Is your dog a genius?

Is your dog a genius? Darcy is, well at least borderline genius. We did the Dog IQ test tonight with him and it was pretty fun. He scored right around a 24(Your dog is smart, but won't go to Harvard)and 25(Your dog is a genius) because we repeated a few tests and he did better than at first. At the beginning he didn't know if he was allowed to try to get the treat out from under the cup. It was cute and we're excited that he was able to do pretty good.

Here's where you can find out more information about the test and how to perform it with your dog: http://www.abc.net.au/animals/dog_test/

Yum, I want this right now!

I saw this recipe over at http://madebymike.wordpress.com/. Mike has a great food blog and he's doing an EverydayFood challenge, where he cooks or makes at least one recipe from every single issue of EverydayFood.

Well, today he posted a recipe for a "giant skillet cookie" and it looks amazing. It kind of looks like a cookie cake or gigantic cookie. I want to make this sooo bad! Here's the original recipe!

And here's what his cookie looked like. YUM!

Dinner and a Movie ;)

Last night was great. I made a quick dinner after getting home from work and then we watched our wedding film from our videographer. We were so excited to finally receive it and it turned out great!

I made sautéed chicken, steamed broccoli, and homemade macaroni and cheese. This is the kind of thing my family would call "random chicken" when I was younger. You get home and you need to make dinner, so you pull out some chicken and go from there to make the meal. I decided to make a quick mac and cheese to go along with the chicken and broccoli. So, I used this recipe from allrecipes.com. However, I made some changes, because I didn't want to have to bake the macaroni or use breadcrumbs. So, I made the cheese sauce and simply added my pasta to that. I started with the roux of butter and a little bit of flour, then added milk and the cheese. It's so easy and much more tasty than using a premade cheese sauce like Velveta. Then, instead of adding the pasta to a casserole dish and pouring the cheese sauce over it, I allowed the cheese sauce to cook a little longer and thicken. Since it wasn't going to cook in the oven, I allowed it to simmer for a few more minutes. I seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder and a little bit of season-all, which has a little spice and some paprika in it. I added the pasta (I used shells, because that's what we had in the pantry) and stirred everything together, making sure that it was seasoned well enough. The mac & cheese was really good paired with the steamed broccoli. I love broccoli with cheese, so this worked out well! Yum!

After dinner, we opened up the DVD from our videographer, Cinematrimony. I love how they personalized the DVD box and the DVD itself, we love it! So, we sat down and first watched the short movie trailer. They did a wonderful job, and we are so happy that we decided to invest in this for our wedding day. Darin is going to be putting the trailer on his blog soon, so I'll be sure to post a link to that as soon as it is up. Then, we watched the entire movie, which was 105 minutes long. They did a great job to make sure that all of the important moments from the day were included and that it never got boring. I also really enjoyed seeing the things that I didn't get to see on the day of, like the guys getting ready, the string music and ceremony before I came in. The day was beautiful and we love how they were able to capture the emotion and everything on film. We can't wait to share the movie with our family and friends!!

New Recipes!

Last night Kevin and I tried out a few new recipes. First, we made a baked penne pasta from the EverydayFood magazine by Martha Stewart. After finding the recipe and reading some of the comments, I decided to add sautéed artichoke hearts to the mix. The great thing about this recipe is that it serves 8, but it is designed to be made in two casserole dishes, so you can freeze one of them if you're not serving a big group. We did this and it will be a great for an easy meal sometime in the future. Below are the pictures I took while baking and after it was done. Here's the recipe:

It was so good! I really loved how the sun-dried tomatoes added a sweetness and a richness to the sauce. The artichokes were also a great addition and are definitely worth including again.

Then, later in the night, I baked a cake while we were watching the Bachelorette Finale. I made a yellow cake with chocolate frosting, that I found on Smitten Kitchen's Blog. Instead of the Sour Cream Chocolate Frosting, I decided to use the sweeter Instant Fudge Frosting. Also, I couldn't find cake flour at the grocery store, so I had to use all purpose flour, which probably changed the cake a little.

I'm not a pro cake decorator, obviously, but I managed to make the cake look half-decent, lol. Here are some pictures from the process.

It was pretty good, although I don't know if it was as good as some of the cakes I've made. The cake wasn't dry, but it was pretty thick. If anything, i think the thickness was probably attributed to the fact that I used all purpose flour instead of the lower protein cake flour. Also, the cake batter has buttermilk, which definitely adds a unique flavor that you don't get in most cake recipes.

It was fun evening of cooking and baking and overall everything turned out pretty well!

Beach Weekend!

We spent the past weekend at the beach. It was relaxing and great to get away for a couple of days. We had a lot of good food and enjoyed spending time with family. Here's a picture of me and Darcy sitting on the porch of the beach house. Below are some more pictures from the weekend.

Now, it's back to work... Have a great Monday everyone!