Eggs & Cookies

           Happy Saturday!  This morning I woke up to make breakfast and I decided to try the Pioneer Woman's Fatty's Grandma's Cheez Eggs recipe.  Thus far I have loved every single recipe that I have made off the pioneer woman website. Luckily I had all the ingredients already on hand.  I was a tad hesitant because my family is not too fond of scrambled eggs.  The girls loved them when they were younger but now they rather eat donuts and the marshmallows out of the Lucky Charms box.  I have had cheesy eggs from waffle house one night when I was out with my some day  soon to be sister in law Jessica. They were DELICIOUS so I had to try to recreate that yumminess.  The recipe is very simple even Jessica can make it. LOL Just kidding Jess. The eggs were a hit. Ava asked for seconds, thirds and fourths. The recipe is great for kids. I will definitely makes these more often.

    Fatty's Grandmas's Cheez Eggs by The Pioneer Woman
  
Ingredients
   3 whole eggs
   1 Tbsp evaporated milk
   1 pinch of salt
   1 Tbsp (to 2 Tbsp) butter
   1 slice Extra Thick Velveeta Cheese

Prep Instructions
   Heat Small skillet over low to medium-low heat.
   Mix eggs, evaporated milk, and salt together until thoroughly combined.
   Add butter to skillet, swirl to coat. Pour eggs. Tear cheese into pieces and add to eggs
   Stir eggs gently as they cook. (Don't let it burn) When cheese is totally melted, eggs are done.
  

Ta Da  Cheesy Eggs!

Below I posted a direct link for this recipe so you can print it off
http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2009/01/fattys-grandmas-cheez-eggs/



Ok Ok I am not done yet! I have more deliciousness for you.  I also have been promising the girls we will bake cookies. They LOVE cookies. So instead of buying the break and bake cookies like I usually do I went out on a limb and made cookies from scratch. I followed the ingredients making no alterations, but I played around with the baking directions.  I love my cookies to be soft and chewy.  I was quite impressed that I pulled it off. The cookies I made were Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies a recipe I found on foodnetwork.com by Cathy Lowe.   I will post a link at the end of this post. This recipe made 35 cookies. I probably would have made more if I didn't make giant cookies in the first two batches.  They are very good. If there are any left by monday I will bring some to work gals. If you don't see me monday then there are none left and I am in a cookie coma.  My jeans are praying that there will be some left to bring:) Sorry only one pic this go around my phone was dead.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies
 Ingredients
  2 1/4 cups flour
  1 tsp salt
  1 tsp baking soda
  2 sticks of butter, softened  (I used no salt butter)
  1 cup granulated sugar
  1 cup packed brown sugar
  2 large eggs, beaten (oops just realized I didn't beat them)
  1 tbsp vanilla
  1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
  2 cups milk chocolate chips (not semi sweet), 2 Hershey's chocolate bars, or M&M's
    (basically whatever your little heart desires)
  1 cup chopped walnuts(optional) (GROSS I did not use these)


Directions
Preheat oven to 375. In a bowl stir together flour, salt, and baking soda. In another large bowl stir together butter, both surgars, eggs, vanilla and cocoa. (I used my dads big mixer for this part).  THen I gradually poured the bowl with the flour mixture into the mixer.  Mix until combines. Mix chocolate chips and walnuts, if using, and stir to distribute evenly. 


For cookies: Drop dough by tablespoonfuls onto greased baking sheet(s) and bake about 10 minutes. Cool on baking rack


My version: Get a spoonful of dough, roll it into balls, place on cookie sheet and press down slightly(i was trying to mimic the break and bake cookies). bake about 8 minutes for softer cookies, 10 minutes for crunch cookies. My version makes pretty cookies.

Here is the direct link to the recipe so you can print it if you would like.
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/chocolate-chocolate-chip-cookies-recipe/index.html



There ya go! That has been my Saturday so far. One of these days I will post pics and recipes of the stuff I have done in the past. Stay tuned because I plan on sharing my cooking experiences with you guys. Well only the successful ones.  I will also try to incorprate kid friendly foods for you moms and soon to be moms. I can say trying to find foods that both us and kids enjoy have been one of my biggest challenges.  I am happy for advice and any suggestions. If any of you would like me to try a recipe and share it on here I would be happy to.  Have a great weekend!


P.S. I have to share this with you. While I have been writing this blog I notice it is very quiet and I turn around to see this:)

She manged to drag my king size blanket and pillow in here without me noticing oops! Too cute!

School Pictures

Good Morning everyone!  I wanted to share the school pictures of the girls with you. What makes these special is I actually have a couple of Ella. Every time we try to take professional pictures she cries.  We have one picture when she was a baby that she has tears rolling out of her eyes.  We displayed in on our mantle cause it was just too precious not to. We just recently replaced it with her recent school picture.  I have been thinking about getting a good camera so I can try to take some myself. The cost of professional portraits today is crazy!  You will notice there are some photos of Ava in her dress. Ella was supposed to have some taken in her dress but of course she wasn't having it.  I hope you all enjoy!

~ Megan

I can't  resist showing you this next photo it  is one of my favorites 

My first blog!

This is my first blog ever as I said in my about me section I decided to do this after reading my sisters new blog www.familyofspears.wordpress.com.  My intentions for this blog is so family and friends can be updated with the progress of my girls as they grow up and as well as whats new going on in our lives.  Please bare with me I am horrible with grammer and punctuation. I also use many words out of context to make myself sound smart AND I  ramble. I also gaurantee that you will see multiple spelling errors. I know this will make my mother proud since she used to be an english teacher. 

        Ok, Ok back to what this is all about. Here is a quick briefing on what has happened that you all have missed out on.  I have two beautiful daughters. Ava Mai is 4 now. She was born March 8th 2007.  She is about to start an adventure out in public school pre-k this fall  at her mimi's school. For those who don't know mimi is my mom.  I will refrence her as mimi alot and my dad is Papa. Ella Marie is 2. Born February 15th, 2007. Shes quite the character. She is always making me laugh. Shes is now almost done potty training YAY!!!!. Now whoever said being a mom is easy should be shot. Just kidding :) No, I love my children very, very much but I have the mommy blues at times.  For those who know me my children are just like me but worse. My parents love it. Mom, Dad I am sorry for all the hell I have ever  put you all through. For those who might ask if we will be having anymore children NOOOO!! We will NOT is say NOT be having anymore!  We also have 2 dogs. Payton our pitbull and Pixie our chihuahua. What a combo.

      I know some people are thinking why is my username zabelfamilyof4 when im not married YET. Even though we are not married we life the life like we are. We have two beautiful girls and a piece of paper doesn't influence the love we have for one another. YES I want to be married and someday we will be but there is no rush.  I always tell him it took 10 years for my brother in law to pop the question to my sister so I gave him 10 years. He only has two now.

      I also am very excited about the new addition coming to our family very soon. Lyla Day Spears. My sister is having her first baby and I will finally be an Aunt. I hope Travis and I can be at least half the aunt and uncle to Lyla as her and chris have been with my two girls.  I owe them alot. Me having my girls has brought my sister and I  closer together and now her being pregnant is bringing us even closer. I love that I can pass down some useful advice to her. I also want to take this time to say thank you to my brother aka bubba for being a GREAT uncle. He is soooo great with the girls. Also to my mom and dad the two hardest working people that I ever known other than Travis Zabel. My mom and dad have been my biggest support systems since I had my girls. They have gone above and beyond helping me out with everything.  I know our family is not big on affection, but Thank You and I love you. Ok enough with the mush heartfelt speech. 


 I recently have embarked on this new adventure in cooking. I like to think of myself as a present day betty crocker. I am very excited to share my cooking experiences with you.

I hope everyone is as excited as I am to be doing this. I will post many many pictures!

Also I don't know why my text is two different sizes in this post