When life gives you snow....make brownies!

My backyard looks like this today
So I made these

We are expecting 18-24 inches of snow this weekend. We are not expecting BeanieDaddy to make it home from work tonight. So, to get us through the afternoon and into tomorrow I decided to make brownies. Brownies seem to be the forgotten child of the chocolate dessert family. At least they are here. I'm more apt to do a cake, or cupcake or candy or something else. Brownies are usually an afterthought for some reason.

But I knew I had the ingredients on hand (at least I was pretty sure) and a page from my Southern Living Christmas Cookbook with a menu for a coffee and chocolate party has been taunting me for weeks. However, I had to make some alterations. The recipe calls for bittersweet baking chocolate and I had semisweet. After doing a little investigation, I learned that you can add unsweetened cocoa to the semisweet chocolate and you would have something closer to bittersweet. Also, the recipe calls for 2 cups of semisweet chocolate morsels. I have had a bag of raspberry chocolate morsels in the pantry waiting for a home so I used them instead. The result: pure heaven. It turned into one of those desserts that is so yummy but a little too rich to eat too much at one time. The hope is that these will last a while.

Here is the full recipe with my changes.

Dark Chocolate Brownies
Adapted from 2008 Southern Living Christmas Cookbook
1 cup butter
8 ounces bittersweet baking chocolate squares
2 cups raspberry chocolate morsels, divided
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs
1 Tbs vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts, toasted
1 cup all-purpose flour, divided
1/2 teaspoon salt

Microwave butter, bittersweet chocolate, and 1 cup morsels in a 4-quart bowl at high 1 1/2 to 2 minutes or until chocolate is melted, stirring mixture every 30 seconds. Whisk in sugar, eggs and vanilla.

Toss together walnuts, 1 Tbs flour, and remaining 1 cup of morsels. Stir remaining four and salt into sugar mixture. Stir in walnut mixture. Spread batter into a greased 13- x 9-inch pan.

Bake at 350-degrees for 30-40 minutes or until edges begin to pull away from pan (a wooden pick inserted in center will not come out clean). Cool on a wire rack.

In addition to the brownies, I made this pulled pork marinade recipe from The Naptime Chef. I doubled the recipe and added 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper and a little more than a pinch of red pepper flakes to give it a little more of a kick. And wow did it add kick. The smell of the pork roast cooking in the crock pot all day is amazing. I think this will be my go-to marinade/barbecue recipe from now on. Too bad Dad won't be home tonight, but there will be plenty when he returns.

Christmas Dinner Revisited

I have to say that one of the highlights to Christmas dinner was our first course, Cream of Curried Peanut Soup. It was simply scrumptious and I have been craving it ever since we had it. It was super easy to make. In fact, I made it a day ahead of time and simply warmed it up just before serving. I had never had peanut soup and questioned if I would like it. Again, completely surprised by the outcome and will most certainly make it again. Plus, I wasn't alone in liking it. Everyone enjoyed it, even my mom who tends to be a bit picky.

Sleepless

It's nearly 1 a.m. and I can't sleep because Christmas is two-and-a-half weeks away and I haven't finalized my dinner menu. Crazy, huh? I have been lying in bed the past hour with my head spinning. I figure that the only way to calm it down is to come here and type out my thoughts.

Last year I was inspired by an episode of Food Network host Nigella Lawson. Her entire menu for a holiday menu looked scrumptious and I swore that was what I was going to make for Christmas dinner. It is still my plan, for the most part but I feel that I need to add more. My mother gave me the latest edition of Southern Living's Christmas Cookbook and it has a couple of recipes in it that I plan to use as well. So, in order for me to get my head straight and feel better about a dinner that is more than two weeks away, here's my menu, or at least my menu at this point in time.

• Cream of Curried Peanut Soup

• some sort of salad with pomegranate or cranberry in it to give me something "red"

• Ginger Glazed Ham

• Spiced Peaches

• Butternut Squash with Pecans and Blue Cheese (I actually made this last year and it was delish) OR

• Sweet Potato Casserole (can I have both?)

• Garlic Green Beans (my own recipe)

• Yeast Rolls (not homemade since we have a fabulous Mennonite community here and they make better bread than I could ever dream of making)

• Individual Fudge Cakes

My dilemma: for some reason this doesn't seem like enough. Maybe there needs to be another vegetable or I'm thinking too much of dressing that normally accompanies a turkey dinner. Maybe some broccoli spears? That is something my grandmother always had for Christmas dinner, with her fabulous cheese sauce, which I have yet to master.

Obviously there isn't much that I can do about this tonight. It's 1:01 a.m. and I really need to try to sleep. Hopefully getting all of this down will help - for now.