Ok–I mentioned Chocolate Ganache in the last post. Mostly ganache is used as a beautiful, smooth chocolate ‘frosting’ for desserts. But it is the tastiest-most wonderful Hot Fudge over Ice Cream. And SOOOOOOO easy to make!

Ganache Recipe:
8 ounces (227 grams) semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup (180 ml) heavy whipping cream

Place the chopped chocolate in a medium sized stainless steel bowl. Set aside. Heat the cream in a medium sized saucepan over medium heat. Bring just to a boil. Immediately pour the boiling cream over the chocolate and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Stir with a whisk until smooth.
Makes enough ganache to cover a 9 inch (23 cm) cake or torte.

I just use semi sweet chocolate chips and once it’s wisked to perfection–pour the entire bowl into a tupperware type container. Keep it in your refrigerator. When you want to use it–take a couple of scoops out of the container and put it in a microwave safe dish. Heat until melted and warm–pour over ice cream.

The sweetness of the ice cream and the semi sweet chocolate mix in such an amazing flavor. The ganache is smooth and wonderful! Finger lickin’ good!!

I’ve always wanted a digital photo frame! Ever since I first saw them on Oprah’s favorites several years ago. My goal is to have one for all four of my kids. Kind of like a digital scrapbook running chronologically through their lives. This would never have been possible back then when digital photo frames cost a fortune. These days the cheap prices and huge selections mean that I may just get my wish, and with interchangeable frames they can all be unique and different from each other.

It was kind of the hit gift this year for Christmas. I think every family in the extended family got at least one. It’s definitely a cool gift for family, friends and even corporate gifts. They are small and compact and hold a ton of memories in each one. Who wouldn’t love them!

I’ve never had dinner in the private dining room at the Chef’s restaurant, and I have to say, it was AWESOME!! The food was wonderful (of course), but the room itself was so cool. They have roll shades and curtains to truly keep your room private. We had a lot of kids running around, I threatened mine with blood loss if they left the room, and I really don’t think anyone in the restaurant had any idea just how many rambunctious kids we did have. It was just a really nice afternoon. I made all of the desserts–tons of yummy sweetness. But the best part of the dinner was this…

Any event that shuts down the “Demon Child” is a GREAT event to me!

When we got married my husbands entire extended family flew in from Chicago and San Diego. It was a big event, and of course they weren’t going to miss it. But my husbands nephew was graduating from middle school two weeks later and everyone had planned to be there for that. However, once they all just traveled to Utah a second cross country trip was out of the question. So I thought that we needed to be there for that. So for our honeymoon we headed to Southern Utah, Las Vegas and Southern California. In Las Vegas I was excited to walk the strip with my new husband (finally being old enough to gamble) and we headed out. I only ever wore one type of shoe. I had six pairs of this one type of shoe. So when I was packing I pulled the two cleanest looking shoes out of the pile and put them in the suitcase. I’ll claim a ‘new bride’ moment but I had only packed two left shoes. But I was determined to persevere and make this walk. We didn’t get very far at all! My feet were killing me. The next day we headed on to San Diego and hit a shoe store. The next day at the San Diego zoo we wandered all over that darn place. There was supposedly a Panda bear display somewhere but we couldn’t find it. I finally had to call off the search due to overly tired and abused feet.

We’ve been together 11 1/2 years and have had the opportunity to find ourselves in some really fun adventures. We took a Trusted Tours trolley tour of all of the things to do in San Francisco. What’s nice is with Trusted Tours you can sign up for their newsletter which is full of ideas for family vacation ideas. They have tours all over the country, and if you sign up now, you’ll be entered in the drawing to win an IPOD Nano.

They even have tours around Chicago and even though we live here, it would be fun to get the kids on a tour to really see and appreciate the city they call home!

I was visiting my Linky List last night–and it literally took me 2 hours to finish the list!! Why? You ask!! Because I got stuck reading everyones blogs. When you do the Linky List everynight–you are aware of new content. That seems strange with over 100 blogs on the list–but trust me–you know when something new has been posted–and you want to catch up! So it took me awhile! As I was catching up on Army Mom Charlotte’s blog I found the following recipe for what looks to be a SCRUMPTIOUS treat! I will be making it later today–after I head to the supermarket for all of the ingredients!! Thanks Charlotte–my 10 lb weight gain I blame on you!!! Just kidding! I’ll try to snap a photo when they are done and add it here–it sounds sooooo good!!

Caramel Marshmallow Bars

Crumb Mixture:

1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine, softened
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped salted nuts

Filling:

3/4 cup caramel ice cream topping
1/2 salted peanuts
1/2 cup miniature marshmallows
1/2 cup mil chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. For crumb mixture, in small mixer bowl, combine flour, graham cracker crumbs, sugar, butter and salt. Beat at low speed, scraping bowl often until mixture is crumbly 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in nuts. Reserve 3/4 cup crumb mixture. Press remaining crumb mixture into bottom of a greased and floured 9 inch square baking pan. Bake 10 to 12 minutes until golden.

For filling, spread caramel topping over hot crust. Sprinkle remaining filling ingredients over top. Crumble 3/4 cup reserved crumb mixture over top. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until marshmallow just start to brown. Cool on rack about 30 minutes. Cover; refrigerate 2 hours or until firm. Cut into bars.

Makes about 30 bars.

1 Prepared Onion
2 1/2 C. Flour
2 tsp McCormick Seasoned Salt
1/2 tsp. Coarsely Ground Pepper
1/4 tsp. Garlic Powder
1 C. Butter Milk
Mix all dry ingredients together. Onion may be sliced like a blossom by cutting the top 1/4 off, the
top has the stem. Then peel and be very careful to leave the root intact. Carefully slice from the top
of the onion down but stop about 1/2″ before you get to the root, taking care not to cut through the
root. Slice the rest of the onion like a pie into many servings. When complete soak onion in cold ice
water for 1/2 hr. so the onion’s petals will start to open up and bloom. Drain onion and dip in flour
mixture and dust well. Dip onion then in buttermilk and back in flour mixture. Place in hot oil and fry
until golden. Oil should cover onion. When done drain well and place on plate and cut center out of
onion so the petals may easily be removed.

Dipping Sauce
1/2 C. Sour Cream
2 Tbsp. Catsup
1/2 tsp. McCormick Seasoned Salt
1/8 tsp. Red Pepper
1 1/2 tsp. Fresh Horseradish
1/4 tsp. Paprika
Mix all together and serve in the middle of the onion blossom. Garnish with paprika and just a dash
of red pepper.

Have you seen the adventures of Stickman? He is a cute little cartoon drawn for little video vignettes for Kettering University. Kettering was recently named one of the US News best colleges for mechanical engineering in 2008. That’s huge! My nephew just applied for school in this same field, and I’m just amazed at the future possibilities that exist in this line of work. I never would have had the brains for it, but I’m glad there are those out there that do. My favorite Stickman video happens to be the one where he’s playing Mortal Kombat with Stickgirl and she talks him into applying to Kettering. After which he gets his backside kicked and cries like a scared little girl!! Here, enjoy it for yourself!

There are many more episodes in the adventures of Stickman—I really enjoyed his campus visit cartoon as well. You will definitely want to head on over to the Kettering website and check them all out.

I added a link to VistaPrint in the sidebar. Currently they are offering 250 business cards free–and up to 500 at a cost of 2 cents each. They also make business card magnets, sticky notes, invitations–anything you need for your home or office supplies. They are also offering free shipping on orders over $50.00 and have a ton of Spring Clearance items from 30-90% off. If you are in the market for customized business products, head on over and check them out.

We have an email waiting for us from our lender. I’ve never been really happy with the way he wrote the original mortgage. Currently we have an interest only loan for 1 year with a balloon payment at the end of the year. Yes, he was right about the rates coming down in the not too distant future, but honestly, why not write the mortgage the normal way and then it’s up to us if we want to refinance when the rates come down. So here we are, 6 months into our mortgage and right in the middle of refinance!

The mortgage market has taken a hit the past year, which although it works in our favor as far as rates go, it’s really sad. So far in our neighborhood alone 4 of my kids friends have had to up and move because they were losing their homes. How sad! It’s certainly not the mortgage industry alone to blame, I think there are a lot of factors that go into it, but the most important thing is to become as educated as you can about the different types of loans as well as sitting down and really looking at what you can afford. We knew the maximum amount of a possible mortgage before we ever stepped into a home to look at it. When you fall in love with a home it’s really easy to think of all of the possible cuts you can make to your spending habits. Yet when it actually comes down to it, that is really hard to do.

The Chef’s restaurant company just purchased a spot for a third restaurant. It’s taking the place of another restaurant that went under, I guess Commercial Mortgages are having the same kind of problems with their mortgagees as the residential market. So it looks like the Chef will be moving from the Elk Grove property to the Naperville property to oversee the opening of that restaurant!

We have been working for the past few months on getting all of our accounts in order. We had a huge sum in savings that was used to purchase the house, but since then everything has remained the same. We haven’t met the minimum balance in our account, so they charge us a monthly fee of $32.00! Really??? Most of the banking I do is online or through the ATM machine. It’s just convenient and I don’t have to talk to anyone. I also can’t go into the building because I’m not taking three kids and the “Demon” child in with me. So anytime a trip inside is required, I send the Chef! He finally went in last week and got everything switched over the way it should, and hopefully we won’t be seeing anymore of those ridiculous charges.

The Chef is starting to look into credit card companies. He needs an expense account for work, and wouldn’t mind the freedom of having a card in his pocket in case of emergency. I am not a “credit” person! Never have been, so I leave this little adventure up to him. He is looking for the ‘whole package’. He wants points, a low APR, credit card applications for Irish customers, fraud protection, you name it–he’s being really picky. I do appreciate this because you can get in trouble with credit and dig a hole you can’t get out of.