Grammy's Crab Dip

One of my favorite appetizers is my grandmother's crab dip.  This is something super quick and easy.  There's two ways to serve it and they're both yummy!  If you want something more formal, layering them is the way to go.  If you want something for a larger group, kids, or to take to a party, mixing everything together is the way to go.

GRAMMY'S CRAB DIP
Serves: 2 -8
Prep Time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:
Bar of cream cheese
Can of Crab meat
Bottle of Cocktail Sauce

Directions:
1. Layer cream cheese, crab meat, and cocktail sauce. 
               - or - 
   Mix cream cheese, crab meat, and cocktail sauce.
2. Serve with crackers (I prefer Sociables)

Enjoy!

Pantry Challenge: Update - Week 1

Today marks one week of the pantry challenge.  The weekdays went well but the holiday weekend not so much.  While we were home, we were good.  I made spaghetti with meat sauce a couple times and had sandwiches, yogurt and oatmeal.  With us traveling 5 1/2 hours Friday, this led to lunch in the car (~$15).  Saturday night, we went out to dinner with friends which added to our food bill for the month (~$20 thanks to having a gift card).  Then traveling home on Sunday, things fell apart.  We stopped at the Italian bakery where our wedding cake was from and picked up way to many sweets (cannolis, wedding cake, cookies) (~$18) and then we stopped for dinner (~$15). 

This week should be better since we'll be home all week and Tony works next weekend.  This week, I plan to do something with the frozen ham in the freezer and finish up the ground beef that I cooked and re-froze last week.

Here's where we are now:

Freezer

Fridge

Cabinet #1

Cabinet #2

Cabinet #3 

We'll see how long we can hold out...

Return to Reading

Growing up, there were very few books that I read and actually liked.  During my spring break two years ago, I read three books in one week while sitting on the beach.  That fall, I started work and took a couple trips overseas.  While there, I finished 4 books in one trip and 6 in another.  I started to really like reading.  Recently, I haven't been traveling as much and my reading has dropped.  That's got to change.  The goal for the rest of the summer is 2 books per month. I'm finishing up Allegiant by Veronica Roth now.

I found HPB - 100 Books You Can't Put Down.  The books that I have read on their list I did really enjoy.  
 
Amazon also has a 100 Books to Read in a Lifetime: Readers' Picks.  Some of the books overlap with the list above. 

Here are their top 100 books:

“To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee

"Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen
“The Diary of Anne Frank” by Anne Frank
“1984″ by George Orwell
“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” by J.K. Rowling
“The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien
“The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Charlotte’s Web” by ER White

“Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott
The Hobbit by JRR Toiken
“Fahrenheit 451″ by Ray Bradbury
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  by Mark Twain
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Night by Elie Wiesel
Hamlet by William Shakespeare
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
The Handmade’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Little Prince by Antoine de St-Expupery
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
MacBeth by William Shakespeare
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
The Holy Bible: New King James Version by Thomas Nelson
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas pere
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Catch-22 by Joesph Heller
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
The Stand by Stephen King
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Watership Down by Richard Adams
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
The Scarlett Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince by JK Rowling
Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Outlander by Gabaldon
A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck
The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Odessy by Homer
Celebrating Silence: Excerpts from 5 Years of Weekly Knowledge by Sri Sri Ravi Shanker
A Prayer for Own Meany by John Irving
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullogh
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Wall
Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
Beloved by Toni Morrison
Helen Keller: The Story of My Life by Helen Keller
The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler by EL Konigsburg
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I thought I'd pull from these two lists for now.  Up next, I am between:

• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
• Eat, Pray, Love
• The Fault in Our Stars
• Bossypants

What do you think?  Do you have a favorite book on/off the above list?

DIY Workbench

This past weekend was filled with a quick and easy project that made all the difference in the world.  My parents came to visit and my dad helped us build a workbench.  I wanted something that had a table top, a bottom shelf, a peg backboard, and an upper shelf.  My dad had built a workbench years ago when they moved into their current house.  We were going to build something similar. 

When he built his, he used RTC2Z Rigid Tie Connectors.  We used the same ones and they made the whole thing so easy!!

We also used plans from DIY Done Right as the starting point.  We did modify them to create a 6' x 2' x 6' work bench rather than the 4' x 2' x 5' one that the plans had.  We lifted the height of the table top as well since Tony and I are taller. 

Here's what we did.

Step 1: Determine the size of the workbench and the materials required.

As I mentioned, we modified the design to give us a larger workbench.  See our new plans below.

Here's what we needed for our larger workbench:

Tools Required:

• Saw
• Screw gun
• #2 Phillips head bit
• Tape measure
• Clamps
• Framing square

Materials Required:

• 2" x 4" x 8' lumber - 6 pcs 8 pcs
• 24" x 48" - ⅝" plywood sheet 48" x 96" - 23/32" plywood sheet
• 24" x 48" 48" x 96" - ¼" pegboard sheet
• (8) Rigid Tie RTC2Z Connectors
• (1 box) Strong-Drive® SD #8 x 1¼" Screws - 100 ct
• (20) (36) #6 x 1¼" flat-head screws
• (4) #6 x 2½" flat-head screws

You can also buy a workbench kit from Amazon here or here.

Step 2: Purchase Materials.

The Rigid Tie connectors and SD Screws came from Home Depot.  I had gotten them earlier in the week.  Saturday morning we went to Lowe's and got the lumber, plywood, and pegboard.  The nice thing about Lowe's, or any of the big hardware stores is that they will rip the large sheets for you.  We had them cut the plywood and pegboard down for us.  If you have this option, take it!  The pieces are perfectly square and it saves a ton of time!  This gave us:

• (2) 2' x 6' - 23/32" plywood sheets + scrap
• (1) 3' x 6' - 1/4" pegboard sheet + scrap

Step 3: Cut to length


We had to cut our 2x4's to length.  We followed the modifications that we made in Step 1.

We needed:

• 1 - 72" piece for the top rail
• 2 - 70" pieces for the rear corner posts
• 4 - 69" pieces for the rails
• 2 - 38" pieces for the front corner posts
• 4 - 17" pieces for the end rails

Step 4: Assemble end pieces.

Make sure you make opposites ends.  You don't want two of the same ends.

Step 5: Install rails.

Step 6: Attach top rail using 2-1/2" screws.

Step 7: Corner out plywood and install.

Step 8: Attach pegboard

Step 9: Organize!

The larger size gave up plenty of room for our small and large tools.

The actual assembly of the workbench took us about 1-1/2 hours.  Not bad at all!

Enjoy!

July Pantry Challenge: Day 1

I have seen Pantry Challenges all over social media.  Tony and I decided to give it a try.  From January - June, our average spending on food is $650 per month.  This includes eating out, lunches, and groceries. 

The (30-Day, New Mom, The Great) pantry challenges all have different ground rules.  If you read through them, they talk about well first you have to re-organize, then plan your meals, and sometimes fill in the gaps.  This fill in the gaps is the thing that get's me the most.  If you are trying to not spend money and empty your pantry, then why do you fill in the gaps?  I wanted to do something more passive.  With Tony and I working opposite hours, it's hard to plan big meals.  Our pantry challenge would make do with what we have.  It'll force us to clean stuff out but also get creative with what we make.

Here's the ground rules that we agreed upon:

1. The pantry challenge would last as long as possible without running out of food.
2. When Tony's parents come to visit, we will take a 3-day pause.  During this time, we will only buy what we need for those meals.
3. Okay to buy only if/when we run out and it is needed - milk, eggs, yogurt, bread (if Jen's homemade bread doesn't come out), meat
4. Try to cut back on eating lunch at work and eating out (plan ahead)

Fortunately for us, we don't have a large pantry so we are limited to our fridge and freezer and three small cabinets.  I'll be surprised if we make it past week 3.

I did a quick survey of what we had where and did a quick date check.  This whole process only took me about 15 minutes.  The biggest concern I have is with our meat supply.  We'll see how things go.

Freezer

Fridge

Cabinet #1

Cabinet #2

Cabinet #3

With today being day 1, here's where I started:

Breakfast - yogurt and iced coffee
Lunch - yogurt and oatmeal
Dinner - pasta (cabinet #1) with meat sauce (freezer ground beef & pasta sauce)

Since I cooked a pound of ground beef, I didn't mix it all with pasta sauce.  I only used a what I needed for dinner.  This allows me to have ground beef for the next few meals.

I think Tony's probably looked like this:

Breakfast/Lunch - yogurt with granola
Dinner - Sandwich (bread, turkey, ham, cheese) and yogurt

Stay tuned for updates on our pantry challenge!