Hawaiian BBQ Chicken

So I don't know about you, but I have always liked my pineapple by itself.

No pineapple on pizza, ham, and above all chicken!

So when Rachel said to me "Hey, we should do Hawaiian BBQ Chicken."

First thing to come out of my mouth was "Bleh. ewwwwwwwwww! NO!"

But being the good friend that I am, I gave in with the promise that next week we will do a drink I have been wanting to try.

For this recipe you will need:

about 2 lbs boneless chicken thighs or breast

about 2 cups fresh pineapple

1/2 cup your favorite BBQ sauce

1/4 cup teriyaki sauce

and a slow cooker

(Set aside another 1/2 cup BBQ sauce

and 1/4 cup teriyaki sauce

for the end of the process)

Start by putting your chicken in the bottom of your slow cooker.

Add in your BBQ sauce and Teriyaki sauce, coating the chicken.

And throw in your pineapple.

Should look something like this

Set your slow cooker to high and cook for 4 hours.

I kid you not we were coming back in to her apartment after going swimming and you could smell this stuff cooking. The aroma was so wonderful, her neighbor's mouths must have been watering.

It smelled like wonderful sweet BBQ.

I could not believe that smell was coming from something something 

I have avoided like the plague most my life.

4 hours later we opened the lid to find this.

I tasted a bit of the cooked pineapple and my taste buds went crazy. 

It is hard for me to describe... but it was so delicious! 

Next you should remove your chicken from the crock pot.

Then strain out the pineapple and set aside.

We suggest you save the leftover juices to use in a rice side dish in the future.

Place the chicken back in the crock pot and start shredding.

Should be nice and tender and easy to shred.

During this time physics broke and as we were shredding this chicken it would go against gravity, on it own

I might add, and landed right in our mouths! 

I know, we are just as shocked as you!

Add in those cooked pineapple pieces in next.

Lastly you add the 1/2 cup BBQ sauce and the 1/4 cup teriyaki and put back on high for about 20 mins

While you wait you can prepare some rice to serve this on top of, or you can just toast some buns!

I have to say I really put my foot in my mouth with this recipe. It was so good I plan to make it again this month for my family. I can't rave about it enough.

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Rachel of course loved it. It is sweet, tangy, and just amazing! Everyone needs to try it!

This week's pet photo is of Sate and Twi!

Sate loves boxes and decided to share this love with his little sister =^.^=

Vanilla Meringue Cookies

I am getting bad at these regular post I should be doing X_X

But good news I have a new job and I am working in a ice cream shop surrounded by friends, 

which always makes things better :)

Alright this week we decided we wanted something sweet. But we didn't want anything heavy like cookies or cake. So light and airy Meringue cookies were the perfect match!

Here are the ingredients you will need:

3 egg whites

1.5 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

3/4 cup sugar

dash of salt

Start by preheating you oven to 250.

It is very important to use room temp. eggs.

Warmer eggs whip faster, so you don't want to use fresh from the fridge eggs.

Add egg whites, vanilla, cream of tartar, and salt to a mixing bowl.

Beat with electric mixer until soft peak are formed. Should take about 4-5 minutes.

Next you add in your sugar, make sure you do it just a little bit at a time so you don't weigh down the mixture. Once all sugar is added beat until glossy stiff peaks are formed.

Prepare a piping bag (or a gallon size ziplock bag) cut out a corner and add an icing tip. I am not good at sizes but you can use a star tip of med.-large size. Or just a cut hole in the bag if you don't have tips.

Scoop in the fluffy mixture.

and start piping the mixture onto parchment paper or a non-stick mat on a cookie sheet. 

I have to admit while I was piping these I started singing "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?" and proceeded to make little Meringue Snowmen. 

To bake these put in you preheated oven for about 45 mins. (If you make your cookies larger than 1 in in diameter you may want to leave in the over for about 50 mins.) Once cookies are done cooking turn off the oven and leave them there for an hour (torture I know!)

But once they are cool you can peal them off the cookie sheet and eat them up! They should be light and airy and oh so delicious!

Inside texture!

Our snowmen came out better than expected.

We plan to make these for Christmas this year.

So check back in December for instructions on how to make them look like cool little snowmen complete with coal and a top hat!

This is our cat Toby and he says "Sharing is caring" when you eat corn on the cob.

Seriously... don't eat corn without sharing with Toby. He will help himself!

Almost Raw Walnut Chocolate Ice-cream

I am really bad at getting these post done on time lately, so sorry for that. This week we decided to try a recipe someone shared on Facebook. Raw Walnut Chocolate Ice-cream. The original recipe site can be found HERE.

But here is our try at it. 

You will need:

2 cups of water

2 cups of walnuts

2 tbsp Cocoa powder

1 cup maple syrup or raw honey 

(we used raw honey)

1 tbsp vanilla extract

How do you make it?

You put all the ingredients in the blender and blend it.

I love these simple recipes ^_^

Stick it in the freezer in an airtight container over night and enjoy for dessert the next day.

There is enough for several nights. We still haven't finished it all.

This is the result!

It is so wonderfully rich, you only need one scoop to get your chocolate fix.

It is not as creamy as you would think ice-cream should be in fact a little grainy, but I do not have a great blender.

Rachel said "It was very rich, but it was Delish!"

This is High calorie because it contains walnuts so I would suggest not to eat too much of it in one sitting.

This weeks kitty is Kit, she sleeps like this sometimes. It just looks like she is just done with everything.

Food Truck Bazaar #2

You may remember our post about the Food Truck Bazaar from last year in November.

Well we went again and ended up trying 4 different trucks.

Rachel and I are huge fans of this event and 

we want to eventually try to make some of our favorite foods ourselves in a post to come.

^_^

Alright the first thing we ordered was from Saigon Sizzle.

I was in the mood for some Vietnamese food so I got the Chicken Vermicelli Noodle.

(Description on the truck)

I loved it, it was a little sweet and spicy. They used lots of cilantro just the way I like it.

Rachel also tried it and loved it. We will be trying to make a copycat recipe in the future.

Rachel was next to order her meal for the evening. She decided to go with a burger, but not just any burger...

Ragnarök the Viking Burger! From SwedeDISH Food Truck.

We both tasted this burger and are in agreement.

Odin himself must have gone to the chef to give him this recipe that only the gods would normally enjoy, in order to bring a smile to us lowly mortals.

So juicy, cheesy, and crunchy. This is by far the best burger we have ever had.

If you are in central Florida and happen to see this truck, STOP, eat here. It's amazing

As I am sure you remember we always get dessert at this event.

Normally we would get one and split it, but we just couldn't decide.

Rachel ended up going to The Crepe Company for an Eclair Crepe with added peanut butter.

She really liked it.

I got to taste it and I am never really impressed with crepes, to me it taste like a thin pancake with stuff inside, but don't go off my judgement I'm not a fan of them.

And finally the last food truck we went to was the Yum Yum Cupcake Truck.

We ordered the Midnight Snack, The Ballad of El Churro, The Dough Dough Bird, and The Nannerpants.

 I am a bit of a cake snob since I bake and decorate cakes myself and I have to say I was not impressed at all. Maybe we got a bad batch or something, but I didn't really like any of them, and neither did Rachel.

The Midnight Snack, Churro, and Dough Dough Bird were all super heavy and dense. A bit hard to swallow. The Nannerpants (Banana cake) tasted like artificial bananas. The only good thing we can say about them was their icing tasted good. Will not be buying cupcakes from them again. 

This is my small herd of kitties enjoying dinner.

From right to left we have Toby, Kit, Sate, Thorin, and Salina.

Thank you for reading this week, look forward to some copycat recipes in the future.

Easter Eggs!

Easter is this weekend as almost everyone should know.
I love Easter! When I was a kid Rabbits were my favorite animal (I had over 100 bunny things)
You know when you find out Santa Claus isn't real and it make you question everything?
Ok that moment happened when I found out the Easter Bunny wasn't real. I was devastated.
But I have grown out of the sadness of this experience and grew to love Easter again.

Even though Rachel and I do not have kids yet we still enjoy dying eggs ^_^
Rachel said, "I will never grow up!"

We found some interesting egg dying techniques on pinterest and decided to try them out

Stuff you need:
Vinegar (white or apple cider, it doesn't affect the color)
food coloring
Cups
Water
paper towels
Olive Oil
Shallow plate
Hard boiled Eggs

1 cup of water, 2 tbsp vinegar, and 3-5 drops food coloring for each cup.

We threw a couple eggs in the cups to make plain colored eggs.

This first method is one my brother and I created on our own.

Rainbow eggs!

Start off by putting a bit of vinegar onto a paper towel.

like so

Using the 4 pack of food coloring we got, we did a drop of food coloring in this order:

Red, yellow, green, blue, and red.

Set the egg on the paper towel and rotate it until the entire egg is colored.

*Warning* this will dye your hands!

This next method we found HERE

Marble eggs!

We poured some color from one of the cups and added 2 more drops of food coloring.

added about 1/2 a tbsp of olive oil. (Don't add too much oil or the color will not stick well)

And swirled the egg around!

Oh, we messed up the purple dying cup somehow and the egg turned out this ugly grey color.

We dropped some red food coloring on the egg we had in it and dunked it back in the "purple" for about 10 second.

This was the result! Lava egg!

Lava egg, rainbow eggs, and solid colors.

This next method we found HERE.

A rubber band Technique

Put some rubber bands on your eggs (tight or the lines will not be solid) and dunk in the color of choice.

You can add more rubber bands and dunk in different colors.

Using the same technique as my rainbow egg we made some tye-dye eggs.

Our Easter Eggs this year.

The rubber band technique was an fun one that I think can be used when decorating with children to make some interesting eggs.

The oil Marbling technique we might not suggest for kids unless you give them a bath right after. The oil was annoying to clean off the eggs without loosing some color.

And my rainbow eggs you may want to wear gloves to make, but they make some really cool eggs.  

This was a great way to bring back some fun childhood memories,
and learn some new ways to decorate eggs.

Happy Easter from your Pandas!

Pink hair Rachel!