Jello, Cookies, Steak, Potatoes and Biscuits!

We had such a busy day today, with cooking as well as other things.  We will be going to Mexico this coming week, so I had to make a bunch of food today to take with us for meals.  Hopefully I'll be able to post over the coming week.  Today however, we had some yummy food, and some not so yummy food :)  We had food from ourbestbites.com, and from the Pioneer Woman's first cookbook, and some cookies from tastykitchen.com.  First, we'll start with the jello.  You can find this recipe at ourbestbites.com, and since Noah wanted jello, and I couldn't see us just eating straight jello, we made this.  I don't ever have Cool Whip, so we just used 1/2 c whipping cream instead.  It's not as light or fluffy, and it has more calories, but it still tasted great.  Calories are 205/jello cup, and we gave it an 8. 

These cookies are so soft and delicious.  Like Aaron says, chocolate for him and butterscotch for me.  Yummy!  They are easy and great tasting and have great texture.  I made 47 cookies, and they were 131 calories/cookie.  We gave them between an 8 (Aaron) and a 9 (me).

For dinner we had Roasted Beef Tenderloin, Creamy Herbed Potatoes, and Buttermilk biscuits all from the Pioneer Woman.  The tenderloin is from PW's first cookbook, and it received a perfect 10, hooray!  It was tender, had delicious flavor, and was fast and easy.  Make it by browning the meat, then coating it in a sauce made from olive oil, bacon grease, salt, sugar and pepper.  I added garlic to that as well.  Cook for about 20 minutes, and you have delicious beef tenderloin!  271 calories/serving because I cut down on the oil and grease and butter.  The Potatoes were from P.W.'s first cookbook as well and these were also very good.  I loved them, and if I hadn't oversalted them a little, I think they would've scored really high.  We gave them a 7, mostly because of the poor seasoning.  They were 280 calories/serving.  The last thing I tried was the buttermilk biscuits from PW's first cookbook, and these were a flop.  I have made buttermilk biscuits from Cook's Illustrated before, and they were great.  These, however, were a flop.  They didn't rise very high, they were dense, and the recipe called for way too much flour.  Oh well.  They were 141 calories/serving, and received a 2 from us.  Just not good.  So a busy day, and hopefully you'll see more of my labors in the coming week.  Tomorrow we're having a crock pot chicken recipe.  We went to see Brave for free today, thanks to Nova Home Loans and Derek Polder, our loan officer.  It was so fun and I really liked the movie, and we think our loan officers are great too :).  Go see Brave if you get a chance, I think it's totally worth it.