Peanut Butter Crispy Bars

This dessert is everything you'd want in a bar: creamy, sweet milk chocolate and peanut butter sandwiched between a thin layer of rich dark chocolate and another of Rice Krispies.  We could just simplify and call them Crack Bars, because once you try them, you'll want them.  All the time.  Every day.  Then pretty soon you'll find yourself in a room with Candy Finnigan while your family looks on wringing their hands and being all weepy.  Yup, you're in some serious trouble.

Guest Blog Post: The Secret Life of Twins, via "An American In Ireland"

Wow, unemployment sure is busy!  It's amazing how little time I seem to have these days to take photos of what I'm cooking.  I guess I'm also cooking a lot less since J is on the road, so I tend to eat the same things (chicken, Mexican doria which is a baked rice dish I just made up, egg whites, toast) so it isn't very interesting.

My sister recently wrote a post, "The Secret Life of Twins," about growing up as an identical twin, and since I'm the other half of that pair, I thought I'd feature her post here.  Her blog, An American in Ireland, chronicles her move to and life in Ireland as an expat and is filled with funny stories of culture shock mixed in with culinary adventures and lots of Irish slang that will leave you scratching your head.  Or noggin.  Is that what they say?

I'll be back with more food adventures shortly.

Enjoy!

Cappelletti In Brodo

I have a lot to cover in this post, so I guess it's best to get started!

Super Bowl Food

Ah, The Super Bowl.  It might be the second biggest eating "holiday" in the U.S. after Thanksgiving.  I'm not really sure where the tradition of stuffing your face while watching football started, but I'm not complaining about it!  I mean, any excuse to eat while watching TV can't be bad (for your soul...but it could be bad for the body!) plus the food gives the football haters something to focus on while the others scream loudly at the television as if the referees can actually hear them.  Which is probably why I made SO much food yesterday.  As you may know from reading this blog, J is a musician.  As you can probably guess, none of his musician friends watch sports of any kind.  So the food was the reason they came, while only a couple of us actually watched the game.  It was a win-win for everyone (OK, maybe not the Steelers...oh well...).

I don't know why I but I always make way more food than necessary, whether it's for a special occasion or just a regular ol' night.  You'd think I was cooking for the Duggars (that family that has like, 100 kids) but I guess I always feel it's better to have too much that too little.  Of course during the 4th hour of cooking I often wonder what the hell I was thinking, but then I get out of the weeds and it all works out.  Isn't that the joy of cooking?!  I just have this need to feed people...it's what makes me happiest, so I'll come up with any reason to cook mountains of food as long as there are people willing to eat it.  

Whole Wheat Lemon Sweet Rolls

I went through a cinnamon-roll-making phase two years ago, right after I started reading the amazing and uber-popular blog, The Pioneer Woman Cooks.  I spied this recipe and decided to make cinnamon rolls for the first time in my life.  It was so easy and so fun that I made them every week for the next month.  I think my husband, friends and colleagues refer to that time as The Fat and Happy Period...as in, they were fat and happy, not me....wait, as in they were fat emotionally with happiness from eating the cinnamon rolls...oh well, never mind.  You get the idea.