Peanut Butter Cookies And More

Tuesday was my daughter, Brittney’s, 24th birthday and we took her out for dinner to the restaurant of her choice. She chose to go to a place called Steak On A Stone. We had never been there before but a couple of people have told us how wonderful it was. Their specialty is having you cook your own meat on a stone that’s heated to 750°. You can choose steak, chicken, shrimp, scallops, duck, lamb chops, pork tenderloin and lobster tail and when the waiter brings it out to you, it’s already browned on one side and he does a demonstration on how you cook your food. He flips the meat over to brown the other side and then tells you to slice off and cook each individual piece to your preference of wellness. It was pretty neat!! Chuck and Justin got steak, Brittney got Shrimp and Kory and I opted to have a meal already cooked – she got a cheeseburger and I got Lake Perch. Sorry, but one of the reasons why I like dining out is because I don’t have to cook! lol I didn’t want to have to work at making my meal!!

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Instead of cake, Brittney found a recipe in the “Taste of Home/Healthy Living” magazine for Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake. It looked delicious and the recipe was revamped to reduce calories and grams of fat by using fat-free and reduced-fat cream cheese. Now you’re talking!!! A decadent dessert without the guilt!! It smelled like heaven while it was baking and looked even more scrumptious after it was completely done!

Now let me ask you this.. . . doesn’t this look sinful?

We eagerly awaited until it was time to sing “Happy Birthday” and cut into that yummy confection! With the anticipation of tasting the gooey peanut butter and the rich chocolaty goodness, we took a bite and we all pretty much had the same look on our faces – disappointment!! It had NO flavor!!! I couldn’t believe it! What a bummer!!

If you’d like to try it anyways, just click on the picture to take you to the web page with the recipe.

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I’m hoping to continue to participate in Colleen’s Kitchen Weekly Recipe Swap, although I can’t promise that I will be consistently posting each week, but I’ll post when I can. I think it is a fun way to share recipes and I’ve gotten quite a few good ones already! Thank you, Colleen!!

So this week, I would like to share with you a fabulous cookie recipe. Growing up, there was a woman in our small town that was a phenomenal baker and she posted several of her favorite recipes in our church cookbook. This is a basic peanut butter cookie recipe which is outstanding by itself, but I like to add chocolate and peanut butter chips. ( A girl can’t get enough chocolate!!) They have become a favorite in our household and especially with my kids’ friends! Whenever they have a get-together, my cookies are a definite request!

Peanut Butter Cookies w/Chocolate and

Peanut Butter Chips

1c. brown sugar

1 c. sugar

1 c. margarine

1 c. peanut butter

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

3 c. flour

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking soda

1 12 oz. bag chocolate chip

5 oz. (half of bag) Reese’s peanut butter chips

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream margarine and peanut butter together. Blend in sugar and brown sugar. Add eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour, salt and baking soda. Add chocolate and peanut butter chips.

Drop by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet and bake 8-10 minutes or until nicely browned.

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If you would like to participate or see who else is participating in Colleen’s (And Baby Makes Five) Kitchen Weekly Recipe Swap, click on the photo below and it will take you to her blog.

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Thank you for all the concern and “get well” wishes for my hubby. He went this past Monday and had his catheter removed. And let me tell you, what a world of difference that has made in his attitude!! I don’t want you to think he was crabby or anything, because he wasn’t! If anything, I was the one that was probably crabby! lol He got a clean bill of health and has no more weight restrictions but shouldn’t try to lift anything extremely heavy for a couple more weeks. He can go back to his usual activities and has been knocking himself out doing things around the house! The man has become a little busy body! lol

I think I mentioned before in an earlier post that we wanted to make new kitchen cupboards, but with the holidays and then his surgery, we just didn’t have time to make them. Well. . . . .since he’s feeling so energetic (lol), I just “kind of” mentioned something about them and he jumped right on the bandwagon with me and we’ve begun making them!! Yayy!! It’s going to get done in stages. We’re starting with the wall cabinets, for now, which will make the biggest difference. I have a “galley” kitchen and so my cupboard space is limited. Instead of the standard 30” high cupboards, like we already have now, we’re going to make them to go all the way up to the ceiling, which will give me a lot more cupboard space!! We have concrete countertops (surprise, surprise, since that’s what Chuck’s business is) which I absolutely love!! We’ll have to make new ones due to the fact that there’ll be a slight adjustment in the width of the base cabinets (I’ll explain that later) but it’s a little too cold out to mixing up concrete outside., so those will have to wait until warmer weather. I’ll post pics of the progress.

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Well, this post has become a little lengthy!! (Sorry, I have much to make up for!) And I need to bake some more cookies. Justin is having friends over, again, Saturday night after their Sweethearts Dance at the high school. We’re suppose to get a major snow storm tonight into tomorrow morning with a lot of snow accumulation. So I don’t now how big of a turn out he’ll have. The southern part of the state is expecting 6-8 inches while the farther north you go, the snow accumulation will be less. The amount of snow we’re suppose to get keeps changing - it’ll be anywhere from 2-6 inches. So I guess we’ll just have wait and see what we get by morning!

Until Next Time. . . . Kris