Hershey Bar Pie

1 Graham Cracker Pie Crust
1/2 stick real butter
5 or 6 Hershey Bars
1/2 pint Whipping Cream
16 large marshmallows
1/2 cup milk, preferably whole

Over a double boiler melt the marshmallows, milk and butter, stirring constantly.  Once melted slowly add in the chocolate and continue to stir until it is melted.  Cool the mixture completely.  Place a bowl, beaters and whipping cream in the freezer to prepare to beat it. When the mixture is almost cool whip the cream until really stiff.  Fold in the whipped cream into the chocolate and marshmallow mixture.  Pour into the pie crust (make sure it is cool) and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Pate

I made pate and I'm not sure how I feel about that.  For Slow Cooker Thursday last week I got two whole chickens and took the breasts, thighs and drumsticks and used them in the slow cooker meal.  That left me with two carcasses that had some meat left so I stuck everything, giblets and all, in the stock pot and boiled everything.  Of course this made some great chicken stock, but when it was done I had the cooked innards left over.  My crazy self threw them in the blender with some garlic and spices and called it pate.

That gets me to today, when I am eating the pate and I don't know how I feel about it.  It doesn't taste bad, but I'm not really sure I want to keep eating it.  It looks like grey mush and every time I dip into it just looks gross.  I have a bag of crackers, the pate and some hummus and I find myself dipping in the hummus more than the pate.  Why is it that leberwurst (liverwurst) is so delicious but when I make essentially the same thing it weirds me out a little?  I just might have mental issues but it seems the pate will probably just be trash and I can call that a failure.

Let's do the math - Chick-fil-A

Thursday night we left the Allen Events Center after watching an unfortunate defeat of the Wichita Thunder against the Allen Americans with food on the brain.  I wasn't starving since I had a snack of leftover macaroni and cheese, potato cakes and blaukraut before we left to go to the game, but I knew I would need food before bed.  There was a Chick-fil-A immediately outside the arena so Steven stopped to get some dinner since he did not have a snack before we left.

I have been trying to control my intake for a while to get back to my pre-wedding weight.  With holiday season upon us it has been that much more difficult.  I know I am not successful every day, but every day that I am is a step in the right direction.

Anyway to the point of the story, I had hoped to order a kids size chicken sandwich but they don't have such a thing on the menu.  Steven convinced me to just eat half of a normal sandwich and it would be fine.  I think I actually ended up eating less that half, but let's just say half for easy math. According to their website a chicken sandwich is 430 calories so that left me with 215 plus the Guinness I had while watching the game that is 126 calories.  341 total.

I think I am ok with that.  Obviously it isn't everything I ate yesterday, but it really could have been much worse.  What I did learn out of this though is that there are options at Chick-fil-A that I had never considered. The big eye opener was to ask for no butter on the chicken sandwich and it saves 30 calories.  I will give it a go next time and see how much the taste is affected.

Cheese Ball

My favorite Cheese Ball ever.  Recipe is credited to my MIL.

2 packages cream cheese, softened
1 8 oz can crushed pineapple, drained
1/4 cup green bell pepper, finely chopped
2 Tbsp red onion, finely chopped
1/2 Tbsp accent seasoning
1 cup chopped pecans
Cayenne to taste

Combine all the ingredients except for the pecans and cayenne.  Lay the pecans out on a sheet of wax or parchment paper and sprinkle with the cayenne.  Place the cream cheese mixture on top of the pecans in a rough ball shape.  Bring the wax paper up around the cream cheese, making sure that the pecans are uniformly around the ball.  Shape into a ball and refrigerate until you are ready to serve.

Note - I grated the onion instead of chopping it and it turned out to be too strong of a flavor.  If you are going to grate it, I recommend only using 1 or 1.5 Tbsp of it instead of the two.

Halloween Marshmallows

Ok, I know, I'm really late on this post, but maybe you will forgive me?

I made some marshmallows for Halloween.  Orange and Black ribbon to boot.

These weren't just any marshmallows though.  They were spiked.  One with chocolate vodka and the other with whiskey and honey.  I used Alton's Brown's basic recipe

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/homemade-marshmallows-recipe/index.html

The main difference was that instead of using water I used alcohol.  And for the whiskey honey, I replaced half of the corn syrup with honey.

They were liked by many and everyone had their own favorite.  Now that it is cold these would be great in some hot chocolate.  For Thanksgiving I made some pumpkin liquor marshmallows that I didn't photograph but they also seemed to be a hit.  Unfortunately I learned the hard way that you can't boil a cream liquor like you can a normal alcohol, so just replace the water that goes in with the gelatin if you are going to use something creamy.

Any flavor suggestions for future batches?  What would an appropriate Christmas flavor be?

Chocolate Dipped Clementines

Not my recipe.

http://www.howsweeteats.com/2011/01/chocolate-dipped-clementines/

The professionals make it look way better than I do.

However, I did want to share a lovely presentation option for them.  They were a big hit at the healthy cook out on Saturday as both an appetizer and dessert.