Emskyrooney

Wanted to share the list of sweets and treats we made for the holidays this year... Unfortunately I neglected to take photo of everything, but at least you can get the recipes if you want them (and next year I can look back and remember exactly what I made!) White Chocolate Fudge with Pecans This is a recipe I found on the Ghiradelli website.  It's very easy, very tasty, and makes quite a few pieces of fudge! (I think this was my Dad's favorite this year- I found him poking around in the tin of fudge quite frequently!) Gingerbread Caramels I've made this Martha Stewart recipe for caramels with gingerbread flavoring (molasses, ginger, cinnamon) 4 or 5 years in a row now.  And every year I complain about the most tedious part- wrapping each one individually in squares of foil or waxed paper.  This year's batch came out somewhat softer than usual- I must have been off in my cooking temperature by a couple of degrees.  They're not sticky, but certainly aren't holdin...

Anyone who knows me knows that one my most favorite things in the world is peanut butter.  It's the one thing I would have to have to survive being stranded on a desert island.  In fact, when I spent my junior year abroad in England the one thing I asked my parents to bring when they came to visit was peanut butter- I needed my Jif! For my birthday this year my in-laws gave me a fantastic present: a 3-month membership to the Peanut Butter of the Month Club.  That's right, there's a club!  Every month I get 2 jars of peanut butter in the mail- the best mail ever! Since today is officially (according to whoever decides this type of thing) National Peanut Butter Lovers' Day, I thought I'd review the first two jars of peanut butter I received.  The package was waiting on our kitchen counter when we got home from our recent trip to Las Vegas (which I still have to tell y'all about!) and I literally walked in the door with my suitcase, dropped it on the floor, and rip...

Big Paul, Little Paul and I had a very relaxing, but very nice Valentine's Day.  Little Paul and I went to a baby music class with a friend in the morning and came home to a dozen red roses and a box of chocolates.... In the afternoon Grammy and Papa came by and gave LP a special Valentine treat- a GIANT teddy bear! For dinner we made a yummy chocolate hazelnut and banana crepe dessert.. That's right, who needs dinner when you can go right to dessert?  Big Paul was on crepe duty (I'm lucky enough to have married a man who owned the following kitchen items when I met him: crepe pan, kitchen torch, creme brulee ramekins, french onion soup bowls- and he knows how to use them too!) and I was on "entertain baby" duty and then "assembly" duty... Here's my Valentine chef hard at work: Little Paul's favorite new thing to do now that he can hold his head up so well and wants to be sitting up all the time is to sit in his highchair in the kitchen and watch...

And some Christmas photos too!... Little Paul, Big Paul, Socks, Gabby and I had a fantastic first Christmas together! We started on Christmas Eve with appetizers at Paul's parents' house... Where Little Paul was given some Yankees gear: Grandpa Paul and Grammy came to our house for Christmas Day where Santa had left one of his reindeer under the tree: Where he was licked by a dachshund: Santa also left a fancy new t.v. for Grandpa... And the dogs were obsessed with the wrapping paper... On the day after Christmas we had a little downtime in the morning while Little Paul played on his new play mat and Mommy played with her new camera lens... (Daddy really spoiled Mommy with a fancy new lens, a HUGE computer monitor, a beautiful wool coat, and lots of other things!) And then Christmas part two began with the arrival of Nana and Grandpa from Pennsylvania and Uncle Nelson and Uncle Spencer who were meeting Little Paul for the first time... Little Pau...

Looks like we'll definitely be having a white Christmas in these parts! This weekend's storm brought us more than a foot of snow.. It turned to sleety rain this afternoon so we're looking at snow covered with ice to contend with in the morning. Good thing Little Paul and I don't have to go anywhere tomorrow although unfortunately Big Paul has to go to work... Here's the view from our back door as of yesterday afternoon (picture another 6 inches on top of this): And the view out the front: The snow kept Paul pretty busy (and sore!) shoveling all weekend. Fortunately our neighbor, Bob (whose last name is Dylan and thought that WE had a familiar sounding name when we first met him!) came over with his snow blower and did quite a large part of the driveway. Unfortunately he did it at 10 a.m. on Saturday and we got another 8 inches or so of snow after that. I tried to help with the shoveling but have to say that after 9 months of doing nothing very physically exerting ...

It's as American as apple pie.... [sidenote: The photo above is my brother's girlfriend San and I enjoying Mrs. Hogarth's famous apple pie after my baby shower- Mrs. Hogarth baked it that morning and brought it still warm to the shower for us!  The morning after my wedding her son showed up at our house with an apple pie for the newlyweds- Mrs. Hogarth had gone home after the big event and stayed up to bake the pie!  Yum....  It's seriously the best apple pie EVER.] So Paul and I voted tonight- it took us all of 5 minutes as we live in a small town and since Massachusetts isn't exactly a swing state- things weren't too busy at the polls... I did, however, manage to screw up my ballot and had to re-do it- I'm blaming my pregnancy-addled brain for that one... We're now settling down to watch the results come in and have a few drinks (Paul's going with the all-American whiskey and Coke, I'm going with the also uber-American Shirley Temple!)... ...

Funny funny stuff... McDonalds is opening their new "McCafes" up here in these parts and while I doubt that I'd stop at a McD's specifically for a latte (french fries, yes, latte?  hmm.. .), I'm finding their commercials to be pretty darn clever and wanted to share in case they're not being shown nationally yet... Here's "Hipsters":  And here's "Intellectuals":

Ok here's another one of those fun "MeMe's" (I know you all LOVE finding out new and interesting things about yours truly!) This one is food related, which is rather fitting since I'm currently obsessed with food and hungry most of the time. I'm still not having any cravings except for ice cream. I have to admit though that the ice cream craving is a life-long craving, NOT a pregnancy one... although I'm certainly using being pregnant as an excuse to break my longstanding "ice cream only on Sunday and Thursday nights" rule! Convenient. Anyway, this MeMe is called the Omnivore's 100 and it's all about things I've eaten, not eaten, or would never try. Paul and I like to watch those travel shows where people eat strange things and then debate whether we'd try them or not so I thought this looked like a fun MeMe to take part in. Plus I haven't posted anything in a while and thought that I should! How the Omnivore's 100 w...

So far today, instead of cleaning the house as I'd planned (have to get it cleaned before my baby bro comes to visit on Tuesday as he hasn't seen our new house yet!) I baked. Recently I've been eating a bagel for lunch a couple of days a week as I can grab one on my way into work and I've been alternating between Dunkin' Donuts and Finagle a Bagel, neither of which really satisfies my craving for a really delicious bagel (after all, this is Boston, not NYC- it's known for baked beans , not bagels.. ) So I've been toying with the idea of baking my own bagels... Last night while perusing Tastespotting (my fave website!) I came across someone who had made their own bagels using the recipe from the King Arthur's Flour website which is full of information on how to make a simple bagel. I looked in the cabinet and we had most of the ingredients necessary so I thought I'd give it a whirl. And I have to say, all in all it was pretty easy. There were a few s...

One of my favorite websites that I can spend hours looking at is Tastespotting . People submit gorgeous photos of recipes that they've made and each photo links back to that person's blog which usually has more photos, the recipe itself, and other information. It's a seriosuly addictive website, especially when you're hungry and always leaves me feeling inspired to get into our kitchen and make something fabulous. A few weeks ago Tastespotting closed up shop for some sort of legal reasons and a new website called Food Gawker was started as an homage to Tastespotting. It's basically the same as Tastespotting, I haven't figured out what the differences are quite yet.. Well now Tastespotting is back, Food Gawker is sticking around, and both sites are fabulous! Seriously, if you're interested in cooking, baking, eating, great photography, and/or drooling on your keyboard you have to check these sites out..... Yum... Now to figure out what I'm going to make...