Biscuits

I am getting really into finding good recipes that require common ingrediants that I have because I don't have a whole lot of money so I can't just go and buy all the ingrediants that you only put in one thing. I was really craving biscuits and gravy 2 days ago so I went on a search for a biscuit recipe that didn't require shortening or cream of tarter and I found this one! And it is way good and easy! I love biscuits.. it's probably one of my favorite foods especially with gravy or soup or stew poured on top of them! Yummy!
Biscuits

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon granulated white sugar (optional)
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup milk
1 large egg, lightly beaten

Topping:
1 large egg, lightly beaten with 1 tablespoon milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and place rack in center of oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. (I just sprayed it with Pam)

In a large mixing bowl, sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Cut the butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs (use pastry blender, two knives, or fingertips). Add the milk and slightly beaten egg and stir until just combined. (The texture should be sticky, moist and lumpy.)

Place mixture on a lightly floured surface and knead the dough gently until it comes together and is a smooth dough.

Roll out dough to 1/2 inch thickness. Cut out biscuits with a lightly floured round cookie cutter. Place on prepared baking sheet and brush the tops with the beaten egg and milk mixture and bake for about 10 - 15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of the biscuit comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack. Serve warm with butter. (Or put sausage gravy on it or potato soup or stew! Mmmm....)

Makes about 12 3-inch biscuits.

Turkey Cookies

These are my favorite cookies to make for the Thanksgiving season because they are really easy and yummy and cute. :) I've made them 2 years in a row. Although, I'll probably have to skip this year because I have no money and I'll be staying somewhere else other than my apartment. (Tennessee!!) But I like them anyways...

Turkey Sugar Cookies

1 roll (16.5 oz) Pillsbury® refrigerated sugar cookies
1 container (16 oz) chocolate creamy frosting
Candy corn
Orange decorating icing
Black decorating gel
Miniature candy-coated chocolate baking bits

(I usually just use white frosting then dye a little of it orange. But whatever works.)

Heat oven to 350°F. Bake cookies as directed on roll. Cool completely, about 20 minutes. Then
spoon chocolate frosting into resealable food-storage plastic bag; seal bag. Cut small hole in bottom corner of bag. On each cookie, pipe frosting on outer edge of half of cookie. Arrange candy corn over frosting for feathers. Pipe orange icing onto each cookie to resemble turkey face and feet. Use orange icing to attach baking bits to turkey face for eyes. Pipe black gel on baking bits for centers of eyes.

Duck Pond Attack!

November 3

Adam and I went to one of our favorite places, the duck pond in Rexburg for our last thing we did together before he left for Tennessee. I had some older bread that I needed to get rid of and I thought that I could just have a peaceful evening with Adam and a couple of ducks and feed them my stale bread. I was amazed, though, when we drove into the pond area, there were about what seemed to be a million ducks. I felt like I was in a scene from the movie The Birds! We parked and right as we got out of the car, there was a stampeed of hungry ducks!! One or two even began to bite and my leg for some food. These ducks were not scared of us at all! I even tried to run away from them for a bit because they were becoming too overbearing, but no, they chased me up the hill! And they were running fast! The whole situation was so ridiculous that I began to laugh histerically! I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. It was a good last day. :)

I began feeding the ducks right as they attacked me before I could even really leave the parking lot.

This is where they started biting me. You can probably tell my my face that I was a little shocked!
I was looking for an escape!
I started running up the hill, but they ran after me!

I felt like their mother and they were my hungry baby chicks.

Adam took a turn feeding the ducks because I needed a break from the craziness!


Haha... I think Adam conquered the ducks in the end! He is the ruler of the ducks!

Pumpkin Night

October 30-31

We saw that Papa Murphys was selling Jack-o-Lantern Pizzas for Halloween and I thought that it looked cute, so Adam picked us up one to eat the day before Halloween. We also had pumpkin muffins so it was like our Pumpkin Night!I cannot go through Halloween with out carving a pumpkin, so Adam and I picked out a frozen one covered in Rexburg snow outside of Albertsons. We were going to carve it on pumpkin night, but we had to let it thaw for a day. It was that frozen! But this is the before picture before we did anything to it.
Adam's job was to cut off the top and scoop out the guts!

I had the job of carving it with a dull, woobly knife.
The after picture of us with our pumpkin. I think it turned out pretty good. I made it a happy pumpkin.
This is what it looked like outside on our balcony. It was pretty sweet! I love Halloween and this time of the year!!!

Flowers from Adam!

Adam suprised me with beautiful fall color flowers last week! He really is the best. My vase was packed with them! It makes my apartment look and smell so much better.

I'm so glad I'm dating a man who loves to give me flowers! :)

Here's a closer look

Corn Maze

October 27

I had a free moment while Adam went to Idaho Falls, so I thought I would put up some picuters of him being here in Rexburg with me! He got here Monday night and Tuesday night we decided to hit up the corn maze in Rigby. It was way cold so we had to bundle up. We would have liked to wait for a warmer night, but there really arent much left in this area. We walked around the maze and thought we were doing really well until after 45 minutes we ended right back where we started at the front of the maze. It was a little discouraging and we were really cold so we decided we had had our corn maze experiece and we walked around a little, made a few cuts through corn walls, and ended up at the exit. It was a lot of fun!
We thought we would take a picture with the corn so you could actually tell we were at a corn maze.

Swine Flu

I heard yesterday that 19% of BYU-Idaho students were sick. It seems that less and less people are coming to class and a big part of it is because of the swine flu. They said that if it gets to where 25% of the students are sick, then they will have to close the school down. Hopefully it wont get to that point, but it's scary how everyone is getting sick! But my spanish teacher showed our class this coke commercial from Argentina and I thought it was pretty funny. Be careful about sharing your germs!!