Cream of Chicken and Cheddar Broccoli Soup with Brown Rice

In lieu of my best friend also known as the love of my life being stuck in New York due to Hurricane Sandy...I made this soup.  There is nothing like soup on a cold and rainy day.

Cookie Bowls

I picked up a cookie bowl pan from Wiltons.  My daughter made the chocolate chip cookie dough and formed it around the cup.  Once done, we added our vanilla bean icecream to it.  This was soo wrong on the waistline...but soo delicious. I'm thinking one can try this around a regular muffin/cupcake tin.

 
This side shown is how to make the bigger size...but if you flip it over one could make the smaller size.  But, if you gonna do it...go BIG...

Cupcake Wars Party

I hosted an 11 year old birthday and the theme was Cupcake Wars.  The only difference is that the lil girls only had to decorate their cupcakes, the cupcake stand and of course clean up.  I had a great time doing this.  I have a passion for decorating and teaching these girls some of the basic concepts of what cupcake decorating is.  It was hard to pick a winner from such precious lil girls so one team won for creativity of their design of the cupcakes and the tower while the other team won for presentation skills on explaining why they decorated their cupcakes a certain way.

Team One

Team Two

 

 

 

 

I think they did a pretty good job for their first time....I'm proud



A Love for Cooking...

I found a love for cooking after I had my children.  Once life slowed down a bit I started cherishing food more.  I most like a lot of people started watching those food cooking shows on the food network channel and the cooking channel.  I started educating myself on the different ways to cook and utilizing different ingredients.  I started using more fresh herbs and vegetables while cooking.  I absolutely love going to the fresh food market and  the butcher more often instead of the prepackaged meats. It is amazing how food tastes better with fresh herbs.  I sprinkled some dried herbs on top just for the presentation. One of my first meals that I used fresh vegetables is my double meat lasagne. 

This is one of my favorite meals and apparently other people as well especially since I get requests.