Joy in the Kitchen!

I used to love Reece's Peanut Butter Cups but they've changed somehow since I was in love with them and it seems that they just don't have the same flavor. This recipe for a similar treat is much more like I remember the flavor of the old candy bar!    My brother shared this recipe with me before I was even a teenager!  He got it from someone he met while serving a mission in Kentucky and Tennessee for our church.  It was easy enough for me to make by myself that my Mom let me mix it up even before I learned to bake cookies.  I pressed this into an 8x8 pan but if you like a thinner peanut butter base to go with your chocolate, press this same amount into a 9x13.   If it's more than you can use, it freezes nicely but be sure to cut it into squares before freezing. Chocolaty Peanut Butter Squares 2 C. Creamy peanut butter 2 cubes margarine or butter, melted 4 1/2-5 C. powdered sugar 1 12 oz package chocolate chips Blend peanut butter and marg...

Years ago my Mom found a little paper in a new shirt that said "Inspected by 14".  She saved that paper and then put it in Dad's lunch the next day with a bite out of the sandwich.  What a fun memory that has been for my family as an example of keeping the fun in a marriage. Today I did my own quality control for Dave's lunch!  He'll get a kick out of it and won't have a choice but to think of me while he's away at work.   Perhaps sandwiches like these will show up in lunches for April Fools!  Surprise!

Born and raised right in the middle of Idaho potato country has allowed me to enjoy potatoes almost every day of my life.  We can grow potatoes in our garden but when there are fields and fields of them all around us it's so easy to buy bulk potatoes from a nearby farmer and store them for the winter.   This year I bought from my cousin who has a field just a mile from me.  This field is part of a farm my grandpa bought and farmed with his boys many years ago. Good soil for growing potatoes and families.  I grew up hearing stories of hand picking potatoes out of the rows in the fall harvest but with modern equipment harvesting is much easier!   There's nothing like the earthy smell of potatoes fresh out of the ground.   Freshly dug Idaho Potatoes heading into the cellar for storage. Big beautiful spuds!!! I like to store 200-300 pounds of potatoes through the winter.  If I pull them right out of the field and put them in gunny sacks or box...

Every Sunday we have a nice family dinner after church.   Right now I'm busy with extra church meetings some Sundays so my family pitches in and takes care of dinner preparation while I'm gone.  Yesterday I had planned a nice pork roast, mashed potatoes with gravy, fruit salad and brown sugared carrots.   My older daughters decided to make rolls as well.   Here is my beautiful daughter Keeley with her new calling in life:    A Roll Model! They used my favorite recipe for 60 Minute Rolls.   Go ahead!  Give them a try!  The world needs more good Roll Models!

Cream Puffs.   LOVE THEM!   Easy to make, elegant, and so many delicious ways to serve them.  I usually do a basic chocolate or vanilla cream or ice cream filling, once in a while I'll do some chicken salad filling.  Today I wanted something a little different.... a little off the beaten cream puff path, so to speak.   Raspberry Lemonade filling was an absolutely delightful choice and look how adorable these little sweets are!   This rosy, tart, yet sweet filling was pretty easy to make, but takes a few minutes as you need to cool the cooked filling.  I was experimenting while creating this recipe so I did mine all at once, but it would be easy to do some of the steps throughout the day in between other activities. First, bake up some mini cream puffs.  You'll find the recipe HERE.    Spoon a walnut sized portion of  dough and drop onto a cookie sheet as directed in the recipe. You should get approximately 1 2 cream puffs...

We recently traveled to Tennessee to help our daughter and her husband move to Utah.  So happy to have them closer to us!  Happy Happy!   While we were there, we celebrated her birthday by going to dinner at their favorite BBQ place, Top Hog BBQ in Gallatin, TN.  It was a delightful, homey place and the food was plentiful and delicious!  Our server welcomed us with southern charm.  We were obviously not the only ones to love this place as even though we were seated right away at 11:30 am on a Saturday, before we left there was a fair bunch waiting to be seated.  Our daughter said there is often a 30 -60 minute wait on a weekend evening.  SO worth the wait!     Barbecue there seems a little different than here in Idaho.  The sauce is much thinner.   The sides were different as well!  So much fun to try different foods!   I enjoyed BBQ Smoked Pulled Pork, Hoe Cakes, and Onion Rings, and I tasted Keeley's colesla...

It's been a lazy Saturday morning and my girls requested Puffy German Pancakes.  They are quick to mix up and take about 25 minutes to bake which gives me time to make home made maple flavored syrup to go with them.  (You can find that delicious home made syrup HERE . Just scroll down past the buttermilk pancake recipe.) With a large family, I've doubled this recipe and baked it in a 11x15 pan.  Today we fed 5 of us with a nice sized piece left for the girls to take to Grandpa when they went to work in his yard this afternoon. It is fun to see what shape each pancake takes as sometimes it will puff more in the middle and less on the edges and sometimes it will puff right over the edges of the pan making an odd shape.  It's always fun to open the oven when the timer goes off to see how creatively it shaped its self! Puffy German Pancakes 1 C. milk 6 eggs 1 C. sifted flour 1/4 tsp. salt 6 T. butter or margarine With hand beater or whisk...