After much deliberation, Neal and I purchased a set of stainless steel cookware. Of course, I love nonstick cookware, and we do have some that my brother and his wife bought for us a while ago. But I really wanted a good set of stainless steel cookware. It does a better job browning meats, creating nice crusts, etc. I also wanted a set that could be taken off the stovetop and right into the oven.

I was really excited about the cookware we bought, and still love it to pieces. I seriously feel like a chef on The Food Network when I use it!

Anyway, Neal and I have noticed lately that it really needed a good deep cleaning. The skillets and saucepans were forming a pretty gross film, and Neal was having a heck of a time cooking his eggs in them, when he normally doesn’t have a problem. I mean, we use soap and water and scrub them after each use, but it just wasn’t working very well anymore.

I bought some stainless steel cookware cleaner and went to it today. I was amazed at the results.

I will say that Neal told me to take pictures of this. I kind of didn’t want to because I didn’t want to admit how gross I let my pans get. Although if you really know me, this probably doesn’t surprise you too much, haha. Anyway, here’s the before:

I know! Totally gross! I hadn’t actually used this pan in a while because of this. Or I would only use it for sauces or something that wouldn’t stick.

And here’s after scrubbing with the Pampered Chef stainless steel cookware cleaner:

Looks like a whole new pan, right?!?!

I was so freakin’ excited. I feel like I get disappointed by products all the time, so when something works, it makes me pretty giddy. These seriously made my weekend! Look how pretty that pan is!!

I celebrated with a scrumptious toasted cheese sandwich.

Our neighborhood is like a trick-or-treat mecca. They bus ‘em in, man. I’m serious. It was raining when trick-or-treating started at 6, but we already had two families by 6:05. The rain let up about a half hour later, and it was like a free-for-all.

I really like handing out candy. I loved trick-or-treating when I was little, so I think it’s really important to hand out candy if we are home. I also LOVE looking at kid’s costumes. There were some really great costumes this year!

Here’s Simone looking for the trick-or-treaters with a treat of her own.

Here were some of my favorite trick-or-treaters:

– A little girl dressed as Dorothy. She had the curled, pigtailed-long hair and a little basket with a stuffed dog inside. It was funny because she couldn’t fit the candy in her basket because the dog took up all the room!

– Twin boys dressed as bugs. These kids were probably not even two, and they were stinkin’ adorable. They tottered down our driveway with their bags of candy. Their parents had these monkey backpack things that had leashes attached. I think that’s kind of weird, but when the one kid tried to push his way into our house, I was glad the dad could pull him back with the leash, haha. The boy’s name was Anderson and he was trying to get to our cats.

– Princesses. Oh geez. Multiple, elaborate princesses. Makeup, updos. The whole shebang. Maybe I should start a princess-costume-making business, because it seems lucrative.

– A little boy dressed as a bear. Only his face was peeking out and he was pretty much the cutest thing ever. Neal was standing at the door and I was in the kitchen. Neal yells from the door “Hey, Megan, come here, you have to see this kid!….. Oh no!…. Oh, he just fell in the grass!…. Oh, he’s getting up now….. He’s kinda wet now……” HAHA, it was pretty funny. He was adorable. I came to the door and the fall must not have fazed him. “Hi!” he yelled. His mother, who looked exhausted, said that he kept running because he was so excited and this was not the first time he had fallen that night. HAHA!

Can ya tell I enjoyed handing out candy? We bought three large bags and only have half a bag left. It was a madhouse! The only thing that slightly peeved me was that we had some double dippers. I really didn’t care about the little kids, but there was this one scary-looking goth/witch teenager with her little sister. They came up the door and I said “Oh, hey, I remember you, but that’s OK, I’ll give you more candy.” The teenager just stared at me. I said “Don’t you remember me?” (I mean, they were seriously at my house about 20 minutes ago). The teenager said “No” and held out her bag of candy. She kind of freaked me out so I hurried up and gave her candy so she didn’t put a spell on me or something.

For dinner, I made some shrimp scampi. It was scrumptious, but I got distracted by trick-or-treaters and the top got a little burnt, haha. And sorry for the crappy picture. I was starving and just wanted to eat!

And to get in the fall mood, I made some pumpkin muffins with cream cheese icing. Oh boy, are these things good! I got the recipe here.

Sorry for the crappy picture. They do not do these justice. I’m telling you, make these things NOW! So good!

Hope you all had a good Halloween!

I have some foodie things to show first. First, Neal and I have a breadmaker that was given to us by family friends. We don’t use it real often. I would say that’s mostly because it takes about 4-5 hours, so I need to be able to be home for long stretches. But I made some crusty honey French bread the other day, and it was really good!

I wish I would have taken some pictures once we cut the bread. It was really good! I think our breadmaker makes rather dense bread, although that could be the recipes I use. Either way, this was really good and very filling!

We had Neal’s parents and grandparents up the other weekend. We had a really nice visit! I made my lasagna, which was a hit. For dessert, I had viewed a recipe online for apple turnovers. I thought the recipe for the dough was interesting. It called for sweetened sour cream, which really gave the dough a nice tang. And it really came out like a flaky pastry crust dough.

Everyone seemed to really like these, so I must have done something right!

So… the Phillies are in the World Series. SO EXCITING! It’s been really fun watching the games. Tonight is Game 2 of the World Series, and the Phillies lead the series 1-0, since they won last night.

Since it’s Thursday, and the Phillies are on, I decided to make something fun. I had a lot of potatoes that I had to use up or they were going to go bad, so what better to make than a mashed potato bar! So Neal and I made salads, and then we had mashed potatoes with some fixin’s – bason bits, chives, cheese and sour cream. Yum!

When I have a mashed potato bar, I make them and then throw the batch in the crockpot on low, covered. It really helps to keep them fresh and fluffy.

OK, so I’m off to watch the game now. LET’S GO PHILS!!

Well, lately, I’ve been utilizing the awesomeness that is frozen shrimp. Our grocery store has had frozen shrimp on sale recently, so we like to buy the 2-pound bags of large shrimp. I get two meals out of that and it’s a good lean meat.

I also have finally broken in my new Pampered Chef cookbook. Some of the recipes aren’t that appealing to me, or they are too calorie-heavy, but there are still some really good ones in there.

The first one, which I made last week, was grilled shrimp with lemon orzo. I had orzo pasta in my pantry for a while and just didn’t see a recipe I liked. So I decided to make this recipe. It was pretty easy and I thought it all tasted really good.

Yum! Next time, I’ll go easier on the lemon juice, as this was pretty lemon-y. But still very good. The best part? It was a one-pot meal. I love that!

Yesterday (Saturday) was a very, very rainy day. If Neal and I don’t have any plans on a Saturday night, then we like to go to the grocery store late at night (like between 10 and midnight; we’re losers). It’s not crowded and we can take our time. So I had to make dinner with whatever I had in the house. I once again perused my Pampered Chef cookbook and found a recipe for parmesan crusted shrimp with spaghetti. I had a block of parmesan cheese in the frig, plus frozen shrimp, pasta and pasta sauce. I sent Neal and out in the rain to grab me some parsley from our herb garden and I was good to go to make this!

I really loved this dinner. I had to grate the parmesan cheese, then cook it in a thin layer in a skillet until it was lacy and golden brown. Then, once it was cool, I broke it up into crumbs. Then I put these crumbs over the shrimp and baked it. It was so good! I will definitely make this again, because it was relatively easy, used few ingredients and was quick.

Doesn’t that look good? It was seriously awesome.

I decided I’ll have to start cooking with shrimp more often!

What a weird weekend this was, right? It poured buckets all day Saturday, and then today (Sunday) is beautiful! Oh well, good football weather. First Eagles game of the season, so let’s go Birds!

Anyway, I’ve been back to cooking lately. We’re been busy this summer and I got lax about cooking, but I’m trying to lost a little chunk, so I’m trying to make some good, healthy meals for Neal and I. I have some Weight Watchers cookbooks that I get ideas from.

Recently, I made some spicy shrimp over pasta. I have to say, it was a little to spicy for me, but Neal really liked it.

I sauteed them with some garlic, red pepper flakes and wine. I’m such a wimp, because my mouth was really on fire after eating these. Neal thought I was ridiculous.

Sunday, my grandparents came over to visit and check out our bedroom. I made a peach cobbler using local peaches. It was a really good cobbler. It doesn’t keep very well, but was very good the day I made it.

And then this week, I made some chicken and mushrooms with a wine sauce (I cook with wine a lot, don’t I? HAHA). Again, it was really good. I love baby bella mushrooms.

Yum!

I’m not really sure if I’m losing any chunk, but I’m working on it, haha.

Tomorrow, I get to sit on a golf course all day with my mom drinking beer. My company participates in a charity golf tournament every year and my mom and I always help work it. We have to sit at one of the holes and collect money for closest to the pin. I look forward to this every year. Tomorrow’s going to be the best day ever, haha.

I sit them on the windowsill so they can ripen up a little bit better. And yes, that is a wishbone at the far end of the sill from a whole chicken we had. I like to let the bone dry out, then Neal and each make a wish and each pull an end. That is if Ferris doesn’t sniff it out first and chew on it like a dog.

My beefsteak tomatoes are still green, so they can’t be picked yet. But there are TONS, so I’m going to have to figure out what to do with all these tomatoes! I might have to look for a homemade tomato sauce recipe!

I made the most bangin’ chicken enchiladas Sunday night. Seriously. These were amazing. And very easy. Neal and I were both really happy with them. Tad had a bite or two of my leftovers at lunch today and agreed they were good.

I found the recipe here.

Kitties are still loving the new room. Ferris actually wouldn’t venture out from under the bed for two days. Not sure what that was about, but he’s OK now. Neal and I are hoping to start working on the trim in the room this weekend.

Think that’s all for now. I did get a photography booklet in the mail that I ordered from Amazon that focuses on my camera, the Nikon D60. I really want to get better at photography, so I’m hoping the book helps. I’ll try to post as I learn more stuff!

For breakfast at my parents’, I made some strawberry scones. I had this recipe saved in my reader and wanted to try it with local strawberries. So I thought this would be a perfect time to make them.

The recipe calls for varying degrees of flour. I started on the low end, since I knew I could always add more. Our local strawberries are already pretty  juicy, and they were very ripe, so I ended up having to add A LOT of extra flour. Either way, I still think they turned out really well, and the family at breakfast seemed to really like them. I had never made scones before, so it was fun to try something new.

As I said, coming up this week, I’ll have photos of the paint samples in the bedroom and Father’s Day breakfast. And is it really the end of June already?

We have the THE best strawberries. I love making strawberry shortcake (the Bisquick mix in a 9×9 pan), because it reminds me of when I was little. My mom used to make it as a special treat around the end of the school year. She would let us eat it for dinner (she’d always make a sandwich or salad for herself and tried to get us to have a “real” dinner, but we refused, hehe). It was awesome. My brother and my dad pour milk over their shortcake and strawberries. I do not. But it IS dinner, not dessert. Trust.

OK, so a couple of weeks ago, I had this craving for strawberry shortcake. It was Sunday and the strawberries had just become available that Friday or Saturday. I drove all over the county on a Sunday trying to find strawberries. NO DICE. I couldn’t find them anywhere. I called mom and yelled at her because she wasn’t home to provide me with the red juicy berries that I craved. I think I might of even hung up on her.

I came home and pouted for a while, then realized I wasn’t going to be happy and drove over to my parents’ house once they finally did get home to eat their strawberries. I was a happy camper then.

I know, I’m such a brat.

Strawberry season is coming to an end, and I picked up some today at the local market for something I plan to make this weekend.

Simone was interested.

And I finally cooked again! I know. Crazy.

I made Weight Watchers shepherd’s pie before. I had a lot of ground turkey, so I decided to make it again. I tweaked the recipe a little, but I think it turned out well. Neal really liked it.

Eh, doesn’t look that appetizing. Sorry. Neal likes all the food that looks like dog food – shepherd’s pie, meatloaf, etc. Kind of weird.

This weekend, Neal and I will be be priming! Whoo hooo! It’s really going to look like a room! How exciting! I will post updated pics for you all to check out!

First, I made some chicken enchilada dip rollups that I saw on a food blog. They were pretty simple to make. I wasn’t sure how good they were so I asked Neal to try one. He can be sort of picky, so I trust him if he says he likes something. He popped one in his mouth and said “They are really good. I could eat the whole plate right now.” So, we had a winner!

And I also made some low-fat chocolate cookies. These were VERY chocolaty, and VERY good. They were going fast at the party and I when I mentioned they were low-fat, they went even faster, haha.

Later today or tomorrow, I’ll have updated pics of Cole (Andi and Shawn’s German shepherd), plus pictures of a BABY!

It was a really sweet moment. I thought back to that day,  truly one of the best days of my life. I remembered the ceremony, the kiss, the dance.

So I turned to look at Neal, and you want to know what he said to me?

“It was hot.”

Seriously. There was no “sweetie, you looked beautiful” or “it was a great day.” He couldn’t even throw me a bone and say “I love you.”

“It was hot.”

Yeah, Neal, it was July. Sue me.

**Sigh** I love my husband

(To his defense, it was hot in the church on Saturday, so I think his mind was on heat, rather than his unrelenting love for me. I’ll let this one slide….)

Anyway, despite his failed attempts at romance (haha, love ya sweetie), I do try to spruce up our weeknight meals. I’ve been getting in a rut lately, making the same ol’ same ol’. So when we had some leftover mashed potatoes, I set out to make a mash potato casserole. I looked around on allrecipes and found this fun recipe, which was like a mashed potato souffle. It’s call Potato Puff Casserole. You have to fold in egg whites and bake, which causes the casserole to puff up. It was really cool, and very good!

I served it with some pan-cooked chicken and veggies.

I probably won’t have a chance to blog tomorrow, as I’m going “shopping” at my cousin’s house for my girls’ weekend in Atlantic City, NJ! Whoo hoo! We leave Friday.  So you probably won’t hear from me for a while. I’ll post when I get back. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of fun pictures to share! Pray that I don’t gamble away all of my money!

It was very similar to the chicken piccata I make, but with addition of mushrooms and a much lighter sauce. The recipe called for heavy cream in the sauce, but I skipped that part since Neal is mildly lactose intolerant and I didn’t feel like hurting his tummy.

Overall, the dish was really good! The recipe had it served with linguine. I asked Neal if he was OK with that and I got a thumbs up. I think it went well with the light sauce and the mushrooms. Yum!

I’m not feeling so good this week. I can feel the beginnings of a sinus infection rumbling in my head (Grrrrrr)… so I’m just trying to get through the week. All I want to do is sleep!  I can’t wait to lie in bed all morning on Saturday! Neal and I are going to a party for the Final Four championship (you know, that basketball thing) on Saturday and I’m excited because I have a fun treat planned! Yay!

Cross your fingers that my immune system holds off this cold!

Friday is the first day of spring, and it’s starting to show. I love it!

Of course, the cats like staring at the black beast the lives across the street and barks at EVERYTHING. Seriously, I’ve never seen our neighbor walk this dog and he’s large and not socialized at all. He just lets the dog out to run around the fenced back yard. The cats aren’t fazed by his constant barking anymore, HAHA.

So, I made these awesome muffins a little bit ago and forgot to post about them. I found the recipe here. They are whole wheat apple muffins, and boy, are these things awesome!

The recipe calls for buttermilk or yogurt. I hate getting buttermilk at the store because I never use it all and end up pouring the rest out. I already had some vanilla nonfat yogurt that I eat with my granola, so I decided to use that instead of plain yogurt, which I didn’t have. What would a little vanilla flavor hurt? And I would say it probably only enhanced the flavor. These are very moist and thanks to the whole wheat flour, very filling, too.

The chunks of apple are perfect. I will definitely make these again!

Let’s all hope the weather stays nice. Neal and I have lots of yard work to do this weekend. Can’t be the worst home on the street!

Neal, bless his heart, has done a great job dealing with all the finances, bills, etc. At one point. I tried to keep abreast of our account, but I couldn’t remember our password for our online banking and typed the incorrect one in so many times that it locked us out. Neal had to make some calls or something to regain access. He wasn’t amused, and I was banned from our bank website, HAHA.

But recently, he started using mint.com, which is a really great, easy to use and FREE website to manage our accounts. It’s awesome, and I love it.

Well, Neal and I both agreed we spend a lot on food. I would eat out for lunch about two times a week, and I made new dinners just about every night. I know the making dinners every night thing is great and all, but Neal and I both agreed it would be a better use of money to make dinners that produced leftovers for our lunches and later weeknight dinners.

So, Sunday, I made a large pan of baked pasta. Essentially it was “baked ziti” but I didn’t have any ziti pasta, so I used rotini instead. For the sauce, I used the sauce I made for lasagna a little while ago. I threw in some mozzerella and baked her up. Next time, I’ll definitely use a tubed pasta that holds up better, but this was still very, very scrumptious.

I served it up with two awesome cheat side dishes. Garlic bread (frozen and baked until golden in the oven) and Caesar salad (the bag mix). If you haven’t yet experienced the wonder that is the bagged salads, then you are missing out. The best is when they are buy one, get one half off (or free) which is a deal Giant runs a lot.

And the best thing is this made A TON of pasta. We are still eating it for leftovers, and I haven’t made dinner since. Pretty cool, huh? In fact, Neal is sitting beside me right now scarfing down some leftovers. And it was all really very cheap.

So, my goal is to make dinners that make good leftovers – tacos, chicken quesadillas, pasta, meatloaf, etc. Hopefully that will help us shave down the grocery bill a little. Oh yeah, and we’re trying to keep ME out of the grocery store. Seriously. I bet we spend an average of $50 less when Neal goes to the store rather than me. You can see who has the stronger will power….

And I woke up to this:

And anyone that knows me AT ALL knows I absolutely hate cold, wet and most of all, SNOWY weather. Grrrrrrr…

So I was in a funk pretty much all morning. Neal was a sweetheart and drove me to work so I didn’t have to drive myself in the muck. The roads were pretty horrible. I share a birthday with my boss, so that’s kind of fun. I got flowers, a pizza lunch, and apple pie (my pick). I also was able to go home after lunch. YAY! My brother was nice and drove me home, which was very sweet of him.

So of course, I changed into sweatpants immediately and played some Fable:

(Yes, I’m a loser. I loved Fable II so much that I bought the first.)

Then I took a cat nap with Simone. I was still sort of in a funk. I do want to thank everyone for their e-mails, phone calls, texts and Facebook messages. It cheered me up despite the weather.

I was all excited to cook chicken piccata, but I just didn’t feel like it. So Neal volunteered to make it. I helped a little, but he did most of the work, which was really nice. I’m a pretty lucky girl. And dinner was very, very good.

He also cleaned up the kitchen so I didn’t have to.  Oh, and for future reference, the best time to confess to your husband that you spent over $100 at a Pampered Chef party is on your birthday. He can’t really yell at you on your birthday, you know?

For desert, I got a nice card from Neal, a card from Ferris and Simone (the envelope said “Mommy,” haha) and Girl Scout cookies. So the day started out a little blah, but ended well, thanks to the well-wishes of my friends and family, two furry felines and because of a special guy who said “I do” to me two years ago.

I’m not sure when I first had it, but I still remember high school, when there was construction going on and we didn’t have a cafeteria. We ate in the unfinished gymnasium, and for lunch, the district brought in pre-made items, cold sandwiches, pizza and food they could keep in those stainless steel buffet things (what are they called?). Anyway, pulled pork was one of them. I would get so excited and scarf down my sandwich in no time.

I still get pulled pork once in a while at my local farmer’s market on my lunch break.

So when I saw this recipe for pulled pork in the crock pot. I got pretty excited. The deal with this recipe was to put a dry rub on the roast, let it sit for several hours or overnight, and then let the crock pot do the rest of the work. SCORE!

Still, I was slightly scared of the recipe. It called for cumin, which is one spice I’ve never used before. I also LOATHE oregano. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that. I will eat things with oregano (kind of hard to avoid since it’s in basic marinara/spaghetti sauce), but I really need it in moderation. If we order a pizza and it is clumped with oregano, I’m totally turned off. I have to make sure that when I order a sub at Quizno’s, I ask for “no oregano.” I always get a weird look, but why do they feel the need to put this incredibly strong and unnecessary spice on my toasted sub? I mean, seriously. OK, sorry, tangent. Back to the recipe – I decided to put in all the ingredients called for, including the cumin and oregano, but didn’t use any white pepper because I didn’t have any.

So, this pork was seriously amazing. It was tender and easy to shred after cooking in the crockpot for 9 hours. I was worried that the spices would overpower and that’s all I’d taste, but that wasn’t the case and I really felt they just enhanced the flavor of the meat.

Neal and I put barbecue sauce on top of our sandwiches, but I do think if you don’t like barbecue sauce, this meat would taste great in a sandwich on it’s own.

And Neal, who has a strong aversion to pork (childhood trauma, don’t ask), declared “Honey, you can make this again.” That’s Neal’s way of saying he likes things. If he doesn’t like something I make, he’ll say “Umm… you don’t have to make this again.” HAHA! He tries so hard not to be mean.

So anyway, I scored big points with this dinner, and the best part is that it makes tons of leftovers!

Neal and I aren’t big celebrators (is that a word?) of Valentine’s Day, but to me, it was an excuse to make a fun dinner. We were excited for a night in, and I was excited to cook/bake up a storm.

First thing I made was French onion soup. Neal and I both LOVE baked French onion soup. I bought little crocks a couple of years ago and made it, but I wasn’t thrilled about the flavor. When I saw that one of my favorite food blogs had a recipe posted for French onion soup, in perfect time for Valentine’s Day, I knew it was fate.

Other than the fact that I had to use mozzerella cheese instead of gruyere (grocery store was out of gruyere), this was seriously amazing French onion soup. I mean, one of the best I’ve ever had. I owe that to the recipe, not my cooking, haha.

I got a thumbs up from Neal.

We totally dressed up for each other, can’t ya tell? HAHA. Hey, it was a gourment dinner and we got to wear sweat pants. How much better can it get?

Main course was seasoned scallops, on a bed of fettuccine in a tomato cream sauce, with a side of roasted asparagus. I didn’t use a recipe for the scallops, just seasoned them and seared them in a pan. I used this tomato cream sauce recipe, but added fresh tomatoes, and used low-fat cream.

Seriously. YUM. This plate probably would have cost $22 or more at a nice restaurant, and we made it for much less than that. I was so happy with this meal. Neal didn’t utter a word throughout dinner, haha, which is a good sign. He wiped his plate clean and then finished up mine.

Hey, I’m still an amateur photographer, so I can say these pictures do not do this dish justice. This was sooooo good.

Last, but certainly not least, was Chocolate Idiot Cake, so named because it’s easy to make, HAHA. I wouldn’t say it’s idiot-proof, but it’s pretty simple. The recipe calls for the highest quality chocolate. I don’t know where to get ScharffenBerger chocolate, so we settled for Ghiradelli. The chocolate flavor is EXTREMELY pronounced, so I understand the need for good chocolate. It’s flourless, and incredibly, INCREDIBLY rich and decadent. I loved it.

So anyway, we were both pretty happy with the meal. And it was much nicer to just be by ourselves, with Ferris and Simone, in a quiet house.

Neal bought me beautiful lilies and I think my favorite part about them was taking pictures, haha.

See? I went a little overboard with the pictures, haha. And isn’t the vase awesome? I told Neal and I loved it and he said “I paid extra for that.” HAHA!

Anyway, I hope you all had a great weekend!

I found this website that had a good basic recipe, plus a lot of add-on options. I made the brown sugar cinnamon packets. They were so freakin’ simple and cheaper than buying the packets. Plus, I’m always happy to make things myself.

But of course, anything sweet we keep out is a like a honing beacon for Simone. I’m not sure what her deal is, but she loves anything sugary. I had these sitting on the kitchen cart and I heard rustling. I came out to the kitchen to find Simone trying to get to into the bags.

She tore a little hole in one and was closing to spilling it all over the floor.

See the hole? She’s such a little rascal!

Anyway, Neal seems quite pleased with them. Yay for homemade!

Thursday or Friday (I can’t remember), I made Neal a stromboli. I didn’t really feel like doing it and just wasn’t in the mood, so I kind of just threw stuff together. Well, that resulted in flour everywhere, including me. I’m not even sure how this happened, but I got it all over my face. Neal thought it was funny and took my picture.

Kind of stupid pictures, but I thought they were funny.

Since it was so nice outside, we left the door open so the cats could look out the screenglass door. They love this.

Neal and I took a nice walk around the neighborhood. It was lovely. And we took advantage of the temps and grilled up some barbecue chicken.

I made some cheddar twice baked potatoes. Delish!

I’m hoping for another couple nice days. Screw you, Punxsutawney Phil!

It was really good!

And now we have plenty of leftovers for Neal!

OK, so I have to post these next pictures. They aren’t really good pictures, because I just wanted to hurry up and take them before the cats moved. Here’s the deal – I walked into the living room the other day and they were both lying on the couch, with their paws around each other. I melted, it was so adorable.

Can you see? They totally hate the flash on my camera, so that’s why their eyes aren’t open. Ferris has his left arm around Simone, and Simone has her left arm around Ferris. ADORABLE!

How precious is that! They moved shortly after this. I was so happy I got this picture. They cuddled as kittens, then went through this phase where they didn’t really interact nicely with each other. Now, they sleep cuddled together on our bed all day, and we find them in positions like you see above. I’m so glad they have each other!

My family calls it “hamburg barbecue.”

Neal thinks we crazy. He always says “What the hell is hamburg?”

Neal and I grew up a little over an hour apart. But sometimes, it seems like we grew up on opposite ends of the country, I swear. The regional differences are pretty funny. I’m opening Neal’s eyes to the PA Dutch world, and I don’t think he’s excited about it. He shudders at the mere mention of mince meat pie.

But anyway, Tad and Amanda invited Neal and I and Mom and Dad over to their house for dinner last night (I’m pretending that the “big game” didn’t happen. I’m not a fan of the team that scored the most points).

Tad made killer hamburg barbecue and we were treated to fresh french fries.

I made dessert, Smitten Kitchen’s cinnamon chocolate chip coffee cake.

It was really moist and not too sweet. I loved it. The recipe calls for whipping egg whites until stiff. I was actually excited to do this by hand, since I have not done it before. My wrist got really tired from wielding the whisk. I already have a sore wrist and wear a wrist brace at night to prevent carpal tunnel (actually, so does Neal and I know you are getting hot just thinking about how sexy we are; try to calm yourself). But anyway, I managed to whip those egg whites into shape. Literally!

I’ll definitely make this cake again. I would be perfect for a party, and was pretty easy to put together.