Monday Meal - Jalapeno Refried Black Beans

I found this recipe while day while searching for something to serve as a side dish with our salsa chicken, but it didn't have very good reviews. So, I made quite a few changes, and the dish turned out delicious enough we've decided it can be added into our regular meal rotation.

Ingredients:

1 tsp olive oil (or so)
16 oz. black beans, rinsed and drained

2 hot chili peppers
2 cloves fresh garlic, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Preparation:

Heat oil in pan over medium heat. Cook the garlic, onions and jalapenos until slightly wilted. Sprinkle in the cumin. Add in beans and cheese and roughly stir, mashing some of it together. I didn't do too much mashing because I actually don't like the look of "refried" beans, so this is more just jalapeno black beans.

Prune Flaxseed Cookies

I bought a bunch of flax seed a few trips ago at the grocery store, but hadn't found a recipe to use them with, until I stumbled upon this recipe from Canadian Living. I've had a lot of success with all sorts of recipes from Canadian Living and this one did not disappoint either, I still did make a few changes, including the addition of the prunes.

Ingredients:
1/2 1/2cup cup(125 mL) softened butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar 1/2 1/2cupcup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar 1/3 1/3cup white cup white sugar
1 egg 1 eggegg
1/2 tsp vanilla 1/2 1/2tsp vanilla
1 cup all purpose flour 1 1cup cupall purpose flour
3/4 cup quick cooking rolled oats 3/4 3/4cup cuprolled oats
2/3 cup flaxseeds 2/3 2/3cup flaxseeds
1 tsp baking soda 1 1tsp tspbaking soda
1/2 cup chopped prunes

Directions:

In bowl, beat together butter and brown and granulated sugars until light; beat in egg and vanilla.

In separate bowl, whisk together flour, oats, flaxseeds and baking soda; stir into butter mixture until soft dough forms.

Add chopped prunes.

Drop by level tablespoonfuls, 2 inches apart, on u baking sheets. Bake at 350°F until golden, 12 minutes. Let cool on pan on rack for 2 minutes.

Rolled Paper Frame

One day while aimlessly searching blogland, I came across this post for a rolled paper frame art. We had both paper and cardboard handy, so off we went to roll some paper. We followed the directions pretty closely, so go on over to check them out.

We spray painted the entire frame and background black, and then added a little metallic silver paint to the rolled paper.
But now we had this pretty frame with absolutely nothing to put in it. We started looking around the playroom for something we could put in it, and came across a pretty picture of a frog R had coloured with Big N one day after work. We Mod Podged the crap out of it, and came up with this stunning array.
Mod Podge and I aren't the best of friend, so I ended up using some white glue on the back to make sure the little froggie stayed put. Now we just have to find a place to put this little man. He's pretty cute. I think he might get to stay.

The $4.50 headboard

Whether this is considered a headboard or wall art, I'll never know. But, are you ready for the reveal of what this beautiful piece is made from?
It's $1.25 piece of poster board, covered in a $1 pillow case all from Dollarama. The centre is an 8x10 canvas art piece that Big N painted for me, there's actually a lot of dimension in the piece, but it doesn't really photograph very well. There you have it ladies and gentlemen, a budget basic redo.

Monday Meal - Quinoa and Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breasts

I came across this recipe the other day while searching for things to do with my quinoa.

These chicken breasts were super tasty, and although we had to vary on the recipe slightly by using mozzarella as opposed to Gouda as our cheese, and I have a feeling would have been more delicious had we used the Gouda, but it definitely wasn't worth trudging two kids to the store for.

So, I won't bother to post the recipe, since I think it's delicious as is, so pop on over and check it out. We served our meal with some baked broccoli and it was the best meal of the week. We'll be adding this into our regular rotation.

Baking

Sometimes as I'm sorting through the pictures on my phone, I come across things that I'm pretty sure I was going to blog about, but then can't remember exactly what they are.

For example, this muffin is?

All gone. They may have been carrot bran muffins, I vaguely recall peeling carrots in the past week. Obviously, the recipe I had wasn't spectacular otherwise I probably would have been more careful to save it.

And these are chocolate oatmeal cookies, which the recipe I used was WAY too sugary, which still didn't stop me from eating about two dozen of them in a day. Maybe I should get more organized on my blogging adventure? Hmm....that seems like effort, not sure that's for me.

Magazine Organizer

For my niece's birthday this year, I got her a magazine subscription, and the last I heard, she loved it! So, hopefully that's still the case. Now, the best part of this birthday gift was that if you bought two subscriptions you got a third free. What's the you say, spend an extra $10 and get magazines for myself too? Why, of course, I'll take it!

And now, I find myself anxiously awaiting my Today's Parent and Moneysense subscriptions, heck, I am an accountant by trade. P.S. Both these magazines rock!

But, onto the real point, I have absolutely no where to put my magazines beside the bookshelf in the spare bedroom, and that's a little out of the way when I'm looking for something to do to pass the time during the day.

So, Big N and I got to work making a nice magazine holder.

We took a Bran Flake box, since it was about the right size, and cut off the top and cut down the sides. We added some scrapbook paper to the back and sides to cover the box itself. And just like that, we had a cute little magazine organizer.

As I was putting away endless amounts of colouring books today, I thought one of these little boxes would work great for them too, so perhaps tomorrow we will make another. A few things I learned along the way for the next round:

1. If your box is very graphic, you may want to take it outside and add a coat of spray paint first, if you look carefully you can see the coupons available on the back of the box.

2. The glue did tend to pucker a little bit, so I would probably water it down a little more than I did this time.

3. Work at not having any excess, since as you can see above a little piece of my box is missing scrap book paper, and that is because I only had one sheet of that same pattern. If I were to make it so it didn't hardly overlap with the black binding, it probably could have covered just a little bit more.