Creamy Peppers And Onions With Kielbasa

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Super easy, Super simple, Alfredo sauce

Serve over any pasta.
We most often use a whole grain penne.
And sometimes we serve it over rice.

And just because.
Asparagus was on sale today.
And that meant.. it was for DINNER!







RECIPE

INGREDIENTS

• Meat Options: Turkey Kielbasa sliced in rounds, cooked chicken-bite sized, or ham chunks
  {Or skip the meat and call this a vegetarian dish!}
• 1 Green Pepper: sliced in thin strips
• 1 Red Pepper: sliced in thin strips
• 1 Red Onion: halved and sliced in thin strips
• 1-2 Garlic Cloves: crushed
• pinch of Red Pepper Flakes
• 1-2 Teaspoons Basil Leaves: crushed in your hand
• 1 Can Chicken Broth or Veggie Broth
• 1 Cup Cream or Half & Half
• Parmesan Cheese

and

Pasta or Rice of choice

DIRECTIONS

Cook your meat option in a large skillet til mostly done. Drain on paper towel lined plate. Set aside. (For Kielbasa I do not use any oil in pan, and just cook til all sides are browned a bit.)

In same skillet on medium heat saute peppers and onions til they just lose their crispness, 3-4 minutes. Use additional canola oil if needed.

Add garlic, red pepper flakes, and basil and cook one minute longer.

Add chicken broth and cream and let simmer on medium low for 8-10 minutes. When the sauce begins to thicken, add meat option to the skillet and warm through. Then add cooked pasta to the skillet.

Serve with Parmesan.

YUMMY.

What To Do With Turkey Leftovers?

When Turkey Leftovers Are BETTER Than Firstovers:
...You have to come up with terrific 2nd time around meals.

1. Turkey Pot Pie: Are you even allowed to have turkey leftovers and NOT make Turkey pot pie?
2. Turkey Pulled BBQ Sandwiches: Use your crockpot and store-bought rolls, easy peasy.
3. Tukey Tortilla Soup: I kind of pulled this one together from several different soups I make... we'll call it the improvised soup?
   

TUKEY POT PIE

I usually use a store-bought pie crust to top my pie, but the husband asked for a Bisquick pot pie, so we tried it... {the kids said thumbs down but the dad said thumbs up}! It so easy to make your own sauce for pot pie PLEASE don't use creamed canned soup... I promise this is SO much yummier!

Chop up vegetables: onions, potatoes, carrots, celery (& corn) are my favorites for this.
Saute them in a bit of canola oil.
Then boil in enough water to barely cover long enough to soften the potatoes.
Drain and Set aside. (I like to have 4-6 cups total.)

In a medium saucepan melt 2-3 Tablespoons of butter.
Add 3 Tablespoons of flour, whisk and cook for 1 minute (it will look like a paste).
Add 2 boullion cubes and 1 can of chicken broth. Bring to a boil while whisking.
Turn down the heat.
Add a big pinch of rosemary (crush it in your hand first).
Add 1/4 C to 1/2 C of milk depending on how big of a pie you are making.
Add chopped up leftover turkey, mine is frozen so it takes a couple minutes to warm up.
Pour over vegetables in a large pie dish or casserole dish.

Bisquick Topping:

1 Cup Bisquick
1/2 Cup milk
1 Egg
Mix briefly and drop by spoonful over veggies, sauce and Turkey.

Cook 45 minutes at 350 °
Till sauce is bubbly and top is browned

TURKEY PULLED BBQ SANDWICHES

I promise this is so EASY.

Step one: buy store-bought large rolls
Step two: place chopped up turkey in crock pot
Step three: add one cup BBQ sauce (I like Kraft brand) add one small can tomato sauce, I love how tomato sauce cuts down the bite of the BBQ sauce.

That's it. Heat up in the crock pot serve on the rolls!

TURKEY TORTILLA SOUP

Chopped onion, few chopped carrots, 2 small potatoes in bite size chunks, and celery diced.
Saute the veggies in a couple tablespoons of canola oil. (This is step one in pretty much anything I make... chop veggies, saute).

Add to Crock Pot:

Veggies
48oz container of chicken broth
1 Cup of your favorite salsa
1 15 oz can of petite cut tomatoes
few shakes of onion powder and garlic powder

Heat it up for a few hours and add chopped up turkey last and heat through.
Mine seemed like it could use some thickening so I added 1 cup of water with 2 TBLSP of flour mixed in right before I added the turkey.

Serve with cheese, tortilla chips, and lime juice....
(my kids were a big thumbs down on the lime juice, but I totally liked it!)

Enjoy those leftovers!

Top Photo by AtomicShark

Blueberry Sour Cream Bundt Cake

Say that 5x really fast!

This just might be the Best Blueberry Cake ever.

I must have this cake at least once per summer. Wanna know a trick? Teach your tween to cook and SHE'll make it for you! That's been the deal for the past 2-3 months. I told her if she'll do the baking... I'll happily be the cleaner-upper!

This cake is beyond yummy, and beyond pretty! It's not totally easy to make and I was impressed that she made the cake part without any help from me at all...

The recipe I've been following for years calls for a bundt pan, but the recipe I re-found online from Penzeys Spices calls for a boring 13x9 pan.. believe me(!) go for your inner Martha here! USE a bundt pan!

Cake batter:

* 2 3/4 Cups flour
* 1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
* 1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
* 1 tsp. salt
* 3/4 Cup butter, softened
* 1 Cup sugar
* 3 eggs
* 1 1/2 Cups sour cream
* 2 tsp. PURE VANILLA EXTRACT

Streusel:

* 3/4 Cup brown sugar
* 3/4 Cup chopped walnuts
* 1 1/2 tsp. CINNAMON (we used CHINA)
* 2 Cups blueberries, rinsed and drained

Preheat oven to 350°.
Grease and flour a 9x13 pan.
Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Set aside.
In a separate bowl with an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs one at a time beating well after each addition. Add the flour mixture alternating with the sour cream and VANILLA. Beat for an additional 2-3 minutes, until well blended. Combine the streusel ingredients except for the blueberries and reserve 3/4 cup. Toss the rest of the streusel with the blueberries. Spread 1/3 of the batter in the pan, top with 1/2 of the berry mixture, another third of the batter, the rest of the berries, and finally the remaining batter. Sprinkle on the reserved 3/4 cup streusel topping.

Bake 50-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack. Carefully turn the pan over onto a serving plate or cake stand and remove from pan. When completely cooled (2 hours or so) sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Totally yummy with real whipped cream of course!


Want more recipes?
Try these over at ASouthernFairyTale.com!

Blog Well Done: Chris Perrin

My good pal and fellow Twitter junkie Chris Perrin of the foodie site: Blog Well Done guest posts today! I can say from personal experience on more occasions than I have fingers that Chris has helped me out with a recipe or baking dilemma... he's like my personal Twitter Chef! From brining Turkey, to veggie sloppy joes, to lime flavored rice for a women's group of 50 he's helped me each time and I'm totally grateful!

"I think I was born ready to cook. Then again, maybe I just learned to love it at an early age."

My father was a wonderful cook, able to turn simple things like dried pasta, tomatoes, hamburger, mushrooms, peas, even Brussels sprouts into things I wanted to eat.

By the time I was in the third grade, I, too, wanted to take simple ingredients and make my own meals. My hope was that I could make everyone as happy as my dad’s food had made me. As an adult, I look back at many of those experiments, and all I can do is apologize to my family (again). They were so good to humor me…

Still, I did learn a lot while making those … dishes. First, I learned that salt should not be added to pasta sauce by the cupful. Very important! I learned the proper ratio of chocolate chips to pancake batter is not two hundred to one. On the other hand, I did learn how to brown and wash ground beef and I learned that soy sauce packs a lot of great flavor as long as you don’t drown your food in it. (It took me a while to learn that last part, actually.)

All of this culminated in what would be my signature dish from the third grade until high school. It’s a simple meal and it was easily within my culinary skills as a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth grader. While it’s not going to trick anyone into thinking it’s gourmet cuisine, this is a dish any kid can master and use as the basis for creating their own signature dishes.

Ingredients
1 package spaghetti
2 tablespoons garlic powder
2 tablespoons salt
1 pound ground hamburger
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons black pepper
1 can sliced mushrooms, drained
1-2 bags frozen veggies (peas and broccoli work well, as does corn)
3 tablespoons soy sauce

Directions
First, bring a pot of water to boil with the garlic powder and salt. Add the pasta and let it cook.

While the pasta is cooking, get out a skillet and brown the hamburger with the oregano and black pepper over medium heat. Once the hamburger is browned, drain any excess fat and add the rest of the ingredients. Cook until the frozen vegetables are warm.

Add the pasta back in and stir to coat. If all of the soy sauce has been absorbed by the meat, add another splash or two so some gets on the noodles.

Where to Go From Here
So this recipe is very simple, but it tastes pretty good and it’s fairly healthy, especially if you don’t add too much soy sauce (I used to have a step in the recipe for draining excess soy sauce. To this day, I still have a tendency to add too much.)

The first thing I recommend parents do with this recipe is have their kids try different veggies. Each time they make it, the kids can change which ones they use and maybe try something new each time. Kids are a lot more likely to try something new if they have cooked it, grown it, picked it out, etc. So let the kids have some input into what new veggies they try and they may just pick out something they would never try otherwise.

This dish transitions really well into both Italian and Asian pasta dishes. The spaghetti noodles can become lo mein noodles and the hamburger can be chicken, pork, or shrimp. Or keep the spaghetti noodles and make meat sauce or dump the meat entirely and make an olive oil veggie sauce using freshly chopped vegetables from a salad bar.

The main thing is that whatever changes a family makes to the recipe, they keep cooking it together. Cooking skills last a lifetime as do the memories of spending time as a family.

So get out there, cook, and enjoy!

Got a question for Chris... need some ideas for an upcoming pot luck? Tell Chris I sent you... enjoy!

photo credit: SereneJournal

Your Kids Make It ::: YOU Eat It!

Catch all of the GoodNCrazy Summer Series.

HELP! My Kids Are Driving Me Crazy!

You know how your kids wander into the kitchen every summer afternoon and go.. hey mom I'm hungry. What can I eat?! And you want to answer... 'Go make yerself some dang quesaDILLas!'

Well here's your new answer:

Go Make yerself some dang Monkey Bread!

This Recipe is courtesy of the fabulous, the seriously funny, the shoe lovin', and the always amazing foodie:

RACHEL of A Southern Fairytale!

We made a kid friendly test kitchen out of this recipe. I handed Sadie (11) and Sassy (8) the recipe, made sure they knew where all the ingredients were, and walked away....

I give you:

Quite possibly the easiest Kid Friendly Recipe in the world. Maybe the Universe!

Take it away Rachel!

Does this picture make your mouth water? Rachel says Monkey Bread is one of her favorite breakfasts because it’s easy, tonguegasmically delectable, has a fun name and it’s so versatile.

She serve this with Milk, Coffee and Fresh Fruit. It’s fabulous for Brunches, Holiday Breakfasts, Bible Studies, Baby Showers, you get the idea.~~~~~~~~

Want to check out how easy these are to make? {HINT: you start with store bought biscuits!}
Please click on over to Rachel's House and she will SHOW you the recipe! Oh my gosh ours are in the oven right now and they smell soooooo good!

A big thanks to Rachel. I think she is amazing.. and... so are these treats!

---

More Kid Friendly Recipes:

Cake Mix Cookies. My kids make these about once a week. I keep the pantry Betty Crocker stocked precisely for this purpose!

Frozen YogoNana Bites. I am so all over these... I'm thinking I should try this with some sort of chocolate variation, what do you think?


Kid Friendly Gingersnaps from CandH Sugar. These totally bring me back to my childhood. My mom made cookies a lot like this! I heart molasses in anything!

Have you heard of a Tall Giraffe? Well you have now! Check out Joy's Submission!

Do you have a kid friendly recipe you would like added to this list? Leave me a comment or email me, I'll be happy to add a small picture and your link!

Reeses Homemade Peanut Butter Cup Cookies

I Heart Reeses!

First: Unwrap 48 mini Reeses.
(Second: Unwrap 10 more, hurry and eat them before kids see you)

You need a mini muffin pan for these, and seriously if you don't already have any silicone bakeware? Go get some.. I LOVE mine!

I've seen recipes that say let these sit for a few hours to set up. And...HELLO?? Melting chocolate goodness! Why wait?!

RECIPE: On the back of Reeses Minis. Or google it, there are plenty of sites with the recipe, and they were all the same...

The only thing that seemed strange was that it doesn't make a lot of cookie dough and you really only use a tiny bit in each mini muffin cup, but it does stretch to 48 cookies (even when the munchkins eat a couple dabs of dough.. not the mom though.. I would never do that... )

Catch More Mouthwatering Mondays @ Rachel's Place!

Strawberry {Daiquiry} Shortcake

Sorry Folks—It's A Virgin Daiquiry
{Mormon thing again..}

Inspired by Betty Crocker. I changed a few things so I hope they don't mind?

It was great fun to walk into Safeway looking for Strawberry Daiquiry Mix... there I am standing in the alcohol aisle with a fairly perplexed look on my face. My kids in tow, asking, mom what are we looking for?? Good question I'm thinking? Talk about having no idea what I was doing! The recipe calls for a bit of non-alcoholic mix... but the best I can see is a GALLON sized Jug of the stuff? How many cakes do they think I want to make here! Oh I see the writing now, PARTY size... I get it... backing. away. slowly...

Turns out I found the frozen stuff in a much smaller dimension; I left looking a little less like an alcoholic Mormon at least!

Birthday tradition dictates stawberry shortcake every year for the hubby's birthday, and since basically I'm incapable of sticking with the same thing twice, I generally experiment and try to find the best Shortcake Recipe possible...

I was hoping this cake would be the one! But this needed a dose of moisture. In the form of some sort of fat maybe? Sour cream..? or Keep some of the egg yolks...? or Did I over bake it? I'm not sure.. but the flavor was great! And we all loved the topping spiked with Daiquiry mix! I should have doused it with a few drops of rum flavoring whadayathink??

RECIPE:

White cake mix (follow directions on box) plus add 1/3 cup Daiquiry mix-I didn't even dilute the mix first... but like I said, I would keep some of the egg yolks and add something else in there to make it more moist? Yougurt, sourcream, applesauce...

Bake in 2 round pans.

Whip up a pint of Whipped Cream (and hooray no problems with the Cream this time around!) Add 1/3 Cup of Daiquiry mix as you whip it.

Spread on the cakes and top with sliced strawberries... Sure Looks Purty!

Share your recipes with Rachel's:
Mouthwatering Mondays!

Easy Cheese Garlic Bread: Forget the Pasta!

Crap, we have to leave for Little League in 45 minutes!!!

You know how you need those quick meals on weeknights (in a hurry before friggin' Little League?) And spaghetti seems to fit the bill about once a week? But it comes out a little boring sometimes, okay most times? Boiled noodles, red slop sauce from a jar...

I have your solution...

Easy Cheesy Garlic Bread

Talk about taking the BEFORE Boring to Za-Zing AFTER!

Serious.Easy.You.Can.Make.This.

While the pasta boils...
1 french/italian bread: big and soft
Slice it in half length wise. Then load those babies up on a cookie sheet.

• 1Cube butter (melted)
  
• 1-2 Cups shredded cheddar
• 1 egg beaten
• 1/4-1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
• 1 Tablespooon Parsley flakes
• Dash Worcestershire Sauce (I never have this so I skip it, oh well.)

Melt the butter in a small glass bowl, add the cheese and stir a bit, add the rest of the ingredients and spread on both sides of the bread. Turn the oven on to Broil, and place the bread on a lower rack for about 7 minutes or until slightly browning and bubbly.

Slice it up and YUMMY it up. We totally eat these the next day for lunch, forget the spaghetti at that point, who cares!

Enjoy more MouthWatering Mondays at ASouthernFairyTale!

Sloppy Joes: My Mom's Recipe

Only... we always called this Barbecue.

You know how you can follow your mom's recipe EXACTLY and still it does't taste the same?? This is one of those examples. We love it, but it never comes out quite like I remember.

Ingredients:
Brown 1lb hamburger with half an onion, chopped.
Add 1 can Campbell's Tomato Soup
Add 1 can Campbell's Chicken Gumbo Soup (I know, just trust my mom here)
Add 1-2 tsp. Cumin

That's it. My mom usually makes 3 or even 4 times this amount for giant family gatherings. Once everything is added she throws it all in the crock pot and keeps it on warm till needed. I usually just simmer it for 20-30 minutes and then serve.

We eat our Sloppy Joes open face style on toasted buns. And we always called it 'barbecue' I don't know why? How do you eat your Joes? And what other Cambell's soup recipes do you love?

AND... I put in a call to my BlogWellDone pal, Chris, he says he has a veggie version of sloppy joes, I'm getting ready to go vegetarian for the summer, wanna join me?

Other MouthWatering Monday Recipes at Rachel's Place!

Don't Know What to Make For Dinner Tonight??

CHICKEN WITH ASPARAGUS AND ALMONDS

Got your attention didn't I!?

I just found a website that provides amazing recipes for you all week long!

A Flash In The Pan

Delivers the recipes, provides a print sheet AND helps you with your grocery list! {I need that part the most.} In fact, I'm havingtheir Chicken Soup with Rice for dinner, and yes we'll be reading the book!

And this cooksheet thing? It tells you when to start cooking what for each meal! (click that and scroll down to see an 'example'.) Like this:

• 5:46 start the chicken
• 5:51 Start the noodles
• 5:54 add something else to the chicken...

and so on.

{I'm going to ask them to add in the part where you have to turn the whole meal off and run to pick up your 11yrold cuz you totally forgot her at little league??}

My Friend Shellie over at Blog4Mom has created a giant group of giveaways including 100 FREE Subscriptions! Check out her site to see all the blog participants and to find out how to win your subscription.

Oh and get this....!

THERE IS A GRAND PRIZE.
Better than a full year of meals, suggestions and recipes?

YES.

The amazing and very professional chefs behind A Flash In The Pan, are going to come to YOUR HOUSE to cook for you! They will fly in, do the shopping, do the cooking and the cleaning up (okay you might have to help with that part..) But HOW freakin' cool is that? If I were to win.. I would soo invite some girlfriends over for a rockin' girl's night at MY house! What would you do?

What are you waiting for? Head over to Blog4Mom and check out all the places you can enter!

There will be additional winners and the Grand Prize Winner announced This Wednesday via Twitter. Yup. Earth Day.

• April 22nd from 7-9PM EST.
• Hashtag: #FIPan
• Custom TweetGrid: #FIPan TweetGrid.com

If You Give a Blogger a Recipe...

Kate the Great from Cooking During Stolen Moments

has created an eCookBook. Where did she get the recipes for this eCookBook?
Well, two are mine! She has added my Pistachio Cake and My Veggie Bolonese...

But there are other recipes from online blogging buddies of mine!

• Daisy (my favorite poet) from CompostHappens has added Mosaic Muffins.
• @David_Tinney (my awesome Twitter pal) has added T-Bone Steaks.. um.. YUM!
• Katie (the BuildABear winner) from Good Life {Eats} has added Vanilla Sugar Sweat Bread.

I don't know about you, but I could be talked into buying the book just from these offerings! But there are over 170 recipes total!

What is the cost? A donation. I'd recommend $20 for the full recipe book, and you decide if you only want the cookes, or breads or even a main dish book! The books are available now, hurry!

All proceeds are going to Share Our Strength, please read more about the virtual bake sale on Kate's blog!

What To Do With All Those Boiled Eggs?!

Does Everyone have weird dinners you ate as a kid but didn't realize were weird until your husband looked at you as if you had grown a third eye??

I have a few of those.
Here's one:

Cream Egg Over Toast

Ingredients:

• 2T Butter
• 2T Flour (+)
• 1 Can chicken broth
• 1-2 boullion cubes
• A little milk (1/4 cup to 1/2 cup)
  
• Mustard (1-2T as you like it)
• 5-6 boiled eggs-peeled and sliced in rounds (preferably dyed!)
• {optional: cumin, salt and pepper, diced ham}
• Toast
  

Melt butter on med. high, in a 2qt. sauce pan, add the flour and whisk around a few minutes. (will be lumpy) Add the chicken broth, boullion and whisk until smooth. Cook stirring often until bubbly. Turn down heat, add milk (create thickness you desire here) add mustard and whisk until combined. Turn off heat and add sliced eggs.

Ladle over two slices of toast and Voila.. weird dinner to help use up the eggs....!
My kids eat this—would yours?

~~~~Another weird dinner?

We eat a bowl of leftover rice, with milk, butter, cinnamon and sugar... simple—but better than quesadillas over and over huh? (My oldest eats this for breakfast in fact!)

What's your weird dinner?

~~~~Got a Great Recipe you want to share?
Link up over at Rachel's Place for Mouthwatering Mondays at A Southern Fairytale. I did!
{you should see the comments about all that PEPPER on her potatoes!}

Goodness in a Jar

You know those nasty cookie mixes in a jar? NOT THESE.
A few years ago I tested a bunch of recipes for cookie mixes. And this is the winner. And really. When the main ingredient is chunks of Reeses Cups, how could it not be the winner??

I'm not very good at packaging. As I've mentioned before. So it's a good thing these babies look awesome before you add anything.

(The little tubs in the pic are homemade lip gloss for kid friend gifts--didn't turn out so well... still experimenting on that recipe...I think we'll keep 'em around for an April fool's joke or something because they are AWFUL tasting---too much Kool-Aide mix!)

Merry Ho Ho Ho.

You want the recipe? It's not a secret. And it's not mine.
I love the part where it says DO NOT USE Diet Margarine.
What the heck is Diet Margarine? And do you have a better mix in a jar recipe...? I'm thinking about creating a hearty oatmeal pancake mix for next year...

ThanksGivings Past

Once upon a time, we had this really great idea. We thought we would try to take advantage of the Thanksgiving Vacation days and travel somewhere warmer...

And it was a good idea and all.

But.

The condo we wanted was booked for the actual week of Thanksgiving, so we opted for the week starting the day AFTER Thanksgiving. Which didn't really maximize the days off school. But whatever.

Another but.

If you need to be somewhere the day AFTER Thanksgiving and it's an 11 hour drive and you aren't sure your 3yrold can hold up that long and you think you may be stopping over in VEGAS for the half way hotel stay....then...how do you do the ACTUAL Thanksgiving day?

These were our options:

• Get up early to cook and eat turkey at 10AM and on the road by 2PM? NO. That sucks for obvious reasons (the get up early part mainly--but leftovers? cleaning up after the mess in order to LEAVE, indigestion in the car for 6 hours..)
• Get up early and drive to In-Laws for Turkey dinner there, bringing only the rolls? No. Similar reasons (the get up early part, the convince them to eat earlier part, the part where it's 2 hours the other direction from where we were headed??)
• Get up kinda early and eat early lunch/dinner at local restaurant? No. First of all SERIOUSLY expensive unless you want Turkey ala Dennys, second...you need reservations 3 weeks in advance? IN ADVANCE? Who are all these people eating Turkey dinner OUT?? Good grief.
• Cook Turkey dinner at the condo in warmer clime only do it a day or so AFTER Turkey day? Now that was sounding good.

And it worked pretty well too. The um.. kitchen utensils and supplies were quite lacking...hard to mash potatoes without a masher ya know?


This is us at the Condo, last year. With swim hair. And a little boy who fell asleep and missed the dinner altogether.

The funniest part, was on Thanksgiving day while driving through Las Vegas (stayed in a hotel overnight...)we needed to eat dinner after being on the road a long time. Just ANY dinner would do, right?

Um? McDonald's? Closed. IHOP? Closed. In-N-Out? Olive Garden? Burger King? Closed, Closed and Closed. 7-eleven was open and we were considering our options there. For our real/fake Thanksgiving dinner! Hot dogs and Big Gulps!? And then...we saw it. A parking lot full of cars...surrounding...

a Black Angus restaurant! WhoHoo!
Never been to one before, but who cares...at least it wasn't a hot dog eh? (They barely squeezed us in-- a late cancellation, whew!) They were so confused when we opted to order off the menu and not eat their Turkey meal! Oh well.



Now this next picture is more like it. Turkey Day 2006. Always pull out my fancy Williams Sonoma tablecloth. First year I got to use my mother's china. And the first course.

Roasted Corn and Red Pepper Soup.

My absolute mostest favoritest. It's what I can't live without on Thanksgiving Day. Well that.. and my family of coursers!


That soup btw? I first found it in a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook....Seriously worth the effort of clicking this recipe and stashing it in your online recipe folder...I know you have one...

I promise...those other recipes are coming. I almost have enough really terrific recipes submitted to even hand out the Hot Chocolate Recipe...I could use a few more though?

Holiday Food Thoughts...

My MIL learned to make hand dipped chocolates the old fashioned way--
from her MIL.

I was always supposed to learn how to make those fancy cherry chocolates, and chocolate covered fondants from her.

It never happened. I lived too far away for too many years.

Instead.

I learned to make Cream Cheese Filled Pumpkin Rolls, and from scratch Gingerbread Men that create heaven on earth while they bake and taste even better(!) and a family recipe for Danish Pastry (it uses more butter than one cow can make in a month!) and my personal favorite: English Toffee. Yummmm.




What is the food you cannot live without during the holidays? The perfect Turkey? Grandma's secret recipe for walnut stuffing? How about the desserts? Ooooh...pumpkin pie of course! But what about the weird things, the experiments gone awry, the goodies only your family loves?

I'd love to share my recipes with you. Will you share yours with me?
I have an over the top Hot Chocolate recipe, one your kids WILL NOT like, it's that good.
It will be your reward for sharing with me.

Join us for GNO Tuesday night over at Twitter.com. Our Guest Tweet is Nicole from PinchMySalt.com. Bring all your foodiest thoughts and questions, I can't wait to ask her about those dipped cherry chocolates!

You know you want some...

I took THESE to book club last week.

Yes. I do get out. I see real women at real GNOs. What book for book club?

I have no idea.

The grown up girly food froze my brain.

Apparently the deal is to OUT-do each other with the treats you bring to book club, and then no one will care that you didn't read the book, even though you claimed to have read it a hundred years ago in Jr. High. (Who would do that?)

There was this homemade 7layer dip with REAL guac in it. The kind where you walk away from the tray with 3/4ths of it on your plate, and go? Oops. How did SO much of that get on my plate? Oh well, no one wants to eat it if I put it back right?? So yeah, I ate all of that. AND another sweet mom there had gotten all Martha on us and brought these cute little puff balls of chocolate cupcakes with giant marshmallow heads and chunks of chocolate bars for garnish. (Literally. She used a Martha recipe she confessed. The little devil.)

Oh. And HOMEmade Hot chocolate. Did you even know you can MAKE hot chocolate? As in NOT from a metallic packet? Yeah, and whipped cream with cinnamon sprinkled on top.

After all that?
So much for my now not -so-amazing:

Chocolate Cheesecake Pumpkin Bars

Just in case you'd like to try these? (And there were one or two--or 18-- twitter friends who said they did....) The recipe seems intimidating. But so did Twitter at first right? It's easy, just follow in steps. (And USE parchment paper...many a frickin swear word avoided via Parchment.)

CRUST

2.5 C Graham Crackers--crushed
1/2 C Sugar
1 C Melted Butter
--mix well and set aside

FILLING

3) 8 oz PKGS. Cream Cheese (softened)
2 2/3 C Sugar
4 Eggs
1 1/2 C Pureed Canned Pumpkin
3/4 tsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice
3/4 tsp. Vanilla
1/4+ tsp. Salt
--6 Oz. chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet)
3 Tbls. Butter

TOPPING

2 C Sour Cream (yes the real stuff)
1/3 C Sugar

There are 4 layers total. So we'll have 4 steps to get to those layers, eh?

Step One:

Lightly grease 15x9 pan for crust (here's where the parchment comes in handy, I spray the parchment a bit!) Press cracker mixture in the bottom and set aside.

PreHeat oven to 325 degrees

Step Two:

Filling. In large bowl beat together cream cheese & sugar. Add eggs one at a time on low speed. Stir in the pumpkin, spice, vanilla & salt.
---Pour 2 Cups of this Pumpkin mixture into another bowl and set both bowls aside. (There's a lot of asides in this.)

Step Three:

In small saucepan over very low heat melt chips and butter while stirring. Remove from heat. Add the reserved 2 cups filling to this chocolate-y mixture. Stir till smooth.

Spread the chocolate/pumpkin batter carefully over the graham crust. Bake for 15 min. Remove from oven and slowly pour the other bowl of filling over this partially cooked chocolate layer. Bake another 40-50 minutes. Until the edges slightly puff up and the center is set. (Don't over cook, a little wiggle-y in the middle is fine.) Remove from oven and cool for 30 min.

Step Four:

Topping. Meanwhile, combine sour cream and 1/4 C sugar and let stand until cheesecake pan is cool. Then spread sour cream mixture over filling. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight. Keep refrigerated.

Cut into squares and then cut squares into diagonals for the Martha factor.
I honestly can't remember where I came across this recipe. So if' it's your great aunt Edna's tell her I'm sorry for stealing it?

Oh. And this makes a ton. Taking half the pan into your husband's office tends to get lots of ...ahem...cheesecake points. (Ask me how I know.)

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~Am on a quest for other great Pumpkin Recipes... Send me yours and I'll link them here:

Connie Has TWO pumpkin breads for you!