CookieD-oh

The kids' school had a bake sale on Friday, so I made cupcakes.  I think I would have made cookies, but the girl has been sick (for an entire WEEK), and it has sort of thrown off our schedule. Fortunately, she seems to be over it now, though she's still a little worn down.  Poor kiddo. Anyhoo, the boy and I decided chocolate cupcakes with peppermint icing would do the trick. They were pretty amazing. My standard go-to chocolate cake recipe and my favorite buttercream with peppermint bakery emulsion instead of vanilla extract.   Funny story, I took lots of pictures, but this is the only one that came out because the battery on my camera was so low.  And by "came out" I mean the only one that was still on the camera after I charged the battery and turned it back on. *sigh* Well, enough of that.  Guess what Tuesday was?  My blogiversary.  The second one.  So to celebrate, I am having my second annual blogiversary giveaway! Yay! ...

Happy New Year! Not much cooking over here lately...we decided to do a juice fast/cleanse/detox to start the year off right. Hubby and I went a little off track during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I mean, cookies.  Need I say more? We're now on day 8 of a 10-day juice fast. I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of our juice recipes with you.  Aunt Louanne, please avert your eyes. We'll start with the classics...Mean Green. You may notice that we got a new juicer.  Mom's 1984 Oster wasn't working for us anymore.  After conducting some exhaustive research on the internet, Hubby decided we HAD to have an upright masticating juicer.  I like it.  It's a workhorse for sure. Meen Green (original recipe) consists of: 6 leaves kale 4 ribs celery 1 cucumber 2 apples 1/2 lemon (peeled) knob of ginger Chop them up, juice them, and voila: Doesn't it just scream "Healthy"?  I like it now, but it took a while. ...