Corn Mac

Whenever I bring my Corn Mac to a party, I get tons of compliments, people asking for the recipe, or people offering to pay me to make it for them since it doesn't come out the same way if they make it themselves. Not bad, right? I actually wrote out the recipe in a "Note" on my Facebook account, but I still get asked about it being posted on here since some people like visual instruction verses just words, so, here we go:

This a REGULAR serving size recipe, which can feel 4-6 people. The amount that's pictured below is for a large party I'm cooking for in addition to personal orders people make when they find out I'm cooking this recipe. So, don't freak out when you see the amount of butter and Velveeta is used :)

Preheat 350

Grease a 9x13 pan/dish

2 Cups - Macaroni "elbow" pasta

1 Cup - Butter (unsalted, or 1 stick salted and 1 unsalted..I prefer using "Challenge Butter")

1 - 16 oz. Block Velveeta - cubed (sometimes I add more since we like things super cheesy!)

1 - can Creamed Corn

2 - cans of "Fiesta" Corn - Drained

2-3 T. - Onion Powder

2-3 Tablespoons of Tastefully Simples "Onion Onion" (yes, really. Add more as you're making your sauce if you like)

* You can also use fresh onion; do about 1/4 cup give or take. Make sure it is finely chopped if you do!

Ground black pepper (optional)

Boil macaroni till tender. While you're waiting for that to finish, you can mix together the creamed corn & Fiesta corn together. 

I tend to prep other things while I'm waiting on pasta to finish cooking, so I measured out my onion powder as well as Onion Onion. Now that's ready to go when the time comes:

Once the macaroni is ready, drain and put in a large mixing bowl.

2. Add the creamed corn and the drained cans of corn to macaroni. Stir to evenly combine. Set aside.

In a sauce pan, melt the butter, then add onion powder & "Onion Onion"; saute on a low to medium heat for 10 minutes. DO NOT get it so hot that'll allow the butter to burn! 

Then, add the Velveeta cubes and stir until completely smooth and combined (lots & lots of stirring). Again, don't allow it to burn or it completely ruins the sauce.

Pour the cheese mixture into mixing bowl and stir until macaroni, corn and cheese sauce is evenly combined.

Place the combined mixture into your 9x13 baking dish. Sprinkle with ground pepper pepper and Onion Onion (however much you're wanting to use).

Bake for 20 minutes with aluminum foil, then bake uncovered for 10 minutes. BAM! You're done!

If you make this earlier in the day and it's meant for dinner, you can put it in the oven at 200* and just have it sit in there till you're ready. By leaving it for several hours  (mine cooked for 4 hours), the onion flavor comes out better and the cheese seems to "soak" into the macaroni.

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FLUFFY!!!!

IT'S HAPPENED! 

It finally snowed!! AHHHH!!

We've been hearing rumblings and rumors about potential snow on and off for the last several weeks, yet, it never snowed. You'd bet your life on it that we were gonna get snow then because it was FREEZING for the last month, but still, no white landscapes or anything. Truth be told, I was getting a little jealous of my friends in the States who were posting pics of their snow days and what not. I'm a cold weather person, what can I say?

Anyway, Eric came in the bedroom to wake me up with his good-bye kiss, he said "It snowed last night and it's still snowing right now". The the front door! Really? I didn't wanna believe him because I know he likes to screw we me, especially when he knows I'm still groggy from just waking up, lol. Sure enough, SNOW! SNOOOOOOW!! Even Piper was excited to check it out!

Once she was all done investigating (and getting snow all in her beard), she decided she wanted to appreciate the new scenery from inside our nice, warm house :)

More importantly, I FINALLY got to use my snow shovel!! I'm sure you're wondering why I'm so thrilled to use it. Ya seeeeee.... when we bought it during the winter in 2010, I couldn't find one on the economy since they were all sold out. Everywhere. So, I bought one off of Amazon for a reasonable price..but they wouldn't ship to APO. Long story short, I used my Ship-It-APO account because, hey, the shovel doesn't weigh that much. I didn't take into consideration that the length of the shovel would jack the shipping price up astronomically. Between Amazon and Ship-It-APO, I now am the proud owner of a $150 snow shovel. 

By the time it finally showed up, all the snow was gone.Yup. 

It took a year, but it's finally been Christened. 

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More Stuffs

Alrighty, so I did a post last week about Trogs. Since I have a bit of an addiction with them, I did some hunting online to get some sort of inspiration in terms of decorating with them aside from using them as a fruit bowl, or a dog toy bowl, or even a dog bed. Sure enough, I was scrolling around Pottery Barn and saw a good idea in terms of candles: 

So, I attempted to copy cat it without spending gobs of money on high end candles. Plus, I also happened to have a "mirror" style ornament to put in the trog (like the one in the PB picture). The only costly part was finding a "filler" to actually hold the candles up. Between debating on rocks, sand, seeds and everything else under the sun, I settled on coffee beans. Yes, coffee beans. After all was said and done, I used about seven pounds of beans...and here's how it turned out. 

All in all, I think it turned out pretty well. Not to mention, my foyer now smells like a coffee bar :) 

In other news, I completely forgot about this awesome chair my Dad bought while he was visiting us back in 2010. Man, time flies! Anyway, he ventured over to the De Kringwinkel with Eric in search of a fairly reasonably priced desk since he didn't wanna use the one that was in my office. Makes sense, right? lol. Well, when they came back, they dropped off this killer chair:

I'm absolutely in love with the carvings it! Plus, the cushions are leather and extremely comfortable. I totally see why my Dad snagged this thing! Apparently this was the only chair they had, but it was supposed to be sold with a matching couch. Obviously, we weren't in the market for a couch...nor were we willing to drag it up the narrow spiral staircase to where my Dad was staying, so, my he had to haggle in order for them to just sell the chair.  As you can see, he got his way:

I meant to blog about it forever, but I kept forgetting even though it's a really pretty chair. Honestly, I've been hunting for another one like it, but none of the ones I've come across have the carvings on the front and sides, which give it a lil extra "niiiiice" factor. Then again, it's probably for the best that I don't get another because this thing is HEAVY! Along the lines of..hmmm...50lbs? Yeah. Momma's gotta do some serious spring cleaning to make sure we don't go over our weight limit when the time comes to move! 

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Quick & Easy Doughnuts

I actually gotta thank Stef for this! She posted about it the other day when, coincidentally enough, I was really wanting a doughnut. Given, the Belgians make some pretty tasty ones, but I didn't wanna deal with driving into town since it was a busy time of day. 

Pretty much, all you'll need is:

Pillsbury biscuits

Vegetable oil

Something to cut holes with; Stef opted for a shot glass while I'm using my Pampered Chef "Apple Corer" 

The Apple Corer actually made tiny bite size doughnut holes about the size of marbles. Not bad since we ended up using them as treats for the dogs since they were circling like sharks in the kitchen.  

I busted out my Le Creuset saucepot and filled it up with enough vegetable oil to where the biscuits could easily float and be turned without a problem. Then I turned up the heat to where the oil would easily fry whatever was dropped in it...it took about 5-7 minutes for it to get warmed up.  

Carefully plop in the biscuit dough into oil. 

MAKE SURE TO WATCH IT! It only takes a minute or so for it to start browning. Flip it over to cook the other side:

Once they're done, let them dry & cool off on a paper towel.

If you're wanting some flavor on 'em, you can do a mixture of cinnamon & sugar on it. If you don't have a ready made bottle of it, just mix together cinnamon & sugar together in a shallow bowl, then press the doughnut into it. Tah-Dah!

I actually like frosted doughnuts, especially if they taste like maple. So, if you're interested in making this glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

1/4 cup of milk

1 teaspoon of maple extract

Blend it all together then dip the doughnuts. I let 'em sit for a little bit so the glaze will actually dry. 

In total, this entire process took MAYBE ten minutes! Enjoy!

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Brussels Impact!

I embraced my inner red neck last night. Yes, I admit it. I went with Eric to watch some good ol' fashioned male soap opera....which is also known as TNA Wrestling. 

We had actually traveled to London last year for Eric to attend one of their events..I could've sworn I did a blog post about it, but apparently not. I blame my shiny syndrome for that! Anyway, we did the whole shebang then by taking the EuroStar train through the Chunnel, arrived at London St Pancras Station then hopped on the Tube to get to our hotel by Wembley Arena. 

He went solo to the wrestling match while I stayed at the hotel and got pampered with a spa date. Hard life, right? He had a blast and told me all about it..he sounded like a lil kid because he was SO excited about the entire thing since his favorite wrestler was actually there. In fact, here's a picture that he accidentally took of himself last time...he looks totally enamored:

Annnnd here's a picture of his favorite wrestler, Rob Van Dam:

Due to him having such a fantastic time at the match in London, I decided to snag some tickets for us to check 'em out in Brussels since that's only an hour away from here. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for heading back to London since I love it there..but we're both all busted up between his back problems and my knee being out of whack. It's for the best that we didn't trek all over the place like last year. I don't think either of us would've survived, lol. 

So, we headed out last night with some time to spare since we knew we'd hit some sort of traffic because, hey, that's how Brussels is. Unbeknownst to us, we didn't realize how cluttered Brussels downtown actually got. Then again, neither of us have ever experienced that city via car...we've always taken the train. It all become crystal clear why we always took the train, lol. My TomTom said we were only fifteen minutes away from the arena, but we were stuck in traffic for forty stressful minutes. Why was it stressful? Well, taxi drivers in that city apparently have no morals, ethics, or souls..they cut people off when there wasn't any room to begin with, almost caused multiple accidents and we have several close calls. Oh, by the way..we were in my Xterra which isn't very common here. With that being said, people had a knack of staring at the vehicle rather than the road, which caused a little more of an issue when it came to moving along. 

By the time we arrived at Vorst Nationaal, we were a little late for the start of the show due to the traffic AND since we had to park a kilometer away (that's all that was available for parking). But, it's all good since we didn't have to wait in a huge line to get in the door. In fact, we were able to walk right in, get our tickets scanned and off we went to find our seats. When we walked into the seating area, this is the first thing we saw:

The camera makes it look so far away, but we were actually pretty close to the ring! Plus, the arena wasn't packed at all, so we got to sit wherever we wanted unlike when Eric went to London (he said it was absolutely PACKED there). When the wrestlers were in the ring, you could hear them clearly (no microphones) and you weren't straining to figure out what they were doing. 

The first match we got to watch was Douglas Williams verses Gunner. When you watch these guys on TV, they look absolutely massive. I mean, they're big dudes when you see them in person..but Gunner didn't look AS buff, lol. 

The match was pretty interesting....in the end, Gunner ended up winning and the Belgians DID NOT like him at all! They were boo'ing and yelling at him. When he was exiting the ring, he was flipping everyone off. Niiiice! Then Douglas Williams waved to the crowd and thanked them for coming to the event, everyone was cheering and rooting for him. At least they were nice to him :) 

The next match was with Samoa Joe verses Crimson. Eric was rootin' for Joe while I was going for the "big ginger", as he lovingly refers to Crimson. 

After a variety of chop slaps, slams, kicks and all sorts of other technical stuff I know nothing about, MY guy won! HAHA!! Of course, Samoa Joe was a sore loser and had a bit of a hissy fit..attacked Crimson and screamed at fans. Ya know, kept his cool:

Then there was a match with the "Knockouts" which is with the female wrestlers. Honestly, I didn't watch the majority of the match since I was trying to fix Eric's camera and clear some of it's memory. Perfect time to do that, right? He had a ton of pictures on there he never removed (I'm talking a year and a half worth of pictures)..so, lots of deleting took place. Turns out, two of the female wrestlers I liked, which is Tara and Mickie James, won their tag team match against Madison Rain and some other chick. 

One of the next performers was actually from Georgia, and not too far from where Eric grew up. AJ Styles! 

AJ ended up wrestling against a guy named Bully Ray. 

To be honest, Bully Ray was so gross. Given, I understand these guys have a character to play, but some of the things this guy did was absolutely repulsive. He'd hock a loogie into the air and try to catch it (or it'd spatter into the crowd), or he'd spit out the side of the ring which looked like it went into the crowd. Just...GROSS. So, I was VERY happy when AJ ended up winning the match. The Belgians REALLY did NOT like Bully Ray..AT ALL! They kept screaming "YOU SUCK! YOU SUCK!". It was pretty hilarious considering they all had really thick French / Dutch accents while shouting that at him. 

Then there was the "main event", which was a three man match. It was with Kurt Angle, James Storm and Bobby Roode. If Kurt sounds familiar to you, it's because he won a gold metal in the Olympics back in 1996. 

Lots of slaps, throws, slams, and a "Double DDT"...

All three guys got knocked out for a lil bits..

After several minutes of high flying stunts, Angle and Storm ended up losing the match to Roode, but they still celebrated with some bottles of Duvel which is a fabulous beer to get drunk off of.

Beer showers! 

They LOVED Angle! 

Angle and Storm were thanking the crowd for coming to the event, which made the fans go nuts even more. THEN, Storm grabbed the Belgian flag from a fan and was waving it around the ring. They fans went bonkers, chanting his name and really got excited! 

Honestly, I was amazed with some of the stuff these guys did, the hits they took (although some were fake, some weren't) and the fans were absolutely hilarious. When you hear Belgians (with their accent) screaming some of the wrestlers names (sounds NOTHING like it) and throws insults at the bad guys in Dutch..it sounds like a comedy skit. Eric was entertained by not only the wrestlers, but apparently by some of my facial reactions to some of the stuff that was going on, lol. 

All in all, this is what I really cared about:

My husband had a great time! Despite the traffic and dealing with being late, he still had a blast, had a chance to get loud and rowdy with the rest of the fans and watch some good ol' wrestlin'! 

Hopefully we'll still be here around this time next year since TNA announced at the match that they'd be returning to Brussels again :) *fingers crossed*

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