Pickled Eggs are not on my list of favorite foods but they are for my husband and son.  I love pickles and I love eggs but why anyone would want to eat a picked egg is beyond me.  With that said, I’ll share the recipe that me and my man used, in which, him and Tyler devoured each and every single egg as soon as 8 days hit!  Enjoy!

P.S. I’d double next time and make a lot more.

Since St. Patrick’s Day is coming around quickly, we’ve been making all sorts recipes; everything from pot of gold treats to shamrock pie.  Since the weather is warming up here in Texas, we wanted to cool things down a bit and decided to make this super easy Lime Sherbert Cooler.  It’s the easiest thing to make and kids love it! Truett helped with the scoops, I poured the drink, and we topped off with Reddi-whip!

Enjoy y’all!

P.S. I was told that I spelled Sherbert wrong, that it should be Sherbet. LOL  Well, I decided to google it and we both are right, although I Sherbet is the most common used.  Oh well….

sher·bet  (shûrbt)n.

also sher·bert (-bûrt) A frozen dessert made primarily of fruit juice, sugar, and water, and also containing milk, egg white, or gelatin.

Quick and easy meal solutions are what everyone is craving these days and finding desserts, like this Whipped Yogurt Pie, that are fast fixes are no exceptions.  I brought you a Summer salad using Avocado and Tomato last week, and this week I bring you dessert, both using only 3 ingredients.

What I love about this pie is that you can use ANY yogurt flavor you want to use.  And if you’re really watching the calories, you can use light in both the yogurt and whip cream.  For our dessert, I chose the Pineapple Upside down Cake Yogurt because the very thought of turning that into a pie mixed with whipped cream made me drool instantly.  Not to mention it’s cold which makes it great for the 114′ weather we’ve been having!  Mixing it is a breeze, it’s the waiting for it to firm up in the fridge is what drives me crazy! I hate waiting!

Hope you guys enjoy!  By the way, I always print the Yoplait Yogurt coupons before I buy them.  They have them all the time and every little bit of change adds up!

What flavor will you be making your pie?

I know you’ve all anxiously awaited the results to March’s Food Challenge and I apologize for the delay.  I hope you all can understand that I just had too much going on offline that I was barely online. In fact, I think I only wrote 1 or 2 posts in April. All future food challenges should be consistent now that I have merged and have more time to dedicate to this blog.   Anyhoo, I have the winner and I’m ready to share May’s Food Challenge with you.

There can only be one winner in the monthly food challenge and March’s winner is………. Diane’s Pesto Torte!  Honestly, I thought it was a creative dish that would gather folks around and quickly become a conversation piece.  It looks delicious and I’m planning to try it this holiday season! Congrats Diane!

MAY FOOD CHALLENGE

The theme for May y’all, is EGGS in honor of National Egg Month!  I don’t know if you know but my favorite are Eggland’s Best Eggs.   The recipe you submit has to have EGGS in it.

DEADLINE & RULES

Deadline for this food challenge is March 29th (about 11pm CST), one day before my 35th birthday!  You can READ ALL THE FOOD CHALLENGE RULES HERE, and please do read them.

SPONSOR

The sponsor for May is  Temp-tations.  The Food Challenge winner will receive a beautiful set of Temp-tations Old World 16-piece Oven-to-Table Set.  These are BEAUTIFUL! style & color may change

If you would like to sponsor a Food Challenge month, you can email me at sponsor@mywoodenspoon.com with food challenge in the subject.

***************************************************

*NONBLOGGERS -If you do not have a blog but want to participate, you may submit your recipe here if you don’t have a place to upload your photo (or know how).  Flickr and Photobucket are great thought if you do want to have your own place to upload photos. Then you can just upload, write the recipe with your photo and grab the URL and add to the linky.  Either way, I’ll help you all I can. Please know that should you submit via this form, you are allowing me to publish the recipe and photo on my blog.

*BLOGGERS -Leave the url to your recipe in the linky below.

Another round of Meal Solutions! This week’s ingredient list was very budget friendly and tasted delicious!  I have to admit, I have rarely used Fettuccine so I was excited to for this week.  If you are needing a fast meal, holy cow is this fast y’all!!!  All it takes is boiling the pasta and the meal is pretty much done.  I used everything below except the garlic bread because I couldn’t find it.  I also didn’t use the cookie mix as we already had some dessert from a birthday.

This week’s meal solutions food products are:

• GV Alfredo Pasta Sauce 16oz
• GV Fettuccine 160z
• GV Chunky Breast of Chicken 12.5oz
• GV Grated Parmesan 80z
• Sara Lee SD Garlic Bread 10oz
• GV Diced Tomatoes 14.5oz
• BC Chocolate chip Cookie 17.5oz

Doesn’t this look yummy?  My boys loved it and it’s a great filler with those noodles!  Enjoy!

Disclosure: Compensation has been provided by Walmart for my time and efforts to create this post. All opinions are my own, always have been, always will be. Check out more meal solutions from my fellow Walmart Moms and from the Walmart website.

This week’s Walmart Meal Solution is actually something that we used to make all the time back in our broke days.   It’s a pretty basic meal but I’ll share with you ways to spice it up.

The ingredients are:

• Kraft Mac & Cheese, 7.25 oz
• Great Value Chicken Breast, 12.5 oz
• 5th Season Chili Powder
• Great Value Chunky Medium Salsa
• Betty Crocker Chocolate Chip Cookies

Because this week has been crazy, HOT, and exhausting, we went the way we used to eat it, only using the Kraft Mac & Cheese and Great Value Chicken Breast.  Since I am trying to eat healthier, I chose to use Smart Balance Butter and 2% milk in my Mac & cheese vs the real butter and whole milk.  Every little bit helps right?!  I didn’t notice any difference at all so I think it was a smart move.   Combined with Propel Zero, lunch was  250 calories (because I ate more than a cup).  HOT DOG!!!!  Had I had some more time, I would have added some vegetables.  YUM!

Now if YOU REALLY want to get creative with the ingredients, you MUST check out Diva’s meal solution with the same ingredients. It looks fantastic!! She out-did herself this week!

What would you make with this week’s ingredients?  Plain like me, or creative like Diva?

Disclosure: Compensation has been provided by Walmart for my time and efforts to create this post. All opinions are my own, always have been, always will be. Check out more meal solutions from my fellow Walmart Moms and from the Walmart website.

Things have been super crazy around here but I wanted to give you a glimpse of some of the recipes coming.  I’m sorta taking it easy for the next two weeks to get things like my house and taxes done but when March hits, expect regular content around here.

I also wanted to extend an invite to bloggers and all you folks who don’t blog, to guest post here at My Wooden Spoon.  If submitting a recipe as a guest post, I only ask that you have at least one photo, trying to make it a really good photo.

So yesterday, after writing about the KitchenAid Cookbook, I received a comment from Jessica mentioning a wonderful recipe on page 36, Cinnamon French Toast Casserole.  This is a perfect example of what I was talking about when referring to simple ingredients. The only thing I had to buy was the french bread which was under $2.  I had the milk, apples, eggs, and spices so talk about a VERY budget friendly breakfast for my crew! Anyways, that recipe is coming soon…….

Also coming soon is a super easy-to-make cobbler!  YUM!

And super cool kitchen appliances and gadgets, like this………..

So bear with me for the next couple weeks because March and beyond will be fantastic!!  I’ve secured some fantastic sponsors already for upcoming food challenges so be sure to enter each one!  February’s Food Challenge has only ONE ingredient – SUGAR! It’s not too late to enter.

I’m actually not a big fan of cookbooks so when I got a new one in the mail the other day, I was hesitant that I’d like it, as I am with other cookbooks.  But then,  I opened it up and saw that it was a recipe collection from KitchenAid and was immediately interested.

It’s hard to find a cookbook that is special.  One that has ‘features’ and doesn’t put me to sleep or cost me an arm & a leg to buy the ingredients.  Thank goodness KitchenAid didn’t let me down.  Here’s what I love about the cookbook.

1) It’s a binder cookbook. I LOVE that I can take the pages out of the cookbook vs having to sit the cookbook upright wherever I’m cooking.  This means I can move the recipe around from station to station if I need to. It also means that I can laminate the pages if I wanted too!!!!  It’s a fun tip I learned way back then and it’s awesome.  You don’t have to worry about getting food all over the page and messing it off. You’ll be able to wipe it right off, so I highly recommend you do that.

2) Speaking of lamination, there’s a front plastic page that helps protect the start of the cookbook.  I like the simple things, what can I say.

3) TABS! LOVE LOVE LOVE the tabs. There’s 19 food tab categories which covers everything.  There’s a few additional tabs for the Glossary/Cooking Terms, Index, and ‘My Recipes’. I love the Cooking terms section and at the back you have your measurement conversions.  I just love the tabs because you can find the specific category you’re after super quick.  And to make it even easier, on the back of the tab page, there’s a list of recipes that are in that section, and their page  number.  VERY USER FRIENDLY!

4) Simple but delicious recipes. One of the things I hate about cookbooks is the fact that so many of them call for such special, high end ingredients that I either can’t find or can’t afford.  That is NOT the case with this cookbook.  I browsed the entire recipe collection of over 400 and was extremely pleased with the ingredient list with pretty much all of them.  That, my friends, is a rare thing.   Each recipe has a photo and clear recipe instructions.

As I mentioned earlier, in the very back of the book, you are able to write your own recipes on the pages.  What I’d like to know though, is if additional ‘my recipe’ pages can be bought to add to the collection, since they only give you three.  I think they should!

What recipe do I want to try?  The Rustic Plum Tart.  YUM!!! We love plums but I’ve never made anything with plums.  Totally gonna though when they are back in season.

You can buy the book at Amazon – KitchenAid Recipe Collection Cookbook

Okay, so apparently beer is not a popular ingredient these days! I listened to all your feedback and have changed a few things up. I really appreciate every comment, suggestion, and even criticism because it helps me make things like this challenge more fun, easier, and just plain better.  So with that, here are two changes I’m making.

1) There will either only be one required ingredient or a theme each month.   Because I am completely uncreative, I completely understand when you tell me that you can’t think of something that uses all the ingredients.  I get it.

2) No voting.  There will be a judge who will pick the grand prize winner.  I hate voting contests and should have known better so thank you for speaking up and reminding me of it.

3) And finally, this post is the last one that will have all the rules and fine print. Future food challenges will focus on the ingredient/them and the entries and will link back to the rules and such. I realize it’s a lot to read and who has time to look through it every time right?

Thanks for the feedback y’all! Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get this thing started!

**You DO NOT have to be a blogger to enter. There will be a form that non-bloggers can fill out to enter their recipe so everyone is welcomed to join in!  I really want ot see everyone participate!

ABOUT THE FOOD CHALLENGE

Participants will be asked to create an original recipe using the required ingredient/theme in the current month’s challenge.  Participants will need to follow all the rules below.

FEBRUARY’S FOOD CHALLENGE

There is only one ingredient for February’s challenge and that is SUGAR!

DEADLINE

Recipe submission deadline is February 28th, 2011 at 12pm CST.

THE RULES

• You must use the required ingredient (or theme) given in the challenge with any other ingredients you want.
• A photo is required of the final dish.
• Would love for all bloggers  participating to provide a link back to the homepage or to the Food Challenge post.  Grab code is available for you to use if you like.  All bloggers will need to leave their entry link in the linky below.
• Standard Giveaway rules do not apply to any of the food challenges.  These are the rules for this.

Winner will be announced win the next Food Challenge begins!

THE PRIZE & SPONSOR

The winner of the Food Challenge for February wins  a $100 eGift Card from Cooking.com

If you would like to sponsor a Food Challenge month, you can email me at sponsor@mywoodenspoon.com with food challenge in the subject.

***************************************************

*NONBLOGGERS -If you do not have a blog but want to participate, you may submit your recipe here if you don’t have a place to upload your photo (or know how).  Flickr and Photobucket are great thought if you do want to have your own place to upload photos. Then you can just upload, write the recipe with your photo and grab the URL and add to the linky.  Either way, I’ll help you all I can.

*BLOGGERS -Leave the url to your recipe in the linky below.

***************************************************

Good luck to all who enter! Can’t wait to see your recipe creations!

I reserve the right to cancel if there are less than 10 entries.

Oh man, this week’s meal solution was delicious!  The pasta, creamy basil sauce, and chicken!  It was a very fast & easy recipe to make too.  Definitely great for working moms to make when they get home.

This week’s meal solution ingredients were:

• Macaroni Grill, Creamy Basil
• Reese’s Artichoke hearts
• Great Value Diced Tomatoes
• Sara Lee Bread

I simply took the recipe below and replaced boneless skinless chicken breast with already cooked, Tyson’s Grilled & Ready Oven Roasted Diced Chicken Breast. This saved even more time!  Now I simply followed the directions on the back of the Macaroni Grill box but if you’re looking for something  a little more creative, try the recipe below!

Disclosure: Compensation has been provided by Walmart for my time and efforts to create this post. All opinions are my own, always have been, always will be. Check out more meal solutions from my fellow Walmart Moms and from the Walmart website.