Encourage your man to have a guys’ night out.  Often.  Every month.  Kick him out the door.  Hit the road, Jack!

He needs it.

You need it.

Guys’ Night Out is as important to your relationship as Date Night is.

What?

It’s true!  It is so important for your man to go out, kick back, be himself, laugh, vent, be free of responsibility, etc, and to do this without you.

Date Night allows you to recharge as a couple.  Find excitement outside of the daily routine, together.  Let go, together.  Which is great…

But, he also needs the recharge with a couple of buddies.  To let go, with the guys.  To drink beer. To hang with other guys that will spend about 5 minutes of the night out asking about the girlfriend or the wife and kids, and then move past it and talk about movies and sports and funny things they’ve heard or seen.

It’s also important for him to maintain this Night Out routine, because guys are less likely to “keep in touch” with their old buddies once life becomes hectic with a house, a family, and work.

Let’s face it.  Most of our guys aren’t the letter-writing type, or the talk-all-day-on-the-phone type.  So, it’s easy for them to lose touch with their best bud from high school, just because they live in a different town and don’t see them at the dump on Saturday.

Date Night reminds you why like him.

Guys Night reminds him why he likes you.

I cannot tell you how many times my hubby has come home from one of these evenings and said, ‘I love you. I love hanging out with you…’

Although he enjoys the time with the boys, he also finds that he’s reminded why they all aren’t as close as they used to be in high school!

And that puts you in an even more favorable light!  Nothing wrong with that!

Don’t forget…his night off is also your night off…

Don’t cook, make yourself a Toasted Almond & grab that bar of Lindt chocolate, sit on the couch and find yourself a great chic flic.

Doesn’t that sound like an awesome reason to promote Guys’ Night Out?

 

 

 

Nothing beats the classics.  Classic books, classic movies, and classic recipes.

Nowadays there are so many variations on chicken wings, it’d be impossible to count.

And so many of them are wonderful!  Honey-Sriracha, Asian inspired, ranch flavored, BBQ, fried, cola, etc.

But everyone needs to have the classic recipe in their arsenal.

This one’s for your collection of go-to’s…

Let the savory adventure begin!

Start with 1 stick, 1/2 cup, of butter

melted.

Break out the hot sauce.  This is the one you want.  This is what creates the classic.  Remember, you can experiment with different ingredients later, but, today, we make the ol’ fashioned kind of wings.  Get yourself a bottle of Frank’s.

Find a giant tupperware bowl with a lid.

Add 12-15 chicken wings.  Drizzle all the melted butter all over them.

Drizzle half the bottle of Frank’s over them.

Put the lid on.  Shake, shake shake!

These are spectacular if you have the time to put them in the fridge at this stage for up to 4 hours.

Still unbelievable if you don’t have any time to let them chill out…

See all the clumps of orange butter everywhere?  That’s good.  That’s real good.  That’s exactly what you want…

Place them on a baking sheet and pop into a preheated oven, at 375 degrees, for 20 minutes.

Turn the wings and bake for another 20 minutes.

Turn on the broiler.  Broil for 3 minutes on one side, till crispy.  Flip the wings.  Broil 3 minutes on the other side, till crispy.

Serve with celery, blue cheese and/or ranch dressings.

 

Enjoy SuperBowl 50 with the true MVP, Buffalo Chicken Wings!

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

 

This is a perfect option for a quick, delicious, homemade weeknight meal.  And really, who doesn’t love any dish that’s beefy and cheesy?!

Let the savory adventure begin!

Brown 1 1/2 pounds of ground beef in a large skillet over medium-high heat.

Add 1/3 cup of chopped yellow onion and

1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper.

Sauté until meat is cooked through; drain.

Stir in an 8 ounce can (1 cup) of tomato sauce,

 

1/4 teaspoon ground cumin,

1/4 teaspoon garlic salt,

and 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt.  Taste it to make sure it doesn’t need a pinch more salt.  Then let this yummy reminds-me-of-sloppy-joe mixture simmer while preparing the crust for your pie!

Grab a 9-inch pie pan, don’t grease it, and an 8 ounce tube of Pillsbury crescent dinner rolls.

This part is so fun…be creative with the little triangles of crescent roll dough and make them all fit like puzzle pieces to form the crust over the bottom and sides of the pan!

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Imperfect=rustic looking=homemade=delicious!

Crack 1 egg in a small bowl,

beat with fork, combine with 4 ounces (1 cup) shredded Monterey Jack or Cheddar cheese (or a combo of both!), and

spread over the crust.

Spoon hot meat mixture over the cheesy-egg mixture in the crust.  Spread evenly atop cheese.

Sprinkle with 1 cup of shredded Monterey Jack and/or cheddar cheese mix.

Sprinkle cheese with paprika.

Bake in preheated oven, at 375 degrees, for 15-20 minutes.

Amazing!

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, the magic!  Waking up in the morning to 4 inches of snow on the ground and seeing it fall from the sky.  Your Mom telling you that school was cancelled and you had a Snow Day!

It doesn’t matter the age…4, 14, 34, 64… a Snow Day holds so much excitement and potential.  There may or may not be school or work.  You can sleep in or wake up early.  You can snuggle by a cozy fire with a great book or get all bundled up and go run around in it.  You can build a snowman.  You can get some exercise shoveling the walkway.  You can make pancakes for breakfast.  You can make hot cocoa after playing in the snow.

Embrace it!

Have the proper equipment so that it’s always fun for you:

• snowpants
• winter jacket
• hat
• “real” gloves or mittens (not pretty ones that you wear to church on Sunday!  The sturdy kind you can roll a snowball with…)
• winter boots (again…functional winter boots!)
• long underwear
• scarf

Don’t harumph the day away.  So what if you have to shovel or snowblow.  Or if you can’t get to the store because you’re snowed in. If you’re worried about the drive, call in to work.  It’ll be there tomorrow…

Go with it.  Grab your sled.  Grab your loved one’s hand.  Put a mitten on it.  Go outside and catch a snowflake on your tongue.  Revel in the beauty of your child with snowflakes on their eyelashes. Make a snow angel.  Get all wet and freezing cold, just so that you can appreciate the warmth and comfort of your warm house, of a blazing fire, of a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows bobbing on its surface.  Take pictures.

Raise your arms victoriously when you awaken to snow and shout at the top of your lungs with glee, “Snow Day!” And then make it that exciting!

Every Saturday morning, my husband makes a trip to the dump.  With the little Beach Rose in tow.  Nothing cuter than seeing her little face, all smiley, in his giant truck.  Nothing more exciting to her than going to the dump where after helping her Daddy unload all the trash and sort through the recycling she’s rewarded with a lollipop from Alan, the guy in charge of waste management.

Mama’s job is to sort through the fridge, before the dump trip, and determine what stays and what gets pitched.  And the conundrum awaits…what to get rid of and what still constitutes edible leftover food?

So……obviously….. anything that looks like a science experiment doesn’t stand a chance.  Anything fuzzy, or with dark green, black, and/or white spots on it has gotta go!

• Smell it.
• Look at it.
• Taste it.

If something’s slimy, don’t try to salvage part of it.  “If there’s slime, it’s past its prime!”  Even if only half of the onion is slimy, the onion’s flavor and texture have been compromised.

If you wouldn’t eat it yourself, don’t keep it or serve it!  If it causes your stomach to turn by looking at it, trust your gut.  If you aren’t sure when you made that chicken parm and how long cooked chicken lasts in your fridge, toss it.

“When in doubt, throw it out.”

Although I do not want to seem as though I am condoning the waste of food, I also want to make certain that you don’t end up sick from eating week and a half old leftovers, just so that you don’t feel bad throwing them away.

Yearly, about 128,000 people are hospitalized and about 3,000 die from all causes of food poisoning.

I recently bought organic chicken thighs at the grocery store.  My grocery store.  The one I love and that always provides me with the freshest, quality produce, meats, seafood, etc.  Well, everyone has a bad day…

The “best by” date was for 7 days from when I bought them.  Two days after my shopping trip, I open the package of thighs and caught a subtle whiff of……..I don’t know how to explain it……..a smell that made me feel a little weak in the knees.  I held the package up to my nose and confirmed that, sure enough, it did not smell right.

“Your nose knows.”  The chicken was not a weird color.  It wasn’t past its due date.  It wasn’t a manager’s special.  And it didn’t smell……………….. strongly, that is.  Just enough that I returned it and my grocer agreed that it was funky and doubled my money back.

Pay attention to your nose!  If you aren’t sure, do NOT use it, eat it, cook with it.

 

Who knew it could be so simple to avoid the dressing aisle at the grocery store?

You can actually make all the classic salad dressings from scratch, with ingredients you probably keep on hand in your pantry, for a fraction of the cost.

And of course, you’ll be making a much healthier version!

Russian Dressing?  Homemade?  But it’s pink?  And has little chunks of something unidentifiable and yummy in it?

We’ll get to the bottom of it!

First, you’ll need 1/2 cup of mayonnaise,

scooped into a jelly or mason jar,

add 2 tablespoons of relish (That was fast! The mysterious “chunks” are revealed…Pickles!),

then 2 tablespoons of ketchup,

 

1 tablespoon sugar,

and put a lid on it.

Shake, shake, shake…till you find yourself with a homemade PINK dressing!

Add about 1 teaspoon kosher salt, mix again and taste.  Add more if desired.

Toss with a beautiful salad and enjoy the wonder in everyone’s faces when you explain that you made Russian dressing from scratch!

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

“Once you cross the Atlantic, you never feel at home.” – Anonymous

The AJ Fikry in my town, our local bookstore owner, recommended “Brooklyn” to me.  I trust him completely when it comes to picking a good read.  But, halfway through, I didn’t think I’d end up liking this book.  It felt like a typical, predictable, romantic coming-of-age immigrant story.  And then it wasn’t…

OK.  So here’s the story of a young Irish girl, Eilis, who lives with her Mom and her sister, Rose.  Her father has recently died and her 3 brothers have gone to England to live to make money to send home to their Mom.  Her sister also works as a bookkeeper in town.  Eilis, can’t find employment, and although she’s studying to become a  bookkeeper, there isn’t much opportunity for work.

So her Mother and sister devise a plan to send her off to America, to Brooklyn, with a local Irish priest who started a church there.  The priest can get her employment, room & board and the promise of schooling.

All of this is done without Eilis’ consent.  Rose and her mother plan her life, essentially, and she just goes along with it.  Why?  Was it the times?  Did you just do everything possible to bring in money for your family?  Why didn’t the mother work?  Why didn’t Eilis stick up for herself?  Why didn’t they at least send her closer to home and where she’d be close to family, in England?

She goes to Brooklyn, starts school and meets a nice young man, Tony.

You can see Eilis slowly come out from under the shadow of her Mom and her older sister, as she immerses herself into her new life in Brooklyn.  She becomes more sure of herself, with a stronger will, empowered by her experiences and her ability to survive and thrive.  She embraces her schooling and although neither you nor she are quite certain the degree for which she likes Tony, there is a mutual respect and enjoyment of one another’s company.

Her correspondence with her family avoids any serious talk about Brooklyn and her experiences.  Is this because she figured it was all temporary?  Or perhaps because she was certain that her family thought it was all temporary?  Or did it feel as though she were living in a dream and couldn’t merge her 2 worlds together…Ireland and Brooklyn.

Then her sister dies and she is called back to Ireland.  Before she leaves, Tony convinces her to marry him, privately, as a promise to return.

Does she do this for him?  Because she feels as though he needs it and this all seems like a fantasy world anyway?  Or does she do it for herself, knowing that the only way she’ll escape the pull of her homeland is with an ethical dilemma such as this.

She comes back home and at first just dreams of returning to Brooklyn as quickly as possible.  Her house feels foreign and her mother is smothering.

And little by little, you watch Eilis recede into the young girl who is defined by her Mother’s wishes and goes with the flow of whatever is decided for her.  Her Mother gets her a job at Rose’s old company.  She helps set her up with a young man from the area.   She even tries to dress her in Rose’s old clothes.  Looking to replace the daughter that she lost, by the other daughter that she sent away.

Eilis comes to the realization that she likes and may even love the young man in Ireland and does not love Tony, that she could have a dream job and life if she stayed in Ireland, and feels as though Brooklyn never happened; that it was all a dream.

Just before the young man proposes, and things get too far, she tells her mother that she’s engaged to a boy in Brooklyn and her Mother tells her that she must return, and honor that vow.

So in the end, did Eilis get what she wanted?  Did she ever know what she wanted?  Did she want to live her life in Ireland, working as a bookkeeper, marrying a well-to-do young man, living right down the street from her Mother and perhaps always living a bit in the shadow of Rose?  Or did she subconsciously get married as a life-line?  Because she knew that it would be easy to get sucked back into that world, when she felt, deep down, that what Brooklyn offered her was what she really wanted?

In the end, is Eilis happy?

“Homesickness – the chronic illness of the expatriate.” – Anonymous

 

 

Rich in flavor and easy, easy, easy.  Oh, and did I mention it takes no time at all to make this?

Steam one pound of fresh, stemmed green beans for 5 minutes.

Add an 8-10 ounce package of sliced mushrooms to 6 tablespoons of melted butter.

Toss in the green beans.

Add 2 teaspoons of onion powder and 1 1/2 teaspoons of garlic powder.

Saute for 8 minutes with the lid of the pot on.  Season with salt and pepper. Done!

So simple, fast and DIVINE!

Bon Appétit, Ma Chérie!

I’ve never been a big believer in child-proofing your entire home.

I never grew up with a window that only opened 3 inches, or with stove knobs removed or with our TV set mounted for safety purposes.  I just got yelled at a lot if I touched things I wasn’t supposed to and got the ol’ “I told you so” if I got hurt when I didn’t listen.

Although my hubby and I did put rubber bands around the knobs of the doors under the kitchen and bathroom sinks, that was pretty much the extent of our efforts.

As always, you can learn from my mistakes…

The unforeseen and yet completely obvious potential hazard…..the table edge.

Goodness it’s gifted many a child with a gaping head wound!

Case in point, last night.  We had dear friends and their 2 children over for dinner.  After the kids were done eating and had been excused, we adults continued chatting around the dining room table, happy to let them entertain themselves. We heard laughter, some running (to which we yelled for them to”walk in the house”) and then a giant THUD.  This was followed by a mild shriek and loud gasp, resulting in all the adults trying to run down the narrow hallway at the same time, squeezed together as they tried to get ahead of each other. Sure enough, their 9 yr old son had a good-sized gash in the back of his head from slamming into the corner of the coffee table.

Ouch.

This is the first time we’ve had anything like that happen here.  But, it’s not the first we hear of this type of table edge/corner head injury.

Just for fun, next time you think of it, bring up this subject around family or friends.  Almost everyone present will have either experienced this first-hand (themselves or their loved ones will have knocked their noggin on the edge of a table) or know someone who has.

You can absolutely train your kids to avert the dangers in a household.

I just think that although you cannot shield them from every possible danger, with this one you need to try.  It happens too frequently…Almost 150,000 kids per year under the age of 5 visit the ER for injuries related to tables, according to the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Last night may have been a first for us, but I’m definitely making it the last.  I’m thinking I’d like to avoid a visit from Massive Head Wound Harry and I’m looking into buying bumpers…