Two Year Molars and other stuff

Because I'm sort of sucking at this blogging thing these days, I wanted to post a quick update.  I'm fairly confident that Baby Girl's first two year molar has broken through the gums on the lower right side.  I've seen it below the gum for a few weeks and then felt it today.  Hopefully the others come through fairly smoothly.

We had our anatomy scan this morning for #2.  I will reveal the sex later to save some surprise for some IRL friends :)

I've lost all motivation to cook.  I cook when I have to, but I just never feel like it and would rather eat out.  Might explain a 6 pound weight gain over the last 4 weeks.  Whoops.

So good that I'm telling you about it again

I know I told you my meal plan for the week already, but I tried a new recipe that knocked my socks off tonight.

Earlier in the week we made shredded buffalo chicken.  It was tasty, but a little spicy for Baby Girl,so we let her dip in some ranch dressing which made her a little happier.  After having dinner and packing up our lunches, we set aside 2 cups of shredded chicken meat to use in this recipe.

I knew this recipe would be good because I've loved everything Cassie has posted that I've tried, but I never could have imagined how good it could be.  You see, I've always been a blue box mac & cheese type of girl.  Love the stuff.  My mom would slave over making a mac & cheese from scratch and I never really liked it.  It would be crunchy on top (in my opinion, mac & cheese shouldn't be crunchy) and I just wasn't a fan.  In early adulthood, I tried this copycat recipe of my favorite macaroni and cheese at our favorite local BBQ restaurant.  Whenever I want to be fancy with my macaroni and cheese, I'll make it and everyone gobbles it up.

So when I saw Cassie's recipe for Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese, I knew it would be yummy, but I just didn't have confidence that I would love it more than my go-to mac & cheese.

But you know what?  I loved this recipe more than any recipe I've made in months.  Seriously.  The freshness of using real milk and cheese, combined with the buffalo chicken and some spices...delicious.  I want to go pick up the pan from the stove and eat the entire thing.  I'm actually thinking that next time I make the buffalo chicken I might just freeze half and use both halves to make this dish.  The only tweak I made to the recipe was that I made it with the already-buffaloed chicken so I didn't add the wing/hot sauce.  I thought the amount of heat was perfect.

I am tempted to put this on the meal plan again next week, but I'm actually thinking I might go see what other mac & cheese recipes she has since I remember quite a few crossing my Google Reader.  But you'd better believe this dish will be back on the meal plan very soon!

My New Love

Move over, Hubby, and make room for my newest love.

This guy:

It's the FoodSaver Mini Plus.  And I'm officially in love.

I got this little guy for just $21, shipped (down from $79), but didn't get a chance to play with it until last night.

Last night's dinner was black beans (I made the whole bag of dry beans with the intention of freezing the two extra "cans" worth), steamed rice, and some other stuff.  Well, I decided to try out this guy on the beans and the extra rice and it was wonderful. 

(To tell the truth, it was The Hubby who used it last night and I watched in awe...it was a three.some of sorts)

It sealed up everything to perfection, sucked all the air out but didn't squish everything.  It was a thing of beauty.  And now I have two cans of black beans in my freezer as well as some rice for fried rice sometime.