It’s party season!  Although between birthdays, showers, potlucks, football, barbecues, when is it not party season?  Dips are my favorite party food.  They are a chance to indulge without the guilt of eating the whole thing yourself (so guilty).  I will warn you, make this dip the night before and put it in the fridge to chill overnight.  It tastes even better the next day and once you start tasting it you won’t want to stop!  So break it out for a crowd and be prepared to share the recipe.  Click here for the recipe »

Are you still eating Thanksgiving leftovers?  For me, Thanksgiving lasts for days.  Between dinner on turkey day, pie breakfasts all through the weekend, and Thanksgiving redone in the office microwave on Monday, we always cook enough food to last a week.  So I don’t typically get very creative with my leftovers.  I save the turkey to make tortilla soup and pot pie but I love my stuffing and green bean casserole just as they are.

This is a fun post-feast lunch or snack, turkey grilled cheese with cranberry sauce and-for me-left over Brussels sprouts.

Turkey and Cranberry Sauce Grilled Cheese

• two slices bread
• softened butter
• cranberry sauce
• sliced turkey breast
• swiss cheese
• stone-ground mustard

1. Heat a skillet or griddle to medium-low.
2. Butter one side of each slice of bread.
3. Flip bread buttered side down and spread cranberry sauce on one slice and mustard on the other.
4. Place turkey and a thin layer of any left-over goodies you like: stuffing, sweet potatoes, Brussels sprouts, etc. over the cranberry sauce and then top with cheese.
5. Close sandwich mustard side down so the buttered sides are facing out.
6. Place sandwich on the griddle with cheese side up and cover with a pot lid.  Heat about 2 minutes then check the underside for browning.
7. When nicely browned, flip sandwich and cover again for about 2 minutes.
8. Check the toasted side and remove sandwich to a cutting board.
9. Slice and enjoy.  Tastes like Thanksgiving!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday!  I am so thankful for our health and happiness and for you all.  I hope the holidays brings wonderful things for you and your family!

I can’t believe how quickly the weeks go by.  Can you remember when we were kids and a summer was a lifetime?  I can’t believe that Thanksgiving is already over and we only have five weekends left for Christmas baking!  When Nestle offered to send me a baking kit for an afternoon of baking with my kids I jumped at the opportunity.  With five days of work, laundry, homework, dishes, and general family maintenance, afternoons baking with the kids has fallen somewhat by the wayside.  Alas, there is nothing quite like a deadline to remind us all to stop for a minute and just bake with the kids.

I always use Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate chips in my cookie recipes because I love the just sweet enough dark chocolate flavor and there are always coupons in the paper.  It’s a win-win.  The first recipe that came to mind for this particular afternoon of baking was Nana’s peanut butter chocolate chip cookies because they use our favorite Nestle chips and because I have been meaning to add them to our recipe collection forever.  Here is Addie showing us how excited she is to be baking instead of watching TV!

These cookies are delicious: sweet and salty, with a hint of peanut butter and melty semi-sweet chocolate-seriously, are you ready for some cookies or what?  Nana made this recipe for mrChaos as a kid and re-named them Addie’s favorite when she was little.  It is hard to measure an exact yield because so much of the dough and freshly baked cookies disappear before you can get an accurate count.  It makes a lot, these were big cookies and we had close to three dozen.  Thanks to the new stove, I actually was able to bake more than one tray at once so we were able to get a jump on the cookie thieves.  Click here for the recipe »

So this spring, chaos in the kitchen will be four years old! And after three official Thanksgiving dinners I have never posted a recipe for mashed potatoes.  Wonder why?  I suck at mashed potatoes.  I make the worst mashed potatoes you’ve ever had.  Without fail.  It’s OK.  I am at peace with my failures.  My mom makes great potatoes and so does my best friend.  So I get to enjoy good mashed potatoes on a regular basis and pretty much quit trying.  Except this year I got a new stove.  This year, I am going to cook Thanksgiving dinner.  So this year I figured I better try again.

Here is my problem and the way you can avoid it:  I don’t cook my potatoes long enough.  Every recipe you’ve read says to cook the stupid potatoes until you can pierce them with a fork.  Yeah well, then cook them some more.  Because if you stop at I-can-pierce-them-with-a-fork-so-they-must-be-done you are gonna have some lumpy potatoes.  Trust me.  Click here for the recipe »