Sugarland Concert

I just have to say that I really enjoy Girls Nights out! It is fun to get to spend time with just the girls. Well for this Girls Night out we went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday's and then to see Sugarland in concert. They put on an AWESOME show! It was TONS of fun!

Danny Gokey and Julianne Hough opened up the show. They were both okay, but not great... Julianne Hough's portion of the show was all about dancing on the stage half dressed. She kept dancing with poles... I was worried she was going to start taking off what little she had on...

The Sugarland portion of the show was great! The stage was awesome, the light show was awesome, the music was awesome! Everything about the show was AWESOME! Plus I got to spend time with two great friends! One thing that really impressed me about Sugarland is they gave a autographed guitar away to a young girl in the audience. I thought that was awesome. That girl is forever going to remember that!

Anyhow here some picture :)

Megan, Me and Betsy

It got really bright where we were sitting so Betsy put her sunglasses on :)

The awesome stage

Jennifer Nettles

Kristian Bush

Kristian delivering the guitar

Pot roast practice

Sunday we made yet another pot roast. Each time we make our pot roasts they get a little better. We have done chuck roasts and cross rib roasts. Sunday's roast was a cross rib roast. I wanted to document the recipe (sized for a 5.5qt slow cooker).

Our Ingredients:

• 1 30oz roast
• 1/2 onion
• 8 celery sticks
• 8 red potatoes (could have been more, but it is all we had)
• 1lb carrots
• 3/4 cup water + 3/4tsp beef bullion
• 2tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1.5-2.5 tbsp vegetable oil

Instructions:

We start by salting the roast and preparing the vegetables. Sprinkle kosher salt over all sides of the roast. Cut all the celery, potatoes and carrots and put them in the bottom of your slow cooker.

Start warming water and bullion mixture on medium heat. Once mixture is warm add worcestershire sauce and keep warm until you are done with the next step.

French cut the onion and start heating a 12 inch sauté pan over medium-high heat (Do not use non-stick for this as you will be deglasing later). Put oil in the pan as it heats. Once pan is hot add onions and cook until onions are soft, but stop before they start to caramelize.

Once the onions are done pull them out of the pan. Immediately give the pan another shot of oil and put the roast in the pan. Sear for 30 seconds to a minute on each side. You want a nice deep brown color on the roast. Once you are done searing the roast remove the pan from the heat. Remove the roast from the pan and place it on top of your vegetables in your slow cooker.

Remove any extra vegetable oil from your sauté pan. Deglase the pan by pouring the water/bullion mixture into the pan. The pan should still be hot enough to instantly boil some of the liquid. Use a whisk or spoon to break up any bits of meat residue stuck to the bottom of the pan. Leave on medium heat until you are ready to use it.

Put the onions on the roast. The french cut and sauté helps with this as the onions are less likely to fall off of the roast. If the onions fall off and into the vegetables and liquid they don't caramelize as well during the cooking process. Once the onions are on the roast pour the deglasing liquid from your sauté pan over the roast.

(At this point we sprinkle a Lipton onion soup dry mix over the roast. I am inclined to try a roast without it next time to see how it works.)

Cook on low for 6 hours.

Notes: This cooking method with the cross rib roast resulted in a piece of meat that was firm, but not chewy. The same method with a chuck roast results in pieces that tend to fall apart a little more. Adding too much cooking liquid is the quickest way to get overly soft vegetables. In the past I have also tried using a dry rub mix instead of just salt on the roast; It definitely adds some nice flavors.

Another edition of Food by Us

Shaun and I really do love cooking! We especially love trying new things. Some of the yummy things we have made recently are Anniversary Chicken, homemade waffles with homemade strawberry syrup, and "Davinci's Horse" Burgers (name still in the works).

Anniversary Chicken

Recipe:

6 chicken breasts                            3 green onions

1/2 c. teriyaki sauce                        1/2 (3 oz) jar real bacon bits           

1/2 c. Ranch dressing                      Chopped fresh parsley        

1 c. shredded cheese

In large skillet,  heat oil over medium heat. Add chicken and saute 4-5 minutes, until lightly browned. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place chicken in 9X13 pan. Brush with teriyaki sauce. Spoon on Ranch. Sprinkle with cheese and green onions. Add bacon bits. Bake 25-30 minutes. Garnish with parsley

**Note: I didn't follow the exact recipe. We used less chicken since there was just the two of us. There was extra teriyaki sauce, which I just poured into the casserole dish. I also only used about 1/3 of a cup of Ranch dressing, but that is what I needed for the amount chicken we had. I also didn't use fresh parsley... Just the dried stuff...

Homemade waffles & strawberry syrup

Shaun made these for us the other morning. It was REALLY yummy. He followed the waffle recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook we have. For the syrup he took 3/4 lb strawberries, 3/4 cup sugar and just enough water to cover the strawberries. He then cooked it on medium/medium high heat until it reduced.

"Davinici's Horse" Burger

These burgers were a lot of work, but REALLY good! Shaun ground a chuck steak and garlic with our meat grinder attachment we have on our KitchenAid. He then formed them into patties and put them on our grill. We then topped the patties was sauteed mushrooms, Davinci gouda, A1 sauce, and a little horseradish! They were SO yummy!!!

My 25th Birthday!

On April 19th I turned a quarter of a century old!! Kind of crazy (well at least to me!) It's amazing to me to see how much I have done in live thus far and how much more I still have/want to do! I wouldn't want to take back any of the experiences I have had in my life. I know that everything has happened for a for a reason and that I have grown so much.

I'd have to say that my 25th birthday was a great one, filled with food, friends, family and fun! Celebrations for my birthday started on the 11th at Shaun's parents house. They had us over for a yummy dinner and then Michelle gave us treatments! (THANKS!!!) The following Friday night (the16th) we had friends over for cake and ice cream and games! It was TONS of fun! Shaun made homemade ice cream and a lemon cake with cream cheese frosting! It was SO yummy! It was great to be able to spent time laughing and just having fun with Aaron, Betsy, Brook, Christie, Matt and of course my cute husband! Thanks for coming you guys! I am glad that I got to celebrate my birthday with you!

On my birthday  I went to school and then Shaun took me to lunch. That night we went out to dinner with my parents, my grandma, my Aunt Brenda (who's birthday is on the 18th, so we always celebrate our birthdays together), and Grandpa. We went to the Texas Roadhouse and it was REALLY yummy! And then Shaun and I went and walked around the mall. All in all it was a great day!

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! You made my day great!

Oh and I just have to say that I LOVE my primary girls. I knew that they were up to something, but I wasn't quite sure what it was. Last Sunday after church we had a knock on the door and it was Ali, one of my girls, with a plate of cookie and a card signed by all the girls, wishing me a happy birthday! It was SO cute!

Here's a few pictures

The ingredient for the ice cream.... Way fattening, but OH SO YUMMY!!!

My birthday cake

Blowing out the candles

Modeling the present my cousin Jen gave me! 

 The cookies and card from my primary girls

The Muse Concert

This past Monday (April 5th) Shaun and I went to the Muse concert at the E-Center. Back in January I won tickets to the show from 101.9 The End. I am really glad we got to go to the show. It was awesome. Silversun Pickup were the opening band, but by the time we got there we had missed most of them(*). The Muse part of the show was awesome though. The light show was really cool and the music was great.

Shaun  tells me after the concert that the whole concert he was trying to figure out how the screens they had work. They had three screens that they projected images onto, but sometime they were see through, so it intreged Shaun. It would be my hubby that would be thinking about how it all worked.

Anyhow... Here are some pictures from that show... Not all of them are the best pictures, but it will give you an idea of what the stage/light show was like.

Shaun and I before the show started

The stage before the show stared

The start of the show (guys walking up stairs...)

This is a bad picture, but this shows how the stage was setup.

Three screens with movable podiums under them

The drummer kept turning and would face those that were behind the stage

Cool lights

Before the show started Shaun pointed these out to me up in the rafters... Giant eyeballs....

I kept looking up there because I wants to know what they were for....

...and at the end of the show (at least the end we stayed for) we found out.

They had confetti inside...

* Shaun and I thought that we had left plenty early for the show, but we turned out being completely wrong. We ended up being about 30 minutes late to the show, due to traffic and the crappy setup of the E-Center. In addition to this it started to snow on our way to the show, so we grabbed an umbrella to try shielding us from some of the snow. Well we get to the doors and they are telling everyone that they have to leave the umbrellas outside, so Shaun decided to take ours back to the car so that we didn't take the chance of not getting it back. Needless to say we are not impressed with the E-Center. Shaun doesn't want to another concert there until the trax line is complete.