Raclette

Piper's favorite dinner: Raclette. It is a traditional Swiss meal that is based solely on cheese.

garnishes and cheeses

You grab what you want and put it on your plate. Then you place what you want to melt/heat up in the little trays. They go in the Raclette oven to be broiled into cheesey heaven. The top of the over is an griddle and the underneath part is a broiler.

You can put lots of garnish or just plain cheese

Lowell did and egg...it takes longer but it's good!

Slide it all off and on to your potatoes and enjoy. This is one of those meals that even when you are so full you're about to burst you wish you could keep eating it.Please pass the angioplasty!

Traditional Halloween Bat Cookies

My friend Traci and I have been making these cookies for the last 5 or 6 years and have now declared them a tradition. They are stinkin' cute and YUMMY but a major pain in the rear end to make. Recipe to follow...
You will need:
Butter
Flour
Sugar
Salt
Chocolate Bark
Sugar Eyes (available at candy & cake making shops or on line)
Chocolate Sprinkles
Rolling Pin
Wax Paper
Bat Shaped Cookie Cutter
Double Boiler
A Partner

Scottish Shortbread
3/4 cup flour, sifted
1/4 cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup room temperature butter
This amount will make about 8-10 cookies. I usually quadruple this recipe.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl. Work in the butter with a fork or pastry cutter until the dough has the consistency of short crust.

Pulsing in a food processor will work also.

Sprinkle a board or your counter top lightly with flour. Turn the dough onto the board and knead until it's smooth. Refrigerate the dough for a couple of hours or overnight. (ladies DO NOT try to skip this step...trust me. The cookies will hold their shape so much better if you just know ahead of time that this is a 2 day project.)

Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thick and cut out bat shapes with cutter. Re-roll and cut until all the dough is gone. Place shapes on cookie sheet with enough space betweem for them to spread out a bit. Bake at 350 degrees F. for 20 to 30 minutes, until the cookies begin to brown slightly. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet.

In double boiler melt the chocolate. Be aware that water from the double boiler will ruin the melting chocolate so be careful to keep the water out of the chocolate. Have several sheets of wax paper ready to place finished cookies on. Have candy eyes ready and a bowl with sprinkles ready as well. Have one person dip a cookie in the chocolate and then dip the wing edge in the sprinkles and place on the wax paper. The other person places the eyes. Continue until all cookies are decorated.

Fabulous Friday

Here are some fabulous things in my life right now:

1.  Hazel is home: happy and healthy!

2.  I lost weight last week in spite of  PMS, hospital cafeteria food and watching approximately 15 hours of TV a day.  Not much but I still lost!  I even maintained the no sugar rule and did pretty well on the WW points.

3.  I made a fabulous salad  last night:  spinach, fresh blueberries, grated parmesan cheese, peas and poppyseed dressing.  It would be great with chicken or even crumbled bacon as a main dish. Yum!

4.  I am practically an RN!  OK that is probably blasphemous to any RN that reads it...sorry!   But I'm actually having fun playing nurse with Hazel and her IV meds.  I thought it was going to be really scary and hard but it's fun and after watching the nurses do it at the hospital for so long it wasn't that much of a stretch.  I have to admit that this whole experience has made the medical field more interesting to me.  I never used to be able to watch medical TV of any kind but now that it has a little personal connection, I totally love it!  Scrubs here I come!

5.  And speaking of TV, LOST is back on the air and I am so happy!  In other TV news: at the hospital I watched about 1000 episodes of What Not To Wear....FUNNY!  In addition I watched the tackiest show on earth:   How To Look 10 Years Younger.  I hate to admit it but it is also funny and they are pretty good at making people look better!

6. Last but not least:   I'm amazed at how blessed I am in so  many aspects of my life.  I have an amazing family, fabulous friends and a warm comfortable home.  What more can a girl ask for?

That about does it for me!  More later!

Inspiration

Well...so many of my friends are making great strides with their health so in the spirit of January I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon.  I have always known that I have a major sugar addiction so my first goal for the month of January is to stop eating sugar!   Ahhhhhh!  I'm scared but after some on line research and deep pondering, this seems to be the root of my problems.   The link above has some good tips and I am quite inspired by a friend of mine that stopped eating sugar back in November.  Well...I'll let you know how it goes.  The first week is hell I've heard so here we go!

Farmer's Stack Pancake Breakfast

This is one yummy recipe.  It tastes like something you'd get for breakfast at Sundance-it's all earthy and new age-y but super tasty too. Even the kids ate it.  Love it!  Get the recipe here.