National Chocolate Covered Anything Day...

Put "eat chocolate" at the top of your list of things to do today. That way, at least you'll get one thing done. (Author Unknown)

Info from this mostly unknown holiday from the Holiday Insights website.
"When : Always December 16
Chocolaholics rejoice! Its a great day to indulge, binge, "pig out", and otherwise consume to excess, your favorite food....chocolate. We believe the timing of this day, during the holiday season, couldn't be better.

Today, we get to enjoy our beloved chocolate by covering something...just about anything... in a generous amount of chocolate. Pour, spread, or drizzle chocolate over cakes, cupcakes, pies, pancakes or waffles, nuts, raisins, even ants (yes, some people actually eat chocolate covered ants!). We will let you decide what is too extreme, and how much is too much, if any.

As chocoloaholics, we shouldn't need any added incentive to enjoy our chocolate. In the giving spirit of the holiday season, make sure to give or share some of your favorite chocolate covered treats today."

Please join me in celebrating this mostly unknown holiday by sharing some chocolate love in the MckLinky Blog Hop at the bottom of this post. I hope to find amongst the entries some new recipes for creating fun treats, new ideas for chocolate gifts and new virtual friends who share my love of blogging with lots of photos :) Most of all - I wish us all virtual sugar highs with the sights of good food with no calories! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Like most holidays this chocolate day snuck up on me faster than I realized and I am ill prepared for being the hostess. I had big ideas and lots of things planned but no time to pull them off during this busy season of holiday gatherings. I will add a couple more chocolate posts as time permits because I still have family favorite recipes to make and a bunch of good ideas to try from the CDKitchen website's suggestions for the holiday. Today, I present the goodies made by myself, my daughter, Jayme and my daughter-in-law, Tammy as we spent a day baking, dipping and covering all good things in chocolate.

I thought it would be fun to host a blogger chocolate celebration because I had the perfect chocolate dishes to use.
They offer great advice though with more healthy fruit pictured...
but holidays are a time to indugle!
Tammy brought this idea to our goodie making day, a family favorite on her side. Ritz crackers spread with peanut butter, topped with a second cracker and dipped in white and milk chocolate.
My son, Nathan, requested the chocolate covered sunflower kernels and chocolate covered cashews. Son-in-law, Scott, thought we needed chocolate covered peanuts as well!
Jayme requested cake balls and cake pops from Bakerella.com and she will be adding a linked entry on the pops from her own blog soon.
My choice on what to make were the chocolate and caramel covered pretzel rods from the blog My Kitchen Cafe. Click HERE to see the recipe and be awed at how perfect her's looked compared to mine :) But taste matters more to me than looks and these are SO GOOD!
Not all of our creations were covered with chocolate (more like topped) but they all involved chocolate somewhere in the recipe and it was a wonderful family bonding day :)
After a long weekend of fun away with family it was good to come home...
and try some chocolate wine.
I will be adding more links myself to the blog roll below but I am really looking forward to all the chocolate goodness shared by fellow bloggers...LET THE PARTY BEGIN!

Life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. Forrest Gump in "Forrest Gump" (1994)




I could give up chocolate but I'm not a quitter.

Sentimental Chocolate...a guest post

My sister, Renae, loves chocolate as much as I do and the following is a guest post (since she does not have her own blog) with words and photos by her.

I'm rather sentimental so I chose to join the holiday in honor of loved ones. The plates belonged to my mom & stepmom.

Peanutbutter bon bons in memory of Mom. She also made wonderful divinity.....boy that would be good chocolate covered as well!
Sponge candy & candy drops in memory of Dad.
Almond windmill cookies in memory of my grandmother.

Chocolate covered prunes in memory of Ann, my stepmom & in honor or my mother-in-law, Selma.
Chocolate covered sesame almonds as a special treat for my husband.


Thank you Renae for participating! Your post brought back lots of memories especially the sponge candy :)

If any other non blogging family members want to particpate - email some content...hint, hint.

Barnesville Potato Days...

My first taste of an unusual food dipped in chocolate was potato chips while visiting Barnesville Potato Days with my sister and her family many years ago. A small town that hosts a huge celebration brought lots of fun for all. One of the local churches has an annual fund-raiser during the celebration called the Chocolate Festival and crowds are lined up out the door to pay the $5 admission fee which entitles you to "all you can eat" chocolate treats.
Chocolate covered potato chips learned at the Chocolate Festival.
The sweet and salty combination is fantastic and this year I am seeing them commercially made in several stores.

when in doubt...

It has been "one of those weeks" and a busy weekend is ahead so J & I celebrated with a little chocolate tonight. It was good practice for all the goodies I want to try for next Wednesday's holiday. Hope to see you participate with me :)

A taste of Scandinavia...

Sorry for the lack of posts here in the kitchen :) I have been cooking but with early darkness setting in nothing is photo worthy these days.

Yesterday, I had a fun day visiting my sister and brother-in-law and we went to lunch at one of their favorite neighborhood places, A Taste of Scandinavia. The food was wonderful and Renae and I shared a savory & a sweet lefse treat. First up... it was filled with grilled chicken, red pepper, spinach, mushrooms, onions, asiago, swiss and mozzarella cheese and then grilled. YUMM! By the way the portions were huge - the photos are misleading.

After eating our wrap we shared a sweet lefse breakfast item...
it was filled with grilled cinnamon sugar apples, sliced bananas, strawberries and lingonberries and topped with powdered sugar and more lingonberries and on the sides were a cream cheese/whipped cream mixture with chocolate shavings. I can't even describe how good this one tasted! My brother-in-law, Dana, had the lutefisk dinner...no photo as I was too busy drooling over our lefse treats and avoiding the sight and smell of the lutefisk altogether :) Dana said it was good as an every 2 year or so dinner :)
Renae & Dana recommended their favorite almond bar for dessert but I was too full so we got it to go for Jeff & I to sample. We both gave it a thumbs UP!

We went somewhere fun in the morning and it will be the subject of my Mosaic Monday post on my Garden blog but while there we saw this sign...
a good reminder to not forget the party next week to celebrate National Chocolate Covered Anything day! I hope everyone who reads this joins in, click on the pink icon on the sidebar for more info.

A Taste of Scandinavia (3 Twin Cities locations)
Marsha - Thumbs UP
Jeff - Thumbs Up to the almond bar

Happy Thanksgiving...

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! It was a quiet day for J & I, our kids were going to their in-laws and we'll be getting together with extended family for 2 big turkey celebrations over the weekend. Since I originally planned the day as just the two of us, I decided we could just have an easy meal of pheasant pie, one of Jeff's favorites. Nathan came out to help hang some outdoor Christmas lights this am so I invited him & Tammy to a noon meal before they went to her side of the family later today. Even though we ate leftovers and simple food - everything always tastes better on a pretty plate in my opinion...The paperwhites I planted two weeks ago to bloom in 4-6 weeks for Christmas are already starting to pop open so I have my December centerpiece starting early :)

Not exactly "pheasant under glass" but a cute little turkey...
and when you eat at noon you have great light.
There are lots of little turkey items in my house at this time of year but this is one of my "sentimental" favorites. A turkey made by my mom in her homemaker's group in the early 1970's, she passed away in 1977 and having little things of her's around make each holiday more special for me. I know other's would have thrown a pinecone & feather turkey years ago...but I am just too sentimental about these kinds of things...
in fact I crafted one of my own in the early 1980's out of pheasant feathers just so I could be like my mom :)
I served in the kitchen at my church yesterday for a funeral and we were all asked to provide a creamy fruit salad and cupcakes. So a leftover salad was freshened up with some raspberries, persimmon & pomegrante seeds and still looked and tasted great.
Simple frozen green beans and...
more leftovers in the form of cupcakes and we had a festive table.
Since Thanksgiving is usually considered "turkey day", I stuck with the bird theme and used my chicken baker for pheasant pie.
A far from "homemade" dish but one my husband loves...pheasant made into a pot pie with gravy & canned biscuit topping.
The Thanksgiving holiday is almost over and this little turkey smore...
wants to remind you of the next upcoming holiday - National Chocolate Covered Anything Day on December 16th.

Creamy Fruit Salad (recipe from our church cookbook)
1 can crushed pineapple
1 can chunky fruit cocktail
1 pkg instant pudding (vanilla or coconut)
2 cups miniature marshmallows
1/4 cup whipped topping.

Mix undrained fruit with pudding mix until pudding mix is blended. Add 2 cups marshmallows and the whipped topping. May add sliced bananas when serving.

My notes: I made it as typed using the coconut cream instant pudding. If you like this type of salad you will like this as all the church women mentioned it as one of their favorites. I personally am not a fan of canned fruit cocktail. There is something about the grapes in there that just turns me off - so next time I might use mandarin oranges (more ambrosia like) or just canned diced pears. The addition of the fresh fruit today was wonderful.

Pheasant pie - no real recipe
I boil the pheasant with chunks of onions, carrots, celery and salt and pepper. When the pheasant is done - I take it out of the broth and flake it apart (necessary to look for bb's) and put in the bottom of the casserole dish. Then I drain the broth from the veggies, toss the veggies as they are mush by now, make a gravy using the broth and add whatever vegetables I have on hand at the time. Pour over the pheasant meat and top with a can of Grands biscuits and bake until heated through and the biscuits are golden brown.

Today - I am especially grateful to all of you who take the time to come and read my simple blog.

a day in the kitchen...

I let 3 bananas get a little too ripe so this morning so I decided to make our favorite chocolate chip banana bread recipe. Once the mini loaves were in the oven and I was washing out my bowl I thought why don't I just keep going and stock the freezer. So next up I made brownies (from a mix) in my pumpkin & fall leaf pan. While they were in the oven - I had to think of what I could make next since I used up all the eggs in the house. While munching on a warm slice of banana bread...I remembered a recipe I saw on a blog recently for Pumpkin Crescent Rolls. Of course I didn't have crescent rolls (much less 8 cans) in the house but I thought the filling would work great with my WS pocket pie molds. Since you can't make a regular pumpkin pie custard filling with a top crust this recipe worked extremely well.
The results were fantastic with pie crust and I can only imagine how good this must taste using actual crescent rolls. I decided to have a cup a tea and a pumpkin pocket pie and read the mail before I tackled the remaining dishes...and as you can see I couldn't wait for the first taste even before the teapot got hot enough for tea :)
Pumpkin Crescent Rolls from Snarky Mom at Postcards From Insanity.

8 oz cream cheese, softened
15 oz can pumpkin
1 can sweetened condensed milk
2 T flour
2 T cinnamon
1 t pumpkin pie spice
8 pkgs refrigerated crescent rolls
½ cup sugar
Preheat oven to 375. In mixer bowl, blend cream cheese, pumpkin, sweetened condensed milk, flour and spices until combined and smooth. Unroll crescent rolls, separate and lay flat. Evenly spread 1 ½ T of pumpkin mix over dough. Roll into crescent shape and sprinkle top with sugar. Bake 11-13 minutes until golden brown.

My notes: I made the filling exactly as listed - yes, 2 TB of cinnamon! It sounds like a lot but we are cinnamon lovers as well and it tastes wonderful. Oops, I guess I didn't make it exactly as listed - pumpkin pie spice is just a combo spice of cloves, ginger & nutmeg so I used 1/2 tsp of ginger, 1/2 tsp of cloves and 1/4 tsp of nutmeg because I just bought them all fresh for the pumpkin pie dessert I made earlier this month and of course, I used standard pie crust for the pocket pies. I definitely will be trying this in the future with the crescent rolls.

Click on the link to her post HERE to view the post showing this recipe and 17 others that are traditional Thanksgiving recipes for her. I will be trying some more of her recipes soon!
Our favorite banana bread...

1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
3 mashed bananas
2 cups sifted flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, milk and mashed bananas, blend together. Add sifted flour and soda. Pour the chocolate chips into a small bowl and toss with a TB of flour until they are coated. This helps the chips from sinking to the bottom of the bread while baking. Mix in and pour batter into 3 buttered mini loaf bread pans (or 2 regular ones). Bake at 350 degrees for approx 45-50 minutes. Test with a toothpick after 40 minutes.