Tortillas and Tortilla Chips

Oh my goodness! I've been wanting to make tortillas ever since Rick Bayless on PBS did them on one of his cooking show episodes. This weekend gave me the perfect opportunity to try them out.  Let me just say, they were awesome! Even more awesome was when America's Test Kitchen (who I LOVE!) posted a pinterest recipe for the perfect home-made tortilla chips. These are so tasty and hearty. I don't think I'll ever have to buy tortilla's again if I remember to make these!

Sunday Stylebook-Sewing Room Ideas

We have a perfectly good bedroom devoted to a litter box and cat food. It's sad really and I've been on a kick to use the space and things we have. I'd really like a sewing room where I could iron without fear of marring the kitchen table and have space to really spread out. I've decided I can use the cat's room for this so I've been thinking of color schemes and ways to organize/decorate it. I think I've decided on a color scheme.

I acquired this fabric from a friend of a friend and I love the lime and orange but I don't have  enough of it to do curtains and I think I want something a little more formal. Here's my inspiration plan.

Brunch Chocolate Chip Scones

I have a confession. I've never made scones before. I have a friend who makes the most amazing cran-orange scones and I covet those but I have never made any myself...until now. I found a recipe on Pinterest and decided I'd throw these together but, life being what it is, I didn't have the whole wheat flour called for. I did have garbanzo bean flour and did a little research on substitutions and wapow!  Only it didn't work. Don't misunderstand. They tasted great, they just weren't scones, instead something between breakfast bread and muffin.

Stuffed Peppers

Hello, my name is Ashley and I'm a Pinterest addict. I have a tendency to put lots of recipes on my Pinterest Boards and then go to the same old recipes when I'm short on time for dinner.  In an effort to diversify our menu I'm working on trying the Pinterest recipes.  (If you want to see the extent of my Pinterest madness hit the Pinterest button on the top right of your screen.)

 Tonight it was stuffed peppers.I started with a recipe from Dashing Dish for general outlines and then promptly changed most of the ingredients based on what I had in my fridge to use. Feel free to use whatever you want, the basics are something crumbly and something kinda saucy to hold it together. We were pretty happy with these and word on the street is that they freeze well. They probably do before cooking. I cooked all 6 of these and then froze the left-overs so we'll see how that works. Not a bad way to start the weekend!

The Perfect Oatmeal Cookie

Today was a day of cravings. I chalk it up to not sleeping well last night. I was up too late and then couldn't stay asleep so then I was up too early. When I'm sleep deprived I crave, crave, crave carbs and sugar. I'm sure there's some scientific explanation for this but I've got an English degree so I'm better at reading a recipe than understanding the science of cravings. So today was full of carb indulgences and bedtime will come early.

Tonight Sweetheart was looking for a chili recipe and, lo and behold, my childhood oatmeal cookie recipe card shook itself loose. Sometimes I believe in fate, mostly I believe in Karma. Tonight I'm putting my money on fate since the perfect snack recipe fell into my lap.

The story on these is that the recipe belonged to my maternal great grandmother, was passed to my grandmother who scaled it for her 5 children and my mom inherited it. I can remember making trays upon trays of these as a kid and now that I look at the recipe I realize it had been tripled! Here's the secret perfect family oatmeal cookie recipe. Don't worry, I've re-scaled it to its original proportions so you won't have to make quite so many.

Easy Chicken Parmesan

Welcome to "A Girl's Gotta Live" and my first post and recipe! Tonight Sweetheart told me about a recipe she had seen online about making a pizza crust out of thinly pounded chicken. I found this weird but the thought of chicken and tomato sauce made my mouth water. It was getting later into the evening and I needed something quick so I did an easy version of chicken Parmesan. It was tasty and done in 30 minutes. I made this for 2 but you can scale up as you need. It's not overly fancy but it was sure tasty!