Dish 47 Chicken Dorito Casserole

Yep, that's right chicken and Doritos.  This also came from my friend Natalie's Pinterest.  I think I could do another 52 dishes in 52 weeks from her Pinterest alone, heck I might be able to do 365 dishes in 365 days from her Pinterest, except I don't cook/bake every day.  So as you can probably guess the recipe calls for chicken and Doritos.  It also has cheese, cream of chicken soup, milk, sour cream, canned tomatoes, and taco seasoning.  It was a little spicier than I like, but it was pretty good.  Truth be told, I don't like things that are very spicy, so even a little spicy seems spicy to me. 

Dress Shopping Begins

So I began wedding dress shopping a few weeks ago.  I went with my mom, my maid of honor, and one of my bridesmaids.  Considering, I had no idea what I wanted, I think it was a good start.  I knew I didn't want feathers, anything obnoxiously poofy, and I was pretty sure I didn't want strapless. 
Surprisingly, the one shoulder dress looked okay.  I thought it would look hideous, but it was all right.  Thin straps weren't bad and I also liked the halter style.  I still did not purchase a dress, but at least I have a few ideas of what looks good and what doesn't now.  We looked at two places, with two very different price levels.  One place let us take pictures of me in the dress and one strictly prohibited it.  I'm not going to post any of the pictures though, sorry! 

Dish 46 Coconut Chicken

I THINK this dish was from my friend Natalie's Pinterest. I seem to be frequenting that page.  :)  Anyway, I liked the coconut chicken, but I had some issues making it.  I made it in a frying pan and the oil was jumping around a little too much for my liking (read, I got splashed a few times and though I suffered no major burns or any minor ones for that matter, just little ouches, it was not pleasant).  If I make this again, I plan to bake it instead.  Ironically, I'm not a huge coconut fan, but for some reason I like coconut chicken, coconut shrimp (yum!), and even Malibu rum (which is coconut flavored).  So I'm not really sure why I don't like coconut by itself, but find it good when it's combined with certain things.  I make a lot of chicken so I'm always looking for new things to do with it, hence the coconut chicken.  Anyway, it was good.  :-)   

Dish 45 Caramel Rolls

I was lacking in the inspiration department for new dishes so I poked through a crockpot cookbook that my friend gave me for my birthday last year.  I found something called Caramel Rolls, which is kind of like monkey bread.  Additionally, I had some leftover biscuits from when my fiancé accidentally bought those instead of crescent rolls.  So tah-dah, along comes caramel rolls.  Unfortunately, I overcooked them a little bit.  I followed the recipe, but I guess I should have turned off the crockpot a little sooner.  So while they were okay, I think in the future, I'll just stick with regular monkey bread. 

Dish 44 Cheesecake Filled Strawberries

All I can say is yum, yum, yum.  :)  So I saw these on-line (it might have been on Pinterest, I forget) and one of my friends also told me about these.  I decided to make them for a Memorial Day cook-out.  They were a hit!  Basically, they are strawberries filled with cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla with mini chocolate chips on top.  I figure they're a tiny bit healthier than some sweets since one of the main ingredients is strawberries.  I also used low fat cream cheese.  The only thing I didn't like about these was gutting out the strawberries.  But I guess it was worth it in the end since they tasted delicious.  :) 

Dish 43 Shosh's Salmon

For my birthday, my friend Shosh offered to make me dinner.  She makes a great homemade macaroni and cheese so she made that as part of it and she offered to do something else.  After some discussion, I chose salmon.   I have never cooked salmon myself so now seemed like a good time to learn.  :)  (And by "now" of course I mean several months ago.)  So a couple of weeks after my birthday, she came over, cooked for me and showed me how to make all the stuff she made.  It was really nice to have someone cook ME dinner.  Anyway, it took a while, but a few months after she made me salmon, I decided to make it myself.  I made it a little differently than Shosh did as I baked mine and she broiled it, but I made her sauce, etc.  Anyway, it was quite good and since it didn't have an "official" name, I decided to name it Shosh's Salmon.  :)  In fact as I sit here writing this blog, I kind of want to make it again soon. 

Don't Trust the Forecast aka Why I Will Always Pack a Jacket or Umbrella From Now On

A few weeks ago I went to Chicago for a work conference.  The conference was great.  It was three days long and depending on the day it went from 8-4 or 8-4:30ish.  That meant we had the evening free to explore the city. One of my colleagues and I flew in the day before the conference started and had plans to go to a White Sox game.  Thanks to traffic from the airport to the hotel, we missed half of the game, but what we saw was good.  There was a fireworks show after the game.  I'm not really into fireworks, nothing against them, just not as excited about them as some people.  Anyway, the girl I went with wanted to see them so we stayed.  Unfortunately, the show was interrupted due to incoming severe weather.  Now with very few exceptions (i.e. going to Arizona in June), I always pack a jacket or an umbrella in case it rains.  However, since we were only going for three nights and the airline we were flying charges for luggage (seriously?!  I still can't get over that luggage used to be free and now you have to pay for it on so many airlines), I wanted to fit everything in a carry on.  So after checking the weather several times and not seeing a drop, I decided to save room in my carry on; I would NOT bring a jacket or an umbrella since there was NO rain in sight.  BAD IDEA!  Yep, the fireworks, as I said, ended early and we got to go back to our hotel in a "nice" rainstorm.  Let's fast forward to the next day.    After the conference, we went to the Sears Tower (it's not called that any more, but you know what I mean).  Sadly, we had to wait TWO hours to get to the top, which I could deal with (though I wish I'd brought my book) and about ONE MINUTE (I'm not exaggerating) after we finally got to the top (remember we'd been waiting 2 hours), the fog rolled in and the tower (as the man who worked there said) was "going to zero visibility."  There were a couple of breaks in the clouds, but let's just say I did not get may good pictures.  And yes, it rained again!  Thankfully, it wasn't raining much when we walked from the tower to a restaurant for dinner.  And when it rained at dinner and after dinner, at least dinner was a short walk from the hotel.  Did I mention the weather had been gorgeous all day when I was inside at the conference?  Moving on to the next day (you can guess where this is going), it was another beautiful day (we left the hotel for lunch).  After the conference was over for the day, we walked around a little bit (wanted to get dinner at some pizza place, but due to a 2 hour wait and the fact that we had plans to take a boat ride, no go on that so we went elsewhere and had good pizza there instead).  Anyway, we get on the boat and the first 30-45 minutes was lovely, but then guess what?  It RAINED!  Let's just say I was glad I took a Dramamene (sp?).  It cleared up a little at the end, but we missed many of the nice sights.  :-(  The last day of the conference,  you know the day I flew home, it was sunny.  Go figure!  So the moral of the story:  always pack an umbrella or a jacket.