Who needs Honeybaked?

I don't know about you guys, but I am a real fan of ham....actually I really love pork (BACON) in general. I always look forward to Easter because my Mom always either cooks a ham or buys a Honeybaked ham. I had never cooked a ham until about a year ago, because I had no idea how and I thought it took hours of oven time. Boy was I wrong! I have been following Stephanie O'Dea for a while now over at crockpot365.com and she posted a recipe for a copycat honeybaked that looked so good! I didn't have all of the ingredients on hand, so I winged it and made it my own and now it's a family favorite. Let me just pause here and tell you that if you haven't been over to her website, you should check it out. She has so many great recipes for the crockpot, you won't regret it! Now back to your regularly scheduled blog. So, this is how you make it and you won't believe how easy it is. Before I start, I must tell you to make sure you get the butt portion of ham when you go shopping, the shank portion won't fit in the crock (don't ask me how I know that).

House Rules 2.0

Well, my friends, today I am going to repost and edit and old post from a couple years ago. You may remember my posting about our Family Rules Canvas that I made based on a couple of other blogs. Well, I have gotten many compliments since I hung it up and my sister loved it, so I decided to make her one for Christmas. Here it is:

I've officially gone granola!!!

I don't know about you guys, but here in the Caliente household we love, Love, LOVE granola. We love to eat it by itself or as cereal or with some fruit and Greek yogurt. We also LOVE Greek yogurt. We love granola and Greek yogurt so much so that we were spending too much of our grocery money on it. Luckily, this summer, my favorite blogger Jillee posted a recipe for homemade Greek yogurt. I tried it and I LOVE it. I can make a whole gallon of plain Greek yogurt that costs less than a 24 oz container of my preferred brand. So from that point on we were making our own yogurt, but that caused us to eat MORE granola. I played around with the idea of making granola, but I thought it would probably be too much work, so I put it off until finally, about a week ago, I was bored and thought I would just look around on the net and see what recipes I could find. I was floored at how simple it really is to make and I had all of the ingredients right here

Mall Chicken (aka Sweet & Sour Chicken) with fried rice

Hello World! Sorry I haven't posted in almost 2 months. It has been a combination of laziness and trouble getting blogger to upload the photos I use in all of my posts. So here is my post holiday "Happy Thanksgiving" and "Merry Christmas"! I couldn't resist posting this awesome photo that was supposed to be our Christmas card. Unfortunately that didn't come together for me either so I wasn't able to send it out. However, I HAD to show it off, because I am so proud of my mad photography skills and my BFF/Aunt's mad photoshop skills. I got the idea from another blogger (Summertime Designs) that I saw on pinterest. I think we will have to redo this idea next Christmas so I can actually send them out.

Anyhow, that is not what today's post is really about. Today I am going to give the awesomest (Yeah, I know, I made that word up) recipe that I got off of Pinterest (you can check out the original here). I have had this recipe for a few months and the first time I made it we all loved it so much that I made it another night that same week. I didn't post it because I kept seeing it all over Pinterest, but finally I decided that maybe not all of you have seen it, or perhaps you have seen it but been hesitant to try it. I have also made a few tweaks that I think make it better. We call it Mall Chicken, but I think the proper name would be Sweet & Sour Chicken. The reason we call it Mall Chicken is because it tastes just like the chicken you get at the little chinese restaurant in the mall food court, but better. At least that's what my family said. Of course, you know mall chicken wouldn't be complete without fried rice, so I am going to give you that recipe too. Let me just post a little disclaimer here, I know this may not be the healthiest meal on the planet, but it is way better for you than the chemicals & junk food you buy at the mall. The best part about this recipe is that it's practically impossible to mess it up.

Doesn't that look so yummy! I'm still working on my food photography, so hopefully the pic does it justice.