Crash Hot Potatoes

Tonight for dinner I made another one of my favorites from The Pioneer Woman (you will be seeing a lot of her recipes in these neck of the woods/web).

In case you haven’t noticed, my family is big on potatoes. You should see my sister practically inhale the mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving… and any other time we have potatoes. (Hi B… do you want me to use your name?).  It’s the Idaho spuds in our genes.

For this recipe (see below) I used potatoes from my garden (hahaha, I’m too quick for you, garden-destroying gopher!), and also heated up some microwavable frozen corn, green beans, and carrots (you wouldn’t have guessed it unless I told ya, huh? )

Dessert was a big spoon-full of frozen peanut butter drizzled with chocolate syrup.

Like eating PB ice cream!

……….

RECIPE: Crash Hot Potatoes (from The Pioneer Woman)

12 whole New Potatoes (or Other Small Round Potatoes)
3 Tablespoons Olive Oil
Salt To Taste
Black Pepper To Taste
Herbs Of Choice To Taste

Directions:

Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add in as many potatoes as you wish to make and cook them until they are fork-tender.

On a sheet pan, generously drizzle olive oil. Place tender potatoes on the cookie sheet leaving plenty of room between each potato. (I decided to cram as many potatoes on one pan as I could, which is why my potatoes don’t look as pretty as hers. It has nothing to do with my cooking skills. And at least I only had to wash one pan!)

With a potato masher (or a fork), gently press down each potato until it slightly mashes, rotate the potato masher 90 degrees and mash again. Brush the tops of each crushed potato generously with more olive oil.

Sprinkle potatoes with salt, pepper, or any herb you choose.

Bake in a 450 degree oven for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.

 

……….

Good news!

I won the lottery!

Hahaha, I wish…. although don’t most of those people end up spending all their money and basically wind up right back where they started?

Or become cursed… like Hugo from Lost.

….Anyway, I was very recently hired to be a Kids Club attendant at a local fitness center. It is only part-time, but at least it’s a job! I start training next week and will hopefully start actually working sometime later this month. Yay paycheck!

So You Think You’re a Photographer

Today I went to lunch with my nana and Ben, my 7-year-old cousin. Ben loves a local restaurant called Jeb’s and talked us into going there.

I was in the mood for breakfast food (when am I ever not in the mood for breakfast?), so I got 1/2 a waffle, scrambled eggs, and fruit.

After lunch, Ben came out to our house to help me make chocolate chip cookies. I’ve been wanting to try Hungry Runner Girl‘s recipe for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, and this was the perfect opportunity. Ben helped me by measuring out the ingredients and reading the recipe to me (he is a super reader!). For some reason our cookies turned out more puffy than Hungry Runner Girl’s, but they still tasted really good! Ben approved.

While the cookies were baking, Ben decided to take some pictures using my (half-dead) camera. Here are some of his lovely snapshots of our TV while we were watching So You Think You Can Dance. (Any other SYTYCD fans? Love that show! Makes me wish I had stuck with dance.)

He’s a talented one. He is probably going to grow up and be a famous photographer one day. And I will have some of his first photos. Should I have him autograph these? 

………….

Noticed my basil is starting to bolt (I think), so I chopped most of those little leaves off.

Now I can make my (okay, Dianne’s) spinach basil pesto. I made it earlier this year and froze it in ice cube trays, but I used them up pretty quickly. I see more pesto pasta in my future!

Garden Pizza

Dobby loves when I give him the empty peanut butter jar.

 

Bonus: It keeps him occupied while I water my garden.

 

This is my garden that used to be a huge weed patch. I started it in January, and so far I have spinach, basil, different kinds of lettuce, 10 3 strawberry plants, 3 raspberry plants, 1 blueberry plant, 8  6 potato plants, and 1 blackberry plant that was almost killed by the resident gopher. The little bugger has also eaten 2 of my potato plants, 1 marigold plant (really?), 7 strawberry plants, and some lettuce and basil.

In April I planted carrots and three more rows of lettuce, but I think the four days I forgot to water hot spell we had last month may have killed them off before they could even sprout. I have a total of 3 little sprigs in the carrot patch, and the lettuce is nowhere to be found. Those casualties aside, I think I’ve done pretty well for my first garden.

……………

I decided to use the remaining pizza dough I made a couple weeks ago (and put in the freezer) for some spinach pizza and breadsticks tonight.

I used some spinach from my garden on top of the cheese pizza (the healthy spinach counteracts the not-so-healthy extra cheese, right?), and also threw together a simple salad using my garden lettuces.

   

I also made granola from Julie at Peanut Butter Fingers tonight since I already had the oven going. It turned out really good! Sorry I forgot to take a picture, but I figure her photography is much better anyway, so you can see what it looks like at her blog. 🙂