New Dishes

Last week, I tried two new dishes. I wasn't sure how they would end up, but I knew I needed to try some new things.

Typically Mr. McB is not a huge fan of my cooking. He is an amazing cook and simply makes things up and they usually end up good. I am not like that. I cook and sometimes it ends up good, but I have to follow a receipe. However, I am getting better at adding and taking away from the receipe.

My first new attempt this week was Southwest Chicken Skillet from Betty Crocker. Of course their picture is much prettier than how it looked, but smelled great. I made a few changes, so here is what I did.

I poured a bit of vegetable oil into the skillet and added my chicken chunks. With a dish like this, I usually cut the chicken into chunks. I let the chicken cook for awhile, then I added a bag of Kroger peppers and onions. I did not use broccoli or mushrooms, b/c broccoli doesn't sound southwestern and the bag did not have mushrooms in it. I heated the vegetable mix up to get rid of the excess water that would cook in the dish. I then added a drained can of black beans and 1 cup of chunky salsa. After that cooked for a few minutes, I added the cheese. Instead of using flour torillas, we put our skillet over crunched up tortilla chips. Mr. McB and I love crunchy food. We then topped it with a dab of sour cream. It was a great meal. I really liked it and so did Mr. McB.

The next meal was taken off of Delicious Meliscious' blog. It is the Mexican-Style Chicken and Penne. Mr. McB loved this one even more and I thought it was quite good. With this one, I made up a lot of it on my own. I started off by cooking the penne in boiling water. Then a put some oil in the skillet and cooked up more cubes of chicken. The start of this dish was much the same as the previous. I added some salt and pepper to the chicken and then added some onion salt and minced garlic. Real onions would have probably been better, but I didn't have any on hand. I then added a fresh banana pepper from our garden and a can of drained diced tomatos with jalapenos. In WV, I couldn't find the chipotle in adobo sauce, so I used some sour cream mixed with taco seasoning and a little water to make a creamy type of sauce. This was as close to the chipotle and adobo sauce as I could get. I omitted the corn and let it cook for a few minutes. Then, I added white quesadilla cheese and a dash of cilantro leaves. This was an amazing dish. I immediately feel in love with it and Mr. McB said it was the best thing I had ever made.

So, two good, but easy dishes down the drain for the week. :)

Let me know if you try them and enjoy them.

Life Update

Wow, it has been awhile. I love blogging and reading other people's blog, but I can't seem to ever find the time to update my own blog. So, here is my attempt at a quick update.

I am still around, but I have been really busy. I really am trying to get better at this. Plus, I like to blog with pictures and can never seem to track my camera cord down.

Last time I posted, my in-laws were about to come to town to purchase a car for cash-for-clunkers. They indeed purchased a beautiful navy blue Honda Civic. While they were in town, we had dinner at Cheddar's and rented a movie. They decided on the movie from reviews. We rented Rachel Getting Married, with Anne Hathaway.

I like Anne, but I must be honest that this was one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Maybe it was a little much for me with the style of the movie, but I just didn't find it enjoyable. I thought the movie was extremely weird and the wedding in the movie even more strange.

The next day we took a trip to Wheeling, WV, about an hour from our place. We went to Cabela's and looked around there all day. Even though I am some what of a country girl, I do not like spending the entire day at Cabela's. After Cabela's we checked out a sports bar for dinner. It was pretty good. I had their nachos and they were huge. Finally, we got to go to TJMaxx. My MIL and I are both huge fans of TJMaxx. :)

After the in-laws left, Mr. McB and I traveled to Pittsburgh, about an hour away, to see a free Eric Church concert. We both love country and especially Eric Church. BTW...Mr. McB went to the same high school and Eric Church and actually knew his sister. :)

Recently, we have started a tradition of wing night with some of our friends. Wing night doesn't always happen, but we try our best to go on Monday nights when the wings are 35 cents at a local pub. We actually went this Monday and had a great time. :)

Since my last post, we have also been camping three times. We always head to Mountain Lakes Campground and make good use of my uncle's boat. We even got away alone for a weekend and go camping. Although I love my family and friends to death, I enjoy getting away by ourselves every once and awhile. If you are ever interested in camping and seeing West Virginia, I recommend Mountain Lakes campground.

My job is moving a long nicely. I am feeling settled in the postion and getting the hang of things at my facility. If you are new to my blog, I recently took a position as Admissions and Marketing Director at a local nursing home. This will hopefully jump start my career in long-term care administration. However, now I am thinking I should have been a teacher or principal. We'll see as time goes on.

We had a cookout at our place for our friends recently. We had the main courses, but we had our friends bring a side dish and premium beer. It was a lot of fun and a great time to get together with friends. :) We had a lot of wonderfuly food and my great husband made amazing BBQ and I don't even like pork or BBQ sauce.

At WVU, they have a concert the first night of classes. They try to bring in different areas of music. This year it was Kelly Pickler, Third Eye Blind and Akon. We headed to the concert with friends and actually got to shake hands with Kelly Pickler. She is adorable in person and my husband likes her even more now that he was so close to her. I wasn't a huge fan of the other groups.

This past week I went to a conference for long-term care social workers. I am not a social worker, but my position works closely with the residents and families. A lot what I do overlaps with the social worker. So, I decided to go to the conference and I learned quite a bit. After the conference, I headed to my hometown and hung around with my mom and had dinner with the in-laws. It was nice to see family. :)

I have also seen two other movies recently, The Last House on the Left and The Time Traveler's Wife. I didn't really like either movie.

I thought the plot of this movie was really good. Unfortunately, I thought it had a little too much gore to it. I don't care to see all of the details of everything that happened. However, I thought the plot was a great idea.

I had a great time seeing this with my girl friends, but I wasn't a huge fan. I thought I would love the movie, but I just found it alright. I found the plot really unrealistic. With unrealistic movies, I have a hard time getting into them. However, the movie was sad and made me cry quite a bit. With being sad and unrealistic, I just got mad that I was so upset about it.

So, there is my life update. Hopefully I will be able to post more. :)