My Mom's Rocky Road

I have had lots of rocky road candy but this is the only one I like. And Robocop agrees. He says to me "I don't bother eating anyone else's anymore." There are a few things that make this rocky road the best - a sweet and salty combo-- so I'd follow the recipe to the T the first time.

Growing up Mom made lots of this...some with peanuts, some with cashews, sometimes walnuts.

Ingredients:

12 oz PKG SEMI-SWEET Chocolate Chips

14oz Can Sweetened Condensed Milk

2 TBL BUTTER (real butter - not margarine)

1 JAR Planters dry roasted peanuts (salted) This is roughly 2 cups

10 oz PKG Mini Marshmallows

1. Butter a 13x9 pan. I recommend using real butter not nonstick or margarine.
2. Melt chocolate, condensed milk and butter over low heat in a pan.
3. Stir continuously to avoid scalding.
4. In a large bowl combine marshmallows and peanuts.
5. Pour chocolate mixture over the nuts and marshmallows and mix well with a spoon.
6. Spread in your buttered pan. Lay wax paper on top and mush down.
7. Cover with wax paper and saran wrap
8. Chill 2 hours.

ENJOY! The secret to this is the salted nuts, semi sweet chocolate, and the butter. This gives just the right combo of sweet and salty.

Homemade Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookies

This recipe is very easy and inexpensive and mimics those wonderfully yummy Girl Scout Thin Mints.

And I'll apologize now for the photos! They were taken with an iphone!

1 BOX of Ritz Crackers

Chocolate of Choice (2-4 squares (or 2 -4 oz)of Almond Bark or Dove Baking Chocolate)

1/4 TSP Peppermint Oil (NOT peppermint extract)

Decorations (In this post I used candy pearls)

Wax Paper

Baking Sheet

Lay your wax paper on a cookie sheet. Melt chocolate. There are lots of ways to melt chocolate. I use a double boiler for my main dipping "background" chocolate and microwave method for my decorative chocolate. Start with 2 oz at a time and add more if you need it less pepperminty.

Dip half of the Ritz cracker in the melted chocolate and tap excess chocolate off very carefully. I dip the front and usually do not worry about dipping the back. That's my personal preference but if you like more chocolate then by all means dunk the entire thing.

Lay them on your wax paper. After dipping, you'll want to decorate while they are still a little melty. Is that a word? Almond bark sets up very quickly so if you use that you may want to dip a few and decorate those before moving on.

For the decorative white I placed a square of almond bark in a freezer bag, microwaved 30 seconds and mushed the bag to make sure it was melted. Mine was melty and perfect. If yours is not then microwave in 20 second intervals. Cut the very tip of the bag and start piping the white chocolate in quick motions back and forth across the cookie. You can also use a piping bag or melt this in a glass container and then put it in the bag...again, a preference thing.

I like to do dark chocolate, milk and white chocolate and decorate them all differently. It makes such a fun little gift. Here they are:

These are white on white w/ candy pearls placed in the swirliest section.

To set any of these up quickly pop them in the freezer for a few minutes before wrapping.

VOILA! Cute. Easy.

Crockpot Potato Soup

I took a recipe from Fix it and Forget it and made it my own. Not on purpose, mainly because I thought I had all the ingredients and didn't so I had to adapt it and it turned out pretty good! You can also add more or less of something and completely omit something and I have found that it turns out different but still pretty good. I try to make mine w/ the least amount of dairy as possibly since I'm dairy intolerant! This is an inexpensive soup to make.

3 Potato, peeled and cubed
1 Cup Instant Mashed Potatoes
2 Leeks, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped (or 1 TSP of Garlic Garlic)
4 chicken bouillon cubes
1 TB Dried Parsley
5 Cups Water
3 TB Butter
1 PKT Lipton Cream of Chicken Soup Mix, Cup of Soup (this can be omitted if you need to but it helps add to the creaminess without adding cream, milk or evaporated milk)

1. Combine all ingredients in a crock pot.
2. Cover. Cook on Low 10-12 hours, or High 3-4 hours.
3. Garnish with chives

Variations: I've added ham or bacon to this. If you want a creamier potato soup then you will add in a cup or so of milk in the last hour of cooking.

Freezer Meal Directions: This freezes up nicely. You can cook it then freeze it or you can prep all the ingredients and quickly bag and freeze it. You do not need to add the water until you cook it. DO NOT let it thaw before cooking. Simply place the frozen items in a crock pot with the 5 Cups of water. If you thaw it your potatoes will turn black!

Blog Background

I cannot figure out what happened to my blog background from the cutest blog on the block and tried several times to download a new cute one. So I had to pick from one of the templates on blogger. I'm not sure what is going on so bare with me until I figure out how to get my blog looking normal again.

The Cup Corset- UPDATE

I am so excited to share my new business adventure with my friend and partner Karalee. We are making and selling Cup Corsets. However, ours are unique, they have a handle! And if you have not ever had a coffee cozy with a handle you will wonder what you ever did with out one. You can check them out here at our other blog www.thecupcorset.com. They fit on most tapered cups that you would find at a coffee shop or restaurant. And we also carry those snazzy acrylic cups you see in the picture here.

The Cup Corset is available with or without a strap so that you can hold your drink or personalized pint of ice cream and not burn or freeze your little fingers.

Find us on Facebook by searching for The Cup Corset. Orders can be emailed to thecupcorset@yahoo.com or with a click of a button at www.thecupcorset.etsy.com. There are many pictures on our facebook and website. At this time all of those are available and we have some others as well. If you are looking for something specific, let us know.

Business has been taking off and it truely has been such a blessing. Thank you everyone who has checked out our product. We have truely been blessed.

Bacon Wrapped Sutffed Jalapeno Peppers

So I guess I just posted the dairy free version...here is the regular version adapted from Pioneer Woman's recipe. I've made a few changes for what works for me. I've made them both ways and they are all good. I don't think you can mess them up.

18 Jalapenos, sliced and cleaned out (see note on how to clean them below)
1 PKG Bacon
1 BLOCK (8oz) Cream Cheese
1/2 CUP Cheddar Cheese, Shredded
2 TBL Tastefully Simple Onion Onion (or chopped chives or green onion)

Blend Cream Cheese, Cheddar Cheese, and Onion Onion together. Cut bacon in half for large jalapenos or in 1/3rds for small jalapenos.

**Make sure your jalapenos are sliced in half and cleaned out. I highly recommend using gloves of some sort (latex or even plastic bags). If you like hot jalapenos then leave some of the seeds and/or membranes in tact. The membrane is the white part. If you do not like heat then clean all of that out really well with a teaspoon.

Fill the jalapenos with the cream cheese mixture. Wrap bacon around the jalapeno. If I have toothpicks on hand I will secure the bacon but it's not required if your bacon is long enough it should not fall off. Place on a baking pan or stone.

Brush BBQ sauce on top of each jalapeno. Bake 350 for 30- 40 minutes or until bacon is crisp.

I have been impatient before and broiled them for a few minutes to crisp that bacon up. I have cooked them at 275 for an hour like Pioneer Woman. But mine came out mushy when I did that. So experiment with them and see what you like. I prefer my jalapeno to hold up and cooking them hotter faster seemed to do that for me. Either way they tasted delicious and it was hard not to eat 10 of them!

Thankful

I've never posted this on my blog but it might give you insight into why I put many posts on and then I'll go a few weeks without anything. I'm sure many of you aren't even interested in this story so you can just scroll down to the more interesting things on the blog.


Before my life changed in Feb 2008, I was relatively healthy, losing baby weight and working out 6 days a week. Enjoying my kids and had a very busy schedule. Maybe even a little OCD.


I remember when the sickness started. At first I thought I over did it in the gym. I had pain in my calves that felt similar to a shin splint. The following week the pain did not go away it spread to my thighs, and then the following week it moved up to my hips and back. I became very ill, so ill I couldn't function. It hurt to sit, I had to pace often, I had tingling up my spine, face, and arms which clearly read neurological all over it. Every time I sat (including driving) I would all of the sudden feel like I was going to throw up. Some of the other symptoms included trouble swallowing, sore lymphnodes, extremely high blood pressure (as in high enough to go into cardiac arrest), I felt like I couldn't feel my legs or toes even though I could still walk. I also began the life of twitching and spasms (which are two different things in my book). I was on pain medication and I didn't even know what was causing the pain.


After many specialists who would diagnose or tell me what they thought was going on because it wasn't showing up on any test I refused to take any more pain medication or any other medication for that matter until they figured things out. I felt like this was the end of the road for me and that I was going to die. I felt poisoned.


Months went by. The doctors changed their diagnoses several times and 5 months later my more painful symptoms finally started to slowly leave. I would wake up and not have the throwing up one day, then wake up a week later and my lymphnodes felt better, and so on. That went on for a few more months.


I am thankful God healed that part of my sickness. It did leave me with extreme muscle pain, fatigue, muscle spasms and twitches and some other problems. It's like whatever happened triggered some things in my body. One Doctor re-diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia, another with Chronic Widespread Pain and after going to the Fibro clinic in Portland it's clear that even though I have many symptoms it's not Fibro. They do think it's something neurological.


I have also seen a naturpath and it seems like some of what is going on now is digestive related. I don't know if any of that caused my earlier symptoms or if its the other way around. Whether or not I'll ever feel "normal" again I have no idea. I am still trying to find an answer. Some days are better than others. But on my good days I would say that it's probably about a 5 or a 7 for a normal person. 20 minutes of exercise puts me into a downward spiral.

But God is good. He allowed me to live and be a mommy. I am so thankful even on my hard days that I'm a mom. It's much tougher now to be the mom I want to be than it was 2 years ago. I had the drive and energy just needed to lose the weight. Now I'm way out of shape, have little energy and sometimes don't feel good enough for these two little boys I have but I refuse to just totally give up. I keep busy throughout the day because if I slow down my muscles stop working right.

I am thankful for good insurance that pays for most of my treatments.

I am thankful for good friends that got us through those tough months, Robocop (my husband), and old and new friends who get us through the rough days now. And I'm thankful for two very energetic boys who remind me about what life is really about. And, to not take it all so seriously all the time. I'm still learning....