Comfort Cooking... and Eating

It's gloomy out today. Rainy, humid and dark gray skies have parked themselves over Chicago. Days like today call for cozy blankets and good books, and baking of course.

We are headed up to the lake tomorrow with friends for the weekend. I thought this was the perfect excuse to try a new recipe I found. You see, Rick's all time favorite food combination is peanut butter and chocolate. So I'm always on the hunt for something new to make involving the two ingredients. This one is a Cooking Light recipe (I know.. crazy!) and can be found here with detailed pictures and directions. The basic recipe is below.


Ooey-Gooey Peanut-Butter Brownies
Recipe from Cooking Light, Sept. 2010 

3/4 C sweetened condensed milk, divided (fat-free is fine)
1/4 C butter, melted and cooled (1/2 stick)
1/4 C non-fat milk
1  box devil’s food cake mix (18.25 oz)
1 large egg white, lightly beaten
cooking spray
1 7 oz jar marshmallow creme (about 1 3/4 C)
1/2 C peanut butter morsels

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

With an electric mixer, combine 1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk, milk, butter, cake mix, and egg white.  Mixture will be very thick.  Spray 9×13 pan with cooking spray.  Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the pan.  Use either floured hands, or spray your hands with cooking spray in order to press it down without having it stick to your fingers.  The layer will be thin.  Bake for 10 minutes.

Combine 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk and marshmallow creme in a bowl and combine until smooth.  Stir in PB morsels.  No one will tell if you stir in some extras.  Spread marshmallow layer over brownie layer in pan.  Carefully drop remaining brownie batter by spoonfuls over marshmallow mixture.  Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes.  (The original recipe calls for 30 minutes, but many readers have noted that 20 minutes was perfect, and I usually only bake for about 20-25).  Remove from oven and cool before cutting into squares.


Here's how mine turned out. We'll see what the verdict is on taste this weekend!

And for dinner tonight, we're having Low Fat Spinach Baked Ziti from my favorite cooking blog. Sometimes, you just need some comfort food... and why not try to cut the calories in half??

www.skinnytaste.com

Julio's Mexican Adventure

We just got back from a most relaxing getaway to Cabo! It was the perfect escape, and though it was HOT, we spent most of the day, every day, in the pool. There was a lot of lounging, reading, spa-ing, and talking. We went to Mexico with a couple goals and came home very pleased with our success!

Goal #1: Agree on at least a couple of names for baby. While Rick and I have a LONG list of names we are luke warm about, we were really struggling to find a name we both loved. Well, we left Cabo yesterday with two solid options, and like I told Rick, I kind of have a feeling we won't actually know what we want to name our little peanut until he arrives.

Goal #2: Relax. We are about to embark on a whirlwind of an adventure, and we both know that carefree vacations are going to be hard to come by in the future. Our purpose of this trip was really to just spend time with each other and do absolutely nothing. Mission very accomplished.

We tend to think of ourselves as overachievers, so it shouldn't be surprising that we came home accomplishing more than we set out to do! 1) Rick felt the baby move for the first time, 2) I came home with a nice golden hue and 3) Rick didn't burn to a crisp! I think we finally found the right sunscreen for our Casper... thank heavens!

All in all, it was the perfect retreat, but we were both embarrassingly excited to come home last night... we really missed Maizey and the comfort of our own bed and shower. There really is no place like home.

Oh... who's Julio you ask?? Well, since dining out at Uncle Julio's the evening we found out Baby M was going to play football for Michigan instead of cheerlead, we've been referring to the little guy as Julio. Though Mama calls him Junior and Adrienne still calls him Poppy, and Fancy changes her name every week depending on what vegetable size the baby is measuring at (this week -- spaghetti squash!) We really don't have a "womb" name, so feel free to call him whatever you want. :)

We have a VERY busy few weeks ahead of us full of travels and plans so I'm off to catch up on laundry and cleaning and errands... oh my!

Clearing Out and Getting Crafty!

Yesterday, Rick and I held a garage sale to get rid of the years worth of stuff we had piled up in our storage spaces, closets and hiding in corners. Believe it or not, we had a lot to get rid of and I have been looking at the enormous junk pile for weeks waiting to sell it, donate it or just plain throw it away. So I woke up motivated and ready to put on my sweet sales-lady smile!

We woke up early to set up the space...

The morning started of pretty busy with a few customers who each bought an item or two. We even had one woman return after leaving initially because she really wanted our laundry hamper... go figure.

To pass the time, Rick and I perused a baby name book and shouted out names to each other across the garage. Each time one of us suggested something, it was usually met with a prompt, "Nah" or "Seriously?" or "bleep NO!" from the other. Once we gave up on that pasttime, I decided to get crafty. I had seen on a website earlier in the week a cute idea for baby closet organizers. Essentially they were expensive dividers to separate baby clothes on the hanging rods of closets. I thought I could totally make those myself, so I went to the craft store, bought some supplies and here's what 6 hours of garage sale monitoring led to:

I plan to use the ribbon to tie it onto the closet rod and hopefully start out with a very organized, very green storage space!

Meanwhile, the sun was blazing and it was a crisp 90-something degrees outside, so by 2:00, Rick and I were both exhausted and so hot we could barely speak to one another. We decided to post an ad on Craigslist advertising that the last hour of our sale would be a free-for-all. Literally... come take whatever you want for FREE! Well, a sweet little family must have read our minds and came by. They were about to have a baby and just bought a new apartment and needed stuff. We helped them load their truck full of everything we had in the garage... seriously they took EVERYTHING! They were so sweet, they didn't want to take it all for free so they gave us a $20 and we thanked them profusely for taking this junk off our hands. Everyone left feeling very accomplished and very happy!

The "After"

All in all, it was as successful as I could have hoped -- my house is now de-cluttered which means my mind is a little less cluttered as well.

Hope everyone's staying cool out there!

Go Blue!

You guessed it... it's a BOY! Rick and I spent the afternoon at the doctor today and we have a perfectly healthy (and kinda stubborn) little boy! He made it tough for the tech to do her job and get all the shots she needed, but in the end it was determined that he is indeed a boy and weighs about 12 ounces right now! Rick screamed and shouted, and I cried... par for the course.

We came home to feed the pup, and Rick poured himself a cocktail to toast to the next Michigan quarterback (and the first ever vertically-challenged, Jewish one for that matter)...

We then headed out to dinner (baby was hungry!) On our way, we stopped at Target to buy baby boy his first outfit...

This morning, Rick and I decided that if it turned out to be a girl, we would go to dinner at an Italian restaurant called Rose Angelis. If it was a boy, we'd do Mexican at Uncle Julio's. All day, Rick kept telling me, "I really, truly don't care if it's a boy or girl... but I'm soo craving Mexican!" Low and behold, he got his queso and cerveza! We enjoyed a very giddy dinner out talking about baby names and the adventures of parenting a boy...

And when we came home from dinner, we were surprised to find a little package at the door waiting for us...

And inside we found the sweetest card, beautiful flowers and my most favorite cupcakes in all of Chicago (with blue frosting, of course!)

 We are so lucky to have such thoughtful and caring friends who are just as excited about the beginning of our new family as we are. Thank you, Adrienne and Chris for satisfying our sweet tooth and loving us so much.

Yay for little boys!

What's for Dinner?

I'm making this for dinner tonight. Just wanted to share this blog again... seriously everything I make from it has been delicious!

photo from www.skinnytaste.com

Happy cooking :)

Bachelorette Fun!

What a fun weekend we had celebrating our bride-to-be this weekend! We packed two cars full of girls, wine, food and Rico.

Rico welcomed Monica at O'hare... he was well received by all except Terminal 3.

We drove up to Door County, Wisconsin where we spent two days celebrating non-stop! We arrived late Friday night to Annie's house where the girls poured some wine (while I poured some lemonade) and we talked and talked till the wee hours of the morning -- yes even me!

Saturday was spent at the beach, frolicking around Door County and searching for the perfect cherry pie to bring home for dessert!

Upon returning to the house, we all changed into our comfy clothes, poured some more drinks and made our way to the patio where we sang to some music, showered Adrienne with some intimate apparel and gave her a scrapbook to remind her of how much she is loved!

And, of course, a party hasn't really started until there's some Catch Phrase!

Later that night, we all gathered in the kitchen to cook up a feast! It was pretty amazing how seven of us fit into the little kitchen and each took over a job. Our dinner was delicious, but the most fun part was the labor of love that went into cooking our meal together.

And, finally... the big night out. We rallied and took Rico out for a night on the town. And, what a night it was! Rico was a celebrity at the bar. I think we all laughed so hard that night, our stomachs hurt.

No idea who this guy is... but Rico seems to like him! 

All in all, it was such a fun weekend filled with good friends, tons of laughs and a whole lot of love! Can't wait for October when we get to watch the little bride become a wifey!

**pictures edited for appropriateness** :)

Up North

Rick and I made a last minute decision to visit his parents up north this weekend. We realized that our ability to go up north will soon be much more of a challenge once this summer is over, and we wanted to take advantage of spending some quality time with the grandparents-to-be (though technically they already have two fantastic grandsons!) We arrived at the cabin on Saturday afternoon and spent most of the weekend relaxing outside, watching the dogs play, reading books and catching up on our time apart from each other for the past several months. Because I can't take my insane cocktail of allergy and asthma medications, I stayed out of the cabin for the weekend enjoying the sunshine. It was truly a fantastic weekend spent with family.

To celebrate the Fourth, Rick and I picked up some fireworks in Indiana on our drive up to the cabin. Rick was like a kid in a candy store.

All the goodies we bought!

We waited for the sun to set by building a fire and making smores. Rick even got to use his boy scout skills and widdled down sticks for us to use! (I was quite impressed... the closest experience I have had, or would like to have, to Girl Scouts is going to summer camp which hardly qualifies as roughing it considering I managed to straighten my hair there each day!)

When the sun started to go down on the lake, Rick fired up his magic.

 

 

Impressive, right?

We will definitely remember this Fourth of July for a long time, and look forward to many more to come Up North!