things i saw, things i love

Happy spring, dear readers! Although this week has been quite a dreary one, I’m just hoping this means that sunshine and flowers are on their way. I’ve gotten to do a good amount of blog reading while I’ve been on vacation this week, and it’s been great. I’m amazed at how many blogs are out there in this virtual world of ours and I keep discovering new and more wonderful ones all the time.

Here are some of the things I’ve seen and loved this week…

The flowers in this bucket are my most favorite colors. I’m so in love with all kinds of shades of orange and pink. I even love the red thrown into the mix here! (photo from The Bottom of the Ironing Basket)

You must check out this homemade cheesy cracker recipe over at little white whale. I love the Noak’s Ark animal shapes, and the recipe seems easy and delicious!

What an adorable idea for a thank you spotted on You Are My Fave. Candy in a jar! Are those peachy-o’s I see? Yummmmm.

Seeing this photograph makes me yearn for summer. I can’t wait til the air is warm and the breeze feels wonderful after a hot summer afternoon. Summer is my happy time and I am counting the days! Photo found at For Me.

These brown butter toasted coconut chocolate cookies look devine over at Joy the Baker. Whew! That’s a mouthful of a cookie name, but it doesn’t get much better than that. I can’t wait to try baking these soon.

What a great collection of spring vintage fashion seen over at Paper Morning. I love the green dress and the Kate Spade purse! Also, I’ve been tempted to pick up that cookbook from Anthropologie on a number of occasions, but have yet to make the final move. Might just have to the next time I am there!

And lastly, here’s a dreaming look at a cherry blossom tree via Meg’s Musings. They are about to burst into bloom around DC and I wish I could be there to witness the magic.

Happy Friday, everyone! xo

easy peasy turkey chili

I love chili. I love anything with beans and cheese and sour cream. And corn bread too. We can’t forget the cornbread.

If you like these things too then you should try this turkey chili recipe. It was given to me a few years ago from a woman I worked with and I have made it a handful of times since it came into my life.

A solid recipe that’s delicious, VERY easy to make, and makes a good amount of leftovers to eat the rest of the week! This is one of those dishes that only gets better with time too, so I recommend sticking the pot in the fridge and saving some for later. Your taste buds will thank you.

Here’s the recipe…

Ingredients:
2 lbs ground turkey
14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
2 cans kidney beans (undrained)
chopped up onion
red bell, green, and yellow peppers, chopped
3-5 tbsp chili powder (I used 2)
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt (I forgot to add this and mine tasted fine)

Directions:

Cook the ground turkey and onion thoroughly in a large pot. Add rest of ingredients, reduce heat to medium/low heat. Cook for 2-3 hours.

TOLD YOU.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

The first night we had it with corn bread a chips. YUM. The second night Zan had the idea of eating it with fusilli pasta, and it was oh so good in an american chop-suey kind of way. Both ways were delicious!

Enjoy!

cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread

Welcome to my cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread adventure.

Advisory: There is a lot of sugar in this masterpiece.

A LOT.

But naturally, that’s what makes it so delicious. Mmmmm.

I found this recipe from my ultimate fave: Joy the Baker. THANKS, Joy! You totally rock.

Alright! Let’s start with our team:

You’re going to need flour, sugar, active dry yeast, salt, butter, milk, water, eggs, and vanilla for the dough. And then for the tasty sugary filling you’ll need a little more sugar (or who are we kidding, a LOT), ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and melted butter.

First, I had to mix all the dry ingredients for the dough together. I whisked them up real good till it was all nice and fluffy.

On a side note: Just throw the packet of active dry yeast in without following the directions on the packet. I was a little confused here, because I make another bread where you need to add water and sugar to the yeast packet to “activate” the dry yeast, but after reading Joy’s directions several times I figured out that this need not be done for this recipe. Just throw the yeast in the bowl with all the other dry ingredients and call that part of the adventure a day.

Next I made a buttery, vanilla-y, milk mixture by melting 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter in a 1/3 cup of whole milk. After the butter and milk are good and blended I added 1/4 cup of water and a teaspoon of vanilla. Mmm I love vanilla.

After this, I added the dry ingredients with the eggs and the buttery, vanilla-y, milk mixture and stirred and stirred and stirred with a spatula until the dough was good and sticky. Joy says sticky is good.

Mine looked something like this:

Then I placed a clean towel over the bowl and then patiently waited for the dough to rise. This took about 1 hour. It was hard for me to wait, but I willed myself to do it.

While I was waiting ever so patiently I made the cinnamon sugar fulling and melted another 2 tablespoons of butter until it was semi-brown. I probably could have browned it even more than I did, but since I’d never browned butter before I was scared and didn’t want it to burn. Maybe burned is what Joy meant, but I don’t like burned tastes so I took precautions on this step.

There is my risen dough. Looks terrific if I do say so myself.

I rolled the dough out as shown and slathered on the melted butter and hefty sugar filling. It was an insane amount of sugar, but what Joy says, I do. Sugar, sugar, heaven. Then I sliced the dough into six equal-ish pieces, stacked them on top of each other and sliced the pile six more times.

From here I loaded the squares into a buttered and flowered loaf pan.

And just for the heck of it, I sprinkled on some extra sugar that tried to get away.

So. much. SUGAR.

And oh so worth it.

After this I had to let the dough rise in the bread pan for 40 or so more minutes. Then FINALLY (I know!) I baked it up. 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees and I had myself a masterpiece:

Tasty, tasty. This bread is amazing.

SOOOOO good!! It certainly wasn’t quick, but it’s worth it.

For a more detailed recipe and more delicious pictures of the cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread, visit Joy the Baker. She’s witty, and totally cool, and makes lots and lots of delicious treats to eat. Make something from her blog and you can thank me later. She never disappoints.

things i saw, things i love

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for the weekend. I’m also ready to say HELLO, dear friend! to spring.

Where are you spring? I need you in my life. Like NOW.

Here’s a list of some of my faves from this week…

I don’t know what you’ll be up to this weekend, but if your looking for me I’ll be in my kitchen making this pretty masterpiece, seen and instantly loved over at Joy the Baker. Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread, you and me were meant to be. I know this will be the highlight of my weekend and I am beyond excited about it.

This room is light, modern, and beautiful. Bright Bazaar never fails to please when it comes to design.

I’ve been following Making it Lovely for awhile now, and I just LOVE the monthly photo project she is doing with her little girl (and now again with her new baby boy!). Each month she snaps a photo in the same spot and it’s so miraculous to see how babies grow so fast! What a terrific idea and such an incredible keepsake.

These mason jar chandeliers are precious!!! What a fabulous idea by BootsNGus seen via Meg’s Musings.

This gorgeous print, by Denise Levy, is so bold and lovely. The bright yellow brings me a feeling of energy and the bicycle and flowers bring happy thoughts of warmer weather.

Besides making the insanely delicious cinnamon pull-apart bread, I’ll be wishing happy spring thoughts this weekend. LOTS of them. Hope you have a good one! xo.