BBQ Chicken Salad

My mom sent me home with some leftover BBQ chicken after the 3 day weekend festivities and it makes for a perfect quick salad for dinner. Here's what I put in mine...

Romaine lettuce

leftover BBQ chicken, cubed

Raw sweet corn off the cob

Bacon

Hard boiled eggs, cubed

Avocado 

Shredded cheese

Use each in a quantity to your liking :)

For the dressing mix 2 parts ranch with 1 part BBQ sauce.

 (Not the fanciest pic, I'm aware)

Homemade biscuits

This recipe is adapted from http://momofthesouth.com/mamas-biscuits/

I am obsessed with homemade biscuits!! I basically do everything the same as the recipe above except I mix it all in my food processor like this! 

I put in all the dry ingredients and the butter and blend until it's kinda grainy. Then, I add the milk slowly through the spout on top while the blades are running until it's dough. Easy peasy!! Follow the rest of the instructions on the website.

*Mine don't usually get very brown even when they're done so be careful to not overcook because they won't be as yummy and moist!! I would say 18 min is closer to how long you should cook them. 

I have even frozen the uncooked pucks with success!! Just thaw on the counter until room temp :)

yum!!

A few changes and a challenge

I was invited this week to speak to the women's group of my church about menu planning. Well, to be honest, I took a long break since we moved back in March, then it spilled over in to a crazy summer. So, it was just the thing to get me back on track and focused again. I also sat down and reevaluated my strategy as I prepared to share my thoughts with the women.  The biggest thing I have changed is keeping a master list of my meals, by category: SOUPS, SANDWICHES/WRAPS, CHICKEN, MEAT/FISH/PORK, MEXICAN, ASIAN, ITALIAN, CASSEROLES...I compiled them in to a Google doc and linked in all my recipes. I highly recommend this!!  It has been awesome!! Goodbye stacks of old menus!

The other thing that I have been trying to do (and here's your CHALLENGE!) is to prep everything that I can for dinner before I clean up breakfast! Take out meat to thaw, wash and cut veggies, set the rice cooker, make any sauces that can be easily heated up later, start the crock pot, etc. Then, I clean it up all at once! This has enabled me to have a cleaner kitchen at the end of the day and given me one on one time with my kids to help them with homework after school, or whatever else. So, I challenge you to try it by the end of the week and let me know how it goes :)

One last thing, I have also been asked to be a guest blogger on gigglesnlaundry.com later in the month, so stay posted for the link!

And just as a follow up, here's my kitchen as dinner cooks. All tidy already :)

Chalkboard art tutorial

The easiest way to do chalkboard art would obviously be to use a projector. I don't have a projector and most people don't, so this is how I do my art.


The first thing you'll need to do is pick a design. You can either design something yourself or find something on Pinterest that you can download into a jpg file. I usually go the Pinterest route but this time I designed my own.

Once you have your design into a jpg file, open the website blockposters.com and upload your file. Go to step 2 and following the measurements to the right, to decide how many pages you want your poster to be, depending on how big your chalkboard is.

After you've printed your poster you'll need to trim off the margins

Next, tape all your pages together 

(For some reason my print out glitched and I was missing text but that has never happened to me before. I'll just wing it.)

Flip your poster over and rub chalk generously all over the back

After you've chalked your poster tape it up onto your chalkboard and trace over everything with a pencil. This will lightly transfer your design to your chalkboard! 

For bold fonts I usually just trace the outer edge and fill in later...

When your transfer is done it's time to chalk it in! Keep a small bowl of water handy so you can dip the top of your chalk to keep it moist as you go! Wet chalk will give you a nice dark finish. 

 And you're done! Ta da!!

If you prefer to use a chalk marker those work really nicely as well. I personally had problems with my chalkboard staining so I stick with plain old fashioned chalk. Although I have heard that windex will take the marker off so let me know if you have success with that!!