Spices Over Yanda Blog (Previously Allyson's Attempt at Domestication)

I made THIS chicken recipe tonight and OMG!!!! It was sooo super yummy! I ate with my son before taking him to baseball practice and left the rest for my girls and husband. I was kinda hoping there was some leftover because I seriously would have eaten it when I got home, haha! However, I only found a little bit leftover which husband has neatly packed away for his lunch tomorrow. :) I decided kinda last minute that I wanted to make chicken tonight, so I pulled some out and defrosted it. I then went to water my garden (doing sooo great still) and I had a lot of basil I needed to harvest. I pulled off a bunch and then came inside to google basil and chicken recipes. I think I picked a winner! I will most definitely be making this A LOT more! My only note is to definitely use the lemon juice. I used fresh lemon juice and it was the perfect flavor with the basil and garlic. It really added a nice element. Great, great recipe! Let me know what you think if you try it.

  My garden is only 2 weeks in and it’s doing FANTASTIC!  I’m sooo pleased so far!  Here is my update! Here is a picture of one of my potato bins.  They are just starting to peek through so on Monday I plan on adding some more soil/compost on top to start my next layer. I think I’m most excited about these! This is my 2X2 bed that I planted onions in half of it.  They are coming up and looking good.  I plan to plant the other half with my 2nd harvest green beans.  I will probably do that in the next couple days.  So far so good! This is my main bed that I started out with a couple years ago.  I have green beans just coming up on the left hand side, my pepper plants are doing well and my onions are all coming up fine.  I even have SMALL plants coming up back in my lettuce and spinach area.  The bottom corner is a tomato plant that is also doing well so far.  I’m excited! This is one of of my 4X1 beds and as you c...

It’s that time of year again!  Garden time!  I decided a couple weeks ago to head out and survey what shape my garden was in.  I had some frustrations last season and pretty much just gave up.  Bugs, bugs, bugs!  This year I plan on using a small amount of pesticide so I don’t lose my whole garden to bugs. Because of the last seasons frustration my garden was found in this shape: Needless to say the beds needed a lot of work before I could be ready to plant.  After A LOT of help from my wonderful husband and a little bit of help from my dog Casey (small bunny incident, hee hee) I’m happy to report my garden is planted! yay!!!  It now looks like this: We still need to weed around the beds and such, but the idea was just to get it planted and go from there! I like to add and try new things each year.  This year we are trying to grow some items in old storage bins.  My daughter drilled holes in the bottom and around the bottom edge o...

I went to a cooking group today and the theme was pumpkin. I decided to tweak my banana bread recipe to include pumpkin. It turned out really yummy, however in the future I will add some pumpkin pie spice or cinnamon to enhance it. I will update the recipe here when I have successfully added the spices next time. Until then, enjoy! Pumpkin Banana Bread *makes 2 loaves 3 - 4 bananas, well mashed 1 can pumpkin puree 2 egg 2 sticks margarine or butter, melted 1 cup whole wheat flour 2 cups white flour 2 cups sugar 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons baking soda 1 - 2 cups nuts (optional) Mix all ingredients together in a bowl until moist. Pour into 2 greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until knife in middle comes out clean. You can sprinkle a cinnamon/sugar mixture on top before baking to give it a nice, sweet, crunchy top. For banana bread - just double the banans and omit the pumpkin. It's delicious!! :) Enjoy!

Oh my! You MUST try these yummy rolls! I made them tonight and we had cheeseburger sliders on them. They were so good and very hearty and filling. These will definitely be my new go to rolls. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did! Oatmeal Dinner Rolls I have a new whole wheat bread recipe that I've been using thanks to Everydayfoodstorage . The only thing is this recipe makes me wish more and more for a bosch mixer, but I still get by. I've actually been kneeding this bread by hand since my kitchen aid won't keep up. However, it makes really good wheat bread. Give it a try and let me know what you think! EZ Whole Wheat Bread Also from Everydayfoodstorage I got this GREAT recipe for pizza crust. Not only is it super yummy, but it's also easy and convenient. You make several of them ahead of time and freeze them, so all you have to do is pull one out when you want pizza. I absolutely love it! I made 6 crusts today for my friends and I to eat tomorrow night for...

I know it's been too long between posts. I've been cooking, just not posting. I'm sure ALL my MANY readers have been sooo sad. LOL! I have two new recipes for the crockpot. One is my everyday vegetable soup. I make this all the time and it isn't really a recipe, so I never thought to post it. I recently had to write it out for something, so I thought I'd post it for everyone to enjoy. It is super yummy and you really can throw whatever you have in and it comes out tasting yummy. The tomato is important, but I have even just added some tomato paste and it still tastes good. The second recipe is for red beans and rice. This is something I've been wanting to try for awhile and recently a friend gave me a recipe for it. I used different seasonings and I must say it turned out super yummy. I will play with it a little each time with the seasonings, but I dont' think I'll stray too far from the recipe I'm posting tonight. Everyday Vegetable Soup 1/2 to 1 l...

I am really soo excited! I LOVE wheat bread. As I've posted before, I store and grind my own wheat at home, so using it is really important to me. I posted a recipe for Fast and Easy Whole Wheat Bread before and it is super easy and it is super yummy. However, there were a couple things I didn't like about it and I think I figured out a couple easy ways to improve the recipe. Here is the recipe after I changed a couple things: 2 1/2 cups hot tap water 2 tsp. dry active yeast 5 1/2 cups whole wheat flour 1 cup white flour 1 tbsp. salt (I use kosher) 1/3 cup oil (I use olive oil) 1/3 cup honey or sugar (I use sugar) 1 1/4 tbsp. lemon juice Mix together water and yeast and add 1 tsp. of the sugar or honey. Allow to sit for at least 5 minutes to proof the yeast. Add the 1 cup white flour and 3 cups whole wheat flour, stir and let sit for 10-15 minutes just until it starts to rise. Add salt, oil, the rest of the honey or sugar and lemon juice and mix for one minute. Add the ...