I Need Your Votes!

I guess I’ve got recipe contest fever!  I’ve been entering any and every contest lately that I can find online.  Some you enter and then won’t hear if you’ve made it as a finalist or won for months, others need your votes to get through.   I entered Fisher Nuts recipe contest for the chance to win a trip to NYC, and meet Chef Alex Guarnashelli.   I’ve watched her on Food Network for years, and she happens to be the Chef Ambassador for Fisher Nuts.   All I know is that I would love to go to her restaurant in NY – it’s called Butter!  Whoever wants to come with me, we can share the 28 day aged Tomahawk steak for two – it’s only $120.  Ha!

Butter was actually the inspiration for this dessert.  You all know I don’t make desserts very often, usually because they suck ass, or I forget the sugar (yup, that’s happened more times than I can count!) so at work I wrote down a recipe for what I thought would taste good.  Shortbread cookie on the bottom, with chocolate coconut and honey roasted almond topping on top.   The shortbread had a whole stick of butter – yowza!  So what I wrote down in my recipe and what the final verdict ended up being was pretty different.  The crust didn’t look right, so I kept adding things until I thought it had the right consistency.  I really thought that once I tried to cut the bars after they cooled, that the shortbread would be all crumbly, but it cut well, like butter!  And when I mixed the nuts into the chocolate coconut mixture for the topping, you couldn’t see the nuts anymore, so when they came out of the oven and it was still hot, I added another cup of chopped honey roasted almonds.

These were so good!  Tony raved about them too, which is a HUGE two thumbs up for me!  And they are simple to make too.  So I believe the voting is until November 1, so at the end of each post, I’ll be reminding you to vote – you can vote 5 times in a day.  No need to sign up, like anything on Facebook or even give them your email address.  Thank you!  You can click here to vote.

I did end up making the naan pizza bread for breakfast yesterday too – so good!  And I took 1/3 of the amount of insulin this time and it worked fine.  By lunch time it was 223 – right where I like it to be.

It was 55 and sunny yesterday, so I took advantage and walked outside instead of going to the gym.  Before I know it, that will be my only option!  The leaves are still gorgeous.

I walk in a subdivision not too far from my office because there isn’t much traffic.  I saw this house for sale:

I looked it up when I got back to my desk – it’s only $2.9 million dollars – no big!  Actually I saw the pictures and even if I had the money, I wouldn’t buy it – I didn’t like the kitchen at all.  Ha!

The other day Courtney from A Life from Scratch posted a recipe for her Mom’s black bean soup.  I LOVE black bean soup, so I thought I’d give it a try.  One thing that didn’t dawn on me as I was making it was “damn, this makes a lot of soup!”  11 cups of water and 2 pounds of dried black beans!  I easily could have cut the recipe in half, but I didn’t.  That’s okay, because I know it will freeze well and I’ll have a soup to grab for lunch in the next couple weeks.   The only changes I made was to leave out the onion, and I added 1 minced jalapeno for some heat.  At work I accessorized it with a drizzle of my salsa verde, added blue corn tortilla strips and some cheese.  Delish – thanks Courtney!  I love that you can see my reflection in the spoon

I still have meat from the rotisserie chicken I bought, so I decided to make a chicken fried rice for dinner – still not as good as Tony’s, but it was delicious. 

And today for lunch since I still have more chicken left, I am thinking of making a bbq chicken panini for lunch. 

And I didn’t sync up my fitbit until last night, but I got all my steps in the last two days:

So thanks in advance for your votes – I appreciate it! Now make it a great day!