Our first Salmon Dinner

When we first started dating this was one of our first meals we cooked together.  It's a really easy baked salmon dish. 

Served with rice and or broccoli it's a great go to meal for a busy week night. 

Even the kids like it!!!

Birthday cake with love

I am not a baker. I do bake bread but that's about it. Once a year I will dust off my cake pans and bake a cake for my wonderful husband. You know he's a wonderful man since I won't even bake a cake for my children. I have done filled pudding cakes, ice cream cakes, and brownies. This year the Kansas City Royals made the playoffs for the first time in 29 years. So being the huge KC fan that he is, he requested a Kansas City Royals cake. 

All of my past cakes were simple. Frosted and decorated with sprinkles. Done. This was going to be a new level of decoration for me. But after 2 days (yes it took 2 days) I think it  I did ok. 

I have the best helper

I finally bought an icing knife. Made covering the cake so much easier! 

It took 20 minutes and a tooth pick 

My little helper. She did a great job with the decorations. 

Not perfect but cute and made with lots of love. 

Hoisin Glazed Pork Mu Shu Casserole

From Every Day with Rachael Ray

The New Casseroles insert 

A really easy one pot/pan meal. Also makes a great make ahead to have latter in the week. 

Quiche Cups!

I love having eggs and bacon or sausage in the mornings for breakfast. In the past this was only a weekend breakfast. As my college roommates know I am not a morning person. Thank you Jill for making sure I got to class by 9:).

Now that I'm at home with Alexandra I do have time to make a weekend breakfast during the week but not enough time to clean it up. While on South Beach I made these egg cups for a filling low carb breakfast. The quiche cups are delicious. You can fill them with your favorite breakfast veggies and meats. I liked to fill mine with bell peppers, onions, sausage, or bacon, and cheese.

Tex Mex Chicken Salad

This is one of my all time favorite summer dishes. I started making this chicken salad when I was on Weigh Watchers. It so easy to make and you can serve it as a sandwich, a salad, or as an appetizer in chip cups! All you need is sour cream or Greek yogurt, mayo, cumin, chili powder, black beans, corn, scallions, chicken, and I like to add a can of tomatoes with green chilies. If you buy the precooked frozen chicken already cut into cubes you just have to microwave it and add it to the beans, corn, tomatoes and scallions. I mixed equal parts sour cream and mayo with the spices (use as much or as little as you want) in a sepreat ramekin before adding the sauce to the chicken mixture. That's it. SO easy. It's great as a wrap or just as a chicken salad. You can see I didn't add any corn. I made this while we were on Phase one of our South Beach diet.

To make this as an appetizer I would dice the chicken before adding it to the mixture, or even use shredded chicken that I had pre-roasted and froze in 1 cup measurement baggies. Then just scoop the salad into Tortilla Chip cups and you are good to go.

Cheers
Katie

All Moved In!

Greetings Happy Hour Readers! I am finally all set up in our new house in Raleigh!!!! It is older than our house in Durham and the yard needs some major TLC but the kitchen is a dream. I love my flat top stove, and now that the oven works (long story) I'm excited to get back into baking.

The last 2 weeks V.J. and I decided to do phase one of the South Beach Diet. We have done this in the past and have been successful in jump starting our "healthy lifestyle" and weight loss. This time around we were successful once again but we complained alot more. I am already on a restricted diet due to my UC. Take away bread, white wine and pasta...not a happy Katie. But we stuck with it and I added exercise. I'm excited to announce I lost 6.5 pounds. The dishes I'm going to talk about in the upcoming entrees are ones I made while one South Beach. Some are awesome, some not so much, and others I loved at first but became tired of in the end.

I love to hear comments from all of you.

Cheers,
Katie

Shrimp and Chicken on the Grill

Tonight for dinner we started our second weekend of "Saturday dinner at home!"

All of your ingredients 

The shrimp in the Marinade, and the Chicken and Veggies on squires. 

Cilantro Garlic Butter 

Dinner is served