Powerpuffs save the day!

So I've taken a short break from my quilt to work on a simple dress. A powerpuff girl dress. Yes. I will be dressing as Buttercup. For Radcon. I really wish I had a black corset, because I just feel so unbelievably fat in this dress. Losing 7 pounds this month has not had any visual effect whatsoever. I can only hope in the next 2-3 weeks I will lose more! Haha. I am doing it for a friend though! We started watching Powerpuff Girls on Netflix and they're just really simple. Instead of doing a simple black band around the middle, we sewed the sash to the front and left the back long so that we can tie them into bows. The front of the dress is "modest", trust me it really bothers us to have such a high neckline! I seriously can't stand shirts touching me above the collar bone.

My friend is Blossom and made this amazing and giant hair bow. She just made it out of leftover dress fabric so it's pink instead of red, but it is still simply amazing. I love it and I want one. She said it turned out a lot better than she thought it would.

I'm going to add darts in the front and back of my dress because the sleeves are basically hanging on my shoulders and I'd like them to be closer together. There's definitely room in my dress to be smaller! Although it's not a stretch fabric at all so I shouldn't make it too huggy.

Speaking of losing weight, I believe I'm being more and more better (don't even try to correct that sentence) about food. At the moment I am making beef soup bone broth, using a slow cooker for the first time, and I am also cooking beans. Not canned beans, dried beans! They're really annoying with all the overnight soaking and now cooking for hours, but this is what a good woman does, right? Pre-plan meals? I also made rice, and plan on cooking up some ground beef and also making guacamole, so we can have burritos/tacos probably for lunch/dinner. We don't really eat at regular times, and I try to eat smaller portions while my boyfriend will eat until everything is gone. When I make enchilada's, I make 6 so there's 2 for each of us here. When he decides to eat 2 enchiladas I bitch constantly because he knows he shouldn't eat so much (I stuff them unbelievably full, it's like enchiladas you get at a mexican restaurant) but it's there and he WANTS it even though he already had one! He keeps saying that he's lost weight, and I don't really believe him because he keeps talking about when he's skinny and looks good he wants me to make him all of his clothes but he never bothers working out, he tries to get me to hand him things that are just out of arm's reach from him, but nooo he's losing a pound once in a while so why should he try harder? I'm pretty sure he is losing weight because of my trying harder to make us better food.

Sorry for the rant, but it's starting to get on my nerves! This is something that NEEDS to change and soon, because when I don't think and hand him something that required me to move more than he would have if he got it, that's just ridiculous and sad and pathetic. Sometimes when I say no I won't give him something he will explode saying how his hip will hurt like the old man he is in his early 20s, and that I can't expect him to do it and from now on I'm not going to listen to that bull.

Stop ranting. Stop it. I really needed it, though! I feel loads better. I'm just done being a maid!

Happy St Patrick's Day

I originally planned on making some kind of themed sweet for Patrick's Day, but Dairy Queen is doing some buy one blizzard get one for 99 cents. I think that's more than good enough.

Corned beef and cabbage for dinner tonight and tomorrow, both times fresh! Delicious. Although I starved all day because we didn't know when we would be having dinner. It was worth the wait.

It was good to have another nice homemade dinner. Those aren't too common for me these days, seeing as I still hate cooking and I avoid it like the plague, but we just got a bunch of red potatoes. I made some pretty good mashed potatoes for New Years, and I was thinking about trying that again. But I definitely want to try making potato chips again, and also stuffed potato skins. I'm aware that red potatoes aren't the best for some of these, but they're good anyways. Right?

Another recipe I want to try soon is stuffed mushrooms. I love mushrooms. I usually saute them up in bacon grease and drown them in garlic powder. As long as they are cooked I can't get enough of them. I have plenty of friends who aren't interested in even seeing mushrooms. I hope to change that, honestly. They can be pretty disgusting if they aren't cooked right, or if they're raw...

Anyways. I'd like some (cheaper) ideas for a beginner cook. I like having a real dinner but I prefer using the microwave. I have no problem using a stove and an oven, but I end up burning things easily.

I am picky, though.

I hate chewing lettuce. I hate oats. I don't do spicy. I don't like fish except tuna and salmon. I hate coconut. There's tons more but those are the basics. I don't eat enough vegetables, I think. Although I believe that will change when there will be an abundance of tomatoes in the summer.

So if anyone has any ideas on easier recipes for me to try, I'm all ears. If there's something in it that I listed that I don't like, I can leave it out unless it's integral to the recipe. I'm trying to find recipes myself. I just... Usually end up finding things that taste good but AREN'T good, you know? It's like trying to eat healthy at McDonalds.

Any and all help will be appreciated!

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More pretzels, Valentine's Hearts, Recipes.

So I made more pretzels today, with all white flour instead of half whole wheat. I am much more happier with these!

The small bowl has my improvised Honey Mustard Sauce, which is made by putting a dollop of mayo, some mustard, and some honey in a bowl and stirring. I didn't measure at ALL so there's how to make that. It's freaking delicious. 

I made more of these peanut butter filled beauties, and I LOVE them. The mold is made for making chocolate candy in, so they just pop straight out after you put them in the freezer for a bit. 

Half done-ish. 

Now. I am not one for measuring things like peanut butter. It's too sticky to deal with. So, to make the peanut butter filling in these, I just take half a stick of butter, and about the top 1/3 of a small container of creamy Jif, and put those in a bowl. Microwave 30 seconds. Mix. Add a BIT of vanilla, then add a pile of powdered sugar. Mix. Just taste it to see if you want more sugar. Jif already has sugar, so you don't really need that much. If it tastes sweet, you're good. And THAT is how you make "Reeses" peanut butter! That's actually more or less my recipe to make peanut butter fudge, actually. But. It works! 

Then you just melt the meltable chocolate in the microwave, use a spoon to more or less cover the inside of the mold, freeze for a few minutes until solid, pour some peanut butter off of a spoon into there, freeze, then cover with chocolate, freeze, presto, homemade reeses! 

For the pretzels, I have an actual recipe. Here: 

One packet of yeast (2 and 1/4 teaspoons)

1.5 cups of warm water

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

4 cups all purpose flour

2 tablespoons baking soda

1 cup hot water

Put yeast in WARM water, mix until mostly dissolved. Add suagr and salt, mix. Add flour. Mix. Add more flour until the dough isn't sticky... 

Flour surface and knead the dough for a bit until when you poke it it will poof back up magically. Shape into ball. Cut into 1/3 cup sizes, I just hack a piece off and stick it in a 1/3 cup to see if it fits. 

Take the baking soda and dump it in hot water, mix until... You get sick of mixing, unless you actually manage to dissolve it all. 

Roll pieces into ropes about 20 inches long. Shape into pretzel shape. Dip into baking soda water then place on cookie sheet. Salt on top, or whatever you want... 

Bake at 425F degrees for 15 minutes, done! NOM NOM NOM TIME. 

Okay, so this is based off of a recipe called pretzels in 30 minutes or something like that and this takes me like an hour to do all by myself. The dough does not want to form ropes. The woman talked about her husband helping her, so if you can manage to do this in a half hour with some help, kudos. If you manage to do that by yourself, give me your life force. I mean, even more kudos! Yeah. 

It's more fun to listen to music while you're cursing at the dough. 

Anyways. The first time, I used 2 cups cake flour (didn't have regular) and 2 cups whole wheat, and dipped it in an egg. I broiled for the last 5 minutes of baking them in order to get them to brown, and they tasted more like bread than a pretzel. This time, I read several more recipes and read someone talking about how they used to make pretzels with some kind of disgusting thing (I can't remember) in order to make them taste like pretzels but now we do it in baking soda and I have to say, they taste a lot more like pretzels this time. They kind of have crunchy crusts, but the inside is still super soft. 

Now, my dad is on a diet and took my recipe and figured out the nutritional value to see if he could have one. Well, here's that info, based on the fact that I made 11 pretzels this time. 

Calories: 174

Fat: 0.5

Carbs: 34.5

Fiber: 1.4

Protein: 4.9

and that is per pretzel. Not the whole batch. I can only assume the measurements are in grams, since that is what is usually on packages.