Christmas Party

As I am getting ready for my Christmas party at our house this year, I cannot help but think about all of the great recipes that I want to prepare. How does one decide if something is proper or not to serve at a 6:30 Christmas party? Well, I started thinking along the lines of soup and sandwiches and then my husband mentioned smoking a Boston butt and making barbecue or grilling hamburgers and hot dogs. I love the hamburger and hot dog idea but that is one of our summer cookouts that we have and that seems sort of like a birthday party idea so we had to keep thinking! Well, finally after a lot of discussion, we decided to serve:
Pimento Cheese Sandwiches
Chicken Salad Sandwiches
Hawaiian Ham and Swiss Rolls
Cocktail BBQ Weenies
Apple Pie Dip with Graham Crackers
Cream Cheese with Pepper Jelly Ball with Ritz Crackers
Sweet Tea
Coke & Diet Coke
and
Wassail.

On top of this, since we are newlyweds and most of our friends are young without much money, all of the girls were asked to bring a dish. So we have someone bringing chips, a cake, brownies, some kind of dip, cheese biscuits, and other things!

Also, I asked each girl to bring a wrapped ornament for an ornament swap! I think this could be a great tradition for years to come!

We are both so excited.... IF ONLY the house would clean itself. I know that no one receives an award for the "cleanest house" but I like to entertain, therefore I want my house to be spotless! It is difficult to get any cleaning done when my pup, Zoe wants all of my attention. Therefore, tonight she is going to stay with my parents for a while so that I can get some much needed cleaning done!

Next on my agenda after all this party planning has been consuming my mind all week is my internship. I am finishing up week 15 of my Dietetic Internship through Cedar Crest College. I cannot believe that I am halfway done. I have three weeks of foodservice left in January and then I move on to Community Nutrition until the end of April and then I am DONE! I cannot explain how excited I am that I will be Registered Dietitian Eligible come May. I am so excited to begin looking for jobs in January! This whole working for no pay is worse than being a college student because at least during college I was able to work two or three part time jobs. Currently, I am working 40 hours a week, taking 12 hours of graduate classes, and working zero part time jobs. I keep telling myself that May will be here before I know it.

Girls Night Out and the gym are the only things keeping me stress free and sane right now. Projects, papers, work, and life gets very overwhelming not to mention that I should be studying for the RD exam now! I am so thankful to have my friends around though when I need them and thankfully most of them are home from graduate school on break for a few weeks! Here is a glance at how my fall has went so far since it is  now coming to an end!

Millie & I

The Nutrition Girls at Emmies Wedding!

Emmie!!

Sarah & I at Jenna's Wedding

The Hubby & I

Jenna Suzanne's Big Day!

The Hubby's Graduation Day!

At my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's wedding!

Me & my sister-in-law

Whit & I at the fair

After the concert!

Hannah & I

Zoe Bug loves to have her picture taken!

Whit, Meg, Me, & Nat out on Christmas Break

Millie, Jenn, Me, & Whit before heading to dinner

Wedding season for me has officially ended. I attended my last wedding of the year in November for my sweet friend Laura.

 I love weddings but my poor husband thinks it is torture to have to go to so many of them. He had no idea that his wife had so many friends getting married :) Too bad he is my wedding date for all of them, but he is off the hook until next spring :)

Well, I better get back to work, so many projects left to finish and so little time!

Until next time.... I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

-MES

Buffalo Chicken Sandwiches

So I have become addicted to Pinterest and I found this EASY recipe!

Frozen chicken breasts (2 for us)
Buffalo sauce (3/4 of the Texas Pete bottle)
One packet of dry ranch seasoning
2 tbsp butter

Add everything to the crockpot, cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6. Shred chicken. Add it back in mix to soak for one hour. Serve with buns!

Let's see how this turns out :)

Okay.. so the buffalo ranch chicken sandwiches on Natures Own wheat sandwich buns was a success! Sooo good and I did not add the butter!

I highly recommend this recipe! Yummo!

Crockpot Salsa Chicken

Dinner is cooking now :)

Boneless skinless chicken breasts
One can of corn (I used frozen)
One can of black beans drained
1/4th cup of salsa
One can of rotel
One can of diced tomatoes, unsalted
One can of cream of chicken soup
One tsp of Mrs. Dash no salt seasoning blend
One tsp garlic powder
4oz of sour cream

Put in crockpot for 8 hours on low.
Shred chicken and serve over warm tortillas or tostitos with cheese!

Yummo!

Spoiled Mini Schnauzer!

Oh how I love my little pup, Zoe! But boy is she spoiled!

I promise the pictures were turned the correct way when I uploaded them! I'm not sure how to correct them.

Clinical Rotation

Today is seven and a half weeks that I have been in my clinical rotation. It really feels as though I had just stepped foot in the Medical Center to begin and now I have a week and a half left of staff relief and projects before I begin foodservice.

I am so excited to say that I really have learned so much these past few weeks! I have learned more in depth about the Nutrition Care Process and I have put it into practice versus just reading about it.

I also have seen so many unique patients! I have had patients who were in terrible car accidents, had brain aneurysms, had amputations, cancer, weight loss unintentionally, failure to thrive children, severely lethargic patients, substance abuse patients, post open heart surgery patients, hip fractures, seizures, motorcycle wrecks, strokes, patients with permanent feeding tubes, bariatric surgery patients, permanent TPN patients, and so much more.

I am so grateful to have been at the hospital I worked at since it is a teaching hospital with units of all kinds and specialized floors for patients.

I really enjoyed working in the surgery/trauma ICU! I feel like I learned so much during rounds in there!

The thing that has been getting to me is the 2 hours I spend driving to and from my site but in 7 days I will only have a 5 minute drive each way!!

The projects and classwork are time consuming and by the time I get home every day and eat supper and go to the gym it is after 8pm when I get home. Thank goodness for the weekend so I can catch up on everything!

Off to work I go! Hello med/surg floor :)

Love

I love my sweet hubby, even if he changes my new fall flag to put up a camo Georgia Bulldogs one....

Celebrating Home

I love my Celebrating Home items! I really love selling it but I just hate being too busy to have time for my husband, internship, class, puppy and home because I feel as though I don't have much time aside of that to have parties and sell it!

Sunday Dinner Time

I am so excited about trying this basil lemon garlic onion slow roasted chicken recipe! :) I combined to recipes that I found, one on zestycook.com and one on fortheloveofcooking-recipes.blogspot.com and made it my own. I hope the house smells delicious in a little while when the basil gets to cooking in the cavity of my little bird :)

Hobo Supper

This is a meal I love called HOBO supper! It basically lines a pan with cabbage and then pats out two hamburger steaks, top that with onions and surround the rest with veggies and add salt and pepper and then cover with tinfoil and bake at 350 for 45 minutes! Yummo!

Supper time!

Who doesn't love steamed vegetables? And with my hand little steamer and a pot of water, I now have steamed carrots and cabbage! Yum!

Mema is coming for supper!

I am so excited because my husbands grandmother (Mema!) is coming over for supper tonight! I recently hosted a Celebrating Home party at my house and ordered a veranda bean pot! So along with the bean pot I wanted a recipe and Celebrating Home also sells recipe books so of course I had to have one! Tonight for Mema, I am preparing a Cajun Pulled Pork recipe in my new bean pot and I cannot wait to see how it turns out. As side dishes, I am making steamed cabbage, roasted sweet potatoes, and baked beans...YUM!

Final product pictures to come :)

Until next time... -ME

The best time :)

I absolutely love the summer time! I love the fresh fruit and vegetables, especially when its on sale! Yesterday I was able to stock my refridgerator with black cherries, peaches, plums, red seedless grapes, peppers, sweet potatoes, carrots, and cabbage! Yummm :)

Hope you are all taking advantage of this season and freezing or canning your excess food!

Sloppy Joes

Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen were my favorite actresses growing up and I owned every single one of their movies! One of my favorites was when the girls went to camp and met each other there and realized they were twins! While at camp, they were served manwiches!
Well, I never knew what a manwich was but my mama always made us sloppy joes growing up! Now, I am not a huge fan of ground beef, I don't like hamburger helper or most hamburger casseroles, but I do love sloppy joes!
Sloppy joes are easy and cheap and it makes a lot of meals in one dish! Tonight, I used deer hamburger meat, 3/4 cup of ketchup, 2 tablespoons of mustard, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, and 2 tablespoons of wostershire sauce. Mix that all together after browning one pound of meat. You can also add in chopped onions and green pepper! Also chopped tomatoes!
Cook this and put it on a hamburger bun and serve! A childhood favorite is one of our family favorites now! :)

Cooking Up A Storm

I love being married to my best friend and being able to cook supper most nights of the week makes for great conversation, especially since I love nutrition and cooking! So this past week I made something called "Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas." Can you say D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S?

I took three boneless skinless chicken breasts and sliced them up into bite size pieces and placed them in a large skillet with a can of tomatoes that were labeled as "Tex Mex Style." Great choice! After this, I took whole wheat tortillas and laid them on a plate and dipped the chicken and tomato mixture onto the tortillas and rolled them up and placed five of them into a large glass casserole dish. I then combined a 8-ounce sour cream and a can of cream of chicken soup in a bowl and poured the mixture over the enchiladas. Finally, I topped the dish with two cups of cheddar and mozzarella shredded cheese. I baked this at 350F for 30 minutes and then bon appetite! It was like my husband and my taste buds rejoiced in the flavorful, juicy chicken, slightly spicy tomatoes, and cheesy, creamy, simple meal! Even eating this as leftovers (which I am not a fan of most dished reheated) was a family favorite!

On another note: my sweet Zoe weighs 12.5 pounds now! She is growing too fast!

Until next time...

-ME

Pimento Cheese

Now that we are settled in, I am starting to cook more often! I began eating pimento cheese a few months ago when I was at a work luncheon and my boss had picked some up from a local coffee shop! At first, I was weary due to the tubs of it my mother use to purchase from the grocery store when it appeared real runny and gooey, but this was thick and chunky and appeared to have mostly cheese. I was beyond in love with the flavor of this sandwich and could not wait to make my own.

Now, I am about to attempt this recipe that I found called Cadillac Pimento Cheese (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/cadillac-pimento-cheese/detail.aspx)

It calls for:

1 1/2 cups shredded processed American cheese food

4 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 (2 ounce) jar chopped pimento peppers

1/4 teaspoon onion powder

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 dash garlic powder

Then you mix it all together, season it, then chill! Here goes nothing! Pimento cheese for lunch on whole grain bread :)

Oh how I love married life :)

Married Life

I am a college graduate - whooo hoo for Nutritionists! :)

Also, my little brother is now a high school graduate!

I had my "bachelorette trip" with my girls for a weekend at the beach before the wedding and had a blast spending the weekend with each of them :)

I have been married to my best friend, Benton for almost 2 weeks now!

It's hard to believe that we were in Jamaica this time last week!

We were at Sandals Whitehouse and it was beautiful there! We are so blessed to have been so fortunate to go there. We met a lot of other honeymooners and we were able to relax and eat a lot of varieties of food too!

Our house has came together piece by piece and room by room. But the house and the honeymoon mean nothing compared to how great it is to wake up beside my best friend every morning.

Sweet Zoe, our puppy has made the transition into the new home very well! She is just the sweetest little pup!


I cannot wait to hear back from the University of West Florida about my Master's program that I applied for. Also, I am looking forward to applying for the fall round of dietetic internships!

Finally, I have been able to cook a lot more lately with my husband which is wonderful! :)

Short post, yes, but I must get some rest and do laundry - it calls my name :)

-ME