Dish 44 Cheesecake Filled Strawberries

All I can say is yum, yum, yum.  :)  So I saw these on-line (it might have been on Pinterest, I forget) and one of my friends also told me about these.  I decided to make them for a Memorial Day cook-out.  They were a hit!  Basically, they are strawberries filled with cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla with mini chocolate chips on top.  I figure they're a tiny bit healthier than some sweets since one of the main ingredients is strawberries.  I also used low fat cream cheese.  The only thing I didn't like about these was gutting out the strawberries.  But I guess it was worth it in the end since they tasted delicious.  :) 

Dish 43 Shosh's Salmon

For my birthday, my friend Shosh offered to make me dinner.  She makes a great homemade macaroni and cheese so she made that as part of it and she offered to do something else.  After some discussion, I chose salmon.   I have never cooked salmon myself so now seemed like a good time to learn.  :)  (And by "now" of course I mean several months ago.)  So a couple of weeks after my birthday, she came over, cooked for me and showed me how to make all the stuff she made.  It was really nice to have someone cook ME dinner.  Anyway, it took a while, but a few months after she made me salmon, I decided to make it myself.  I made it a little differently than Shosh did as I baked mine and she broiled it, but I made her sauce, etc.  Anyway, it was quite good and since it didn't have an "official" name, I decided to name it Shosh's Salmon.  :)  In fact as I sit here writing this blog, I kind of want to make it again soon. 

Don't Trust the Forecast aka Why I Will Always Pack a Jacket or Umbrella From Now On

A few weeks ago I went to Chicago for a work conference.  The conference was great.  It was three days long and depending on the day it went from 8-4 or 8-4:30ish.  That meant we had the evening free to explore the city. One of my colleagues and I flew in the day before the conference started and had plans to go to a White Sox game.  Thanks to traffic from the airport to the hotel, we missed half of the game, but what we saw was good.  There was a fireworks show after the game.  I'm not really into fireworks, nothing against them, just not as excited about them as some people.  Anyway, the girl I went with wanted to see them so we stayed.  Unfortunately, the show was interrupted due to incoming severe weather.  Now with very few exceptions (i.e. going to Arizona in June), I always pack a jacket or an umbrella in case it rains.  However, since we were only going for three nights and the airline we were flying charges for luggage (seriously?!  I still can't get over that luggage used to be free and now you have to pay for it on so many airlines), I wanted to fit everything in a carry on.  So after checking the weather several times and not seeing a drop, I decided to save room in my carry on; I would NOT bring a jacket or an umbrella since there was NO rain in sight.  BAD IDEA!  Yep, the fireworks, as I said, ended early and we got to go back to our hotel in a "nice" rainstorm.  Let's fast forward to the next day.    After the conference, we went to the Sears Tower (it's not called that any more, but you know what I mean).  Sadly, we had to wait TWO hours to get to the top, which I could deal with (though I wish I'd brought my book) and about ONE MINUTE (I'm not exaggerating) after we finally got to the top (remember we'd been waiting 2 hours), the fog rolled in and the tower (as the man who worked there said) was "going to zero visibility."  There were a couple of breaks in the clouds, but let's just say I did not get may good pictures.  And yes, it rained again!  Thankfully, it wasn't raining much when we walked from the tower to a restaurant for dinner.  And when it rained at dinner and after dinner, at least dinner was a short walk from the hotel.  Did I mention the weather had been gorgeous all day when I was inside at the conference?  Moving on to the next day (you can guess where this is going), it was another beautiful day (we left the hotel for lunch).  After the conference was over for the day, we walked around a little bit (wanted to get dinner at some pizza place, but due to a 2 hour wait and the fact that we had plans to take a boat ride, no go on that so we went elsewhere and had good pizza there instead).  Anyway, we get on the boat and the first 30-45 minutes was lovely, but then guess what?  It RAINED!  Let's just say I was glad I took a Dramamene (sp?).  It cleared up a little at the end, but we missed many of the nice sights.  :-(  The last day of the conference,  you know the day I flew home, it was sunny.  Go figure!  So the moral of the story:  always pack an umbrella or a jacket. 

Dish 42 Pineapple Chicken

Since I made this back in April or May, I don't remember a whole lot about it, but as you can probably guess it had pineapples and chicken in it.  It was pretty good.  In fact, I should make it again sometime as I liked it.  I did take a picture of it, but it didn't come out that good.  In my fact my fiancé thought the picture looked awful and not good enough to post on my blog so it is not included. For a girl who likes to take pictures, I'm not very good with the food pictures. 

Dish 41 Eggless Cookie Dough

This dish is dangerously delicious!  This is another one I can blame on the Arizona trip.  Natalie made it for me when I visited her back in April and I made it when I got back home.  I brought it to the S'mores party and it was a hit.  I also made it a few weeks ago when I was stressed and craving something sweet.  Unfortunately, I ate too much of it then. Oops.  Anyway, it's basically cookie dough, but it has no eggs so you can eat it without having to worry about salmonella (sp?). 
Sadly, after making them three times now, I've never remembered to take a picture.  Anyway, getting to the S'mores...  My fiancé and I got invited to a cook-out the weekend I got back from Arizona.  They were having a S'mores contest.  You had to bring creative things to make S'mores.  They would be providing the usual graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate, so we were supposed to bring other things.  Anyway, since my AZ trip was fresh on my brain, I brought eggless cookie dough and cake batter cookies.  Both were good, but the eggless cookie dough was the winner.  Other creative S'mores additions included:  peanut butter cups, Chewy Chips Ahoy cookies, and I can't remember the rest, but we enjoyed some yummy S'mores that night.  :-) 

Dish 40 Cake Batter Cookies

When I visited my friend in Arizona, she made me many delicious dishes.  One of those dishes=cake batter cookies.  I enjoyed them so much that when I got home and had to go to a cook-out that weekend, I made and brought some.  They are basically cookies made from cake mix so they taste a little more "cake" than "cookie," but they are still good.  She used a strawberry cake mix; I had vanilla at home so I did that instead.  I need to try the strawberry at some point.  They are good by themselves or as you will read about in a future blog, as replacements for graham crackers when make when participating in a S'more contest.