I thought I would attempt to make this Rosemary & Olive oil bread recipe I found on Pinterest, since I've mastered making homemade pizza crust. Bread & I didn't used to get along, I was always too impatient for it to rise, lol. This is a more hearty dinner bread, it would be great with spaghetti! The recipe calls for bread flour, but I made mine with self rising white & wheat flour and it turned out fine.

I whipped up some garlic butter to put on top of the fresh sliced bread.  I mashed up half a stick of butter with some fresh chopped garlic- (I buy the kind in a jar), and a little salt all mixed together.




We had my parents over for dinner last night for a belated Mother's Day dinner. I cooked bacon wrapped chicken, sliced yellow squash & mushrooms and  Stouffer's macaroni and cheese.

Here's the table all set! :-)

We had a little extra money this past paycheck. So I got to order some Scentsy stuff from my cousin Chrissy. And we ordered some more Philippine goodies from Phil-Am Food again. Yay!

This time I ordered some frozen items to try. It's $8.99 extra for them to ship frozen food to you, but it comes in a Styrofoam cooler with ice packs shipped in a regular box. And everything was still frozen when it arrived. (It only took about 1 day to be delivered to us from New Jersey to Philadelphia, even with regular shipping).


Our loot: Snack foods, soups, canned quail eggs, sauce & seasoning mixes, pancit noodles, etc, etc, etc!!!


Vaseline shampoo is the best! I also love this purple Palm Olive shampoo. It has coconut oil in it. It leaves my hair really soft & shiny.

The Vaseline soap I wanted to try. Icy Cool sounded neat- but it was disappointing. It just smells like... soap, lol. Like Ivory soap or something. Nothing special. I thought maybe it would have eucalyptus or menthol or mint in it...

The frozen goodies! Pork siopao, Pork Tocino & Lumpia! (Lumpia is like a skinny spring roll/egg roll). 


For dinner on Tuesday we had Knorr corn & bacon soup. (We usually get corn & crab- I ordered some of those too, hehe!) And we tried the frozen siopao. They were amazing! You steam them wrapped in a damp paper towel in the microwave for about 2 minutes each. They were pretty large. The bun had a really nice sweet taste and the meat inside had actual pork chunks & the sauce was savory. We definitely would order the siopao again!


We had the pork tocino tonight for dinner. We had a 'Pinoy' breakfast, as my husband said. I cooked up the pork tocino, and we had it with fried eggs & rice. The pork tocino was really good.


And because I always like trying new stuff. I ordered these seaweed chips. They are made in Thailand.They were more poofy than crispy. But still really good. The flavor is salty & a bit fishy, it reminds me of sushi in that way. The seaweed itself reminds me of spinach.





Phil-Am Foods

Philippine Snack Foods

Foreign Food Cravings

Taste Testing (Asian Aisle)

This past Saturday my husband & I had half price Starbucks Frappucino's, for their special happy hour which ended on 5/13.


 

My Templeton rat is sooo affectionate! He loves giving kisses and grooming me. I got some cute picture of him today grooming me while laying on his back, he was so relaxed. I've never had such an affectionate male rat.


 

Thank you Shannon for the tip! :-) My new area rug for under our coffee table! I love it. I went with the smaller $29.99 one. We have a Target right around the corner from our apartment and this was the last one. They also have a larger version for $69.99.



Also can't beat a cute, less than $2.00 clearance creamer cow! He's sitting on top of my microwave. :-)


 

I love picking up stuff for our apartment to decorate. I visited Pier 1 Imports this past Friday. I saw this Elephant Teapot on their website before and it was 20% off in the store. It was just $12. I'm using it more for decor than for drinking tea though, hehe. It's currently sitting on one of my living room tables. I love it!


I also got some new dishes from... Dollar Tree! I saw these on their website, (but not wanting to buy in bulk- 24 bowls would be a bit excessive...) My husband checked a few of the Dollar Trees around us and was able to find the plates & bowls. Can't seem to find the matching mugs at any of the stores near us, but oh well. They are really pretty dishes and only $1 each!


Another Pier 1 Imports find. They had these large turquoise plastic tumblers (23 oz.) for $6 each. I thought the color would go well with the above dishes. They are made with a heavy durable plastic.



Other things on my to do list:

• Find a cute kitchen mat for in front of the sink. 
• Find dining chair covers or cushions (white, black or aqua).  
• Keep bidding on vintage/antique salt & pepper shakers on ebay until I win a set, lol.

 

I LOVE my Kindle Fire. I use it every day. I use it on the train to read or listen to music or browse the web. (I use my T-Mobile Sidekick 4G as a router). I use it on the train platform waiting for my train because there's free wi-fi at 30th Street Station. At work on breaks I might read a book or look at a magazine. At home sometimes instead of my laptop I'll browse the internet and read books before bed. Sometimes I watch Netflix on it too.

I've had my Kindle Fire since the day it was released. (About 5 months). When I would play a game and then exit the game, sometimes there would be this burned image of the game on my screen sort of invisible. I thought it was a just a glitch, so I'd restart my Kindle and it would be fine.

But then it started doing it with other things. Sometimes the search bar would burn into the screen & the navigation bar, so that when I rotated my Kindle I would have 2 dark stripes running alone the screen and if you looked closer you could see the ghosted icons. That wasn't going away even when I would restart. I would sometimes get the keyboard burned into the screen, or the icons on your home screen. It was getting really irritating. I tried to doing a factory reset which wipes out everything from your Kindle Fire, but that did not help. The ghosting was still happening.

I searched for the issue on the Amazon website, on their Kindle Fire Help Forum. There was topic about the ghosting and burned images. It seems a lot of people are having this issue. It's some sort of defect with some of the Kindle Fires.

I contacted Amazon by using their 'Contact Us' button. They must be there 24 hours because I called on a Saturday night at 9:30pm. The customer service rep asked if I had done a reset (holding the button down for 20 seconds). I told him I had done a factory reset and that hadn't resolved the ghosting on the screen.

He told me Amazon would send me a replacement. I just had to send the damaged one back in the box of the replacement with the prepaid UPS label they would email me. They ask for the last 4 digits of one of the credit cards on your Amazon.com account. If they don't receive the damaged device back within 30 days they will charge your account the full price for the Kindle Fire plus shipping.

My replacement Kindle Fire arrived in 2 days! (So I didn't have to go through Kindle withdraw too long, hehe!). Then I packed up my old Kindle and we dropped it off at a UPS store to be mailed. Amazon got my old device back within 2 days also.

Soooo... just beware my Kindle Fire fans. This is an issue with some of the devices. If your Kindle is under warranty Amazon will replace it. My 2nd Kindle Fire is working perfectly and I hope it does so after 5 months of use. Hopefully there will be no need for anymore replacements!



 

I'm a bit addicted to International Delight's new Iced Coffee's! (Not creamer, actual iced coffee in a quart! It's not super sweet, so I always add a packet of sweetener to my cup, but I love it!)

Vanilla, Mocha & Original

I've pinned a lot of different recipes on my Pinterest page. I haven't gotten around to most of them. But there have been a few that I've tried and really really LOVE. Things that I've made more than once. I wanted to share my favorite Pinterest recipes! Dinners & Desserts!

1. Cinnamon Roll Cake









This is AMAZING. I've made it twice. Once for my husband & I. And a 2nd time to take over to my parents house. It is sooo good. And so much easier than trying to make actual cinnamon rolls (I suck at cutting my rolls even sizes). Plus this recipe is super simple to put together. Definitely put the sugar glaze on while it's still warm, because it seeps into the cake and when you let it sit for 1 whole day before eating- wow. All that sugar and cinnamon crystallizes into something out of this world! Which is why I'm sharing this recipe as #1!

2. Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies







I love this recipe! I've made it 3x's since I found it. It's super simple with only 5 ingredients and no flour! These are definitely my new favorite peanut butter cookie. :)

3. Coffee mug cake








I've made chocolate mug cake before but this coffee mug cake it even better. With butter, cinnamon & sugar. Love it! Plus it only takes about 1 minute in the microwave!

4. Sweet & Spicy Bacon Chicken











This is sooo good! You dip the chicken in spices, wrap a slice of bacon around it, roll it around in brown sugar & bake it. Making these again this week! (Bacon is always good! lol!) It tasted like something I'd order from a restaurant.

















Tip: This how I make my bacon wrapped chicken. I line a deep casserole dish with foil. Mix my brown sugar & spices together in a bowl. (I use McCormick Montreal Chicken Seasoning), roll each chicken slice in the mixture (I cut my chicken breasts in slices of 2 or 3); then wrap a bacon slice around each chicken slice. Cook for 40 minutes at 400 degrees. When it's done, use tongs and place each chicken slice on a plate with paper towels to drain the grease before serving. The paper towel step is a MUST, or else it will be too greasy. LOVE this recipe! 

5. Breakfast Egg Rolls








I didn't follow this recipe exactly. I took the idea and ran with it. You can find egg roll wrappers in the grocery, they are usually in the veggie section near the cabbage. They give you a lot of wrappers in one package, so I've put just about anything you can think into an egg roll wrapper, lol. Our favorite combo was cooked bacon, scrambled eggs & cheese. Then I fried the egg rolls with Smart Balance oil until they turned golden.

6. Bacon Wrapped Cheese Burgers.










(This is my own photo.) I saw a lot of these burgers on Pinterest, but they had way too many slices of bacon on them & were usually grilled. I put together some homemade ground beef patties (salt, pepper, splash of worcestershire sauce & 2 tablespoons of ketchup for about 1 pound of beef). Then I wrapped 2 slices of thick cut bacon around the patties, smashed them flat, lined them on foil on my deep rimmed cookie sheet & baked them for 30 minutes at 375. Top with velveeta cheese on a sesame bun. Yum! 

7. THE best homemade brownies EVER!


















These are THE BEST homemade brownies I've ever had. It's my go-to recipe. They are chewy, they are dense, and best of all easy to make, you only need some Cocoa powder and few other ingredients. 

None of these recipes are exactly healthy, but they sure are good! ;-)

My camera came back from Sony today. I had it sent off to be repaired because the flash stopped working. :-( It was only 8 months old. Luckily they repaired it for free because it was still under warranty.

It's been awhile since I posted picture of some of my gang. So here are some new photos now that my flash works again! :-)

Buttercup says, "I want out!"

Lily! She will be 2 years old around June. She's my little old lady.

Templeton. :) He loves to give kisses.

Snugglies! Templeton & Teddy

Templeton says, "I want to get in the photo too!"

F.B. & I got to see an NBA game on Saturday here in Philadelphia. We got to go watch the 76ers play against Orlando Magic. I got the tickets for F.B. as his Valentines Day gift. He loves basketball, but he's never gotten to see an NBA game live, until now. We did get to watch a Philippine basketball game together in 2008.



I've never been to an NBA game either. It was super crowded and our seats were really high up, but you could still see the game pretty well. We did decide to leave at halftime though since the game started at 8pm. We wanted to beat the traffic. (Good thing we left early anyhow, the Sixers lost! They had been in the lead before halftime). We went to IHOP around 10pm and had a late dinner. (Yum pancakes!)

We had a quiet Easter dinner at home this evening. I cooked a roast beef in the crock pot and we had it along with onions and mushrooms. We also had baked potatoes & green bean casserole. Yum!

Happy Easter Everyone!