Category Archives: Holiday

Time for Some Holiday Cookies – Part 1

Posted in Cookies, Dessert, Holiday by

So it’s that time of year where we all eat way too many cookies and treats in honor of the upcoming holidays. I decided to contribute by making cookie plates for all of my friends, co-workers, and the other people I wanted to thank. The list got kind of long and I ended up doing five different kinds of cookies (with four of the recipes doubled). I might have been a bit too ambitious because it ended up taking nine hours. But oh well. They all turned out well and I made so many that we had lots of leftovers! I made chocolate hazelnut crinkle cookies, seven layer bars, Mexican wedding cookies, double chocolate peppermint cookies, and cranberry streusel shortbread bars.

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Holiday Gift Ideas

Posted in Holiday by

After several years of shopping for my kitchen, I am starting to get to a point where I don’t regularly get to the middle of a recipe only to realize I don’t have the right utensils. But this has taken time and many trips to Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and Amazon. So in honor of the upcoming holidays, I wanted to share some of my favorite kitchen tools (and some of the ones still on my wish list) to help any of you who are doing shopping for fellow baking/cooking friends.

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My Favorite Meal of the Week – Pretzels and Fall Chopped Salad

Posted in Gluten Free, Healthy, Holiday, Salads, Vegetarian by

This week, I did very little cooking. Between recovering from Thanksgiving and getting the house all prepared for the holidays (see below), I had no energy left to toil in the kitchen. But after finishing all of our holiday decorations this afternoon, I decided to get a little creative for dinner, and it turned out to be one of the best meals of the week.

I’ve been meaning to make my own homemade pretzels (I have a soft spot for the horribly unhealthy ones you can find in malls and airports), and after sitting on the floor for three hours making my own cranberry popcorn garlands today, pretzels sounded like an amazing dinner. And while yes, part of me wanted to just devour the pretzels by themselves (see the next post for recipe), I added in a fall chopped salad (really just so my mom wouldn’t disown me upon reading that I’d only had pretzels for dinner).

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My Favorite Meal of the Week – Thanksgiving Style

Posted in Dinner, Entertaining, Holiday, Winter by

Preparing to host our first Thanksgiving kept us very busy this week. But now that it’s over – we survived and have a fridge full of leftovers – it was so worth it!

Although, there was one moment when I wondered if we’d be able to get everything done. I spent all week getting the food, figuring out timing for how to get everything done on Thursday, cleaning, and setting up. None of that prepared me to have our sink stop draining, our disposal stop working, and our dishwasher start flooding at 11:30pm on Wednesday. After an hour of trying to fix it, we went to bed thinking we’d be doing all of our dishes in the shower on Thanksgiving. Luckily, Dave managed to fix it Thursday morning about five minutes before his parents showed up (side note, pour baking soda and vinegar, and then boiling hot water down the drain to clear the clog).

But all in all, we had a pretty seamless day on Thanksgiving.  I had wanted to do several posts with all of the different things I made (and lots of pictures) but I sort of underestimated how much I’d have to do on Thanksgiving. So I had to skip taking pictures of every step. But I do want to give you the links/recipes for all of my dishes, and some pictures of the final products!

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