Ragu

So I was chosen on my favorite #crowdtap to sample a whole bottle of Ragu Pasta Sauce for free!
I'll be completely honest and say we are a prego family through and through. So as much as I wanted to get a traditional sauce and compare I was feeling up for something completely different and grabbed a jar of Alfrado! I was super excited, since I LOVE me some alfrado pasta!

I chunked some chicken and sauteed it in a pan until it was cooked through. Meanwhile I cooked some pasta, and drained it when it was done. I dumped some of the alfrado sauce in a pan and chopped up some fresh broccoli and put it in the pan with the chicken. I heated it up and added the pasta! Everybody loved it and asked for more! Thanks #RaguSauceMasters we had an amazing #NewTraDish and #crowdtap!!!!

Taco Bell

So it's not a secret that I am a fan of fast food. Especially Taco Bell. (judge away, but I'm still kickin and we eat it a couple times a year. Delish!) My girls love it and ask for it when we drive by. We aren't huge fans of spicy or sauce, but I was super duper excited when #crowdtap hosted a party giving away full size bottles of Taco Bell sauces! I recieved (FOR FREE PEOPLE!) verde, mild, hot, and fire sauce! Obviously we haven't touched the Hot or Fire but I will be giving those away to friends that will use them up!

In my box of yummy sauces I had a insert that had some recipe ideas. One was guacamole using the verde salsa. Well, that was right up my ally! I grabbed up the ingredients and on Superbowl Sunday Hailey helped me mash up the avocados and stir everything together. It said to use the whole bottle of verde salsa but I put about 1/4-1/3 c in. It was delicious! Hailey gobbled it up and would hate eaten the whole bowl in one sitting if I had let her! That girl is just like her Momma! ;)

Then we had taco's topped with our delicious mild sauce! It was like taco bell right at home. Except with out all the convenience :/ Ha! So yummy! Thanx #crowdtap and #tacobell for the yummy sauces!!!

Recipe at the bottom;

Taco Bell Zesty Guacamole Dip:

3 ripe avocados- peeled, pitted and mashed
1 tomato chopped
1/4 Cilantro chopped
1 bottle taco bell sauce- Verde

Mix well in bowl and store in fridge.

*HUGE HINT!!!! cover your guac with saran wrap pressed tightly on guac. Keeps air out so it won't brown. Lasted in my fridge like this for about 6 days! Would have lasted longer if I had a lid on top but my bowl didn't have a lid :( I was so sad to have to dump some!

An oldie but a goody

So I was cleaning off my myspace blog page and I came across this old one. I wrote it when I was a Nanny 2 jobs ago :( Miss that job NOT the family. Ha. Anywho edited it a little b/c of certin content (email me for ? on that if you wish) So anyways ode to Becky and her beef stew expierances:
**Side note #1- for refrences purposes this was written last March before we were married.

So as everybody knows I am a pretty domestic person. I am a full time nanny, meaning I have to care and clean up after 3 kids, 40+ hours a week. I clean the house, cook the meals, and wipe snotty noses (among wiping other things!). I love to clean, be organized, and cook and bake. I told Steve one day I am a horrible Fiancée I need to learn to cook better. I totally go for boxed things or even better frozen skillet things that you just brown on the stove top. But I can't like make a lasagna from scratch or anything. Of course he reassured me he LOVES my cooking and even brags to his co-workers about it! So I decided I was going to make him home-made-from-scratch beef stew. One of his favorite meals of all time. With dumplings even. So I go and I print the recipe off Betty crocker's website, go to the store and buy the special meet, bay leaves, carrots, stewed tomatoes, and red potatoes. Little did I know I needed to buy a pan. So I decide I am gonna make it one night, put it in the fridge over night, reheat it the next night and make the dumplings (it took 3 1/2 hours to bake so dinner wouldn't have been ready until after 9). Sounds good right? I start reading the recipe and it says to put it in a "dutch oven" wtf? Clearly something I did not own. (I had to ALSO look THAT up online and it's a big cast iron pot. I registered for one on Target! lol) So I decided I would use my handy dandy pasta pot cuz it looked similar to the picture of this "dutch oven" I saw on google. Of course it's me though and I did NOT pay attention to the fact that the lid had a plastic handle. Oops. The pot was in the oven at 325 degrees for 2 hours. I tried to open it to stir it and the pot holder melted to the lid. Oops! So I am cracking up and frantically call my Mom (who says I am retarded. Well she raised me!) and she said to take the lid off and put foil on it. So I did much better. So the lid is cooling and the stew is still cooking. So I decide I don't want to put it in the fridge w/ just foil (cuz God love him but knowing Steven he would SET something on top of the foil and it would end up in the stew. Seriously it would happen) on so I put the lid back on. NOT a smart idea Becky. Since it's a pasta pot it has a strainer in the lid (little holes) so you can dump the pot upside down over the sink and drain the water out of your spaghetti. It works GREAT for Spaghetti but not so great for beef stew in the oven for 3 1/2 hours. :( So since it's a strainer it has to lock in place. So I put it in the fridge w/ the handle melted lid and lock it. The next day I take it out to heat it on the stove top and make the dumplings. I can NOT get the lid off. The melted handle got to cold in the fridge and shrunk and fell off the top. So I have to jack it off with a fork in the strainer holes. Classic huh? Meanwhile I am trying to use my new MP3 player which I do NOT know how to use. Put the 2 together and you get me throwing silver wear across the kitchen stomping my foot like the 2 1/2 year old kid I nanny for saying f bombs every 2 seconds. LOL. It was quite amazing. So I get the lid off and go to heat it up. I end up burning the bottom of the stew so it smells like road kill on fire in our house. Lovely! The dumplings turned out awesome which was like the only thing edible at this point. Haha. So yeah then when I am trying to get out what parts of it I can to save for Steve and I come across a SCREW. Yes a SCREW was cooked in my beef stew. How amazing is that?? So yeah I guess it's canned beef stew for us for awhile :(
P.S The whole entire pot including the lid AND the seperate handle ended up in the trash. Now I have to registered for a fancy new pasta pot too! :(


***Side note #2- So since then I have attempted home-made-from-scratch-beef stew a couple times. The first couple times did not turn out much better then that one. One other time I decided I should make it in the crock pot. So I put everything together and then I didn't want it to cook to long so I waited until the last possible minute to turn it on before I walked out of the house for work, yeah forgot to turn it on. Oops. That rotten meat that sat there smelled good let me tell you. But I must admit I have made it and it did turn out amazing and the Hubby loved it. And they lived happily ever after!