Not a book review but have you seen the Cooking Light Fresh Food Fast cookbook? Oh my gosh, what a great cookbook. I got a copy for Christmas from the in-laws and it has been a really great cook book. I have cooked almost every single night since I got this. They aren't kidding when they say it's fast. I don't think anything I've cooked anything that took more then an hour and everything has been delicious.

It's true, I am a spoiled girl.

I have been coveting this Kitchen Aide pasta maker since some time last year. It makes tubed pasta like macaroni and rigatoni. My mom spent way too much money and got it for me this year. She was so excited about it that we made fresh rigatoni for Christmas dinner with it. She practically grabbed it out of my hands when I was opening it and ran to the kitchen with it. It was so much fun and so easy to use.


Hubbs got me the Knitting Chart Keeper from Knit Picks.com. I have been dying for one of these for some time ever since I heard Chrissy from Manic Purl podcast talking about them on her podcast. Naturally, I got out a pattern that had a chart and cast on for a new pair of socks right away. Love this. Now I don't have to mess with sticky notes to keep my place on the chart and when I'm done I can close it up and the cat doesn't lose my place on the chart. So awesome!

My older sister, Molly, got me Around the World in Knitted Socks by Stephanie Van Der Linden. Tons of fabulous sock patterns in this book. There were a couple of patterns my Gram expressed interest in, so I'm trying to think ahead about Christmas or her Birthday next year. I've been wanting to learn to do some color work but wasn't really sure where to start and this book has lots of great patterns in it for two stranded color work. I think this might be a good place to start since I feel like after as many socks as I've done, I've pretty much got socks mastered. PS, I love the socks on the cover! Yum!

Hubbs parents got me the Cooking Light Fresh Food Fast cookbook. So many great recipes! I've already my first recipe picked out. Going to get a pot roast at the grocery store tonight, and make it in the slow cooker. The picture looked so tasty! Can't wait to try!

My Favorite Cookie Receipe: Peanut Butter & Milk Chocolate Chip Studded Oatmeal Cookies



Ingredient List:
1 Cup butter, room tempature
1 Cup packed light brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar2 large eggs
1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2-1/2 cups quicking cooking oats
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 cup peanut butter chips

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350.

Combine flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon; set aside for later.

Beat butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar in a bowl until creamy. Add eggs and vannilla; beat well. Add flour mixture to butter mixture, beating well. Stir in oats, chocolate chips & peanut butter chips.

Drop by medium cookie scoop onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in 350 degree oven for 12 min's or until lightly browned. Cool for 1 min and move to wire rack.

Serving size: 1 Cookie
Number of servings: 38
Use medium cookie scoope to get portion size.

Before I could cut the pie last night, Hubbs wanted to get a proud cook pic. He cracks me up! My first pie!

First cut

First bite

Official verdict!

The pie turned out really good. I'm not sure I'm happy with the way the apples baked down. It looked awesome before I cut it but once it was cut it was a bit like apple sauce inside. I think it might have been the variety of apples that I used. I might have to try again with a different kind to see if they don't bake down so far. But all in all it was a great pie, good flavor and the crust was awesome. I was really worried about the crust. I know that I can tell the difference between a store bought crust and a homemade one so I was worried about how it was going to turn out. But it turned out light and flaky and very yummy.

Thankfully the official judge, Hubbs, gave it a thumbs up and had two slices! I'll call that a total victory since he doesn't really like pies with fruit in them. Next pie is Chocolate Silk, his favorite. Pressure is on since he's only had ones from bakery's. I'm sure I can do it.

I! Have made pie! From scratch!

It's my first apple pie, actually it might be my first pie ever. I can't ever remember ever making one before. When I was doing the pie crust it seemed very familiar but I think it was just from having watched my mom do it a million times before.

Isn't it lovely?! I was hoping it would brown up more but since I forgot to put the wash on the crust before it went into the oven, it looks pretty good to me. I'm waiting for Hubbs to get home from work to cut into it. I know that he's a boy and won't appreciate how it looks, all boys care about it how it tastes. But I'm dying to know! I know I can bake some killer cookies but this is my very first pie.

The recipe is from Cooking Light.com. I love that website. It's got tons of great stuff on it, everything from cooking to healthy living to exercise. Great magazine, great website. The recipe can be found here: http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1054849 It's just a basic apple pie but I didn't want to try anything too fancy coming out of the gate on this one. For Thanksgiving at the in-laws I'm going to make a chocolate silk pie (Hubbs favorite) and what I call a cowboy cake. The cowboy cake is a "make in the pan" cake. There are no bowls and it's super easy. A definite fan favorite since my mother-in-law asked for it. I'll have to make a second one to take on our annual camp out for Thanksgiving weekend. I'll be sure to post the recipe before thanksgiving.

I'll let you know if Hubbs likes the pie or not! Fingers crossed! lol

A while back my mom bought me an attachment for my kitchenAid mixer. I love making stuff from scratch and had been dying for the pasta roller attachment for my machine. Mom splurged for me and bought it. I've been wanting to give it a try but a variety of things kept me from actually getting to it, but no more! I pulled it out this after noon and made some pasta.

In about 30 Min's it went from dry ingredients to finished pasta! Yummmmy!

Sleep is for Suckers!

I can't believe that I'm up at 1am. At midnight I heard a very strange noise that woke me up from a nice sleep. Since I couldn't identify what the noise was, my first thought was that the cat had gotten into my brand new (expensive) yarn that I bought yesterday. So I jump out of bed and run into the dinning room. I flipped on the lights and it wasn't the cat. My dog had gotten the empty package of Parmesan cheese out of the trash can and was tearing it up to get to any cheese remnants that might have been inside. So I guess the good news is that the cat wasn't in my yarn, but the bad news is that I'm a wake.

I tried going back to sleep and laid in bed, in the dark listening to hubby snore for almost an hour before I gave up. So here I am, logged into Spark starting my day. Thank goodness that Hubby won't be home tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, normally that would be a bad thing but if I don't get any sleep I'm going to be very cranky and I don't want to take it out on him. He's been traumatized enough lately putting up with my horrible PMS. But instead of focusing on the bad, how about some pictures of my new yarn?!!!

I just love the color!

It's kinda chunky and funky! I have two skeins of it so I'm planning to make myself a scarf and maybe a hat out of it if I have enough. But who knows? With Ravelry the possibilities are pretty endless.

So besides yarn shopping, running errands and doing some house keeping, what else did I get into yesterday? I baked some more cookies out of my new Martha Stewart Cookies cook book. I made some huge chocolate cookies that turned out to be more like brownies then cookies but Hubby liked them so I'm happy. I also baked some bread. I did basic white bread because I had all the ingredients already. I wanted to make whole wheat but I was missing the powdered milk called for in the directions. This was my first try at using my Kitchen Aide mixer to do all the work of kneading the dough and it was soooo easy! I followed the directions, let it raise for an hour, punched it down, split into two loaves, put it in the pans, let it rise again and then tossed it in the oven. The loaves came out really great and the house smelled awesome! So doubly good!

Doesn't that look good?

On Friday, I pulled the last two of my rag quilts out of the drying and marked them. I think I posted here that they were made from my husbands grandfather's shirts. He passed away in November 2007. With some family members helping, we conspired to get a bunch of his shirts so that I could make quilts for 5 of the family members. Well, yesterday evening I needed to run up to the jewelers to have some links taken out of my new watch so I could wear it. Hubby suggested that we stop at his parents to give my mother-in-law the quilts. My MIL was so touched that she started crying. She looked at the four we'd brought for her and picked out all the shirts that she remembered her dad wearing on a regular basis. She's such a sweet lady and I'm so lucky to have her as my MIL. I have to give special thanks to my Hubby for coordinating the sneakiness, my FIL for picking out the shirt & my MIL's brother for bringing me the shirts. Without them, it never would have happened.

My MIL and 4 of the Quilts.