Crockpot Cabbage Rolls

I'm always making an effort to eat healthier. I kind of float between a paleo and gluten free diet. When we're home it's easy to stick to those guidelines, but I gotta be honest, when I go out that stuff just flies right out the window. Oh well, you only live once. Right? In that case, I don't go out very often and I'm always searching for interesting healthy recipes to make at home.  I guess you could say my healthy home cooking justifies my better diet judgement while I'm out.  So, when I found this recipe for cabbage rolls I was happy it was both paleo and gluten free. 

Peeled, boiled cabbage leaves. 

The filling... Ground pork, ground beef, sautéed onion and riced cauliflower 

Ready to wrap and roll

First layer going into the crockpot with the tomato sauce

Crockpot full and ready for the sauce

Cabbage rolls topped off with remaining sauce

These cabbage rolls turned out great! They were delicious, definitely making these again! So with a little bit of prep work this recipe is pretty easy.  I made the filling first. I took a head of cauliflower and pulsed the florets in my food processor until I got a rice like texture. You want about a cup for the recipe, so I really only used about half a head of cauliflower. Then you take your riced cauliflower and combine with the diced onion and sautée until tender, about 3-5 minutes. While your sautéing the veggies you can make your meat mixture. Mix 1lb ground beef, 1lb ground pork, salt & pepper and then finally add in cooled veggie sautée.  Boil one medium head of cabbage for 15min. Peel cabbage leaves off gently and let cool before wrapping and rolling. For the tomatoe sauce I just used a large can of crushed tomatoes.  

Now you're ready for assembly....

Pour half of tomato sauce into bottom of crop pot

Stuff filling into cabbage leaves and wrap and layer into crock pot

Pour more tomato sauce over first layer and add remaining cabbage rolls

Top with the rest of tomato sauce and cook on low for 5  hours. 

Totally Obsessed Tuesday

Today, I'm totally obsessed with all the wood work and fixtures in this new custom home my husband built. He really has an eye for that down home rustic feel.  It's not all cookie cutter and cold. He creates homes that make you feel as though you've lived there for years. It's amazing. I love how creative he is and how he incorporates his clients personalities into their homes. 

First of all, check out the view off this back deck...

Love, love, love these oak floors

Family shot. Love the banisters

The master bath

Lights over the bar in the kitchen.  These are so cool!

Living room, den, kitchen area. Those sliding glass doors provide tons of natural light. 

Like I said, I'm totally obsessed with the floors, all the rough cut barn wood and the lighting in this home.  Also, this home has numerous energy efficiency upgrades. From the energy star appliances to the heat pump, this house is a great example of all the new geothermal technology.  I love this home, because it feels like home. Not only is it warm and inviting, it's beautifully rustic.  

Homemade Pimento Cheese

NI never realized how much I liked pimento cheese until this last summer when we were at the beach.  We had been out on the beach all morning and for lunch we put out a huge mess of self serve snacks. Palmetto Pimento Cheese just happened to be one of our many snack selections.  I'm not sure why I decided to eat this pimento cheese, because I have always thought pimento cheese was kind of gross.   This stuff was amazing and thus started my love affair with pimento cheese.  Needless to say, I ate a lot of pimento cheese that week.  Which got me thinking that it's probably not that hard to make and that it'd be a relatively inexpensive snack.   Well, I was right.  It's basically cream cheese and shredded cheese mixed together with some pimentos. 

This took me all of 5 minutes to make. 

First you start off with about 4oz of cream cheese

Then take your hand mixer or standing mixer to soften up the cream cheese. 

Add in your cheeses. I used sharp cheddar and a mexican blend. 

Toss in those pimentos 

Mix all together on a low sitting and then your done. 

Yummmm.

Skillet Roasted Brussel Sprouts

Brussel sprouts are delicious and definitely a family favorite here at the Smith house. They are also pretty easy to prepare and loaded with lots of vitamins and nutrients like, Vitamin C, Vitamin K and Omega-3 Fatty Acids.  I have attempted to grow this veggie in my garden, but it didn't have a chance to produce anything before the deer got to it. That's ok, because at least I know it will grow and there's always the grocery store option.  That's were I found these beauties, still on the stalk. 

First you're gonna want to rinse off your brussels and cut them in half vertically, keeping the stem in tack.  This keeps the leaves on the sprout from falling off. 

Next we're gonna parboil the sprouts 

This gives the sprouts a jump start on cooking before finishing them off by roasting them stovetop.  Parboil for 3-5 minutes and then immediately drain and throw Brussels into a bowl of ice water, allowing the brussels to stop cooking and retain that vibrant green color.  Next, bust out about 4 pieces of bacon and diced it up.  Toss bacon into a heavy bottomed skillet, like cast iron, and sauté for a few minutes until the bacon has released some of its greasy, fatty goodness.  Add the brussels and roast, stirring occasionally, until they have a nice brown, carmelizing crust. Should take you about 10 minutes.   The grease from the bacon not only gives the brussels a great flavor, but it helps create that wonderful roasted flavor. 

There ya have it...Skillet Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Bacon. Yum!

Oh how I've missed you

I have been missing my Muddy Boots and Chickens. I have completely dropped the ball on blog posts in the last couple of months.  So, what's my excuse?  Life and laziness in general.  What a terrible excuse, but at least it's honest. I have slacked so bad on this blog, because I let laziness get the best of me. I would want to blog and then when it came down to it, I'd be like, oh I'm tired or I'll do it tomorrow.  Well you know the excuse I'm tired or I'm busy, is the gateway excuse to a lifetime of excuses. 

So, I'm back. I'm determined to not be a victim of laziness and other slacker excuses. I have a busy life, but the blog is my outlet. Here's to creative thinking, interesting blog posts and an inspiring lifestyle. 

I love this picture.  It's from my honeymoon in the Bahamas.  This picture makes me smile every single time I look at it. It's currently my home screen on my iPad and my inspiration to get off my bum. Thank you, tropical island paradise, for reminding me that life can be a dream come true. 

DIY Multi Purpose Cleaner

I'm a big fan of DIY anything. So deciding to make my own all purpose cleaner was a no brainier.  It's super easy and takes minutes to make. Oh and you most likely have all these ingredients on hand.  Here's your mixture...

2 cups water

1 cup white distiller vinegar

Lemon juice either fresh squeezed or store bought

2 Tbsp natural dish soap, like seventh generation 

Pour it all into a spray bottle of your choice and shake til combined. 

I choose to recycle a store bought spray bottle, but whenever I'm not feeling lazy and remember to get a nicer looking bottle, I'll replace it. 

I love the smell of fresh lemon, it's clean and crisp. You could add your favorite scented essential oil instead of the lemon.  Feel free to customize anyway you like. 

Garden Beauties

I wish I could garden all year round. I love fresh veggies out of my backyard or a friends backyard.  However, unless you have a greenhouse, our mountain winters don't allow much growth for anything October-April. Even if you do have a greenhouse, most people put little heaters in there during the coldest months.  So the growing season up here isn't very long and it isn't very easy.  I got lucky this year, between my garden and some friends gardens we pulled in a lot of nice veggies this season. 

Purple pole beans from my neighbors garden

Grilled em right up...really tasty and they turn green once you cook them...pretty cool!

Gardening is a relatively new thing for me and I've really gotten into it. It's both therapeutic and rewarding. I'm looking forward to the next years growing season. 

Attempted Granola Bars

I've read numerous recipes for homemade granola bars. I've also been wanting and planning to make these all summer.  Since it's the end of August now, I thought I'd go ahead and give it a try. The recipe is simple enough and you can throw in just about anything you want from fruits and nuts to chocolate and other sweet treats. The challenge is getting it to stick and stay together. 

Here's my mixture of gluten free oats, sunflower seeds, dried pomegranate seeds, melted butter, honey and peanut butter. I was thinking things were looking good at this point, cause they were definitely tasting good.  You know, mixed the dry ingredients, oats, chex cereal, sunflower seeds and pomegranate together. Then took my boiled, melted down honey, butter and peanut butter mixture and poured it right over my dry mix. Stir it up to combine and you have your wonderful hot, sticky mess of granola goodness.  Now time to make that hot mess into bars

I pressed all the mixture into a greased baking pan and let that sit at room temperature for 2hrs.  While I was waiting I decided to do a chocolate drizzle over the top. 

I'd say that was more than halfway successful. Just disregard the chocolate blob in the middle. I had a heavy pouring hand at that moment. 

Ok, so 2hrs have passed, I'm ready to cut up the granola and make my bars and with my first cut I could already tell that they were going to fall apart. Wasn't worried about it, just popped them in the fridge for 30 minutes thinking that will firm things right up.  30min in the fridge, granola comes out and still falling apart. I accepted defeat at this point and turned this "fail" into a glorified version of granola. 

Here's the almost empty jar. My husband loves it!  I'm glad it wasn't a total loss. There's definitely a learning curve when it comes to making granola bars and I think I've figured out what I did wrong and to fix that for next time. I basically didn't use enough sauce, I needed more honey and peanut butter. Note to self...measurements are important. 

Anyways, I'm not gonna give you a specific recipe since these guys didn't turn out. I'll tell ya what I used though

Gluten Free Oats- about 2 cups

Rice/chex cereal- about a cup

Butter -1/4 cup

Honey -1/4 cup

Peanut Butter - 1/2 cup maybe

Some sunflower seeds

Some pomegranate seeds

Melted chocolate chips

Next time I'll use more peanut butter and honey, maybe throw a little raw sugar into the mix. Also, I'll let the wet ingredients boil/cook a little longer. When I get it all perfected, I'll hook you up with a detailed recipe and a play by play of the process. 

TOT

The dog/chicken obsession is getting out of control at my house.  My dogs are completely obsessed with the chickens and the chickens are kind of obsessed with the dogs.  These birds have no fear. They'll just fly right into the dog pen and strut around for a hot second and fly back out.  This drives the dogs mad! I think the chickens like to taunt, tease and test the dogs. It's pretty ridiculous.  The dogs have been in strict training for almost a year now with the whole you can look, but you can't touch/eat the chickens.  Poor dogs get yelled at and popped on the nose if they even nip at the birds and then the chickens never get in trouble. Sounds unfair, but I know you can train a dog and he'll listen, but chickens....

Exhibit A. Gretchen Butters. German short hair mix. An avid bird lover and chicken extraordinaire. Unfortunately, this ole girl has gotten 3 of our chickens and that's why she's in doggy jail when we're not home. 

Exhibit B. Pungo. German short hair purebred.  Our prize bird dog hunter. She is totally obsessed with these chickens. She heards them, chases them, stares at them, nips them and repeats. This is what she does all day long. 

Pungo, turn between letting chickens in or out of their coop

DIY Earring Holder

I have been wanting to make my own earring holder for a long time. Several of my friends have made them and they're all over Pinterest and they're so cute.  So, I finally got around to making one the other week. This little Diy project was really easy and it cost almost nothing. You can get really creative with this one by choosing different types of colors and mediums. These would make great gifts for any occasion. 

Here's my step by step process...

I picked out a cheap frame at Michaels, it was $4, and I already had some paint at home, but I'm pretty sure I bought that paint at Michaels for around $3. Anyways, the point is it's cheap. 

I painted a light coat because I wanted some of the black to show through. You know, give it that rustic look. 

Well, that didn't work out the way I thought it would. My cheap, fake wooden frame had some kind of coating on it to make it look like wood, which disagreed with my paint.  All the paint began peeling off, that kinda sucked.  Maybe sometimes cheaper isn't better. Guess I should've sprung for the real wooden frame. 

I was determined to make this frame work in my favor.  So I thought I'd either switch to using spray paint or just try and sand off whatever the frame was coated in. I didn't have any spray paint, but I had plenty of sand paper.  I got to sanding and it didn't take long to get most of the paint and coating off the frame. 

I repainted my frame and it worked!  Next I got out my burlap that was leftover from making my pallet garden beds and cut it to fit the frame. 

I busted out my trusty staple gun and attached the burlap to the frame. Just a side note here, I actually doubled up the the burlap thinking it would make it stronger for holding heavier earrings. If you don't have any heavy earrings in your jewelry arsenal then one layer of burlap should be fine. 

At this point I was pretty much done. Just had to trim off the excess burlap. 

My finished project! I have it just sitting on the counter in my bathroom, but I'll probably end up hanging it on the wall to free up the space. I'm happy with the way it turned out and I'm sure I'll make more. Like I said, you can get pretty creative with this project. I choose to use burlap, because that's what I had on hand, but you could use small chicken wire or window screen as your backing and you could do a ton of different things for the frame. 

Totally Obsessed Tuesdays

So, this weeks obsession is not a big surprise and it really doesn't need a grand introduction. 

I, like so many others are totally obsessed with...

This addictive website is amazing!  Where else can you go and find anything and everything?  I'm not gonna lie, Pinterest consumes most of my free time. I mean, I'm already life dependant on social media as it is, but Pinterest is basically my go to for just about anything. If it happens to not be on Pinterest, then sometimes I strongly consider not perusing the mission at hand. Yes, I'll admit it, I'm addicted and obsessed with Pinterest. 

Just the site of this icon on any web page, blog, or social media of any kind makes me want to take a look. Yeah, yeah I'm a junky and it's probably only gonna get worse. Ok, so, I might not have thousands of boards or pins or followers on my Pinterest page, but some of my boards are in the hundreds. From first glance at my Pinterest page you might not think I'm that big a freak about it. However, I'm the secret surfer. I'm the one who's always looking, just not pinning every single thing I see. 

If you don't know what Pinterest is, I'm glad I've at least brought it to your attention. If you do know what Pinterest is, then maybe your share my obsession with this website. Whatever your case might be, I hope you at least stop by my Pinterest page and check on my latest pins or likes. I try to keep it interesting. 

TOT

Totally Obsessed Tuesdays, ummm I guess I'm starting a theme for at least one day of the week. 

Alright, so my TOT for this week is Craft Beer.  I love local, homebrew style beers. Well, I love beer in general, but craft beer is the best. Luckily in North Carolina there are craft beer breweries popping up everywhere and even better there are a few in my town and the surrounding areas. 

I'm gonna feature a few of my favorites 

Flat Top Brewery, Banner Elk, NC. 

This brewery just opened last month. They're pretty small, only 6-8 brews on tap, but they sure are tasty. These guys have their eyes set on distribution mostly, not so much a tasting room. However, they're open 6 days a week and offer up some of the best small town brews.  

Stout and Irish Red

Appalachian Mountain Brewery (AMB) Boone, NC

Ok, these guys are in it to win it and they're doing a damn good job. Not only do they have a wide variety of home brews and ciders, they give back to the community every single day and they're the only certified sustainable/green brewery in town. I love their mission statement, "Changing the High Country One Pint at a Time, ACT LOCAL. DRINK LOCAL! "

Hawksbill Pale Ale

Pisgah Brewing Company, Black Mountain, NC

This brewery is one of many in the Asheville, NC area.  If you know anything about Asheville, then you know they're killing it in the craft brew category.  This is the place you'd want to be if you were going on a brewery crawl. Pisgah offers over a dozen brews and has a heavy distribution in the surrounding areas. 

Pisgah Summer Ale

Me and my son, Ollie. He had fun running around the brewery and my husband I enjoyed a couple tasty brews, wishing 3 year olds could be designated drivers....haha, one day

None of these wonderful brews would be possible if it wasn't for this awesome plant, hops

Hops make it happen

I love, love, love beer and I love trying all kinds of different brews. However, my go to flavors are pale ales, summer ales, most seasonal brews, rye and scotch ales. Happy beer drinking and cheers!