Ferris and Simone

Last fall, I had a Pampered Chef party at my house. I had it for two reasons – first of all, I wanted to have fun with friends and family, and second of all, I needed a good set of pots and pans.  :)

After much deliberation, Neal and I purchased a set of stainless steel cookware. Of course, I love nonstick cookware, and we do have some that my brother and his wife bought for us a while ago. But I really wanted a good set of stainless steel cookware. It does a better job browning meats, creating nice crusts, etc. I also wanted a set that could be taken off the stovetop and right into the oven.

I was really excited about the cookware we bought, and still love it to pieces. I seriously feel like a chef on The Food Network when I use it!

Anyway, Neal and I have noticed lately that it really needed a good deep cleaning. The skillets and saucepans were forming a pretty gross film, and Neal was having a heck of a time cooking his eggs in them, when he normally doesn’t have a problem. I mean, we use soap and water and scrub them after each use, but it just wasn’t working very well anymore.

I bought some stainless steel cookware cleaner and went to it today. I was amazed at the results.

I will say that Neal told me to take pictures of this. I kind of didn’t want to because I didn’t want to admit how gross I let my pans get. Although if you really know me, this probably doesn’t surprise you too much, haha. Anyway, here’s the before:

I know! Totally gross! I hadn’t actually used this pan in a while because of this. Or I would only use it for sauces or something that wouldn’t stick.

And here’s after scrubbing with the Pampered Chef stainless steel cookware cleaner:

Looks like a whole new pan, right?!?!

I was so freakin’ excited. I feel like I get disappointed by products all the time, so when something works, it makes me pretty giddy. These seriously made my weekend! Look how pretty that pan is!!

I celebrated with a scrumptious toasted cheese sandwich.

Halloween was pretty low key in our household. Neal and I ran errands in the morning, I planted a mum in my outdoor pot, and I made some yummy goodies for us.

Our neighborhood is like a trick-or-treat mecca. They bus ‘em in, man. I’m serious. It was raining when trick-or-treating started at 6, but we already had two families by 6:05. The rain let up about a half hour later, and it was like a free-for-all.

I really like handing out candy. I loved trick-or-treating when I was little, so I think it’s really important to hand out candy if we are home. I also LOVE looking at kid’s costumes. There were some really great costumes this year!

Here’s Simone looking for the trick-or-treaters with a treat of her own.

Here were some of my favorite trick-or-treaters:

– A little girl dressed as Dorothy. She had the curled, pigtailed-long hair and a little basket with a stuffed dog inside. It was funny because she couldn’t fit the candy in her basket because the dog took up all the room!

– Twin boys dressed as bugs. These kids were probably not even two, and they were stinkin’ adorable. They tottered down our driveway with their bags of candy. Their parents had these monkey backpack things that had leashes attached. I think that’s kind of weird, but when the one kid tried to push his way into our house, I was glad the dad could pull him back with the leash, haha. The boy’s name was Anderson and he was trying to get to our cats.

– Princesses. Oh geez. Multiple, elaborate princesses. Makeup, updos. The whole shebang. Maybe I should start a princess-costume-making business, because it seems lucrative.

– A little boy dressed as a bear. Only his face was peeking out and he was pretty much the cutest thing ever. Neal was standing at the door and I was in the kitchen. Neal yells from the door “Hey, Megan, come here, you have to see this kid!….. Oh no!…. Oh, he just fell in the grass!…. Oh, he’s getting up now….. He’s kinda wet now……” HAHA, it was pretty funny. He was adorable. I came to the door and the fall must not have fazed him. “Hi!” he yelled. His mother, who looked exhausted, said that he kept running because he was so excited and this was not the first time he had fallen that night. HAHA!

Can ya tell I enjoyed handing out candy? We bought three large bags and only have half a bag left. It was a madhouse! The only thing that slightly peeved me was that we had some double dippers. I really didn’t care about the little kids, but there was this one scary-looking goth/witch teenager with her little sister. They came up the door and I said “Oh, hey, I remember you, but that’s OK, I’ll give you more candy.” The teenager just stared at me. I said “Don’t you remember me?” (I mean, they were seriously at my house about 20 minutes ago). The teenager said “No” and held out her bag of candy. She kind of freaked me out so I hurried up and gave her candy so she didn’t put a spell on me or something.

For dinner, I made some shrimp scampi. It was scrumptious, but I got distracted by trick-or-treaters and the top got a little burnt, haha. And sorry for the crappy picture. I was starving and just wanted to eat!

And to get in the fall mood, I made some pumpkin muffins with cream cheese icing. Oh boy, are these things good! I got the recipe here.

Sorry for the crappy picture. They do not do these justice. I’m telling you, make these things NOW! So good!

Hope you all had a good Halloween!

What’s been my deal lately? I have been slacking hard core on the blog. I guess there’s just been a lot of stuff going on, and this fell to the wayside. I’m sorry! Now that we are entering the arctic months, I’ll probably having nothing better to do than blog, haha, so hopefully I get on the ball with this thing. As my friend Jodie says, I need to get my head in the game! Oh, and congrats to Jodie for getting a job! Woot!

I have some foodie things to show first. First, Neal and I have a breadmaker that was given to us by family friends. We don’t use it real often. I would say that’s mostly because it takes about 4-5 hours, so I need to be able to be home for long stretches. But I made some crusty honey French bread the other day, and it was really good!

I wish I would have taken some pictures once we cut the bread. It was really good! I think our breadmaker makes rather dense bread, although that could be the recipes I use. Either way, this was really good and very filling!

We had Neal’s parents and grandparents up the other weekend. We had a really nice visit! I made my lasagna, which was a hit. For dessert, I had viewed a recipe online for apple turnovers. I thought the recipe for the dough was interesting. It called for sweetened sour cream, which really gave the dough a nice tang. And it really came out like a flaky pastry crust dough.

Everyone seemed to really like these, so I must have done something right!

So… the Phillies are in the World Series. SO EXCITING! It’s been really fun watching the games. Tonight is Game 2 of the World Series, and the Phillies lead the series 1-0, since they won last night.

Since it’s Thursday, and the Phillies are on, I decided to make something fun. I had a lot of potatoes that I had to use up or they were going to go bad, so what better to make than a mashed potato bar! So Neal and I made salads, and then we had mashed potatoes with some fixin’s – bason bits, chives, cheese and sour cream. Yum!

When I have a mashed potato bar, I make them and then throw the batch in the crockpot on low, covered. It really helps to keep them fresh and fluffy.

OK, so I’m off to watch the game now. LET’S GO PHILS!!

Yay! The Eagles won today!

Simone’s excited!

Well, the Eagles should have won. They were playing a terrible team, haha.

Here’s hoping the Phillies win tonight!

I’m incredibly sore today. It makes me realize how out of shape I am. I really need to get the dust off of that elliptical and get my butt into shape. Blah.

OK, so I have some kitty updates! I realized I haven’t post about my blog namesakes for a while. Ferris and Simone are good. We have some stray cats in our neighborhood that keep getting onto our deck and staring in our back door at our cats. I don’t like that, because it freaks our cats out, but Neal and I have tried to be vigilante at watching out for these cats. Anyone have any recommendations on something we can spray around our deck to keep out the stray cats, but that also won’t be harmful to our cats if we let our doors open? I’m really getting tired of the drama caused by these stray cats.

Neal and I have been noticing that the litter box we have is too small. I really liked it. It kind of looked like a spaceship/pod thing, but both Ferris and Simone couldn’t seem to go without sticking their heads and front legs out the front. And Ferris would literally almost lift up the lid if he stood up in it.

So we decided to get them a new box. We measured ours to make sure the one we got was bigger. We are happy with the new box we got. And we also bought a mat to try to minimize the stray litter.

The litter box has a door on it, but we wanted to get them used to the box before putting the door on.

P.S. – I realize I’m lame for posting about my cats’ litter box. But seriously, do you really expect anything else from me?

OK, and we also bought them some cat grass. It’s not catnip; it’s grass that is OK for cats to eat, and is supposed to help them with digestion. They fought over this stuff and really seemed to love it.

I think it’s wheat or oat grass. Either way, it really kept them busy for a while. And there was definitely some midnight snacking.

And here is a picture of Simone trying to hide under our football table (we call it that because it has leather accents on the top that look like football laces).

And Ferris kept meowing at our hamper until I tipped it over for him. He dashed into it and it started rolling back and forth with him in it. It was pretty funny and he seemed like he was having a good time!

So anyway, that’s all for now. The Eagles have a bye week this week, so we are just watching a little bit of each game that is on. I really love Sundays. Does Monday really have to follow it?