Cottage Cheese Ranch Dip

I was introduced to this stuff by my mom at my baby shower last summer. Don't be fooled by the texture. You really wont notice it and it's delicious...with crackers, potato chips, and probably anything else you normally dip in ranch. I'd imagine it's not all that bad for you either.

Cottagae Cheese Ranch Dip

• 1 32 oz low fat cottage cheese
• 1 8 oz Neufchatel cheese (or cream cheese, I just normally go the "healthy" route because I can't taste a difference)
• 1 packet ranch seasoning

Soften the Neufchatel cheese and then cream it so it'll blend with the other ingredients better. Add in the cottage cheese and the ranch seasoning, mix it all together. (I used a hand mixer to see if it would break up the cottage cheese chunks and it didn't, but my mom mixes it by hand.)

So easy, right? According to MyFitnessPal 1/4 of cup of this dip comes out to about 64 calories. It's almost twice as much if you use cream cheese.

Italian Pasta Salad - My First Guest Post

Today, you'll find my post over at Pokla Dots on Parade where I was lucky enough to be asked to do a guest post. My first guest post ever. I'm rather excited, so go check it out.

http://polkadotsonparade.blogspot.com/2011/06/foodie-friday-crafty-cook.html

Balsamic Glazed Mango

Remember that Mahi Mahi I posted last week? This is usuallly what I serve it with. One Mango is good for 2 people and according to MyFitnessPal comes to a grand total of 88 calories per serving.

Balsamic Glazed Mango

• 1 Mango
• 4 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
• salt

Pour balsamic vinegar into a microwave safe dish and microwave on high 30 seconds at a time until it is reduced  by half. Slice mangos annd brush lightly with balsamic reduction. Sprinkle with a little bit of salt.  Cook on grill until mangos are tender.

Simple Mahi Mahi with Parmesan

A while back I discovered MyFitnessPal.  It's a great website for tracking your calories and your exercise. I'm not very good about tracking my calories but even tracking just some of it makes me realize just how many calories are in a fun sized candy and that I probably ought to cut back if I ever want to drop my pregnancy pounds. MyFitnessPal has a great feature if your serious about counting calories. It lets you put in a recipe and then will add up the total calories to help you figure out how many calories are in a serving. Genius because who really knows how many calories you are getting with a homemade meal. I whipped up this super simple Mahi Mahi dish and put in the recipe. It came out to a nice 270 calories per serving.  It tastes great with mangoes on the side.

Parmesan Mahi Mahi

• 2 Mahi Mahi filets
• Olive oil
• dried parsley
• salt and pepper
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 4 tsp Grated Parmesan

Rub Mahi Mahi filets with a little bit of oil, parsley, salt and pepper.  Heat a skillet or frying pan to medium heat.  Place mahi mahi filets in pan. Squeeze lemon juice over fish.  Cook until bottom of filet starts to brown and then flip filets over. Cook until fish is done and sprinkle some parmesan cheese over each filet.  Serves well with mango.

Pillow Case Window Valance

Right now, the little office/extra room is probably the best decorated room in our little duplex and that really isn't saying much AT ALL.  I have some nice white and turquoise bedding for the futon when it's being used as a bed. When we were wandering though Burlington Coat factory I found some cheap wall are that matched the bedding perfectly and then I though maybe they'll have some curtains that matched the wall art, and they didn't but it didn't quite match the bedding because it had some lime green thrown it. My husband reminded me that I had a sewing machine and that I could make some curtains and while we were a burlington I found another set of the same bedding I already have for 10 dollars and figured I could use some of that extra set as fabric and it would still leave me with some extra bedding. I only ended up using two pillow cases to make a valance. So I still have an set of sheets and 2 more pillow cases.

To my valance I started out with my two plain embroidered pillow cases.

Using a seam ripper I removed the strips with the embroidery and  then cut them it 5 pieces. I sewed these 5 pieces into one long strip.  I took une of the embroideredless pillow cases and cut it (hot dog style) into 4 strips then stitched those 4 strips into one really long strip.  I hemmed up up the 2 long short edgeds and one long and basted along the other long edge and gathered it to the same length as the embroidered strip for a little bit of a ruffled look. I stitched these 2 trips together and using the last pillow I case I made some loops for the curtain rod and stitched them to the top of the embroidered strip.  Now the room doesn't look quite so boring and like I said, it only used 2 pillow cases.

I couldn't decide which picture looked better so I put up both.

Slow Cooker Ribs

Look closely, the ribs are the big plate in the middle.

I used to spend a lot of time wandering the BYU bookstore. My husband and I didn't always have classes at the same time or I would need to kill some time while I was waiting for him to finish a test.  I found a lot of good books in the bargain books section, mostly cookbooks. One of the cookbooks I found was Cook Once, Eat Twice Slow Cooker Recipes.  I bought it because it's full of slow cooker recipes, but it's a neat book overall.  It'll give a recipe and then the next page is a recipe for using the left overs (if you have any left overs, that is.)  I have so many cookbooks that I've never used this one until yesterday. We had signed up to have the missionaries from church over for dinner and they had told my husband they wanted some barbecue.  The cookbook had a recipe for ribs in the slow cooker, so I thought I would try it out since the best way to get tender ribs is to slow cook them anyway.  They were delicious and very, very tender (some of them just about fell off the bone in the slow cooker.)

Slow Cooker Ribs

• 4-5 pounds ribs (the original recipe called for pork , but I used beef. It's what my hubby wanted)
• 1 1/2 cups bottled BBQ sauce
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup chopped celery
• 2 cloves  garlic, minced ( I love garlic so I added a few more cloves)
• 2 Tablespoons yellow mustard
• 2 Tablespoos Worcestershire sauce

Place ribs in your slow cooker. In a bowl mix together remaining ingredients. Pour sauce mixture over ribs in slowcooker. Cook on low for 8-10 hours.

Chocolate Swirled Pudding Pops

Since it's summer I've seen a lot of posts for Popsicles, pudding pops, etc. all over the internet and thought that I should make something with the cheap popsicle molds I found at Michaels. I decided to do some pudding pops because they are ridiculously easy. I had grand plans of making layers of chocolate and vanilla pudding in my pops but then I realized all of my molds together could only fit one box of pudding so I got creative:

Chocolate Swirled Pudding Pops

• 1 box instant vanilla pudding mix
• Milk 
• Chocolate Syrup

In a bowl mix pudding according to box instructions. Before pudding is completely set, drizzle 2 or 3 tablespoons chocolate syrup on top of the pudding. Take your whisk and raise it up in down through out the bowl a few times, just enough that the chocolate syrup swirls into the vanilla pudding but does not mix in.  Pour the pudding mixture into your molds.  Freeze several hours.