Is this real life?

I recently found an app on Pinterest, and I have to give it a go. Apparently, you select the items you have currently in your kitchen, and it gives you a recipe. Well I found one for yellow cake.... in a mug. In. The. Mircowave. 

It's 9:30 at night. I have to try this!

Here's my story.

You'll Need:
2 tbsp. Flour 
1.5 tbsp. Sugar 
1/4 tsp. Baking powder 
1/8 tsp. Salt 
2 tbsp. Milk 
3/4 tbsp. Oil 
1/4 tsp. Vanilla

Mix all the ingredients and microwave for about a minute and a half.

Oh my gosh, it actually worked. And this is the only bite I had. Hubbers annihilated it. 

Dear Dorm Friends. YOU CAN HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO!

Thank you, Pinterest. Thank you. 

With Love As Always, 

Courtney 

Here's My Breakfast Pie!! (sang to the tune of Cherry Pie)

Hubbers loves this recipe, I love this recipe, friends love this recipe... and it's easy as pie!

I introduce you to Breakfast Pie! Breakfast Pie is a product of playing "cookbook roulette." (Cookbook Roulette is what happens when you throw all the cookbooks in the floor and randomly pick recipes because you don't really know what you want for supper.)

Here is this heavenly concoction. People, friends... fasten your seatbelts.

You'll need:

1 can of evaporated milk (NOT CONDENSED MILK)
5 eggs
3 cups of shredded hashbrowns (thawed if they were frozen)
1lb of sausage (I used Country Sage)
2 cups of cheddar cheese shredded
2 pie crusts, the rolled kind from the refrigerated section

*optional ingredients
1 half bell pepper, diced
1 half onioin, diced

Lay you out a pie crust in that awesome round pan. 

Brown up that sausage

If using the optional ingredients, dice up that onion and bell pepper

Get them hashbrowns. 

Now, for whatever reason, I don't have pictures. Oh, technology. But you'll want to beat those 5 eggs with the evaporated milk. Then, when the sausage is brown, layer that in the pie crust, then dice the onions, then layer the hash browns on that. Next, put on the cheese, pour the egg and milk concoction, and put that other pie crust on. Bake for 25 minutes at 400. 

Boom! Slice that girl open. 

Can. You. See. The. Goodness?

Hubbers gave this one a Thumbs Up. This is one of those great ratings that you don't just win at the Oscar's. Just saying. You may want to write this one down in the history books. 

Serve this up with some salsa for an extra kick. 

Guys, seriously, try this one. It's awesome!

Love as always, 

Courtney 

Chicken Fried Rice... Minus the Chinese Take Out.

Hubbers LOVES this recipe. Adores it. I try to make plenty for leftovers and that usually doesn't happen because he and my "brother in law" (Jeremy's best friend/brother, best man at our wedding) destroy it before the plates even hit the table.

You'll need:
1 can of carrots
1 can of peas
1 cup of rice
3 chicken breast
1 bottle of soy sauce
*eggs, scrambled
*green onion, diced
*zest of two oranges
*juice of two oranges

(**Means optional ingredients)

First things first, boil your rice. That's one cup rice, two cups water. Pour the rice and water in together, and bring it to a hard boil. Once it's boiling, cut the heat off, stir it, then put a lid on it. Let the steam work from there. This takes about 20 minutes. 

In the meantime, cook that chicken in the skillet. (I only used a few strips of chicken for a smaller amount. I like less chicken, you may add more.)

Next, combine all of your ingredients together. The peas should be drained as should the carrots. The chicken, once done, should be diced. Stir it all together so it looks like it does in the picture above. *If using optional ingredients, now is when you'd add the green onion, scrambled egg, and orange zest.*

Go ahead and heat up that skillet, wok, pan, what have you. I have an electric skillet that works wonders for this. 

Use max heat if using an electric skillet. 

It's not fried if there's no butter ya'll! Use about 2 tablespoons of butter to drop in that skillet. Paula Deen would use more, but we're not trying to lube up our arteries here. 

Throw that beautiful mess into the skillet once the butter has melted and sizzled. At this point we'll add the soy sauce, as much as you like (you won't use the whole bottle, hopefully. Taste it along the way. I like mine a little salty.) **If you're using the optional ingredients, add the orange juice here.

It's done when the excess juice and sauce have cooked into the rice. Enjoy this bit, kids, cause everyone is digging it!

Love as always, 

Courtney 

A Dessert For My Soul....Tastes Like A Million Bucks!

Before I can tell you about this pie, let me tell you why it is so near and dear to my heart.

The oldest lady in that picture? That's my MawMaw Berry. In this picture we were celebrating her 90th birthday. Due to Alzheimer's, she barely knew who most of us were unless we "introduced" ourselves. It was hard to see her like this as she was always the one to cook for the family, talk, laugh with everyone, fret to the extreme over Y2K and dote like crazy on her grandbabies. This woman was blessed with these beautiful, old, wrinkly hands that cooked us the best food in the whole world. This picture was taken February 2012.

In June 2012, just three short weeks before Jeremy and I got married, MawMaw Berry was reunited with her husband Woodrow Berry in Heaven. She lived a long and blessed life and she blessed many others. At her funeral, my mother, stepfathers, aunt, uncle, MawMaw, PawPaw, brother, sister, and cousins did our best to eat the food provided by the church, but all it did was stir up memories of when MawMaw Berry could still stand to cook.

We remembered dumplins and fried chicken and fresh butterbeans and boiled shrimp and cornbread muffins and greens and gravy... but we mostly remembered her Millionaire Pie. She didn't write down the recipe, she didn't tell anyone exactly how it was made. We had already lost our grandmother, great grandmother, mother... and now losing her recipes just added to the heartache.

Being the cookly wife that I am and using my MawMaw Berry as inspiration, I made a bold statement at that funeral dinner. "I'm gonna make that Millionaire Pie. It may not be as good, but I'm gonna make it."

This month, MawMaw Berry would have been 91 years old. Therefore, I celebrated her memory by making her pie. It's incredible how simple it was. I found this recipe off Pinterest, but it is incredibly similar to what I had from MawMaw Berry.

You'll need:
1 carton (8oz) of cool whip from the freezer section
1 (10oz) can of crushed pineapple
1 can (14oz) of Eagle Brand condensed milk
3 Tbs. of lemon juice
3/4 cup of crushed pecans (or as many pecans as you like.)
2 Graham Cracker pie crusts.

Combine cool whip, condensed milk, crushed pineapple, lemon juice, and crushed pecans in the mixer (or bowl) and mix well. It should look like the picture above. 

Pour the pie mixture into the two pie crusts..

 And refrigerate for two hours. 

When you finally cut into this heavenly piece of Millionaire Pie, it'll look like this. The longer it sits, the firmer it gets but you really cannot wait longer than two hours to taste this!

It holds together nicely, so long as you keep it refrigerated. 

It was an honor and a blessing to be able to make this pie for you. I feel like I got to spend a little time with my MawMaw Berry today. I can only hope that I'll be half the wife, homemaker, and mother that she was. Enjoy this pie my friends.

Oh, and take a moment to read up on Alzheimer's. Be aware of the dangers, the symptoms, the signs, and the treatments for Alzheimer's. I lost someone to it, but I pray you don't have to. 

Love always, 

Courtney

Good Morning! Get Up, Seriously...

It's an early morning in the Ingle house. Mardi was whining to be taken out, Winry was meowing because Mardi was whining, and of course the hubs was fast asleep. On today's agenda, I have to go to the library for my research, go purchase a weather radio, make a trip to the Wally World AND prepare garlic bread and a dessert for our dinner party tonight with friends.

See, my social life has not ended because of marriage or because of graduate school. If you don't find the time for friends, forgive me, but you're doing it wrong. My husband and I need each other.. but we also need the comfort and warm embrace of fun times with great friends and family.

Later today I'll be bringing you two separate recipes. One for the garlic bread I'm making(hopefully, if it works. I'm terrible with bread) and one for a dessert that is near and dear to my heart.

I wanted to share with you something I saw on Pinterest this morning: 31 Things To Freeze and Save Money is a great read by a very talented blogger/homemaker. Jill has all kinds of tricks up her sleeve, so check her out!

Also, if you ever want to just peer into my brain, my Pinterest boards are the best way to do so. There's everything from my humor to what I want to try on there, so give it a look.

I better get back to my day. Stick around folks, I'll have that garlic bread and that dessert for ya soon.


Love always,
Courtney

Catching Up Part 3--Rebuilding and Moving Forward

After the February 10th tornado, Southern Miss did not lay down and accept defeat. We stood up, we buckled up, and we tightened down.

On Southern Miss Cleanup Day, February 12, 2013 over 940 students plus 300 volunteers from either the alumni, community, or other schools came together and gathered over 2000 bags of debris. Thanks to them, we went back to work and school on February 14th, 2013.

That was how Southern moved on, and the Ingle house has moved on as well. We've added a new baby to our house! Folks, meet Mardi!

Mardi is our precioius, 4 pound Chiweenie. She was a shelter puppy. When we got her she was dehydrated, eat up with a worm infection, and almost to the point of malnutrition. But we loved her, so we took her home, cleaned her up, fattened her up, and she'll be spayed next week. Having her in our lives made us focus on something so pure, so innocent, and so time consuming that we quickly recovered from the emotional trauma of the destruction from the tornado. Plus, our cat Winry adores her. And yes, that is a picture of a cat grooming a puppy as if she were a kitten. There is so much cute in my house that you'd think My Little Pony threw up Dora The Explorer.

**Mardi Update***


As I was typing, I heard a knock at the door. I look up to find Mardi scratching the door furiously to be let out. I grab the leash but she gives me a "Mama we ain't got time for that" look, so I just open the door. Out she goes to the grass, handles business, and comes back in.

Praise be to God, my apartment is one poop/pee session closer to smelling like fresh linen again!


Don't worry, I'll be posting a recipe later. Actually, two, so stay tuned ;)


Love as always,
Courtney

A Lot Has Happened... Catching up Part 1

For the most part, I'll make this short.

After my fourth post, I suffered from a ruptured ovarian cyst. It was painful, it was sucky, and I was off my feet for a little while.

One week to the day later, I went to the doctor thinking I had the flu. It wasn't the flu--it was sinusitis, bronchitis, and an ear infection in each ear. While still hurting from the cyst. Again, that knocked me off my feet.

**Author note. If you take Sudafed at 9pm, don't think you're going to sleep. I didn't. Instead, I watched two seasons of Community within 24 hours and then went comatose for about 12 hours.

After dealing with all that, catching up on school and work and financially recovering from not having my insurance yet (the cyst ruptured the day my insurance was supposed to activate), I fell away from the social media sphere for a while.

But I'm back...BOO-YAH!

I've learned in all this that blogging takes work, it takes time, it takes dedication--but it can't take you! Honestly, in order to remain at my Super-Student, Super-Spouse status, I've had to back away from the computer and focus on myself. Granted, this wasn't a very convenient thing, but when is everything convenient. Don't worry, I'll wait.

When I decided it was time to get back to the blogging sphere, I used {never}homemaker blog for inspiration. The post that's dedicated to bloggers keeps me going, and I look at it frequently, as should you.

I'm going to spend the next couple of blogs catching up on all that's been missing. I have a couple of new recipes I tried, I've danced (sorta), I've cried (you'll see why) and we adopted a puppy. So much has happened in our lives that I can't get it all in here. So stick around for the other parts of Catching Up.

As always,
Courtney