HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you had a great day with family, food, and football. :)

On the field at Texas Stadium at a work event last year. :)

Happy Open Letter Day!

Today, SITS is hosting an Open Letter Linkup...everyone goes and puts links to their open letters. I love open letters. If you've read my blog for very long, you've probably seen a couple. So for your Friday enjoyment, here are my open letters. Enjoy the blast from the past!

A Letter To My Love

An Open Letter to Grocery Stores

An Open Letter to the Apple Store

Tiramisu

After posting Broccoli Rice Casserole recipe yesterday, by Sarah's request (glad to hear from you!) here is my tiramisu recipe. Background: after I went to Italy, I had the best tiramisu I've ever tasted. I went to numerous Italian restaurants in the US trying to find it again, and eventually realized that no one here has it. So I scoured several Italian blogs, found a couple of recipes that I played around with (not changing much...mostly altering to fit what I could find in the US) to create what I think is the perfect tiramisu. I have a couple of disclaimers that I'll throw in at the end. This recipe will make a 9x13 pan. You can half it for smaller ones.

5-6 packages of Mascarpone cheese (8 oz pkg. I usually buy mine from Super Target and its kept in the deli/bakery section close to the fresh mozarella and other specialty cheeses)

6 eggs (6 egg yolks, 4 egg whites. Separate into two bowls)

6-8 heaping spoonfuls of sugar (or more or less, depending on taste)

2 packages of ladyfingers (I usually find them at World Market - Vicenzovo brand in an orange pkg)

4-6 c. espresso (strong coffee will work just fine. Make it and then put it in a dish to cool)

Cocoa

Beat egg yolks and sugar. Add mascarpone cheese and whip until creamy. Beat egg whites until peaks form, then add to cheese mixture. Add extra sugar to taste (it shouldn't be overly sweet though).

Quickly dip ladyfingers in coffee one by one and line the bottom of your pan (I literally set it in the dish with the coffee, immediately flip it over and take it out. Very quickly or they get overly soggy). Put a layer of cheese mixture on top. Make another layer of coffee soaked ladyfingers. Add another layer of cheese mixture. That should be enough to fill a 2" dish. Sprinkle top with cocoa (a sifter works great for this). Stick in the refrigerator for a bit and serve cold.

Now my disclaimers:
- This never comes out the same twice. It all has to do with the consistency of the mascarpone cheese which is out of your control. Sometimes you may need a little cream to make it creamy (no pun intended) and sometimes it will come out entirely too thin and doesn't get a good thickness to make layers. Sometimes 5 pkgs of the cheese is perfect, sometimes you need 6, sometimes even with that it is too thin. Even when its a little thin though, it's still good!!
- You're probably wondering where the liquor is. When I was in Italy, I never had a tiramisu with liquor in it. Apparently, that is an American addition. Italians prefer to keep their alcohol separate...drink the wine on the side instead of throwing it into the dessert.

Hope you enjoy!! :)

Broccoli-Rice Casserole

Here is my recipe for Broccoli-Rice. We had another potluck today (for a different group) and I was tasked with dessert. I made homemade Tiramisu and it was a hit again! I'm just rocking out the potlucks this year. :)

1 stick of butter
½ onion chopped (or a little more or less, depending on how much you like onions)
1 package of frozen chopped broccoli
1 can cream of chicken soup
1/3 to ½ lb of velveeta cheese
¾ c milk
1 cup of uncooked rice, cooked (measure the rice before cooking it, but cook it before you put it in the casserole)

In a large skillet, sauté onions in butter. Add chopped broccoli and sauté until completely thawed. Add soup, velveeta, and milk and cook until all of the velveeta is melted. Stir in cooked rice. Pour mixture into greased pan and bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes.

For a 9x13 pyrex dish, I made 1 ½ of the recipe above. The normal portion works great for a 9x9 square pan. I usually make it the night before and bake the day of. Hope you enjoy it!

Potlucks...mmmm

I love potlucks. I love potlucks even more when everyone raves about my dish and asks me to send them my recipe! It satisfies that scared child in all of us that is wondering "are people going to like my dish? Is the food that I think is good actually weird or gross?" Hooray for Broccoli-Rice Casserole! :)

Things I Could Blog About, But Won't

- Work is busy as usual

- How Wheel of Fortune's new $1Million spot is a load of crap....too many hoops to jump through after you land on it

- The big storm that is headed my way bringing hail and tornadoes....in NOVEMBER! Seriously??

- The fact that How I Met Your Mother is the best. show. ever. It is legen...wait for it.....

- How depressing it is to leave work at 5:30pm and have it be completely dark outside. It feels like I'm leaving at 10:00pm!

- I thought working out was supposed to give you energy. It just makes me exhausted and tired

- ....dary

Hope you had a great Monday...or at least as good as it could be!

How About a Little Respect?

Last week, I went and exercised my right to vote. We have the luxury of being able to vote in secret, but I will tell you that I voted for John McCain. But I'm not here to talk about why McCain should win - people have made up their minds on that issue already and there are like, 1 1/2 hours left in the polls. Plus, I don't think anyone cares about my opinion on that! :)

What has made me really frustrated today is not who people are voting for. I'm pretty sure Obama is going to win. I'm frustrated at the lack of respect that people have and how divisive the whole voting process becomes. Throughout today, I have been reading horrible attacks on supporters of either candidate on blogs, facebook, myspace, etc. Obama supporters implying that people who don't vote for him are idiots, racist, just plain wrong, and so on. McCain supporters implying that people who don't vote for him are uneducated, lazy, just plain wrong, etc. The truth of the matter is, both candidates are great men. Yes, they have differing philosophies; yes, they focus on different things. You can take both platforms and spin them to be the best, state the same fact in two different ways to support different conclusions. That's just how politics is and always will be. Remember that millions of people are voting on the opposite side of you and that those millions of people aren't wrong - they're just voting on different things.

My best friend at work, Lauren, is voting for Obama. We are able to recognize that both of us are intelligent, we both make the same amount of money, we have the same education, we're both white females...we have just interpreted the two platforms differently. And when we show up for work tomorrow, neither of us is going to think any less of the other for our decision. And frankly, if we let who we vote for define us as people, we don't deserve each other's friendship.

Whether our next president is Obama or McCain, the world is going to keep on spinning tomorrow. I don't care who you vote for, but don't attack my decision and I won't attack yours.

Halloween Recap

It's 6:45pm and has already been pitch black outside for the past hour. That makes me sad. I don't know what I'd do if I lived in Sweden or Alaska or another one of those places where it is dark pretty much 24/7 in the winter!!

But on to the important stuff...Halloween! I've been so busy this year, I actually forgot it was coming. But my cousin, Allyson invited me to a party with some of her friends on Friday night. Then she started talking about dressing up and I was like "Why would we dress up?" That was the first time I realized it was Halloween!

So I made a quick trip to Academy after work on Friday and did a really pathetic transformation into camo-girl for the night. Ally channeled some 80's Madonna, and we headed off to The Glass Cactus for the Spazmatics Halloween Bash. Spazmatics are an awesome 80's band that I have been to probably 10-15 times (for example...here and here). It was the perfect Halloween activity - everyone had a great time just dancing and hanging out and they put on a really fun show. We felt like we were at the Halloween party out of Hocus Pocus with everyone dressed up and dancing to a live band. :) Is it sad I set my holiday expectations from a kids movie?

And now...pictures. ;) Starting with me, Ally, and her friend Anastasia (with the Spazmatics in the background!)

I incldued this one for the full effect of Allyson's outfit. Ha!

No Halloween party is complete without Uncle Fester and his (working) lightbulb!

Asian Michael Phelps and Shark. This guy had some SERIOUS self esteem to be able to walk around in a speedo all night!

We all had such a great time! Thanks for a great Halloween, Allyson! :)