Tag: simplefood

ranch pretzels with dill
Recipes

Ranch Pretzels with Dill

Striving for Simple

Ranch Pretzels with Dill

ranch pretzels with dill
ingredients for ranch pretzels

Total time 40 minutes (bake time 35 minutes)

Ingredients:

  • 1- 15-16 oz bag pretzels of choice
  • 1 package dry ranch mix 
  • 3/4 C. vegetable oil
  • 1 TBSP dill
  • 1 tsp garlic powder

Directions:

  • Preheat Oven to 250 degrees F
  • Place pretzels in a mixing bowl
  • drizzle the oil over the pretzels
  • stir until pretzels are evenly coated
  • Sprinkle the dry ranch powder, dill, and garlic on the pretzels
  • Stir again until evenly coated
  • dump pretzels in a single layer on a sheet pan
  • Bake for 15 minutes
  • Stir pretzels
  • Bake for an additional 15 minutes

  • ranch pretzels mixed together
  • ranch pretzels poured on sheet pan
Advertisements
Greek Yogurt Fruit Dip with Apples
Recipes

Greek Yogurt Fruit Dip

Striving for Simple

Greek Yogurt Fruit Dip

I love simple recipes that require very little time and effort; yet taste amazing!  This is one of those recipes!

greek yogurt fruit dip
cool whip, greek yogurt, instant pudding mix

Ingredients:

  • 1- 2lb tub Cabot Greek vanilla bean yogurt
  • 1- 8 oz package lite cool whip
  • 1- 3.4 oz package instant french vanilla pudding

Directions:

  • In a large mixing bowl, combine the greek yogurt and cool whip. Stir until well mixed
  • Add all of the instant pudding powder to the yogurt/cool whip mixture.
  • Stir well.
  • Refrigerate until ready to use.
  • Lick the spoon (optional).

***Tip: Save the yogurt and cool whip containers to use if you plan to package the dip up to take somewhere. 

apple dipped in fruit dip

This fruit dip is perfect for any type of fruit, but I especially love it with strawberries or apples. You can serve vanilla wafers or graham crackers to dip in it as well.

caramel apple bar
DIY

DIY Caramel Apple Bar

Striving for Simple

DIY Caramel Apple Bar

Perfect for a fall party buffet!

Disclosure- Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I may earn a commission on purchase.

BA426588-6A3A-4F1C-8790-FCD7A2558BB3

This past weekend, we had a fall party with lots of friends and family.  I wanted to have a simple, yet, custom sweets area.  I decided to construct a DIY Caramel Apple Bar.  I had accumulated tons of yummy apples from my Fall CSA and this would be the perfect time to use them.

I purchased two bags of Kraft caramel bits and a super small food warmer (images link to the products on amazon!):



I then rummaged through my cabinets and found everything else that I needed.  That included kaboob sticks for poking the apples and toppings to sprinkle on the caramel after dipping.  I chose crushed peanuts, mini chocolate chips, sprinkles, almond slivers, toffee bits, and coconut flakes.  The possibilities for topping options are practically endless.

Check out the rest of my set up below!  YUMMMYYYY!

apple slice about to enter melted caramel2EEB27AC-FB36-49B0-8D25-B340B7B498ADtoppings for caramel apple bar37C5E5AE-A0A5-459D-BBF1-BA6113C2CDFB

My only complaint is that after letting the caramel in the warmer for a few hours, it began to taste a bit burnt.  I would suggest not melting and warming the caramel until the dessert portion of your party.

Recipes

Easy Peel Hard Boiled Eggs

Striving for Simple

My family goes through a lot of hard boiled eggs.  They are such an easy grab-and-go snack.  Plus you can use them to whip up a quick batch of deviled eggs….yum!

There is nothing more frustrating than going to peel the first egg from a batch and you are stuck peeling every little piece of shell off.  Not only does it then take forever to peel them, but you are also left with a bunch of sad looking eggs with pieces missing.

If this sounds familar to you, well, then keep reading!  I have finally found a method that makes peeling my eggs easy.  Every. Single. Time.

EASY PEEL Hard Boiled Eggs

  1. Fill a pot of with enough water that your eggs will be completely covered once they are added.
  2. Place the pot on the stovetop, set on high, with a lid and bring the water to a boil. **NOTE:  keep checking to see if you water has started to boil so that it doesn’t boil out and over.
  3. Once the water has come to a rolling boil, GENTLY lower your eggs into the boiling water. **NOTE: if your egg has even the slightest crack (or if you don’t lower them gently) you can expect some of the egg white to leak out of the egg.  This usually happens to one of my eggs, but I don’t mind.  They are all still super easy to peel.
  4. Once you have all of the eggs in, lower the temp (to medium or medium-low).  Make sure that the water continues to gently boil the entire time.
  5. Set a timer for 12 minutes.
  6. While you are waitng for 12 minutes to pass, fill a large bowl with ice water.  I don’t just mean cold water.  Place a handful or two of ice in a bowl and add nice cold water.  This will be where your eggs go IMMEDIATELY after they are done boiling.
  7. When your timer goes off, quickly remove the eggs from the boiling water and add them directly to your ice water.  Stir the eggs in the ice water for a moment and make sure that there is enough water to submerge all of the eggs.
  8. Let them sit in the water for 5 minutes.
  9. Peel immediately.  **Remember to smile as the shell just falls off!

I promise to add pictures to this post soon!  I will take some the next time I make a bunch!

Recipes

Yogurt Drops- (yogurt without the mess!)

Striving for Simple

Frozen Yogurt drops
Frozen Yogurt drops
Frozen Yogurt drops
Frozen Yogurt drops

 

All you need is a container of your child’s favorite yogurt, a sandwich bag, a sheet pan, and parchment paper.

  1. Scoop a container of yogurt into a disposable sandwich bag.  Try to keep the yogurt down in one corner.
  2. Line a sheet pan with a piece of parchment paper.
  3. Cut a SMALL corner off of the sandwich bag.  If you go too big it will just run out of the bag.  Start small and make the cut bigger if you need to.
  4. Go crazy squeezing dots on your pan.  Mine are not all perfect in size or shape.
  5. Pop the dots in the freezer for an hour or so and then scrape them off and transfer them to a baggie for easy access.

I usually have a baggie of these in my freezer at all times.  They are perfect for when my little is ready for food, but I don’t have food prepared yet.  She will sit content in her high chair munching on these while I make her dinner.

Recipes

Fall CSA- Week 2

Striving for Simple

Local Produce

 

 

Yummy Taco Pepper Poppers

Pepper Poppers

This recipe reminds me of stuff peppers, but made into a snack or appetizer size.  From my CSA, I was able to use my tomatoes, peppers, and onion (from a different week).

Find the recipe here!

 

Shrimp and Sausage Old Bay foil bakes

67C2B944-48D0-4603-ABA6-8DBBCF7CDE35

Find the amazing recipe here. 

We were able to use CSA potatoes and corn for this recipe.

Sliced Watermelon:

Deciding what to do with my watermelon this week was super easy…just slice it and eat it!

I did, however, try a new way of slicing my melon…with DENTAL FLOSS!  I can not take credit for this hack.  I saw it on a facebook video and just had to give it a try.

  1. Cut the watermelon in half, and then cut the half again.
  2. Now it is time to break out the floss.  See images below!

Slicing Watermelon with Floss
Slicing Watermelon with Floss
Slicing Watermelon with Floss

Slicing Watermelon with Floss
Slicing Watermelon with Floss
Slicing Watermelon with Floss
Slicing Watermelon with Floss

It worked perfectly!  And…no…my watermelon did not taste like mint.  You do have to put the watermelon rine against your body when you are doing the first pass with the floss.  This is a sacrifice I was willing to make because of how easy this trick made slicing the watermelon.  You could always put a towel between yourself and the watermelon as well.

 

Apple Nachos:

Basically a decadent candy apple on a plate.  Whenever I am having a craving for something snacky and sweet, this is my go to!