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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

New Blog Home!

Okay so I have moved yet again. My new blog home is on wordpress. Come join me!

Dangerously Delicious

Monday, January 28, 2008

I moved!!!



Okay I moved! Still trying to get some kinks worked out but I am now on my own domain on Wordpress. You can all join me over there. You have the option of registering for the site, or just using your info from blogger or wordpress or where ever you are based at.

Have a nice evening! Hope to see you soon! Click the link below!

Jasmine's New Blog

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Ask for a discount!


This has worked for me many times. Whenever we rent a car, book a hotel, buy shoes at payless, buy auto parts even, we ask for a discount. Well I do anyhow, Joe will if he remembers or I remind him. lol

Most of the time I drop the AAA name. Now for the car stuff it was Napa and it wasn't AAA. It was the fact that Joe used to work for General Motors. He doesn't any more, now he works for the City.

I was reading a blog last week and the lady mentioned going to Restaurant.com and buying gift certificates cheap and having a date night. We usually do this once a month, or once every other month, go out to a nice restaurant. Once a week we hit In & Out or the like but I don't really count that.

Anyhow last Thursday I read that post and even cruised by the rest. link she posted. None in my area. When my dh got home we were supposed to go to Costco and S&F but I decided that could wait and took him out somewhere we have been trying to go for a while but every time we go it is closed.

It is Woody's Cocky Bull and is a western type place with a grand ole opry and all the trimmings, bear rugs on the wall, pool tables and a bar they can't use cause they don't have their liquor license yet. (Which is fine cause we rarely ever drink.)

They just reopened for buisness and I thought their prices were WAY too high for this establishment. I shut my mouth though cause he has really wanted to go for months and one night we stopped by they were closed. Another time they weren't open til 4:00 and it was earlier and there was a movie we wanted to catch so the timing wouldn't work out.

He wanted an appetizer too so we ordered one. We have been doing that lately. Now that our income has opened up a bit more I am not pinching the pennies so hard. lol
It would of been $6.99 for 1 appetizer or $10.00 for a plate with 3 appetizer's so we figured lets get 3. Well wouldn't you know they brought us out 3 DIFFERENT plates of food. haha(Not our pic)

One HUGE plate of chili cheese fries, 1 HUGE plate of fried chicken tenders, and 1 HUGE plate of onion rings. With no sauce. I had to ask, she forgot.

I had wanted steak but thought it was crazy paying $18.99 for a simple steak. Their porterhouse was $29.99! Now I know this is what nicer restaurant's charge but if we are going to spend $50.00-$60.00 on a meal it had better be The Outback Steakhouse. I mean this place was empty. We were the first diners there and pretty much the ONLY diners. I even remember telling him that was crazy, about the steak. They must of over heard me cause the waitress ran over a few minutes later and told me "porterhouse" was on special. $19.99. So I went ahead and ordered it. *smirk*(Not our pic)

I did look at the burgers, but I had a hamburger at home that afternoon. Joey ordered the pork ribs. I was not at all impressed with the menus. No pictures whatsoever! If you haven't noticed, I am all about the food pics. lol That usually seals the deal for me. Their sides were so boring and simple. Baked beans, corn bread. I could of stayed home and made this. Of course I could of stayed home and made an awesome steak with a baked potato, lots of butter and sour cream, fresh rolls, with even more butter, and a salad with ranch. Do yourself a favor, do NOT add up all the calories! haha

But this wasn't about staying home. This was about having a nice evening out with my sweetie. Joey told them to hold the beans for me and substitute a baked potato, with lots of butter and sour cream.

Now I have to add this in. I was really freaked when small flies, like gnats came by our table and tried to steal the tomato off my plate! We called for the waitress and she moved us to another table across and they still followed us. We wound up moving to a complete other section. About 20 minutes we came, a group of 4 came in, looked at the menu and left. I am not surprised I would of left too if it weren't for dh being so gung ho about this place.

A few more diners came in and stayed. This place was huge though. I do have to say the food was very good though. I got my porterhouse and cut off an 8 oz piece and put the rest on Joe's plate. He gave me a few bites of his rib. Baby back ribs. The potato and salad were fine. The chili cheese fries were good, I had a few of those, the fried chicken pieces I had one of those it was good, you know what for some reason I remember there being french fries too. LOL Yes regular french fries AND chili cheese fries AND a bakes potato. I am thinking I changed my mind on the fries or the potato and they forgot and brought both.

The onion rings were REALLY good. I was sitting there thinking we should of just ordered an appetizer and a salad there was so much food. We wound up bringing alot of it home. The kids enjoyed that. I must say I was expecting to be disappointed by the cornbread. Corn bread is not normally my favorite. Usually it is to gritty tasting. But these were very light and fluffy. They were mini muffins and tasted great. I was sorry I hadn't room for more than two.

When we were waiting for the lady to tally the bill my dh ran off to the bathroom and I asked her if we could get a discount cause the flies were harassing me. She said she really couldn't cause she had made a mistake and given us 3 plates of appetizers instead of one plate of 3 appetizers. She did say if my dh was a cop or a fireman they could give us a 20% discount. We said no but he does work for the city in another area. They gave us the discount.

All in all we wound up spending $41.66 or so. We threw in a 15% tip and stayed to play 3 games of pool. It was actually alot of fun.

SO the point I was getting to was, ASK FOR A DISCOUNT!!!

Should I of called the health department? What would you do?

For even more tips check out Works For Me Wednesday

Kitchen Tip Tuesdays



Okay my tip for today is about baking. Whenever I am baking and I need to use oil or honey or molasses, I spray the measuring spoon or cup with pam or cooking spray. It helps the ingredient to slide right off my cup or spoon and into the mixer where it belongs. I used to hate having to get another spoon and trying to scrape honey or molasses off. Now I don't have to and neither do you. Hope this helps.

For more tips check out Tammy's recipes!

Monday, January 21, 2008

The blog is moving....

Okay so I have been quiet for a few days. That is because we are getting ready to move. I have a domain, have had it for about a year and have a board on it. I have had many boards in the past before the domain and been pretty successful with them but they take alot more time than I have. I have found these past few months that I really love having a food blog. It is not as much maintenance or up keep as a board. I am going to leave the board open in case anyone wants to stop by and chat.

But for now I got a new domain yesterday that is going to be focused on having a food blog. I am switching to wordpress. I have a friend who is helping me get it all set up and right now we are just waiting for the server to propogate.

She said we can import all my stuff from here so I won't have to start fresh thank goodness. I have already picked out the layout for the new blog. One thing that annoys me with blogs is having to scroll down constantly. And if there is a really long post that can get annoying. I love the "click here to read more" feature. I hope you will all join me over there and if you wanted you could actually REALLY join me. I read that we are able to add 35 additional blogs for free. How cool is that?

This is my cinnamon bread!


You can cut yourself a slice of cinnamon bread while we wait. Aren't those big beautiful loaves? That is supposed to be cinnamon raison bread from my new book Bread by Eric Treuille. That was also the day I was baking regular bread, cookies (from the cookie dough I had saved in the freezer)and the stromboli. I was bound to goof something up. Guess what it was? The raisons. hahaha

This bread was really good but I am not much one for sweeter breads. SO I just ate one piece out of two loaves. Good thing. I will have to make this more often! lol I really love how poofy it turned out and just the texture was awesome. It called for bread flour so that is what I used. Here is a picture of it proofing.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Frugal Friday: Frugal Fun!



Okay well for this Fridays frugal tip I will tell you what I did this week. After spending $36.00 on 3 cook books at amazon I also decided I needed to start watching for cook books at yard sales/swap meets to keep expanding my collection. So last Saturday we went to the swap meet and I got 3 cook books. They were 3/$5.00. So $1.66 each. Tonight I searched amazon to see how much they are going for. I found 2/3 on amazon.

The first one is a bed and breakfast cook book which I love and have already used twice. Click here to see me ramble in another post about this book.
The Bed and Breakfast Cookbook: Great American B & Bs and Their Recipes from All Fifty States by Martha W. Murphy. I looked on amazon tonight and this book is selling right now for $16.93. I spent only $1.66 so that is a savings of $15.27.

The next book is Jenny Craig's No Diet Required: Recipes for Healthy Living It is selling for $14.99 and I got it in great condition for $1.66. So I saved $13.33. The third book I couldn't find at amazon but I am sure I saved money there as well. ;)

Another tip is to look at discount outlets like Ross. My friend Zsuzanna mentioned the other day finding a pizza stone for a great price at Ross so Joe and I happened to be out there today looking to see if I could find any cookware I was interested in. We did find a few mini muffin pans. I was trying on an outfit in the womens room and Joe seen a stand of books and he found me this one. It looked good. I liked also that it had the calorie counts. He said he flipped thru it and saw yummy food he wants to eat. It said $5.99, that sounded fair enough so we bought it. By the way this book is HEAVY!!! It says it has over 1000 recipes and has 564 pages(including index, but still)All-new Complete Cooking Light Cookbook

Since it was brand new and not a used book I decided to take a peek and see how much amazon was selling this book for. It says "regularly" $34.95 but on sale for $23.07! I paid $6.00 for it so we saved $17.07. Now a really frugal tip would obviously be to borrow these from your library. ;)but for the cost of gas nowadays you can't beat $1.66 at the swap meet. In addition you don't have to give them back. They can be part of your ever growing collection and stab at feeding your family lots of yummy wholesome food.

For more frugal tips check out Biblical Womanhood.

Double Trouble:Twin Stromboli!

In case you are wondering, Stromboli is "Rolled earth bread filled with smoked mozzarella and basil". It is , "Named after the volcanic island of Stromboli, located off the coast of Sicily, this bread is filled with a delcious combination of smoked and plain mozzarella. The cheeses erupt from the holes pierced in the rolled focaccia dough during baking." This is from my new book, "Bread" by Eric Treuille.

I am sure you can see why I just had to try his recipe for Stromboli first before I did anything else in the book. I found that picture on google images.

SO yesterday I baked two loaves of our regular daily bread and cracked open my new book. I put it on top of the microwave instead of the counter in the hopes that I wouldn't splatter anything on my new book. I looked later and I think there is one teeny tiny oil mark from the olive oil I had on my finger. lol

I had mozzarella and cheddar cheese but no smoked mozzarella. So I substituted cheddar for the smoked. Everything else I did the same. I really had fun doing this and even learned a new technique, chafing the loaf. I just hit google and if you read #5 that should explain it. It is actually pretty simple. Chafing.

The rising time said 1 1/2 - 2 hours but I had the oven on from the other bread. No I didn't stick it on top of the stove but it was sitting next to the stove. *trys to look innocent* haha I think it was done rising in about 40 minutes.

The first thing I did was to double the recipe and yes it all fit in my mixing bowl. My new bread board came in handy to chafe the dough on and then when I needed to roll it out. I have no idea where my old tupperware rolling pin I never cared for went. I think I used it twice in all the years I had it. I got it for free though so at least I didn't waste money. I think I am supposed to fill it with water or something?

I need to find it cause, don't laugh, it took me 10 minutes to roll out one stromboli on my middle dd's mini rolling pin she got for christmas. *hangs head in shame* Okay you can laugh now. lol

This is a picture right before it went in the oven. AFter you roll it out you cover it and let it rest for 10 minutes. I have a huge rubbermaid container that fits my texas sheet cake perfectly. It was just the right size to hold one dough so I could roll out the other dough. I was thinking this would probably also be a good dough for pizza. I will have to try that next time.

Okay now it called for 1 Tbs of oil drizzled on the top, plus 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of pepper. I used kosher salt which looks chunky. When I was putting it on I even thought it was too much salt and pepper but figured I would adjust it later. These twin's are not burnt. That is black pepper on the top which makes it look so black. If you don't believe me look at the before I threw them in the oven picture. lol

I timed it just right so that we could eat dinner when Joe got home. We had a salad on the side and it was perfect!! We all really loved this Stromboli I am definately going to make it again and again. My 7 year old son and 9 y/o dd couldn't believe I made it from scratch they said it tasted like french bread. And they were surprised I could make a bread like that. Joey loved it of course, only thing he said to change the next time was half the salt. My eldest son said this was better than restaurant food! My eldest dd said it was delicious.

I loved it too. With it as just bread and cheese and a salad I was thinking a light soup would of gone perfect. Or what I really want to try next time is throwing some sauce on it as well as some kind of meat. It looked like one huge hot pocket! haha I told the girls maybe this Sat. or Sun. we could make this dough up and cut it smaller and make mini Stromboli's.

Our cheese didn't come out the top for some reason, but some did shoot out the side.

I think I will post the recipe later. I need to go on a walk right now.