3rd Dish of Christmas 2010 - Minestrone

First - Today is the hubs birthday! Happy Birthday Mike!

I found yet another recipe on the kitchn's website - minestrone soup. This soup is an easy one-pot dish that has a lot of ingredients that you probably have on hand. I made this because we haven't had a lot of time for good, healthy meals between Mike's long retail hours and my hours at work lately. I am going to bring a couple of extra servings to keep in the fridge at work so I don't have to order out every time we stay late over the next week or so! If we're having it at home... I'll probably make a grilled cheese to go with a warm bowl of the soup!

Quick side note - the recipe says that you can leave out the bacon to start and use olive oil instead... if I said the hubs is a bacon fan, it would be quite the understatement, so I of course started with the bacon! I, however, did only use 2 slices of bacon instead of the 3 the recipe called for to decrease the amount of grease. What was left in the pot cooked out really quickly as the vegetables were softening and there is no greasy reside to the end product!

2nd Dish of Christmas 2010 - Chocolate Dipped Peppermint Biscotti

For my second dish of Christmas, I made chocolate dipped peppermint biscotti (basically a twice baked cookie) from the kitchn website. This was a really easy recipe and I'm pretty interested in the other biscotti recipe listed in that post. I bet it smells great!

The smell of the peppermint extract in this recipe is still lingering in our kitchen 10 hours after baking. The smell + Christmas tree and stockings mean Christmas is in full gear at our house! For our tree, I stuck with the mini tree I have been using the past few years and am going with a silver/gold/white theme. I already had some silver and white ornaments from prior years and picked up a few gold ones today. Mike got a camera ornament from Laura and my mom brought us a "new home" ornament over Thanksgiving so we are all decked out! Next up is to decorate the outside for the neighborhood contest :)

Recent Reads

I noticed I've been writing about what I'm reading about every six months so it looks like its time to put out another list!

I wrote last time about debating over whether I should purchase a Nook or not. Well, I took the plunge and absolutely love it. I love not having to tote multiple books around with me. (Especially during our long wedding weekend where I brought half the apartment to Spicewood and on our honeymoon in Mexico where our goal was to bring one suitcase between the two of us!) I also got a great turquoise cover for it. Love it!

The Summer We Fell Apart by Robin Antalek

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer

Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer

Nanny Returns by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

Heart of the Matter by Emily Giffin

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro


I know I'm a total eternity behind everyone else by just now reading the Twilight series. Its not really the typical type of book I like to read but I felt totally out of the loop since all of my friends and co-workers have read it and I felt like since I'm an avid reader I should have read this series. I liked the story more than I thought I would but I did have few reservations about some parts.

The Summer We Fell Apart was an ok story but nothing special. I was also semi-disappointed in Nanny Returns. The heroine was a little blah in the story sadly!

I really liked Heart of the Matter (probably not the best book to read on our honeymoon though) and am really enjoying Never Let Me Go (also now a movie with Kiera Knightly and Carey Mulligan). I'm going to finish the book before seeing the film and I'm really looking forward to it! The story is really interesting and a bit strange (in a good way). Don't read any commentary online because they give away the plot!

Read anything good lately? Share! Somewhere Inside and The Great Gatsby are next on my reading list!