Five Favorites

Linking up with Grace for Five Favorites. Good luck with your deadlines, Hallie!

The finished product was gone too quickly after it was made to take a photo. Oops. 

1. A new-to-me macaroni and cheese recipe. We all know that I love mac and cheese. Remember when Pinterest started a couple years ago and you couldn't scroll two times without seeing the cake mix + can of pumpkin muffin recipe and the macaroni and cheese recipe where you boiled the pasta in milk? Well, I finally tried the one pot wonder mac and cheese recipe. And it was delicious. It was so creamy and rich, which is just my style. I only had medium sized shells and they cooked just fine even though the comments warned against them. I think the key was stirring the pot very frequently to keep them separated. I used 2% milk and then 3/4 of a cup or sharp cheddar and 1/4 of a cup of grated Parmesan. Delicious! The recipe definitely doesn't make enough for my tastes though so next time I will be doubling it. 

2. Yepp Mini Bike Seat. I have sang  its praises before on this blog, but really ... I LOVE it. All-caps, bolded and italicized. We are definitely getting our money's worth out of it. I use it every day to bike to campus. It is so easy to balance, and Ryan adores it. He is big into sequences lately like, "Ceiling! Angels! Church! Heaven!" (of course you have to imagine all of that with the pronunciation of someone with a peanut butter full mouth or something). When I say we are going on the bike, the sequence that follows is normally, "Bike! Helmet! Church! Quiet! Shhhh!" Which makes me feel like I might be doing at least something okay in this whole parenting endeavor amid the ups and downs of sharing meltdowns and I-shit exclamations. One of the best parts is that we can switch it from my bike to Chris' in maybe five seconds tops.  If you are thinking about a child bike seat ... yepp, yepp, I recommend the Mini. 

Source

3. Baking soda. Yesterday I made a berry smoothie and some of it spilled on to the counter. By the time I cleaned it up, I noticed that the berry color was not coming off of the counter. Very berry bad. Out came Google, and then out came the baking soda. I mixed baking soda and a little bit of water until the mixture looked like yogurt. Then I smeared it on the stain and covered it in plastic wrap. I waited a couple of hours maybe and then peeked to see if the stain was fading. It was gone! 

I feel a linkup coming about neat cleaning tricks. 

4. Tamales. The local Mexican grocery store sells homemade tamales and most of the time I go, they are sold out! However, the past two times there have been tamales just waiting to be bought. Tamales for lunch every day over here. 

5. A question for you ... what were your favorite maternity leggings? Or leggings in general. I'm looking for some that are not see-through and hold their shape. Thanks in advance! Although will I even need them with the way the weather has been lately?