 4 cups of mixture. Sprinkle tops with 1/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese.

Voila! You have made 10 entrees. Now put on the lids and you can add them to the freezer.

To make the meal for yourself, here is the recipe:

2 cups cooked chicken breast, diced

10.5 oz can cream of chicken soup

1 cup sour cream

1/4 cup milk

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

2 cups uncooked egg noodles

Mix all ingredients together and place in a 2 quart baking dish. Sprinkle 1/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese on the top. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. Uncover and continue baking for another 10 minutes.

This recipe is one of our most popular kid friendly entrees. The great thing about my job is I get to sample the food. Yum Yum

It's Not Big Money....But it's Easy!!

Don't worry....Taste Test Tuesday is coming!! But it's going to be more exciting than usual. This week we are going to have a guest poster, my mom (who taught me everything I know) do a Taste Test Tuesday recipe. Not sure what she's going to do, but I'm sure it will be yummy!!


Anyway, until then, I wanted to tell you about something cool. There is a website that I found through Wes about a year ago called Ebates (http://www.ebates.com/). At this site, you get paid to do your normal online shopping!! Don't believe me? Well, it's true!!

With Christmas coming up and more and more people doing shopping online, more money is being spent online. At Ebates, all you have to do is visit their site FIRST, before you visit the website that you are going to buy something at. Each of their websites listed on their has an amount of cashback that they offer to you! You click on their link and wala! You are at the website you wanted to go to. But the difference is you are getting a little money back! Here's an example.

I want to order some pictures from Snapfish.com. So, first I go to Ebates and go down their list and they have Snapfish listed as a merchant you can receive cashback from....10%!! (FYI- most stores have lower cashback than this.) So, I click on their link for Snapfish and it takes me directly to the Snapfish website. Then I make my purchase through Snapfish. A week or so later, I get an email saying that cashback has been credited to my Ebates account. If I were to spend $20 on Snapfish, Ebates would credit my account for $2.

Every three months or so (I can't remember the exact amount of time), Ebates sends out checks to you for your cashback money. Now, I don't do a lot of online shopping throughout the year, but I just got a check back for $5.51 for shopping through Ebates. Not too shabby. But I do do a lot of shopping online for Christmas, so I will defnitely be shopping through Ebates first if I can. They don't have every merchant on there, but they do have a lot of the big names.

So, if you are interested, email me at stacylcook@gmail.com or post a comment and I can email you a refer-a-friend email. Just for signing up, you get $10 and so do I! Then once you make your first purchase, you are eligible for your first check back. I know there are a lot of scams out there, so I'm hoping this doesn't sound like one of those, because it's not! If you go to their website, you can see that they are a upstanding website.