Curried Chicken, Peppers, And Peas En Papillote

For my French Friday's adventure, I recently made Curried Chicken, Peppers, and Peas En Papillote from Dorie Greenspan's Around My French Table Cookbook. Crazy easy (it's on my menu this week for lunch to bring to work) and delicious, I highly recommend this dish. It will not take up much time so you can make it the morning of for lunch or for a quick dinner at night.

You can pair this dish with really anything: rice, quinoa, or polenta, which is what I did because polenta is always in my fridge thanks to my Northern Italian upbringing! Pre-cooked polenta is easy to find in supermarkets, just slice it up and heat up with a little olive oil. Delicious combo.

You can find the Chicken Curry En Papillote recipe here.

Valentine's Day Crafts

Sometimes I get crazy ideas in my head. Like the kinds that aren't ruled by any sort of logic or thorough thinking. The latest was after I saw, online, a holiday garland for Valentine's Day. I thought "I could totally make that and save 16.99!" Well yes, I could make it for sure since I'm pretty crafty, but could I make it for less than 16.99? I didn't think that part out. A trip to Michael's and 69.00 later, I exited with all the supplies I needed for my wonderful garland.

The garland came out like this:

It's close to 6 ft long and while it's not perfect, I'm proud of it!

Since I had about 59.00 worth of materials leftover, I made a few more garlands:

Unfortunately I ran out of the letter "V" so I can't do anymore garlands that use either the word love or valentine's. Oh well.

I'm happy with them all, some are better than others, but all quite cute.

And all very easy to make.

Here are the materials I used:
1 heart shaped lever puncher
1 whole puncher (heart shape)
Easy-Tear Tape (double sided)
Valentine's Day scrapbook paper book
Solid scrapbook colors
Valentine's Cupid Decoration Rounds
Red twine
Letter Stickers
Marker (red or black)

Each garland varies, but the very basic directions is to pair 2 hearts together, tape them together, and stick the letter on the more solid colored heart so it's easier to see it. Then take your marker and highlight the letter so it stands out more. Punch two holes in the hearts - one in each corner - and take your red ribbon and thread through each. If making the large garland, put the cupid decoration round in between each word. Otherwise, you can use that round to frame out the word.

Michael's is having a nice sale on Valentine's Day decorations & crafts so you could probably get all these material's for 50% of what I paid!

It's really really simple and make cute gifts! If you want to make several, just buy more letter stickers!

Chocolate Chunkers Cookies

I'm not going to lie, these cookies gave me a run for my money. Literally. I had leftover chocolate from my holiday bark - the kind of chocolate that is expensive - and I had leftover pecans and apricots and golden raisins. Not cheap ingredients!! So when I was flipping through my new baking book, From My Home to Yours, I found a recipe that incorporated all those lovely pricey ingredients: chocolate chunkers. Excellent I thought.

But not so quite. Batch 1 burned!! Batch 2 was soggy!! And then I gave up. Sulking on the couch after turning off the oven, I remembered the recipe said to refrigerate the cookies if they were too gooey inside. Well, what if my entire cookie was gooey?!! I put batch 2 in the fridge for 15 minutes then took one out and took a bite. Heaven. It worked! Back on went the oven and I happily made the rest - - though more time consuming since I had to put them in the fridge to solidify and had to cool off the baking sheet in between batches.

Anyway, long story short - these cookies are good, but could turn complicated. If you bake them and find yourself frustrated, just use the fridge after ten minutes of baking (do not bake longer thinking that the cookies will actually cook better - it won't, it'll just burn). I promise these will be amazing and impressive to anyone you offer them to. Anyone who loves chocolate will fall in love with these. The raisins and apricots (I used both instead of just one) really make this recipe!

You can find the recipe here. Good luck! And enjoy!