Category: Uncategorized

Quest for the Best Banana Bread and a Chopped Challenge

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We just wrapped up our Christmas parties yesterday, after a celebration with my family. As is tradition, we had a meal of all appetizers. Every family brings their favorite appetizers to share with everyone else and we spend the entire day just grazing. It’s an understatement to say that I’m full today. So before we get to our quest and our challenge, here are a few other blogger recipes we enjoyed once more.

First up is this delicious (and super easy) Baba Ghanoush recipe from Charles at Five Euro Food. I enjoy this one for lunch quite a bit too.

We also made some Candied Cranberries that we saw over at A Spicy Perspective. Miss A and I really enjoyed these – most of the cranberries were sweet, but every now and then one would give a surprisingly tart burst of flavor. A very fun flavor experience, plus they were just pretty. Continue reading →

A Delicious Time of Year

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We hope that everyone is enjoying the holidays. We had a wonderful weekend complete with a visit from Santa (the kids are still besides themselves), laughter, love, family and delicious food. We’d like to start by giving a shout-out to some of our blogging friends who made our holiday all the more delicious. Unfortunately I don’t have photos of all the dishes we made, but each one was every bit as good as we hoped!

We spent Christmas Eve having a family dinner with just the four of us. We dressed-up, opened presents, ate our traditional homemade Italian dinner, followed by a tour of Christmas lights in our Christmas pajamas while we ate cookies in the car. Our meal this year featured two amazing recipes from Linda at Savoring Every Bite. The kids especially enjoyed her Calamari Pomodoro. We did too, but the kids beat us out of seconds and thirds. They love their calamari. So while the kids devoured the calamari, Mike and I enjoyed the Pasta with Pecorino Herb Walnut Sauce. (Which incidentally makes for great leftovers too!)

We kicked off Christmas day with our Maple Bacon Biscuits – every bit as good as the first time and then got ready for the festivities.  Continue reading →

It’s Not Christmas Without…

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Mom’s oatmeal cookies. They are the only cookies that are an absolute must in our house.

I know, I know, mom. Couldn’t leave you out of the flashback pics though.

Admittedly, this week has gotten away from us a little. We haven’t had many home cooked meals and we’ve put our cooking around the world on hold for a few days. Rather we’ve been finishing up our holiday to do list – okay, we started and have almost finished up our holiday to do list. Fortunately I’m taking a day off work today and plan to finish everything up, because for the next three days it’s all about playing with the kids.

Now the one thing we made sure to have time for this week was mom’s oatmeal cookies. These little gems grace our holiday dessert table every year. I don’t know where the recipe originally came from, I just know it’s hands-down my favorite cookie. It’s sweet with a hint of vanilla and practically melts in your mouth. I don’t think it’s Mike’s favorite cookie, but he does ask that I only make them one time a year because he just can’t control himself around them. And the kids…well, they would eat these for every meal of the day if we let them. Continue reading →

Always be Prepared

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While this is the motto of the Boy Scouts, it’s also something my parents instilled in me as I was growing up. For instance, my mom always had everything you could possibly need in her purse from band aids and tissues to breath mints and stain remover. No matter what the need, you could be sure an answer was in her purse.

We also had a “safety” plan for every possible emergency from fires to strangers, and as I got older we had an escape plan for parties should they get “out of hand” or make me “uncomfortable.”  Then when I went away to college mom gave me a stash of what she called, “mad money,” to be reserved for emergencies. Of course we disagreed on what constituted an emergency – I thought bar money and a train ticket to see Mike were certainly valid situations.

My dad also imparted his preparedness wisdom too – make sure to get regular oil changes, keep a safety kit in the car, remember teenage boys have hormones (My response to dad – “So do teenage girls.” I’m amazed he ever let me out of the house after that.), never walk alone at night…the list goes on. Continue reading →

Taking the Quest for the Best Banana Bread to New Elevations

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The countdown is on folks! Only a few more recipes before we’re opening up the freezer, thawing the banana bread slices and having ourselves a banana bread feast all the while we determine which is our favorite recipe. Perhaps it will be this one? Only time will tell.

This next recipe wasn’t originally going to be in the mix, but we ran across it while surfing around one day, and it was enough different than all the others that we had to give it a try. We found it over at a blog called Inside the Kaganoff Kitchen and it’s called Mountain Sky Banana Bread. So what was so special about this bread that it was calling our name? Cream cheese. Yum! Continue reading →

Red Hot

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By Mike

Miss A carpools home from preschool with our neighbor, and in a development that should come as no surprise to regular blog readers, she’s been known to express her opinion about the music selection during the car ride. Her standard request demand is for the Red Hot Chili Peppers:


She apparently picked this up from Kristy unbeknownst to me. Regardless, we’re off to New Mexico, a state that knows something about chile peppers, for our stateside adventure this week.

In fact, chiles are the subject of The Official New Mexico State Question: Red or Green? The correct answer if you can’t decide is, appropriately enough for the season, “Christmas.”

Our pick for a New Mexico meal featured red chiles most prominently, though the ones we chose were mild. We went with Costillas de Sudoeste–Southwest Spareribs in a red chile sauce. Fear not, though–we made some green chile sauce to go alongside as well. Continue reading →