Friday, February 24, 2012

Food I found on Pinterest

We made something so scrumptious today that it is my new favorite. I think Shannon would even agree. :) If you LOVE bread or cheese, read on.

I am a messer, which does not mean that I am messy, it just means that I mess with stuff. I can never just DO WHAT THE RECIPE SAYS! I have to find my own way. Here is a link to the ORIGINAL RECIPE. Check it out before you read on.

My version is much simpler and may make you more willing to try it, but the original is still sinfully AWESOME and should be attempted at least once. I will do the original recipe some day. Part of my problem is that I am impatient. I can not wait until everything is perfect before I do something so I just DO IT. Sometimes this means I blunder along and get stuff wrong or the thing turns out like I did not intend. Sometimes it works out okay and this time it did. :)

So, What I did was first, use a muti-grain bread loaf. Try to help the healthy level there. I inserted the provolone but I folded it in half and stuck the whole slice in there, not just half. I sauteed some mushrooms and filled the bread with them, pressing them down into the crevices. Then I sprinkled the green onions on top of the mushrooms.

Now, melted butter would be SOO yummy and make this gooier than EVER, but it is not healthy for you in large quantities. Since I forgot this part of the recipe and did not add it, this makes my recipe even healthier. :) I just wrapped it in foil, put in the oven and heated to melt the cheese. When it came out it was AWESOME (in case you forgot from earlier). However, I though to myself, hmm, could it be any more awesome? The answer was yes; it needed some kind of seasoning so I added a couple of seaoning mixes from the cabinet (on different parts) to try them out. You should definitely at least use a little seasoned salt but try Tony Chacere's if you like cajun spice or an italian spice mix if you want to go that direction. Even just a little garlic salt would be great.

The best thing about this recipe is that you can use the basic idea and go crazy with alternative fillings!!! I never thought about just filling the loaf with food and letting people take it apart themselves!! What a lazy way to serve sandwiches!!! You could do ham and swiss. You could do pepperoni and mozz. You could do corned beef and cabbage with some kind of cheese. You could even do basic ground beef (or turkey) and sharp chedder. I mean, the possibilities are endless!

I wish you all well, hope you enjoy your cheesy pull apart bread and I suggest you arm ourself with a blunt weapon in case people start coming out of the woodwork trying to get your bread. They will. }:}

Do you have any good filling ideas? Let me know what your ideas are and if you try this. I want to know how good it is!!!

Monday, February 13, 2012

A new Skirt Make-over

You can find the tutorial for the ruffled skirt portion here. Click Here

I made a pair of shorts into a ruffled skirt. How fun for the girls. Little Sister LOVES it. It is still big for her and she has to wear a belt but that is not stopping her. I used a pair of jean shorts from a company called Rubee Jeans. I've never heard of them before but these shorts were SOO cute. They had distressed patches and paint splotches and I just HAD to buy them (on clearance, of course, because I never pay full price for ANYTHING).

Here is a picture of them, I forgot to take the before picture so you will have to imagine them without the ruffles. I also cut out the seams that made them into shorts because my girls do not need the shorts under the skirt but if your girls are very active and need extra coverage, you can keep them intact as shorts.





So, now you are imagining how CUTE these shorts were before and wondering why not leave a good thing alone. Well, the decor was cute but the style was not. We don't wear skinny jeans or fitted shorts so these had to be altered. WEEE! I have not done any ruffles since I was in Home Ec in Highschool because it was a LOT of work. I have been wanting to make ruffled something for my girls but I was seriously not sure that I wanted to work so hard. After this alteration, I remember why I was leary of ruffles and I realize that making them look nice is harder than just making the ruffle.

Always default to MORE fabric for your ruffles rather than less. I had a specific width of fabric to work with and that is what I used but now that I am finished, I would double the fabric if I did it again. It is too flat and needs more POOF!

Here are the working process pictures. The link to the tutorial is at the beginningof this post. I did not follow her plans exactly because I was not re-purposing a T-shirt but I follwed her basic directions for making ruffles. I like her t-shirt dress MUCH better. :} I will have to follow her diretions exactly and make another, better project. Here in GA we do not need long-sleeve t-shirts for much of the year so I will likely just use a short sleeve t-shirt.








Here is the finished product. As you can see, the ruffles are not ruffly enough. Also, they are not straight at all because I did not measure. The simplest way to keep the ruffles straight is to measure and pin. I hate pinning but I also know better.

Enjoy!