Happy holidays everyone! I will now teach you how I make the easiest holiday cookies ever. In fact, I'm not even sure they qualify as cookies... but the DO qualify as delicious and they are simple enough that even *I* can't screw them up, so it's a win-win! And you only need FOUR ingredients! I told you they were simple! Here we go!
You'll need:• Your favorite graham crackers (mine are the cinnamon dusted ones from Trader Joe's -- delicious)• Two sticks of butter. Don't judge! How else would something this easy be this delicious?• One cup of brown sugar• One cup of chopped pecans
First, preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Then line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil (this helps with cleanup immensely), and then spread the cookies out on the sheet, keeping them as close together as you can (and leave a generous amount around the edges).
Next, melt the butter on medium heat and add in the brown sugar. Bring this mix to a boil for about 4 minutes until it magically turns to caramel. The best caramel in the world. The kind you burn your tongue with because you need to "taste it to make sure it's turning out OK." Once it's ready, mix in the pecans and then remove from the heat.
Pour the mixture over the graham crackers and spread it with a spoon. It will spread a little more in the oven, so don't go all the way to the edges, but close. After it's spread over the crackers, pop the cookie sheets in the oven for 6.5 minutes, then remove and let cool.While baking them, it's imperative that you share the "licks" of the pot of caramel with only those you love the most.
After the cookies have cooled about 10 minutes, they are ready to enjoy! I usually make a batch and save about 6 for me and box up the rest for friends or family. If you're boxing them up, make sure you put a sheet of wax paper between each layer too keep things manageable. Enjoy!
For your internet share of the day, here's something that sounds AMAZING and far more complicated than the cookies above: Dark chocolate pistachio orange cinnamon rolls. Yup.
YUM. Today I will show you how my amazing and wonderful husband makes sweet potato latkes.We came up with these a few years ago when Hannukah started on Thanksgiving weekend -- it seemed to be the perfect blend of the holidays. And now? Now I prefer these to the regular potato latkes. And for all you fellow gentiles out there, latkes are little potato pancakes (much like hashbrowns) that are eaten at Hannukah. And if you want to know more, I *highly* suggest 
The ingredients are simple. You need:• Sweet potatoes. I count that as 3 up there because the one is so large.• Eggs. You need to match the number of eggs to sweet potatoes. I photographed 2, but we ended up using 3 (again, since that one potato is so large)• Olive oil: You need enough to thoroughly coat the bottom of your frying pan. It should be as deep as 1/2 of a flattened latke (roughly)• 1/2 yellow onion, diced• 1/4 cup matzo meal• salt and pepper to taste
First, heat the oil in the frying pan on low while you shred the potatoes and dice the onion. Next, mix the shredded sweet potatoes, onion, eggs and matzo meal together in a bowl. Add your salt and pepper. Once mixed up, spoon heaping tablespoons of the mixture into the hot oil in the pan, and flatten with said spoon, cooking for about 3 minutes (or once bottom is browned). Then flip and repeat.Once you are done frying a batch (we fit about 4 in each batch), transfer to a paper towel and blot dry and dash with salt. Repeat until mixture is all used up, and serve latkes with sour cream and / or apple sauce. YUM.
I'm honestly not sure how to calculate the calories on this one because of the frying oil, but based on my research of other recipes online with similar ingredients, I would guess around 120 calories per latke (including the sour cream).
For your internet share of the day, 
As promised, today I'm going to show you how I make the best green beans ever.I started this recipe for Thanksgiving one year when I (gasp!) opted to give up on the cream-o-mushroom soup variety of Thanksgiving vegetables. I needed something that felt a little lighter, but was still amazingly delicious, and this totally fits the bill.However, I realize many of you have your own traditional green bean recipes for Thanksgiving, so I thought I'd share these after. Just try them on a weeknight and I promise, you'll want more later. Sooooo delicious.
What you'll need:• one small yellow onion• one cup of sliced/slivered almonds• two cloves garlic, minced• two tbsp olive oil• 1/2 of a produce section plastic bag full of green beans. Yeah, that's my measurement. Sorry.• A hunk of your very favorite bleu cheese (mine is Northern Lights -- I love local stuff)
First, slice the onion like so and mince up your garlic.
Then, after warming the olive oil in your pan on medium heat, add in the onions and garlic and heat until soft and starting to brown. I believe around 5 minutes will do the trick.
Once the onions are soft, add in your freshly washed green beans and then enjoy the steam that comes out of the pan.
Cook this mixture for about 3 minutes, and then add in the almonds. Continue to cook until the green beans are the right consistency for you (I prefer mine a bit al dente).Once you are done cooking the beans, plate the mixture either onto individual plates or onto a platter, and then sprinkle with crumbles of your bleu cheese.
Voila! Soooo tasty! And this clocks in at about 200 calories per serving (140 without the cheese).For your internet share today, how about 
But of *course* I'm gonna save my amazing mashed potato recipe for Thanksgiving week! Now, I don't think mashed potatoes are ever really bad... ok, sometimes. But it's rare. But these are my very favorite way to make them, and my guests always rave, so I thought you might want to try it.
What you'll need:• Yukon gold potatoes. For this batch (which makes about 8 servings) I used six medium potatoes• Fresh chives• Sour cream (about 2 tbsp)• Butter (about 1/2 stick)• Milk (which I forgot to picture!). I used 1/4 cup, but you can vary this depending on how creamy you like your potatoes• Salt and pepper to taste 
First, fill a large pot with water and heat it to boil. While waiting on the boil, quarter your potatoes. Once ready, cook in the water for about 15 minutes or until soft when a fork is inserted.Next, add in the milk and butter and stir until butter melts. Then add in the sour cream and chives (I use about 1/3 of the package and I cut them with scissors -- way easier than with a knife) and mash everything together.
I use an old-fashioned masher because I like my potatoes kinda chunky. Also, salt and pepper to taste.
So there you go! If you just want mashed potatoes, you're done. BUT WHO WANTS PLAIN MASHED POTATOES?? Actually, I think these are good enough that they are divine plain. But lets be real. You need gravy.
People also always rave about my gravy which is hilarious because it's all packaged goods. But here you go!I am religious about the Knorr turkey gravy mix. However, the instructions say to mix it with water and bring to a boil and simmer until thickened and you're done. How boring!So instead of mixing with water, I use turkey stock to make it richer and I also add in the bits from the bottom of the turkey pan (the fatty goodness). Then I also add in about 3 glugs of wine. That's a measurement, right? Glugs? Well you know what I mean. And that takes it to a whole new level and it makes your gravy taste home made. Ha! Let's go fool them all!
So there you have it! Go enjoy! And no calorie counts on Thanksgiving. That's blasphemy.Oh! But for your internet share of the day, here is 
Oh yeah, I think chili season is upon us now that we are in single digit temperatures in Minnesota.Jamie's brother was in town last weekend, and he made us his white chicken chili one night for dinner. It was so perfect for this weather, so I thought I'd share it with you!
First, here's what you need:
Begin by dicing the onions and garlic. Next, combine beans, chicken stock, garlic and half the onions in a large soup pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer.While that's simmering, saute remaining onions in oil until they soften, then add the chiles and spices and mix thoroughly. Once the seasoned onions are ready, add them and the chicken to the bean mixture and simmer for an hour.
And that's it! We served it with shredded monterey jack cheese, salsa, sour cream and fresh cilantro on top. The nice part about this recipe is that most of the ingredients can be kept in the pantry, which means you can be ready to make it at a moment's notice. Also? This makes an enormous pot that make fantastic leftovers to enjoy all week long. Bon apetit!
Yum. That's what that is.Today I'm gonna show you how I make my roasted chicken. It's super duper easy and delicious. In fact, I didn't try to roast a chicken until I was in my 30s because I felt like it would be as much work as Thanksgiving. Oh, but I was so wrong. This is so simple! If you don't have your own variation, chop chop!
So for my recipe, I use:• One bird. I'm gonna be honest and tell you I usually buy it already in pieces because it's easier to get off the bone that way. But for the photo, I thought a full bird would be prettier. Yeah, I make decisions based on aesthetics. You should know that by now.• A stick of butter• A red onion• A few cloves of garlic• A few celery stalks• 5-6 carrots• 3/4 tsp thyme• 3/4 tsp salt• freshly ground black pepper• potatoes or another starch (cauliflower works great for those Paleo folks out there!)
First, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. While it's warming up, melt the full stick of butter and add the thyme, salt and pepper. Stir that up (yum). Next, I roughly quarter (or sixth?) the onion, peel and chop the carrots, chop the potatoes (into sixths as well), chop up the celery and peel a few garlic cloves. Mix all of the veggies in a bowl and then pour the butter mixture over SAVING A LITTLE BIT for later. Don't forget to save some!
Then you arrange the veggies around the roasting pan, and place the bird in the middle. You can do this all in a flat pan, but I prefer a roasting rack so that the juices drip down below (and it's easier to clean in the end).Next, pour the rest of the butter mixture that you saved onto the top of the bird and brush it into the skin. You can use a regular cooking brush or the back of a spoon. You just want some of that buttery thyme goodness on the bird. It makes for a nice, crispy skin. Then? You put it in the oven for an hour. And in that hour, you can bask in the amazing smells coming from your kitchen.
After an hour, the bird should look like the top photo in this post. Then you remove it and cut off the meat. I keep the meat on the legs, but remove it from the rest of the bird.
Then you serve it all up with the veggies! Yum! So very easy and so dang delicious. And it clocks in at about 412 calories per serving (four servings per recipe). Now, that's before the extra credit.
Wait, EXTRA CREDIT? Yes. This will take your meal to the next level, I promise.So, let's make a simple gravy. Use the roasting pan (DO NOT CLEAN IT) and put it on the stovetop on low heat. Add in about 1/3 cup chicken stock and 1/4 cup red wine. Throw in a dash more thyme and stir this over the heat until the wine begins to cook off just a bit (lots of steam). Make sure you scrape all the stuff from the bottom of the pan into the sauce. Mmmmmm.... Put this in a gravy boat and pour it over the plate. And you just try not to drink that gravy straight. It's harder than it sounds.
The temperature dropped here in Minnesota this week, so I thought I'd whip out another one of my favorite soup recipes. This one is not Paleo friendly as it includes potatoes and cream, but it is super easy and a definite crowd pleaser, so I figured I should let you in on it.
First off, the ingredient list is pretty simple.• Two to three stalks of celery, chopped• 5-6 leeks, chopped• 1 stick of butter• 2 quarts chicken broth (only one is pictured above)• 4 medium potatoes• 1 large, yellow onion, diced• 1-2 cups cream (I use 1 cup half and half to cut back on calories)• salt and pepper to taste
So the first thing I do is chop up the leeks like so. As I'm chopping them, I throw them into my salad spinner which is filled with water. This lets them soak and clean while you work. While I love leeks, they can get a lot of dirt in them, and this is the best way I've found to clean them. Then after soaking, you can use the spinner as a colander and rinse them off.
After the leeks are cleaned, I melt the butter in the pot and then add the leeks, onion and celery. Cook this on medium heat for about 10 minutes until the leeks and onion soften and cook down a bit. My god, the kitchen will smell amazing.
While that's cooking, clean and chop up your potatoes. Feel free to skin your potatoes. I'm too lazy for that.
Once the onions and leeks have cooked down, add the potatoes. Um. It looks like this blogger might need a bigger pot.
But the bigger pot is dirty! So we'll split it into 2 pots...
Simmer the soup for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked through. At this point, add the seasoning and any soup that you want to freeze, you should separate (oh, like that second pot I had to use). Otherwise, add the cream (or half and half) to the pot and stir together to warm and mix. Now, at this point I use a potato masher and I mash the cooked potatoes and vegetables to make it creamier. If you had a handheld blender, that would work wonders as well. Once that's done, you can serve it!
This is a hearty and rich soup that is perfect for cold, winter nights. And you know what else would be an amazing garnish on it? BACON. I was fresh out, so I used shoestring potatoes and parsley. Chives would have been good, too. This dish is 332 calories per bowl.For your internet share of the day, how about a recipe for