Bet On Dinner

Well, hey! I took a little holiday blogging break, on purpose…and that extended into a second week, because life. Post-Christmas has lots of extra jobs – unpacking from traveling, attempting to organize and assimilate new toys, putting away the decorations and vacuuming the pine needles (I mean…the tree is gone! Are they breeding??), and finishing off the cookie dough truffles for lunch. I’m kinda pooped. And I also haven’t cooked much of anything…we’ve been living out of the freezer (hey bean burritos, hey!) and off of leftovers from delicious extended family holiday meals that I didn’t have to cook. It’s been pretty awesome.

So I thought I would share with you a few fun things that I got for Christmas for my kitchen! I set up a little Amazon store, which means they’ll give me some pennies if you buy through my links (and help offset the cost of running the blog). It’s been many moons since I earned any pennies, so spend that Christmas money, my friends! ;o)

These lovely measuring spoons showed up in my stocking. I took them for a spin making waffles and they’re great! Very sturdy (my old plastic set has some warped spoons from the dishwasher), and I love that the shape allows them to get down into little spice jars!

I’m super pumped about this Cook’s Illustrated cookbook from Jay’s folks. It’s enormous – over 2000 recipes! Cook’s Illustrated is one of my favorite sources for great recipes – we can thank them for roasted sweet potatoes and the original recipe for pork carnitas. I’m sure I’ll be sharing some more goodness from them this year!

My sister Laurie got me this book, written by a food blogger! It’s called Dinner: The Playbook, and it’s about “mastering the art of the family meal”. I haven’t tried the recipes yet, but I’m very attracted to the practical, down-to-earth, and fun approach Jenny has – I love this line: “Dinner, more than anything, just has to be…done.” Yes and amen. Some nights are for awesome, special meals and some are for feeding all the people and surviving until bedtime. (The book includes recipes for both types of dinner!)

I asked for these popsicle molds for the girls for fudgsicles. This morning we made some frozen yogurt pops with plain yogurt, a banana, frozen strawberries, and a drizzle of honey (an eyeballed half recipe from Jamie Oliver) – total hit. I can’t wait to experiment more with these!

My mom got me this nifty little nut chopper I mentioned recently – I already used it to make a second batch of Russian Tea Cookies!

Jay and I have spent a lot of our marriage unable to agree on a pepper mill. We are finally proud owners of this one, recommended by Cook’s Illustrated!

My baby is about to be 6 months old (howwww?) and I’m excited to put these baby food storage containers to use!

Jay snuck around on my Pinterest boards and totally surprised me with this Anthropologie prettiness, even though we weren’t supposed to be getting each other anything! Thanks, babe!

And – not to be all sentimental at the end of the year – but sharing recipes with you, and especially hearing that you made them, and liked them, has been so, so much fun – a gift. Really. So THANKS!! I’ll be back with a recipe in 2015!!