Thanksgiving with my dad

Tomorrow, my dad is getting me and Connor for Thanksgiving. We are going to my dad's brother's house for a Thanksgiving meal (I don't know when we will get there). We will see my uncle, his wife, and Grant, my cousin. I bet Grant is going to be crazy :) He always wants to wrestle and play when see him at our grandpa's house. There might be more people, but I can't think of anymore.

I don't know what we will be having exactly, but I bet we will have turkey, maybe ham, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and maybe pumpkin pie. I am most excited for the FOOD!

After we eat, we are going to come home. Well, after we talk and maybe play with Grant's new dog.
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Here is a recipe for sweet potato casserole which I made for the Thanksgiving meal at school. People loved this dish! I made two lasagna pans of this and it was all gone by the end of the meal!

Ingredients:
2 cans (15 oz. each) cut sweet potatoes
5 Tablespoons butter or margarine
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 bag of mini marshmallows

Recipe:
1. Pour the sweet potatoes with the liquid into a 2-qt. saucepan and cook until heated through.

2. Drain the liquid.

3. While the sweet potatoes are heating, combine the butter and brown sugar into a 1-qt. saucepan and cook until hot but NOT boiling.

4. Add nuts to the sauce if desired (I didn't do that)

5. Pour the sauce over the sweet potatoes and stir just to coat.

6. Pour the sweet potatoes into a pan (9x13).

7. Pour 1 bag of mini marshmallows over the sweet potatoes.

8. Put the sweet potatoes in the oven at 400 degrees and cook until the marshmallows are big, puffy, and brown-ish.

9. Eat immediately :)

Something People Really Liked: Crab Rangoons

This is a recipe for crab rangoons I found on allrecipes.com. I typed in "crab rangoon recipe" on Google and found this recipe as the first option. I have used allrecipes.com before to find recipes and I have the app on my iPod Touch that I have also used. 

Crab Rangoon: allrecipes.com

Ingredients:
8 oz of cream cheese
6 oz of crab meat (packaged imitation worked for me)
2 green onions, sliced thin
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon light soy sauce
wonton wrappers (found in the vegetable aisle)

Recipe:
1. Preheat the oven to 425

2. Lightly spray the baking sheet with cooking spray

3. Combine all the ingredients except for the wonton wrappers in a bowl.

4. Place 3 wonton wrappers on the baking sheet. Put 1-2 teaspoons of filing in the middle of each wonton wrapper.

5. Get your finger wet with water, trace around the edges of the wonton wrapper and then fold the wonton in half. Poke down the edges until it's closed.

6. Continue until your are out of filing. 

7. Put the tray in the oven for 12-15 minutes.

8. Eat and Enjoy!
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TJ Review:
Great! I liked them a lot! I like these at restaurants and I thought it would be interesting to make them myself. They were different then the ones at a restaurant because the shell was a little softer. I think that's because they deep fry theirs and we baked ours. We don't have a deep fryer, but I wish we did. I wonder how long you have to deep fry them? The staff really liked them. Mrs. Roberts even wanted the recipe from me! Mike, my step-dad, had one.  I don't remember what he thought about it, but I bet he liked it :) I will definitely make these again!

Pasta- American Macaroni Salad

This was macaroni pasta that I made on Tuesday for lunch. There was some celery, green onions, and bacon bits with the macaroni. I found the recipe by looking up "lunch meals" on Google and found this recipe under "food network". Here is the recipe from foodnetwork.com that I changed a little.

Ingrediants:
2 cups dry macaroni, cooked, rinsed, and drained
1/3 cup diced celery
1/4 cup diced green onions
1/2 cup mayonnaise
3/4 teaspoon dry mustard
1 1/2 teasponns sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar
3 tablespoons sour cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
black pepper
bacon bits

Recipe:
1. Cook the macaroni by using the box directions (I cooked mine for 7 minutes)

2. In a large bowl, combine macaroni, celery, and onions.

3. In a small bowl, wisk together the mayonnaise, mustard, sugar, vinegar, sour cream, and salt.

4. Pour the dressing over the salad and stir to combine

5. Pour bacon bits, salt, and pepper until you think there is enough

6. Put some in a bowl for yourself and put the other in the refrigerator covered up to 3 days.

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TJ Review:
It was good. I liked the pasta and the bacon bits the best! The celery was easy to cut because I have been practicing cutting vegetables a lot lately.  I liked the sauce on it because it was kinda like Ranch dressing. I haven't ever seen cider vinegar as an indgrediant before so that was something new to me. I don't think I would make this aghain though because I tried to avioid the onions and just eat the pasta. So it wasn't my favorite, but other people might like it.

My first restaurant review!

I  went to China Town Buffet to do a restaurant review for you all!

Mrs. Slagor and I went for lunch last Thursday. We took notes and pictures of what we ate and the experience we had.

The look:

The restaurant was not crowded, but it wasn't empty. It had clean bathrooms, even cleaner than Central's :)

The decorations were good and cool. It looked like older times and China (I think so at least). It was very clean and they even had plastic chair covers to make sure that people don't make a mess on the furniture.

The food:

The food was good! Some was kind of weird like the squishy sesame ball for dessert. I thought it was squid at first!! They had Chinese food there like crab ragoons, shrimp balls, sushi, cold seafood salads, hunan pork, sweet and sour chicken, and hot and sour soup. They also had some American foods like spinach casserole, donuts, pizza, and chicken wings. I tried just the Chinese foods. I was going to try the spinach casserole, but I didn't because I wasn't sure I was going to like it (I don't like spinach much).

My favorite food I ate was the squishy sesame ball for dessert because it was the most interesting thing I had. I also really liked the chocolate cake and crab ragoons I ate.  Mrs. Slagor's favorite was the hot and sour soup because it was warm and kind of spicy. I tried it, but it wasn't my favorite food.

Price:
$9.37 for the buffet and a soda

My rating:

I would go back again for sure! I gave it two thumbs up!!



New website

Mrs. Slagor showed me a new website called, tastespotting.com.

It is a website with food recipes with links to a bunch of different blogs and websites. You should check this out because it's even better than EatCU because there are a ton of options and it can go on for miles!

I found some recipes I thought sounded good.

EatCU.com

EatCU.com is a website I use a lot! Here you can find menus to restaurants in Champaign-Urbana. I like to go here because it gives you a lot of options to see what restaurant you want to go to AND it gives you the menu.

It helps you plan and make a decision on food you want to order.

When you go to EatCU.com first click on Dine In & Catering Menus. You will examples of menus and on the left you will see different listings of different types of restaurants. So if you want to find a Thai restaurant like My Thai then click on "Asian" to find menus and restaurants like that.

This site has lots of menus, but not to all the restaurants in Champaign. That kinda stinks because sometimes it doesn't have your favorite restaurant that you want to see.

Here are some of my favorites in each of the categories:

Asian- My Thai, An Sun
American- Buffalo Wild Wings
Bar & Grill- Hooter's (My mom doesn't let me go there :))
BBQ- Hickory River
Breakfast- Courier Cafe, Le Peep
Cafe- Cafe Kopi, Atlanta Bread Company
Family Affair- Merry Ann's Diner, Lone Star Steakhouse, Noodles & Company
Fast Food- McDonald's, Taco Bell
Fine Dining- Silvercreek, The Ribeye
Ice Cream/Custard- Nothing here that I like
International- Flat Top Grill, Mandarin Wok (I've never been there, but Mrs. Slagor really likes it here)
Italian- Olive Garden, TGIFridays
Mexican/Latin- Escobar's
Pizza- Fazoli's, Jupiter's
Sandwiches- Penn Station, Beef Stand (I want to try it here)
Seafood- Red Lobster, Ruby Tuesdays
Sushi- Ko Fusion
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I think you should go to EatCU.com because it has all the restaurants and menus which awesome!

Just like IHOP

I asked Mrs. Slagor, "Have you ever had the stuffed french toast at IHOP before?", she hadn't so I decided to make some here at school. I looked on allrecipes.com and searched "stuffed french toast". Only two recipes came up, so I picked one from the picture it had. I decided to make raspberry cheesecake stuffed french toast because I like cheesecake and french toast (it was a perfect match for me!).
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Raspberry Cheesecake Stuffed French Toast (allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
1 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons cinnamon
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup raspberry jam
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 loaf french bread, cut into 1 inch slices
butter

Directions:
1. In a bowl, whisk milk, sugar, cinnamon into the beaten eggs until well blended. Set aside

2. In a separate bowl, cream together raspberry jam and cream cheese until smooth.

3. Make the sandwiches by cutting each slice of bread in half and spreading raspberry-cream mixture in the center, then top with other half.

4. Melt butter over medium heat in a large skillet.

5. Dip bread into egg mixture and coat it thoroughly (that means the whole thing, all of it).

6. Cook until well-browned on both sides, about 5 minutes. When flipping, you might need a hand. Mrs. Slagor and I did it together with 2 spatulas.

7. Eat!
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TJ Review:
It was good! You should make it. The cheesecake part was my favorite part because it was sweet with the raspberry jam. I made some changes to the original recipe. I didn't use nutmeg, powdered sugar, or vanilla because we didn't have those ingredients at school. I used white bread instead of French bread because they didn't have a loaf at Aldi, just a roll. I wanted more than just one roll!!

Total: $9.53 for 3 servings bought at Aldi.