Joy in the Kitchen!

My Favorite Guy and I decided to stay home for Valentine's Day this year.   It just doesn't seem as romantic having an intimate dinner for two..... with 75 other people in the restaurant!  Not to mention waiting in line, waiting to be seated, waiting to order, and waiting for your food.   We banned the kids to one of the bedrooms upstairs with a movie, chicken nuggets, apple slices, pop, and sugar cookies.  They seemed happy enough.  Their steak and crab days will come.  Right now the 6 year old is as happy with chicken nuggets as we are with steak and the 12 & 14 year old girls understand that we want space to ourselves and they got to pick the movie. I set a small table in the living room by the fireplace. Rounded up a yard of Valentine'y fabric someone gave me a few years ago and set the flowers Favorite Guy had given me earlier in the day there to enjoy.   A nice Pandora station of Harry Connick Jr. gave us some nice background music....

Boy, did we have a feast New Years Eve!   My oldest daughter and her husband and 2 kids came.  We ate, played games, ate, watched a movie, and ate some more. :)  I already posted my recipe for the Fruit Salsa and Cinnamon crisps , but just wanted to share how beautiful our table looked. (Before we started munching... it didn't look quite so tidy afterwards. LOL ) We served chips, cheese & crackers, Cream Cheese Cranberry dip, Layered Bean Dip, Bacon Wrapped Water Chestnuts (my personal favorite - I probably ate 1/2 of the double batch Audra made.), Ham Roll-ups, Muddy Buddies, Lil' Smokies (of course),  Sausage Balls, Bruschetta, Crudite', and the Fruit Salsa. Keeley, also made a wonderful Chocolate Mousse - and of course I forgot to take a picture of it.  Probably would have drooled all over the camera trying anyway.  It was delicious! Setting out the food in a pretty fashion was fun too.  Dragging out some of our little used dishes (that w...

We're trying out some fun new dishes for our New Years Eve festivities!  I just finished making this one and it is SO good!  I saw a recipe idea online and changed it for what's in season and my own tastes.  The Cinnamon Crisp recipe can be found in the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.  This salsa is so fresh and bright, it brings a taste of summer to these bleak winter days.  What a great way to ring in a new year, serving something so bright and hopeful!   I hope you enjoy it as much as we are enjoying it! Fresh Fruit Salsa 3-4 kiwi 2 golden delicious apples 1 C. raspberries or strawberries (I used frozen) 1 pear, Bosc, Bartlett, whichever you prefer or is in season 1 T. lemon juice 1/4 C. strawberry or raspberry jam (I used my homemade freezer jam for a good color) 2 T. brown sugar 1 T. honey 1 T. sugar In a small bowl, mix jam, sugars, and honey.  Set aside to let the sugar start to dissolve.   Peel, core, and finely dice pear ...

Here is a terrific appetizer for New Years Eve!   Simple to make, and I haven't met a person yet who doesn't absolutely love it.  Kara Age is pronounced sort of like Kahdah Ahgay you have to sort of roll the "hd" like you roll an R in spanish but not quite as hard. (my own phonetic spelling there... take it for what it's worth!)  My husband spent 2 years in Japan on a church mission. He loved so much of the food. Oddly, this wasn't one of the dishes he tried there!  However, when we were first married, and had our first internet connection, we searched for Japanese food recipes and this one came up.  It has been a favorite for years. This requires deep frying, but I just use a 2 quart pan and about 3 inches of oil.  You marinate this for a few minutes prior to frying, so be sure to start this about 1/2 an hour ahead of time.  As a time saver, you COULD mix up the marinade early and cube the chicken, but you don't want to mix them together too ...

When we were discussing our choices of what to make for Kids in the Kitchen, McKay (13) suggested making this Bruschetta he had seen in a Taste of Home magazine. I LOVE Taste of Home...  I've found some really good recipes there, and even better, I love to just thumb through the pages and look at the pictures. LOL!  I told McKay he could try it, but we probably wouldn't list it with the Kids in the Kitchen recipes. It is quite a bit more involved than I wanted our Kids recipes to be.  McKay did this pretty much by himself.  I only gave clarification & a little advice.  It is WONDERFUL! I can't post the recipe, but you can find it on this page at Taste Of Home .  We made a few changes.  These were:  we used french bread instead of italian,  We didn't have fresh basil so we used dry. (it was yummy, but would have been even better with fresh!), we also used regular slicing tomatoes instead of plum tomatoes. (it's what we had on hand. :)...