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Ahhh....I love weekends.   The hubs and I got to spend the weekend away with friends and it was a blast.  I love how relaxed we get to be and that there is nothing pressing on my time (well as long as I don't think about it because believe me there are still many things I need to do, just things that don't have to be done right this second!). Plus we have a tradition every Saturday morning.  The hubs makes pancakes and scrambled eggs.  He makes the most delicious eggs.  It's probably all the cheese he puts in them, but hey I won't complain, I don't have to make breakfast, which puts me in a great mood all day :). Since we were going to be with friends, in a cabin, we decided to make everyone our traditional breakfast.  We made our new favorite pancake recipe.  These were heavenly.  I love adding buttermilk to pancakes, it makes them so moist, and this recipe is fairly healthy (egg white, whole wheat and little sugar or oil), which I will take...

In our house cream cheese is one of those universal foods that we always have on hand .  Seriously!  Cream cheese, according to the hubs, is AMAZING. Think about it.  Cream cheese is delicious in main dishes ( alfredo  and pretty any kind of pasta), appetizers ( hot reuben dip , bbq jalapeno poppers , artichoke dip ), and in desserts (just think cream cheese frosting , pound cake , pumpkin cheesecake snickerdoodles ).  Ahh...heaven.  Anytime I find something new with cream cheese, you can bet I am totally going to make it.  I mean come on, it has cream cheese and I have some waiting in the fridge to be used. But when I first saw this recipe I was a little skeptical.  No eggs and cream cheese.  I wondered how well these would turn out but OMG!  These are one of my new favorite cookies.  Not only were they so easy to make (I always have a hard time with chocolate chip cookies--they either spread out too much, are too hard or too soft,...

 I use to think that January was the most boring month ever.  Any of you with me on that? Maybe because it's the let down of the holidays or just because it starts to get really cold, at least it use to here in Idaho, lately that's not been the case.  Our beautiful snow melted off completely and it's now been raining for 4 straight days. Anyways, back to January.  This year I thought surely this month is not going to be boring.  We are going to play and stay busy and just enjoy it for what it is, a month of getting back into the routines and cleaning up from the holidays--physically and emotionally. So now that January is more than half over, I am absolutely amazed.  This month has flown by and I can hardly find two seconds to make a recipe or read a book.  Maybe that's because I have two new responsibilities in my church, one being super big and pretty overwhelming at the moment but hey, it's made January not boring!  So here's to making Jan...

Is it too late for hot chocolate? Not at our house especially because we finally got snow.  Yeah!! This is our first white stuff of the winter season so were so excited to see it coming down.  We broke open the snow gear, went and played (and shoveled the walks), enjoyed how beautiful it was, and then came in and warmed up with some hot cocoa. I love coming into a warm house and drinking some delicious chocolate.  Ahhh...so good. This year we have been trying the homemade version of hot chocolate.  I grew up on the homemade stuff and my mom always kept a huge container in the pantry.  My children on the other hand have grown up with Stevens (that's pretty yummy stuff especially the candy cane one) and I have been trying to get them to enjoy the homemade kind. Homemade hot cocoa has a different flavor, delicious but different so be prepared.  Don't expect it to taste like Stevens or Little Miss or any other those other boughten kind.  In some ways it mi...

 No matter how many times I make this and take photographs of it (which we are up to 3 now), I think they look terrible. I'm getting almost obsessive about it.  I try different bowls, different plates, different places in my house to take the pictures, different times of day, different settings on my camera, and guess what!!!! They all look this bad.  So if this picture makes you not want to try this, I totally get it BUT (and you notice it's a big but...) it actually tasted fabulous. The hubs keeps telling me to forget about it and just post it since it is his favorite of all time appetizers.  He gets so excited when I am making this because he absolutely and totally loves it and could devour the whole entire dip himself. So in honor of him and me trying not to be upset about my ugly pictures, here it is!  If you like reuben sandwiches at all, this would be a hit.  And don't worry the sauerkraut is very mild and you hardly notice it is even there.  So...

Sometimes things come along that really surprise me.   Like california sushi rolls.  Man I hate regular sushi but california rolls, oh my, they are pretty delightful. Or what about beets.  Okay that might be a little too weird for most of you but my husband LOVES them (it came from spending 2 years in Ukraine) and until a couple years ago I detested them.  Now I think they are quite tasty, especially with a little butter and salt-n-pepper. Another thing that has come into my life recently and completely surprised me is nuts.  I have always liked nuts but I HATED them in anything.  If my mom (or anyone else) so much as added one nut to the cookies, brownies, cake, etc. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. Then in the past month my husband convinced me to add some chopped almonds to some homemade ice cream, and as they say, the rest is history.  I have been adding nuts to everything, especially pecans, and I am in heaven. So if any of you are nut ha...

I figure since we are on a chocolate peanut butter kick I might as well add another one to your list. This ice cream was absolutely divine.  I took one bite and was speechless.  I couldn't even find the words to describe the masterpiece I was eating. It all started with  this  lovely cookbook the hubs got for Christmas (the only way I got away with that was because it's all about his favorite dessert in the world--ice cream).  This cookbook was AHHHHMAZING!  I spent several hours on Christmas reading it from cover to cover and thoroughly enjoyed myself. He shares some of the most amazing recipes and I would have to say, some of the weirdest combinations.  For instance, I don't know if we are ever going to try olive oil ice cream or green pea ice cream.  He also has perfectly normal combinations that we have tried and loved, like vanilla (coming soon) and plain old chocolate that will also knock your socks off. So if you want to become addicted to ...

Any of you football fans out there? I've mentioned before that I come from a football family and the hubs does not.  Because of me we now follow BSU quite religiously, watch most of the BCS Bowl games (even though we think it a stupid system and needs to be changed), and follow my brother's NFL teams so we can be a part of the conversation when we get together. And now that it's January the Super Bowl is coming up.  That's one game we don't usually watch unless the Denver Broncos are playing, which isn't likely but you never know with Tebow.  Ha, ha, I'm a poet and didn't even know it! Okay that was lame but one thing we do enjoy about the Super Bowl is the fun foods that come around.  So I thought I would share with you some of our favorite appetizers.   This is a ramped up 7-layer dip.  Most 7-layer dips are basically the same and that's why I love this version.  It has a touch of spiciness, great flavor, and absolutely delicious.  Plus it's pe...

My husband is a New Year's Eve baby.  Most of the time he likes his birthday and especially when I make him his favorite foods. He has lots of favorites and December is quite busy making him food.  Not that I have to, I just always feel bad because his birthday is so close to Christmas and I try to compensate for that--I know silly but I think I would hate to have my birthday then.  Some of his favorites are ice cream (he got a new ice cream book for Christmas and we have been trying it out--so delicious!!), prime rib, enchiladas , cheesecake, and peanut butter. He first wanted an eggnog cheesecake but after a little persuasion (and lots of talk by the kids saying how much they would hate it), he decided on something chocolate and peanut butter.  Which I was thrilled about because, as you know, they are two of my favorite combinations of all time. My mother, a few days before Christmas, brought us a whole bag of reese's peanut butter cups so after a very small amount...

Are you one of those goal setters?  Or how about those people that choose a word for the year and focus on that?  Or maybe just nothing at all? This time comes around and I am always in a quandary.  I can't decide whether to commit my goals to paper (because you know there is always a risk that I am not going to achieve any of them) or just focus on one thing in my life and work on that.   Last year I tried the committing the goals to paper thing and as I was looking over them, I realized I achieved half of them.  YEAH!!!  for me, that's a new record.  I also firmly believe that when you write something down it makes work at it better so maybe I will just do both this year.  Two of them that I made were about this food blog.  And thanks to all of you out there, I met my goal.  Want to know what they were: 1.  Make it to 500 followers (last January started with 138) and 2.  Reach 10,000 unique hits a month (last December I avera...

Well it's official.  The new year is here and everyone is back at the gym. I use to be one of those people that would show up in January for a couple weeks and then slowly slack off until I was not showing up at all.  Now I am proud to say that I am one of those regulars that go all year long, quite regularly. Now I get to watch all the "newbies" come in and see the gym etiquette take place, which is quite hilarious to me.  For instance, people have their assigned places and it is a faux pas to set up in "their space".  Never mind that you have never been there before and could have no idea someone had a "spot" and I think it's entertaining to watch a regular get huffy about it.  I try to move around regularly to upset the statue quo, okay I don't but one day I will have the guts to take over someone else's spot. Another rule of the gym is that you can't be too close to someone else.  You shouldn't use the treadmill right next to so...