Meh....What's up Doc?

Two years ago my in-laws were visiting. My father-in-law and husband built a deck on the front of our house and a play house for my children. My mother-in-law watched the children. I went to work. I would come home each day to find more things done to my home. One day I came home to find that my mil had found an old cookbook on my shelf. It was a cookbook she gave me for my bridal shower almost 20 years earlier. Each family member filled in a page of the book with a favorite recipe. That summer and fall I prepared a large number of the recipes in this book with my children and took pictures of them preparing the food. I also scanned in all the recipes. I then compiled it into a book for my mother in law.

This recipe is from that book. It is for a food that I'm not overly fond of, carrot cake. While I was making the book for my mil, I was doing my best to prepare as many of the recipes as possible. I skipped things that would kill me, like shrimp ones. I also adjusted those with nuts or just plain skipped peanut butter ones. But I ended up doing almost all the recipes. That includes making carrot cake. The kids and I made it and took it to a neighborhood party. It was a huge hit. I started getting requests to make it for neighborhood birthdays and other parties. So I have made it a few times and the carrot cake people all seem to really like it. I actually will eat it. Anything with cream cheese frosting I'll eat at least a bit just for the frosting.

I'm strong to the finish....

I am generally not a healthy eater. Ok, I'd rather live on chocolate and potato chips. But now I have children and I'm over 40, so I try to eat better. One thing we do regularly is baby spinach salad. My friend Kathy shared her wonderful dressing and we just love it. Now, it says it makes 8-10 servings. I try to use about half of a normal serving just because I worked out the calories on it. :) And I like to add extra goodies to it.

Brownies for babysitting

Saturday I was supposed to have my monthly afternoon of crafting. I host a Friday night event every other week in my home, but once a month I go somewhere else and am completely without children. It is *me* time. This month I had my date all set and was ready to go when one child was invited to a birthday party, but the other was not. I debated what to do, and then finally put out a status on Facebook whining about my need for a playdate for my other child. Luckily one of his classmate's mom was kind enough to jump in and help me out. In return for taking him for the day I prepared a pan of brownies. That same morning I had checked out 3 new cookbooks and found this recipe. It was for a 13x9 pan of brownies, so I made 1.5x of the batch to make two 9x9 pans. I couldn't make brownies and then keep none at home.

These brownies are rockin' I tweaked it and rather than using 6 ounces of semisweet chocolate chips, I used 3 types of chips equalling the weight. Next time I'm going to add more chips to replace the cup of nuts I omitted. And maybe next time I'll add a layer of caramel to try to recreate the Dorothy Lane Market Killer Brownies. The recipe says Fudgy, cakey, fudgy, cakey...can't make up your mind? These brownies combine the best of both worlds - the fudge brownie's ulltramoist texture, and the nice rise of a cake brownie.