Daddy's Day Deliciousness

Is deliciousness a word?? It must be because I didn't get the little red squiggly line indicating I spelled something wrong. Good thing because that totally describes the wonderful creation I made to celebrate my sweet hubs and what a wonderful Daddy he is to my boys.

But first, let me back up a bit. A few weeks ago I asked my dear husband what he wanted to have for dessert on father's day, and he said he wanted chocolate chip cookies...to which I responded...Seriously??!!?! I'm offering to make anything and you want cookies?? Well, he did, but I just didn't feel that was enough to show him what a great dad he was. He did get his cookies, but I made them a few weeks ago (you all remember my post about those cookies right??) to satisfy the cookie craving. Then...for fathers day I made chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake - AMAZING.

I don't think I could have made him anything better. It was creamy, the cookie dough was amazing, it didn't even crack...perfection! Again I turned to my trusty A Passion For Baking book that has quickly become my "go to" book for all baked goods. I have yet to make anything out of that book that isn't truly amazing.

Home made cookie dough for the cookie dough parts

The middle layer - cookie dough and mini chocolate chips

Ready to go into the oven

one happy daddy :)

Aside from sitting around eating lots of cheesecake, we had a wonderful Father's Day. We went to church, then brunch at one of our favorite brunch places, then home so we could all just lay around and relax and enjoy time together. Dinner was light, quick and easy then it was off to the movies to see the new Toy Story 3 movie. We had a great time, and the movie was really cute. Both boys really enjoyed it - although I swear my little one just goes for the popcorn.

I am truly blessed that my boys have such an amazing daddy. Because of his job, there is a lot that he has missed, and that will continue to happen. But when he is here, he makes every SECOND with those boys count. One of my most favorite parts of the day is when I'm in the kitchen fixin' supper and my boys (all three of them) are in the next room wresting or playing some sort of "tag - you're it" game. The squeals of laughter just melt my heart. I thank God everyday for my wonderful family.

I hope you are all having a great week so far. We have been enjoying the hot sunny days of summer and spending a lot of time at the pool and playing in the sprinklers (or sprinkles as my little one says). There is just something about running through sprinklers that defines summer.


If I can figure out A. how to get video off my phone to my computer, and B. how to post it on here I'll post some footage of my big kid swimming. He is a full fledged swimmer now - the kid even went off the high dive!! Alright, I really do have to wrap this up! Until next time...later gators.

Pesto and Pate...

Yes, you heard that right, pate (I don't feel like figuring out how to add all the little symbols above the actual spelling of the word, but I'm sure you all will forgive me), but not the liver kind, this was a veggie based one, and over all I'd say it's pretty tasty.

Maybe I should back up a bit - It's the 14th, which means Daring Cooks posting day. Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

I'm going to report in steps. First, as I mentioned above, I chose the veggie recipe that they provided. It wasn't as challenging as some of the others, but it's the only one that I was sure my hubs and kiddos would eat. I did most of it with the food processor, layered it in the little dishes, and then stuck it in the fridge for about 24 hours. Here area few shots I took along the way - as well as the finished product.


As always (if your interested) you can find the pate recipe here.

The next part of the challenge was the homemade bread. First off let me say that while I have made cinnamon rolls, and pita bread one time, this was my first time making loaf bread. It took me awhile to decide what KIND of bread I wanted to make - but I referred once again to my handy "Passion for Baking" cookbook, and found a recipe for a Pain Pesto. YUM! I figured this would go nice with the pesto in the pate as well. I was a little nervous when after mixing in all my flour I realized that I measured my water 1/4 c. short, but it still managed to turn out wonderful!


Sorry there aren't many pictures of the early bread stages. My camera battery was dead and it took the first part of the bread making process to charge up.

And here is the bread and pate together. It makes for a good hefty snack that's for sure. I think the pate would also go very nice with pita chips - the bread was great, but maybe too much for the pate.

Okay well that's it for me and this month's DC challenge. I'll be back soon with some other goodies that I'll be cooking up this week.

Chocolate, cleaning and cookies

We have orders to CT - it's official! Not that there was any doubt, but still, it makes it "real" for us military folks.

Things are on a roll and now we are in "moving" mode. I don't know that I've wrapped my head around all of it just yet, but I'm excited about our next step, so I think that's a good thing! We have our papers in for the movers, and all our housing stuff is done - so those are two big checks off the old "to-do" list.

Yesterday and today we spent a good chunk of time in our basement, we don't even have that much stuff down there, but just looking through what to keep, toss, etc. We are also trying to arrange what down there is going into storage while we are in CT and what will be making it to the new house. We had BAGS of stuff to toss. It's amazing what you think you "might need" later, then realize that in two years you haven't looked or thought about it, so it can probably go. As a reward to my dear hubby who worked very hard this weekend, I made his favorite, chocolate chip cookies (a new recipe for me) and they were AMAZING!! But hold that thought, we will get back to the cookies!

Needless to say, we will be going through this house room by room repeating the same process, so that's a glimpse of my life for a little while :). But on the up-side, it always feels so good to do a big "clean out".

As for after our stay in CT, well hubby finally decided on his top pics, and he sent in all his info to his detailer on Friday. That being said, the jobs can and most likely will change, and we won't know for certain (meaning actual orders in hand) where we are going until after the new year. He will get verbal orders before that, but those are not the "real" thing and are subject to change. (I know you Navy folks know all this, but for you non-Navy folks...). His top choices take us anywhere from CT to Hawaii and in-between. His first choice would be to be on the USS Jimmy Carter out of Washington State, then after that the USS Missouri that is currently in Groton, CT, but will be moving to Hawaii. So we would just be in Groton a little longer, then when it was time for the boat to go, head over to Hawaii. He made sure to check on the timing, and will would be good to go for a home-port change (for all of us). After that I really didn't pay much attention, I know there were two more in Hawaii that were near the top, and a couple in Groton, and one in Virginia. So...we shall see...eventually!

So, in CELEBRATION of our next step, and as I said above, just to do something nice for my sweetie, I made some chocolate chip cookies. I had a recipe I wanted to try out, and am really glad I did, because these are better than my old "go to". They are from the cookbook "Passion for Baking" that was given to me by my sweet friend Sam not too long ago (waving to Guam), and I have been baking things from it left and right, and have yet to find something that wasn't amazing, and these are no exception. They are buttery, tender, and just melt when you take a bite...

Who needs the oven...I'll just take a spoon...

Amazing Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup butter, melted and slightly cooled
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 large eggs
1.5 tsp vanilla
2 cups AP flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3 cups semisweet chocolate chips

To make:
- Line cookie sheets with parchment paper, and preheat oven to 350F
- Cream together butter and sugars until very smooth, about three minutes
- Add eggs and vanilla and mix well
- Add in the flour, baking soda and salt and mix to combine
- Stir in chocolate chips
- spoon onto baking sheet and cook, 8-10 min for small cookies, 10-12 for large
- enjoy still warm with a tall glass of milk :)

Hope you all have had a wonderful weekend and I'll be back soon :).

Back in business!

Haha - we have internet again, and it's ALL OURS!!! No trying to surf the web on my phone (although it is quite good at that) or taking the laptop to various locations to hook up with some wifi - no we are back to the land of technology here! Well almost...we don't have our home phone hooked up yet, or the cable upgrade, but those are coming tomorrow. :) Hooray!

So, I know it's been forever - there is so much going on I hardly know where to start!! Matt did his triathlon a few weeks ago. We had a great time cheering him on, and we were gone about 4 days so it was also a nice little mini-vacation. Also, my mom, dad and sister came as well, so it was great to be together as a family. We all had a lot of fun. My in-laws came to town over Memorial Day weekend, and that was nice as well. We had a bunch of friends over for a crawfish boil and it was a big hit!! I'll have to post pictures of that soon.

I have been baking up a storm here recently, so it's hard to pick one thing to post on my first post back, but I'm going to have to go with the sugar cookies that I made for big kids graduation reception. You probably remember (or maybe you don't but that's okay) that I was hired by his school to cater the cookies for the reception after the ceremony.

For about three days I lived, ate, and a few time almost slept in my kitchen. The order was for 350 cookies...that's a lot of cookies y'all.

The baking went really fast actually, but then I got to the "outlining" part and thought maybe I didn't charge enough after all - haha. It took FOREVER. And as you will see, every surface in my kitchen was at one point covered in butterflies!!

Not only did this part take forever, my hand was so cramped at the end of the night it hurt to straighten my fingers!!

But then the filling in wasn't so bad either, so overall it was a very fun, and positive experience, and they got lots of compliments.


Here are a few pics of my big kid at graduation. I can't believe next year he will be in "real" school - crazy!

And here are some of the many cookies out and ready to be gobbled up!

So, there you have it - a quick sum up of three days of my life! :) In other news, we are moving in just over two months...YIKES!! We still have nothing set up because we don't have orders yet...but who really needs those right!?!? Hehe, kidding - we've been told they are "on the way" so hopefully soon. The hubs also got his slate (list of jobs that will probably be available for his next tour) and while I know it changes and nothing is final, it's nice to see where some of the options are. He is changing his mind daily on the order of his list, so really I couldn't even venture a guess as to what our top choices are. It will be awhile (and I mean many months for you non-navy people) before we know anything for certain, but I'll keep you posted! :)

OKay, well this is getting really long. So with that I'm going to wrap up for today and promise to be back soon with some more updates!

PS the sugar cookies/icing recipe I used is the same that I posted before back with the baby shower post.

I'm still here...

I just don't have internet. I'm using the hubs laptop right now at a location that gives free wifi, but as far as our home, I'm out of luck. Long story short, we came home from KC not this past Monday, but a over a week ago Monday, to discover that while we were gone our modem broke. So we called up our internet company to place an order for a new one, nevermind that we are leaving in just over 2 months and it was going to be 70 bucks to replace, but whatever. We place the order and are told it will be here by Thursday. Thursday comes and goes, Friday the hubs calls around noon. He's first told that they can't find the order, but we had a confirmation number so he gives them that, is transferred and they tell us that it will be there by 7pm via UPS. He asked for a tracking number and was told that they "couldn't give us one". Strange, yes we thought so too. So, knowing they closed up at 6 we called again at 5:30, went through the same issues with finding the order, then again were told that they had until 7. At this point we were pretty sure it wasn't coming so my husband told them flat out that if it didn't get there by 7, we would be calling first thing Tuesday to cancel our service. This didn't seem to bother them. So, as you may have guessed it didn't show up. So hubby called Tuesday to cancel and talked to the customer care people who informed him that the order had never been placed, and it was clear to her (therefore to the others he talked to on friday) that there was no such order in the system. The guy who took the order started it, but it was never finished, so it was just sitting there waiting to be processed. So, we were lied to TWICE. She offered us a free modem, but we still canceled our service due to the lack of service we received. But this leaves us without a phone or internet for another week while we get everything switched over to the "competitor" of our previous provider. Okay, so i guess that wasn't such a short story, but oh well. Never get service through Qwest because they stink!!

Okay, have to run. I baked lots of yummies over the holiday weekend and as soon as I get my connection back i'll post some goodies!

Take care folks!!