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12 December
Holiday Squares (Sunshine Bars) Recipe
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Holiday Squares (Sunshine Bars) Recipe

I blinked once and the Christmas season was here; I blinked twice and now it’s almost over. I’m considering holding my eyes open with toothpicks à la Odysseus so I won’t blink again. Not really, but maybe I should because it would be a shame for Christmas to pass without sharing at least a few more Christmas recipes with you. (Read about Christmas Lollipop Cookies.)

The Christmas treats I’m sharing today are some of my favorites for many reasons:

  • They are festive and come out of the oven dressed to party.
  • They’re extremely easy to make.
  • The masses love them. So do the non-masses.
  • You can take them to work and your co-workers will love you.
  • They make your house smell divine.
  • They can tell the future, and so much more!

I should warn you though. They also have an identity crisis, and I’m afraid it confuses the children. After eating these, my kids have been known to say some pretty odd things. Check these doozies out.
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Filed Under: Desserts, Holidays, Kitchen Sink, Recipes Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Christmas Lollipop Cookies Recipe

General Mills always seems to be up to something fun, and earlier this month they invited a few bloggers to create a fun holiday-themed cookie recipe using a Pillsbury cookie dough roll. With the chance of the recipe being on Pillsbury.com (Update: This recipe and the other bloggers’ submissions are now on Pillsbury.com. Follow the link to check out all the delicious goodness!), I couldn’t resist and decided to participate. We could choose to use any of the following Pillsbury cookie doughs: sugar, gingerbread, chocolate chip, peanut butter, or peppermint.

Being the sugar cookie addict that I am, I naturally opted to use the sugar cookie dough. Sugar cookies have long been a holiday tradition at my house, one that I hope my kids continue and pass down to their own families someday.

As part of our cookie submission, General Mills also asked us to make it kid friendly so that moms (or dads!) can make it at home with their kids. For those of you who read my blog regularly, you already know that I love cooking with my little girls. They’re especially fond of any recipe that lets them play with dough.

This particular Christmas cookie idea combines two of my children’s favorite things. The first is making dough snakes. My kids jump at the chance to make them, and believe me, we can play that game for hours. The second is suckers. Their love for suckers nearly surpasses my own for sugar cookies.
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How to Make Pumpkin Seeds: Year 2

Last year I was a little late (mid-November) on the bandwagon when I posted How to Make Pumpkin Seeds: Year I, so I figured this year I’d try to post before Halloween.

My family looks forward each year to buying our pumpkins from one of the local pumpkin patches. You arrive, get a wheelbarrow and leisurely stroll around the pumpkin rows looking for the perfect pumpkin. I always buy a couple extra just for the seeds. My kids run around in utter delight trying to carry the largest pumpkin they can find. Depending on the patch, they may have hay bales and tractors set up for kids to play on. The owners of the patch we went to this year was giving tractor rides and had created a free corn maze for the kids.

We bought two big pumpkins for my wife and I, and three small pumpkins for our kids, and then a few of those really really small pumpkins just for the heck of it–actually, the kids seemed to be rather attached to them, and it was impossible to resist.

This past Monday, we hollowed out the pumpkins and let the kids carve theirs, so I’m sure the pumpkins will be overly shriveled come Halloween day, oh well. From the 5 hollowed out pumpkins I ended up with 6 cups of fresh pumpkin seeds–perfect for three different batches. Now, I’m the type of guy who rarely orders the same thing at a restaurant each time I visit because I like to experience different foods and flavors. So although I’ve already created pumpkin seed recipes that I like, I couldn’t resist whipping up some new ones either.

This year I’ve created three new recipes: Chipotle Ranch, Sugar ‘n Spice, and Lemon Picante. The Lemon Picante has become my new favorite.
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The Best Halloween Candy — No, Seriously.

I’ve gotta’ say, Halloween is a dangerous holiday. It’s too easy to buy candy long before October 31st; it’s even easier to justify buying it early when you say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll stick it in the top cupboard and save it until then…”

Yeah right.

I don’t know of anybody who has ever successfully done that. Before too long, it just starts gnawing away at you because you know it’s there… eat me, eat me, eat me… *sigh* … Two years ago I bought my Halloween candy on October 31st, Halloween Day. I went to the store to find nearly empty shelves and ended up coming back with the stuff nobody wants: stale pumpkin peeps, Sunmaid raisins, and a mini-size candybar mix. Mini size. Really? Halloween is about packing in the goodies, not skimping on treats that you don’t even have to chew before swallowing.

So this year I decided to–yep, you guessed it–buy my goodies early. I bought them two weeks ago during a “weak moment” on aisle 5. Needless to say, I’m going to have to buy more. Dangit. At least there is one huge benefit to buying your Halloween candy early; besides having to buy and eat twice the amount of candy for Halloween, you get the best of the best. No stale pumpkin peeps for me this year.

So this year I’ve rounded up a list of the 10 best Halloween candies (I cheated and added more than one candy to some numbers), that if I had to buy twice this month, I wouldn’t complain.

In no particular order, behold the list…
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Filed Under: Kitchen Sink, Lists (Top 10 & Such) Tagged With: , ,
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An Awesome Gift + Where I’ve Been

Hey folks, I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last post. Wow! In blogging terms, 1 month or longer between posts is equivalent to shooting myself in the foot.

But before we get into that, and above all else, I wanted to send a grateful shout out to Maren, my friend from Seevetal, Germany (near Hamburg). Over Christmas Maren sent me a really really awesome Christmas package full of German delight!
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31 December
2nd Annual QA Christmas Candy Party
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2nd Annual QA Christmas Candy Party

Excuse me for a second while I fill you in on the my latest happenings and not-so-adventurous adventures, then we’ll get to the real stuff.

It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to sit and down and work on The Cooking Dish, which is unfortunate because I have some delicious foods I’ve been wanting to post. Unexpectedly, however, I now have 4 to 5 days to work on it, if I’m up to it. For the past two weeks I’ve been fighting off a cough and intermittent fevers, and I finally thought I was getting better… BUT I woke up last night at 2:00 a.m. with a sever chest pain which kept me up for the rest of the night. Straight away this morning I contacted the family doctor and after a visit to the office left with a note saying, “stay home from work, you’ve got bronchitis and other junk” and some prescriptions to fill. Oh joy. I’m personally not a fan of involuntarily taking time off from work, but I don’t want to infect my co-workers either (you guys can thank me later–when I get back to the office).

So, without going into many more details, I’m stuck here at home and at the same time, trying to keep my distance from my overly-cute kids so they don’t get sick. That’s nearly impossible.

Well, thanks for listening to the rant… on with the show.

As of last year (2008), we started a new tradition in my department at work: The Annual QA CCP (Quality Assurance Christmas Candy Party). Although next year, we’re thinking of taking on a P at the beginning so it’ll be the QA PCCP (Pajama Christmas Candy Party).

Since my mom has been teaching my siblings and I how to make Christmas candy since we were only little squirts (just tall enough to burn our fingers on the stove top), and my brother and I work in the same department, there’s twice the trouble-making at the CCP. These CCPs have usually lasted an exhausting 6+ hours, but they’re always loads of fun.
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December Cookie Cutter Giveaway Winner

Congratulations to Sharla for winning this month’s giveaway: Fred’s ABC* Cookie Cutters
*Already Been Chewed

Her entry: “What Child is This”.
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Filed Under: Giveaways & Contests, Kitchen Sink Tagged With: , ,
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December Giveaway: Cookie Cutters

Now that I’ve completed The Ultimate Kitchen Gifts List, I figured I would give away one item from it. One of my favorite Christmas activities is making sugar cookies, so in honor of my favorite activity, I’m giving away Fred’s ABC (Already Been Chewed) Cookie Cutters. These cookie cutters are supposed to help people stay away from your cookies… but to me, a broken or ABC cookie is an invitation to snitch. To each their own, I suppose. However, if you looove cookies and your kids absolutely demand you leave some for Santa, making Santa’s cookies with these will almost guarantee there’ll be some left for you on Christmas morning.

This contest will run through Friday sometime (December 11th), and then I’ll ship them a.s.a.p to the random lucky winner.
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The Ultimate Kitchen Gifts List

*Phew!* I can’t believe I finally completed “The Ultimate Kitchen Gift List”, which I hope will be an excellent holiday (and non-holiday) shopping guide for you; it’s also great for birthdays, Groundhog Days, national Be Nice to a Cook days (is there such a thing?), etc. etc. etc. What I’ve done is researched days on end for the ultimate, best kitchen gifts and gadgets that people all over are using and enjoying.

Here’s why you’ll want to use and should use “The Ultimate Kitchen Gift List”:

  1. I’ve done all the research for you, spending days reading customer reviews and finding the best products. I’m confident in this list, and you can be too.
  2. I didn’t use Consumer Reports. Sure, they’re handy, but in my opinion, when it comes to kitchen tools and stuff, it’s best to get the word straight from the horse’s mouth, so all of these products are rated at least 4 (most of them 4.5) stars out of 5 by those who use them, and not a test lab.
  3. I’ve tried to pick the best rated and most well-liked item for each price range in the specific category. This means you’ll find similar items in both less expensive and more expensive price ranges in this list. All you have to do is match your budget to the item.
  4. I have a receding hair line and ‘they’ say that guys with a receding hair line are smart… or at least try to be.
  5. Did I mention that you’ll save yourself gads of time by using this list?
  6. I’ve added pictures below each item group so you don’t have to click a link to see what the item is. I love picture books. The pictures are in the same order as the list above them. If in doubt, just hover your mouse’s cursor over the picture and a little tooltip will display with the picture’s title.

Items marked with an asterisk * are my personal favorites in each category. Items with brackets around the asterisk [*] are items that I personally own and love using.
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Filed Under: Kitchen Sink, Lists (Top 10 & Such) Tagged With: , , , ,
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How to Make Pumpkin Seeds: Year 1

I know you’re all thinking it, so I’ll just come out and say it… “Chris, you’re about 3 to 4 weeks late on this post!” And at this point I begin to think of a good excuse… and realize I don’t have one. Oops. So as an extra bonus feature with this post I’m going to give you TWO recipes. That’s right, two for the price of two one; the truth is, I was going to give you two recipes in this post anyway.  Okay, confession time is over, and so is Halloween, and in here in Northern Utah,  so is the pumpkin harvest.  This probably means that most of you have either 1) already cooked up your pumpkin seeds, 2) thrown your pumpkin seeds away, or 3) left them in your fridge and they’re covered with a gooey white film and molding.  Gross. Don’t ask how I know about the white film.

I do know, however, that at different times of the year you can still buy bagged, uncooked pumpkin seeds in the grocery stores.  Yes!  A reason to still create this blog entry.  As always, a printable version is available at the bottom of the post. In today’s case, both pumpkin seed recipes are available.  Here we go.
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