Bright and Sunny!!

Let the sun shine!!! The past few days have been fabulous because my very good friend, the sun, has decided to grace us with it's presence once again. We're not one of those "cloudy" kind of states, but with all the crazy weather and storms that we have had, it's been awhile since we have had constant states of sunny-ness. Of course it's still cold, but I'll take what I can get.

In celebration of the yellow sun, I decided to grant a request the hubs made for some lemon bars.

These turned out really yummy - so if you're a fan of lemon bars - give these lemon bars a go.


Also, last night while I was at the book store for my book club meeting I found a cookbook that I can't wait to start trying out. First let me say, this isn't going to be a "Julie/Julia" thing - chances are I am not going to cook EVERYTHING in this book, and I know myself pretty well (we've been together awhile) and I know for certain I won't be posting about everything I make. My reason for wanting to "cook through a cookbook" this year was mostly just to broaden our horizons as far as some of our weeknight meals. Sometimes I get into a rut and we end up eating the same thing every week... So this little "challenge" is really a quest to find some new favorites.

I realized last night while searching that there were some important criteria for my book. First it needed to be practical - both in ingredients and time-wise. I'm not going to spend all day running around looking for hard to find goods, nor am I going to take hours to prepare dinner on a weeknight. I just don't have that kind of time. Second, it needed to have a variety. I love Italian (Mexican, German, Asian, etc.) food as much as the next guy - or gal as is the case, but that's not ALL I want to eat. And third, it had to be somewhat healthy. I'm not a super strict "no sugar" kind of gal (as you can tell from all my baking) but I do try to fix pretty balanced and healthy meals most nights of the week.

So with all that in mind - this what the book I settled on:


It has a lot of really yummy looking stuff. And I really liked the fact that every recipe has a picture...I'm a big fan of the pictures.


I wrote down a few to try next week, so I'll let you know how my subjects...errr - family...enjoys what I make. Hopefully we will come away with some new weeknight favorites.

Alright. I am off to bed. I had a fun night out tonight playing BUNCO with some of my mommy friends, and now I'm tired and ready to call it a night - 6 am comes really early.