Crescent Roll Awesomeness

Oh Hello!

I hope everyone is enjoying this last day of November. We are off to a good December start with the snow and all :)

It's been such a weird fall, but I've thoroughly enjoyed the warmth. Now I am able to accept the cold after feeling so spoiled!

SO as many of you probably know I've been doing a lot of Pinterest lately and I've discovered wonders on it!

Not only have I found motivation do some simple daily workout routines, I've also found joy in baking  and cooking new discoveries!

One of the discoveries I've made on Pinterest is how phenomenal crescent rolls are. They are so versatile in the sense that one can use them for so many varieties of goods :) both sweet and salty. This might be no news to you, but it was to me and I'm so glad I found that out!!

So I want to share two ways I've used crescent rolls in the past week, and hope you can try one or both of these easy recipes at home!!

The first one is the Cinnamon Cheesecake or otherwise called Sopapilla Cheesecake that I'm assuming you've seen me write about on facebook :) It is so good, so easy and I can't get enough of it!! 

First, here is what you will be needing:

• 2 (16 ounces) cans of  Crescent Rolls
• 1 1/2 C Sugar
• 1 tsp Vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup melted Butter
• 2 packs of cream cheese (8 ounce) softened
• 1 tbsp ground Cinnamon

1.So at first you will want to preheat the oven ( I always forget to do that and end up waiting for foreeever) to 350 degrees.

2. Then in a 9x13 pan, you are going to spread the entire roll of crescent rolls on the bottom of the pan.


3. Next you will mix the cream cheese with the 1 Cup of Sugar. ( the other 1/2 a cup will be used later), and the vanilla extract until smooth. Once you feel like you have creamy mixture, layer it on top of the sheet of crescent rolls and layer the 2nd sheet of crescent rolls on top of the cheesecake mixture.

4. Your final steps consist of brushing the melted butter on the layer of crescent rolls, and sprinkle the top with a mixture of the remaining sugar and cinnamon.

Place in oven for 30 min or until golden. and VOILA!!!

I advise you to let it cool before serving or devouring it :) I once made a mini one that I didn't have to wait as long for it to cool so I could eat it ASAP!


And even though it doesn't look all that pretty, it tastes so very yummyyyyy!!! 


So there ya have it. Here is what it looks like when finished.

Oh by the way, I made this as a thanksgiving dessert and brought it over to Jeremy's house where his family and mine were finally able to meet. 
Here are a few pictures of the afternoon spent in Westerville, OH.

Mom, Mr. Pope, and I patiently waiting :)

Most of us gathered

Mr. Pope

My wonderful Jeremy

Alright now onto the salty. I'm not sure why I started out with the dessert, but anyways moving on. Next on the list were the Chicken Roll-ups I made last night. 

They took longer than I had expected (1h30 because of the shredding and my many distractions) but they were really good, easy to share with others, and really easy to make as well!

For this one, you will need:

• 1 package of cream cheese (8 ounce)
• 2 cans of Crescent rollups
• 4 shredded chicken drumsticks
• bread crumbs
• 1 1/2 C of Shredded Chedar Cheese
• 1 C of shredded Monterey Jack
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

DISCLAIMER: I didn't really follow this recipe to the T. But I will share the "original" recipe with you :)

Oven should be preheated to 350 degrees

1.So first I boiled the chicken by placing it in medium hot water for about 35 minutes. You don't have to use drumsticks, I like the dark part of chicken better which is why I used these, but you can really use any type of shredded chicken.

While the chicken was boiling, I prepped the rest of the recipe...

2. I mixed the softened cream cheese with the shredded cheese in a bowl. ( I just used whatever shredded cheese was in the fridge but would like to use the Monterey Jack and Cheddar next time.)

3. Find bread crumbs as you want, but what I did was use a regular piece of white toast and just stripped it to small pieces with my hands. It took forever. I'm sure there is an easier and quicker way. But this is what I got.

OKay. So. Not gonna lie, I got a little hungry while waiting for the chicken to boil and the cream cheese mixture is not that good of a snack to munch on SO I busted out one of my favorite snacks of all time and it did the job quite well :)

Skinny Parmesan pretzels and Roasted Red Pepper hummus!!!

4. Once the chicken is thoroughly cooked go ahead and shred it. This is the part that takes a long time!! I'm assuming doing this with a friend or spouse would be much quicker. Or you could always buy already shredded chicken :)

Once shredded, add the salt and pepper and whatever other spices you'd like to season your chicken with. I personally like more taste than the average Joe, so this is what I used to season it.

5. Add the chicken to the cream cheese and cheese mixture. Then put the mixture on yummy crescent rolls like so...

and roll them up!!

The original recipe suggests 2 cans of crescent rolls. I would suggest 3 or perhaps even 4 because I had a lot of chicken cream cheese mixture left over.

I thought I'd be creative and fry the mixture up in balls of dough, but that was a bad idea. (well I didn't like them, but Jeremy's roommates did so I don't know how much of a fail it was). Probably because I've never fried anything in my life while at home before.

So you could either make more of these OR come up with another great way of using the leftover chicken cream cheese mixture.

6. Finally, brush butter on top of the rolls and top them with the bread crumbs, which surprisingly stuck on pretty well!

and 25 min later.....here's the result....and it tasted good!

Alright that's all I got for now. I hope you enjoyed it!!! YAY CRESCENT ROLLS!!! :) 

Who said this journey couldn't involve great food along the way?? :)

Confession. I'm scarred!

Hello!

Disclaimer. these thoughts were jotted down in my journal and don't necessarily all make sense or flow with each other.

Recently I’ve been reading back through some of my old journals because it’s something I like to do everytime I complete a journal. I just got done completing my 2009-2011 journal and the concensus of that year and a half is that I always seemed to be on the pursuit of something. A job. A boyfriend. A purpose. Expectations fulfilled. Something.

I mean I’ve gone from Indiana to Colorado, to California, back to Indiana and now moving to France in a 2 year time frame (kind of didn’t have much of a choice for the France one lol!) Let’s not forget that I also tried going to Canada. Haha.

I was telling God the other night  how grateful I was that He’s created me with all of these passions but as long as I’m not doing anything with them, I feel lost and somewhat pointless. It seems to me that there’s always going to be something "missing"  as long as I keep chasing something tangeable rather than focusing on the Spiritual and my Relationship with God, I will still feel as if something were missing.

I need to stop chasing the  "what is next" question and just focus on "what is now" aka the present, otherwise I’ll fly through life without truly LIVING. And I’ll just wake up someday not knowing how I got whereever I am at that point.

Even this morning, I shot a quick thought up to God and asked him to  "Help me not to only rejoice about the futur when I have somethig to look forward to." I mean it’s normal to get that tingly feeling of excitement in your gut when you know something fun or great is about to happen and you are looking forward to it. That, however, should not be the only time we get excited or rejoice.

I frustrate myself when I do that and I think that's okay that I get frustrated at myself. I think that just means that I’m aware of some things that I need to change. In fact I am not as hard on myself as you’d think. I give myself a lot more grâce than I really should :/ and unfortunately I forget that grace is God’s job, not mine.

So all of this to say that just because I don’t know what’s in store for me with this moving to France business, that does not mean I can’t simply rejoice today and rejoice for the futur and what God has in store.

And if I’m really honest with myself, I’m actually pretty scared of moving, I have this tough, adventurous, spontaneous persona through my lust for life and adventure but I’ve actually been avoiding thinking about this move due to fear. I choose not to let these fears control but they are ever so present in my heart and mind.

I am scared of being lonely (especially after reading my previous journal, I did not handle loneliness well at all !). I am scared to discover life without Jeremy by my side.  I am scared of not finding a job. I am scared of losing some very good friends of mine. I am scared of not finding a community (especially after 6 years of having the gréât community that I’ve had). I am scared of people that I care about from the US completely forgetting that I even exist. Sigh. I am basically scared of year 2010 to happen all over again. It really was a hard year but then again that’s the year I grew closest to the Lord, as if God just needed to strip me of everything and everyone in order to reach my full attention.  And if that needs to happen AGAIN. Then let’s do it !!

After journaling this, I read a book and randomly opened it and this is what it said :

"Biographies of bold disciples begin with chapters of honest terror. Fear of death. Fear of failure. Fear of loneliness. Fear of a wasted life. Fear of failure to know God."

My immédiate thought after Reading this was "did I not JUST journal about this !? "

I am grateful that God finds every way possible to simply remind me that « He is there. »

"Faith that begins with fear will end up nearer to the Father. " We cannot go where God is not. So even though I have no idea where this life, path, road, whatever you want to call it, is taking me and who will be there, I know one thing for sure is God’s promise that He will be right there every step of the way !

God is so good to me.  To all of us. Let us rejoice and be reminded that in the midst of fear, we can rejoice for God is with us !

Also, one thing I want to encourage everyone to do is to write down their fears on a piece of paper, journal, or even a text message to themselves. Wherever or however you want tp. I’ve done this many a times in the past and it’s always so beautiful a year or two later to read back and be able to look back and see how God answered, provided, calmed, or took away each of these fears. 

Blessings to each of you. Much love.

Hope you enjoyed the weekend !!!

Djo

What I've been up to these past few months

Hello fellow readers :)

You might be confused as to why I am blogging on here. Basically I realized that as fun and exciting as my old blog was, it was way to complicated to update each month. I built that blog from scratch and needless to say, in order to keep it fun and exciting, it required a lot of work.

Now this may come to a surprise to some of you (not really) but I'm generally somewhat of a lazy person, and even though I have ALL of the time in the world, just the thought of rebuilding a new page for each month of the year was very unappealing to me, which led me to basically never blog!

SOOOO the other day, I was reminded that I used to blog for a specific class of mine and had used blogspot. I therefore decided to look it up and to my surprise, my blog still exists!!

I just spent a few hours transferring all of my blog entries from the old blog and now I am writing to announce that this is the blog I will be using from now and and I really hope that it makes a difference on how much I blog from now on in comparison to how much I've blogged within the past 10 months (3 times haha).
Hopefully it makes a big difference.

I have 15 minutes to share a bit of what's new in my life, which is quite convenient because since my last entry, not a whole lot is new!

Ever since I've found out about my being "allowed" to leave the U.S. I've felt so much peace. It was literally as if a HUGE load had been taken off of my shoulders. It was such a beautiful day :)
I spent it with my wonderful boyfriend and my parents. I was able to be with my parents the following week and after their departure, I just went back through my normal routine. Basically volunteering at Fredrick's, babysitting, taking pictures, and spending time with loved ones!

My birthday has gone by and I was able to celebrate with good friends part of my community!

The week prior to my birthday, I had decided to start a Master Cleanse. Some of you may have heard of it! It's a 10 day fast that consists of drinking nothing but water, herbal tea, and a lemonade that contains Cayenne Pepper and Maple syrup. The purpose of this cleanse is to clear out your toxins and allow you to sort of push a "reset" button on your body and help you restart your diet.
The Cleanse was successful other than the fact that I had gotten sick prior to starting it and I think that the mixture of my body getting rid of my toxins (lots of mucus. gross I know!) and the lack of food, and lack of medicine, probably didn't help. I got sick again but decided to push through. I only did it for 8 days because it generally takes about two days to ease back in into a regular diet, and I wanted to be able to eat on my birthday, which so happened to be on the 10th day of the Cleanse.
I'm glad I tried it although I hope to try it another time when I know I can do the full 10 days and when I'm not sick!

Hmmm what else...Oh I've been able to take an engagement photoshoot of one of the most amazing people I personally know. Marissa Scheiber. She is a very dear friend of mine who means a lot to me, and it was such a privilege for me to capture her and Luke's love for each other! It was great finally meeting Luke, the wonderful man I had heard so much about! They were so fun to work with and I was pleased with the results :) Here are a few of my favorites.

For more of these, go to www.facebook.com/pages/Djolife-Photography/114008375351893

Also that following weekend, one of my all time best friends Megan Crawford got engaged to a solid guy named Daniel Schroeder and I was super pumped to be the creeper in the bushes who got to capture the moment!! Can't you just see me doing that? It's what I was born to do baby! Just kidding! Anywho here's a little bit of what I was able to get...

 

Aren't they so adorable!?!? :) I may also be taking some of their engagement pictures as well, which I am totally stoked about!!!
My heart does break at the thought of not being at their wedding. :( In fact Megan had asked me to be a bridesmaid but I had to decline since I will most likely be in France :(
No worries though, she is setting up a computer with skype so that I can witness every minute of it! :)
It'll be just as if I were there!

So on monday mornings, I've been able to do a daycare at College Park Church, which is a Church basically right on Huntington University campus, and so happens to be situated right in front of one of my friend's apartment.
So most sunday nights I get dropped off at my friends' apt on campus and wake up the following morning and do the day care for a couple of hours. I then end up just staying at her apt until I finally decide to go home, which usually ends up being on a wednesday.
After spending a day or two at home with my roommates, I end up spending the weekend with Jeremy, whether it be in Huntington or in Goshen.


I am very excited about the weeks to come because I will be doing some traveling!! And not many enjoy the thrill and excitement of traveling as much as I do!!
This weekend there is a possibility that I will be going to Michigan to watch a Michigan State football game. Jeremy's best friend since age 1 is the leading receiver for their team, and we might be able to get tickets to watch him play on his senior night! I am then going to be able to spend Thanksgiving in Ohio with Jeremy's family. The sweet part about this is that my parents fly out back to Senegal the week after thanksgiving, and God willing they will find a vehicle to meet up with us in Ohio. Parents meeting each other. Exciting!
A couple of days after Thanksgiving, I am flying to Colorodo to visit my best friend, Lysiane, on her birthday! This is Jeremy's Christmas gift to me :)
From Colorado I will hopefully be able to fly to Philadelphia to watch over a 2 month old baby named Samuel, while his mother does a bone marrow transplant that could possibly save someone's life!!! I am most excited about this! What a privilege! When Libby (Samuel's mother) asked me, I was so grateful! I mean what a blessing to be a part of this experience! I do not know for sure whether this is really happening, but it most likely will and I am very excited (as you can probably already tell)!

After these travels I will more than likely be going back to Huntington and start attacking my belongings (sorting them out basically) to prepare myself for the big move!

So there ya have it! leave comments if you please.

Blessings to all of you!!

D.J.O.