Carol's dreamy sun-dried tomato sauce

My girlfriend Carol makes this sauce and trust me when I tell you it's to-die-for. You'll be licking the bowl clean, soaking up every last drop of goodness with pasta and bread. Perhaps even lapping it with a spoon straight from the pot. Not that I'll ever admit to doing that. 

We like to make this for parties and special dinners. I've even frozen a bunch in containers and taken it to our grandparents for Christmas with a wrapped box of pastas and other Italian goodies. Try it, I promise you'll love it! Just know that it's definitely not light on the calories, so go easy. You've been warned.

Ingredients: 

• 1/4 pound of unsalted butter
• 4 chopped basil leaves (fresh)
• 5 chopped garlic cloves
• 1 small jar of sun-dried tomatoes, drained of oil and chopped (reserve oil)
• 1 cup of white wine
• Crushed red pepper (depending on how spicy you like your sauce - I sometimes skip this)
• 1 pint heavy cream
• 1 jar of tomato basil sauce (I use Wegmans brand)



Directions:

1. Melt butter, and saute basil, garlic, sun dried tomatoes. Let these get hot for a few minutes.
2. Add the white wine and crushed red pepper to your taste. Bring to a simmer and let bubble.
3. Add heavy cream- cook a bit more until hot again.
4. Slowly stir in red sauce until a light pink color.
5. Cook for about 20 more minutes. Serve or let cool and freeze.


While the sauce is cooking, I like to cook up pasta to serve with it - penne or tortellini are our favorites. I also like to saute a few chicken breasts in the reserved sun-dried tomato oil, then add them into the sauce in the end. And to add in something healthy here, I throw in some asparagus. Sprinkle Parmesan on top. Voila - the best sun-dried tomato sauce you'll ever have!


This sauce freezes perfectly, and honestly tastes best the next day, or when frozen and reheated. We always double or triple the recipe, then freeze in old spreadable butter containers. 

Our favorite meatballs

We've made this meatball recipe dozens of times over the past few years and it's always a winner. I usually triple or quadruple the recipe and bake everything, then toss the extras in a big freezer bag. My suggestion is to either freeze flat on a tray before placing into a bag, or place them in a single layer in the bag in the freezer, so they don't stick together.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound ground beef with 80-85% fat content

• 2 garlic cloves, chopped

• 3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

• 6 tablespoons Pecorino Romano cheese, finely grated

• 1 egg

• 1/2 cup 2% milk

• 1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F.
2. Put all ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Knead everything together with clean hands. You want to feel for the right texture -- It should be soft, but not sopping wet. If it's not soft enough, add 1 more tablespoon of milk.
3. Once all ingredients are combined, form balls the size of an egg by pushing them into the shape softly in your hands.
4. Place meatballs on a nonstick baking sheet. Bake for 30 minutes, remove and gently toss into your favorite sauce.

Our favorite meatball recipe comes from Teresa Giudice when she appeared on the Rachael Ray show. I cannot take any credit for this recipe, as this is 100% straight from Teresa Giudice.

A Butterfly 7th Birthday Party

Our dear daughter chose a butterfly theme for her 7th birthday bash. She invited only the girls from her class, so we were able to have the party at our home. Once she came up with the theme, I went to work finding all sorts of butterfly stickers, coloring pages, crafts and decorations.

I absolutely love how the cake turned out. I used two 9 inch round cake pans to bake a vanilla cake. I put a layer of icing over the first cake, then put the second on top before cutting it down the middle. It's much easier to icing a round cake than it is to do two halves and smush them together. I also put the icing around the rounded sides before I placed the cakes together in the shape of a butterfly. Then I just had to cut out some of the outer wings to shape them, and then finish putting icing on the rest. While the icing was still soft, the boys had fun lining up marshmallows in a pattern across the top and around the bottom. The butterfly body was a yellow Starburst candy that I softened in the microwave so that I could roll it into shape. Then we used pink Starburst candies (also softened) to make the antennae.

As the party began, the girls went to the kitchen table and wrote birthday messages on a large piece of paper. This kept them busy for a few minutes until everyone arrived.

Then it was time for arts and crafts. I had collected various pipe cleaners, pompoms, stickers, etc for them to make foam butterflies. All of these pieces were picked up at the dollar store, so this craft was about $4 for 12 projects. I also printed out a butterfly word search (found online), and we had butterfly tattoos they could put on their arms, hands or cheeks.

I picked up sun catchers at Michael's so they worked on those for a bit too. They were much harder than I thought, as they would bump each other an then one little bead would go under the frame and shift everything off, forcing them to start over. After about 45 minutes of working on the sun catchers, and still not done, the girls took off to my daughter's bedroom to play. Not about to let the project go to waste, my husband and I sat at the table and frantically worked to finish up the girls' projects.

my savior

Putting together the food was fun also, as we arranged cheese, pepperoni and butterfly shaped crackers on a tray. Another tray held pineapples, grapes, strawberries and cantaloupe in the shape of a butterfly. And then dinner was a pasta station, where the girls could assemble the meal however they'd like with butterfly shaped pasta, meatballs, sauce, butter and grated Parmesan cheese.

When it was time for dessert, these butterfly snacks were served with the cake and ice cream. My daughter helped create these, using hard pretzels and pretzel pieces, held together with candy melts (the kind you buy in a bag at Michael's). We dabbed extra melts on the backs of M&Ms and placed them in the openings of the pretzels, to decorate each butterfly.

All of the girls seemed to have a great time, and my daughter said they loved the butterfly theme. Now, on to planning a Skylander's birthday party for my son in two weeks!

Time away...

I've been working on new recipes and crafting for my kid's birthday parties these past few months, but have plans to get back to working on this little site during the summer. Lots of recipes to share, as I've been doing an awful lot of baking lately!

Oven baked sweet and sour chicken

For years I've followed a blog Hip2Save, where Collin not only shares all the great deals going on in the world, but she also shares some of her yummy recipes. One of our family favorites is her sweet and sour chicken.

We've been making this for two years now, and have tweaked a few things to our liking.

Ingredients:

• 4-6 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1 Tbsp garlic salt
• vegetable oil for frying
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 20 oz. can pineapple chunks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup pineapple juice (from straining the pineapple chunks)
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 3/4 cup ketchup>
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp low sodium soy sauce
• 1 green pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
• 1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
• cooked rice (enough for your family)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Add enough vegetable oil to frying pan so that it is about 1/2 inch deep, and heat on medium-high.
3. Sprinkle chicken with garlic salt.
4. In one bowl, beat the two eggs. In another bowl, mix the flour, salt and pepper.
5. Coat the chicken first in the egg, then in the flour mixture. Carefully drop piece by piece into the hot oil. Turn after a few minutes, once the chicken turns a golden brown. Drain on a paper towel covered plate.
6. While the chicken is cooking, drain and save the juice from the pineapple chunks. You'll only need 1/2 cup so you may have some left over (put in a small container and freeze - it will be great in smoothies!). 
7. Cut the pineapple chunks in half, and put aside.
8. In a small saucepan, heat the sugar, reserved pineapple juice, vinegar, ketchup, salt and soy sauce. Stir until the mixture comes to a boil, then lower the temperature and keep warm until ready to use.
9. Once the chicken is done frying, add the pepper and onion to the frying pan and stir for two minutes or until softened.
10. Add the chicken, peppers, onions and pineapples to a 9 inch x 13 inch baking dish and pour the sauce on top.
11. Bake uncovered for 30 minutes.We enjoy this over jasmine rice, but you could also serve it over any type of rice or noodle.

Enjoy! If you make this, I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback.

Crazy easy way to clean your gas stove grates

Anyone else have incredibly dirty well used grates on top of their gas stoves? I've tried to clean them. I honestly wipe them down each time I clean the stove. I've tried soaking them in soapy water, even letting them soak all night. But no matter what I do or use, that grease coating refused to budge.

That is until I learned this little trick - ammonia. Yes, ammonia. The kind you probably have under your kitchen sink. In the way back. Take a look. I think my bottle may be 15 years old, and seemed almost full still.

First let me say, I'd recommend trying this with one grate to begin with, just to be sure it does not strip any paint or coating off and leave you needing to purchase 4 (or more) new grates. This happened to my mother-in-law, who happened to have specially coated grates. Mine were just the plain dark gray type, and had no problems with the ammonia.

before / after cleaning with ammonia

Directions:

1. Dump 1/4 cup of the ammonia in a large resealable bag.
2. Place your grates in the bag and seal tightly. This step is important. The fumes are toxic, so you don't want any leaking out. Trust me.
3. Store the bag in a sink or bucket somewhere out of harms way for 12-24 hours. I placed my bag in a wash bin in the laundry room sink, and let it sit overnight.
4. Rinse the grates in soap and water, and then you'll just need to wipe the grease off with a sponge or dish cloth. The grease really does just fall off at this point. No need to put a lot of muscle into it, or pull out the heavy duty scrubbers. The grease came right off when I wiped it. 

That's it! It's truly that easy. I didn't realize how dirty ours were until I saw how beautiful they became once all the grease was removed.

Granola Bars

One of our favorite snacks is a good granola bar. And nothing tops homemade. The kids love to take these to school for snack time or grab as we are running out the door for soccer. We've been experimenting with different recipes found on Pinterest, and have tweaked them to our liking. The recipe below was adapted from The Spiffy Cookie's No-Bake Peanut Butter Granola Bars. Her granola bars are delicious as written, but I wanted to add a few things to change things up a bit. We also usually double the recipe below, and put in a 9x13 pan, plus a smaller 4x4 pyrex dish.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups quick oats
• 1/2 cup crispy rice cereal
• 3/4 cup chopped pretzels
• 1/4 cup flax seed
• 2 Tbsp shredded sweetened coconut
• 1 Tbsp chia seeds
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup miniature chocolate chips (if desired)

Directions:

1. Lightly coat the bottom of a 9 inch x 13 inch baking dish with a nonstick spray. Cut a piece of wax paper large enough to cover the dish.
2. In a large mixing bowl, stir the quick oats, crispy rice cereal, chopped pretzels (I give mine a quick swirl in the food processor), flax seed, shredded coconut and chia seeds.
3. In a small sauce pan, whisk the butter, brown sugar and honey together over medium-low heat until it begins to bubble. Once it bubbles, turn the stove down to low and continue to whisk for two additional minutes.
4. Remove from the heat and whisk in the peanut butter and vanilla extract.
5. Pour the liquid mix over the dry mix in the bowl, and stir to make sure everything is coated.
6. Pour it all in to the 9x13 baking dish. 
7. If you feel the need to add in mini chocolate chips, now's the time to sprinkle them on the top.
8. Use the wax paper to press firmly on the top of mixture, pressing it down so there's no air in between the bits and pieces. Be sure to press evenly so the bars will stay together.
9. Place in the refrigerator for an hour to harden, then slice into bars. 

We like to store these in the refrigerator until ready to eat. Then we pull them out and let sit for a few minutes to come to room temperature.

If you make these, I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

Introducing O'Doodles Of Fun

Welcome to my little world of the blogosphere here at O'Doodles Of Fun. I've been a mommy blogger for almost 8 years, writing personal letters to my children, journaling our lives,  and posting videos and pictures for our family throughout the country.

I've been wanting to start my own "public" blog for a while now, but just couldn't quite figure out what I'd write about. There are so many talented bloggers, with the most amazing blogs on cooking, baking, decorating, style, great deals, etc. I'm not an expert in anything really, so I wasn't sure what I would blog about. And then it dawned on me - I'll just write about what I love - my family, good food, thrifty finds and DIY projects. So, here we are - O'Doodles of Fun - where the O'Donnell family has oodles and oodles of fun together!