Cooking!

A few good recipes to pass along.

Chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes
I usually don't like baking desserts, but I saw this recipe on Amanda's blog and decided it looked too good to pass up! It is for chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes-- YUMMMMMMMMY!!! If you are into making your own cookie dough and icing, then please view her blog, but if you are like me and into shortcuts, then I can tell you in 2 seconds what I did.

I had store bought Pillsbury cookie dough in the fridge. I rolled that into balls. I stirred up my store bought cake mix (I used chocolate fudge, she used vanilla) in a bowl according to directions and pre-heated the oven according to those directions. Real hard so far, huh?

Place the cupcake liners in the pan and fill each about 2/3 full with batter and drop in the cookie dough.


Bake according to directions or until appears done-- the cake will puff up and completely surround the cookie dough! I used storebought buttercream frosting for the top and mini chocolate chips to garnish.


They were awesome!!! (I did freeze some of my cookie dough balls and did not others-- I really liked them both ways and could not tell a difference. When not frozen, it will bake a little more into a cookie...while frozen will stay more doughy.)


Chicken Noodle Soup
So this is really not much of a recipe since I just throw whatever I want in a pot in whatever quantities look about right....but it was my best pot yet, so I'll attempt to document it.

I used a HUGE pot and filled with chicken boullion/broth. I then chopped up half a small bag of baby carrots, some celery (include those leafy tops!), turnips (awesome new vegetable I tried), and onion-- add all to pot. I bought a herb-roasted rotisserie chicken and pulled chunks of chicken off of there-- add to pot. Chopped up fresh dill and parsley-- add to pot (I think these fresh spices were key this time and I have never used dill before cause thought that would be weird, but now it is a must for me!). Add freshly ground pepper and let simmer for a while. Once the onion is transluscent and veggies soft, then I add wide egg noodles. Enjoy!


And I also have got all of my recipes torn out from magazines and from friends into an organized binder-- and I LOVE IT!

Who's going shopping?!?!

Just a few things I've found for those going out shopping this Black Friday. I personally don't have anything I'm after this year, but will probably still venture out.

1. Wal-mart announced they will price match items in other ads!

“Walmart is kicking off three days of savings, typically reserved only for the Friday After Thanksgiving, on this seasons’ must-have holiday gifts, including the strongest “price match” guarantee in the market. In fact, Walmart is one of the only retailers that will price match competitors’ ads on “Black Friday.” Customers simply bring in competitors’ ads and Walmart will match the price of any identical product right at the register, making Walmart the easiest place to save this holiday season.”

2. Shop-n-Save has a great deal. Buy $100 of gift cards at their store to participating retailers and you'll get a $20 gift certificate for Shop-n-Save. Best Buy and Kohls are retailers listed that I normally shop at, so I'll probably try to buy some this week, knowing that I will shop those stores on Friday or at some point coming up. Now I'm not a fan of shop-n-save, but it is fine for getting frozen foods, soda, canned and boxed items, etc. I'm thinking you can use this on Thursday when they offer $10 off a $50 purchase...so really it will be like getting $50 of groceries for only $20!

3. BFads.net is one of the best sites I've found so far if you know what you want to buy and looking to price compare. For example, let's say you want a Nintendo Wii-- instead of looking through each store's ad, you can search for Wii and it will return all ad entries and prices for the wii!

4. Look online because many stores will have their deals available online (unless you are going after a super spectacular doorbuster item)! If shopping online, always check first to see if your store is available through ebates. Ebates will give you cash back (a certain % unique to each store) for your purchase if you link to the store through them.

If you sign up to ebates, please use this ebates link as I will get referral money!

Good luck and have fun!!

Europe Day 15&16 Munich (Finale!)

I'm combining Saturday and Sunday together cause we really didn't do much sightseeing, we just spent both days at Oktoberfest. I have to say that by at this point in the trip we were just getting worn down, but this was the big moment we had been waiting for....and unfortunately I think I had built it up WAY too much. It was fun, but it was basically just like a huge carnival with beer tents and rides and concession stands. And I was thinking they would have a selection of great beers to try, but it was so crowded and busy that there was just 1 type of beer they bring you-- which was okay, but not great. Still, it's something to experience and I feel like we were the perfect age to do it!

We were a little nervous how the whole thing worked as I had heard MANY different things from people on the internet. We did not have a reservation, but since there was just 2 of us, I was basically assured that we would be able to find a table if we just kept asking people. Well, we went to the first tent- Hippodrom- and weren't finding ANY place to sit, so then we moved on to the Paulaner tent. It was so close, but the grounds were so packed with people that I swear it took us 30 minutes to navigate less than 1 block. We get there and start asking people that have room at their table if we can join them and luckily we come across 4 guys from switzerland who had space....and they turned out to be really great, nice, fun people to sit with! We really couldn't have asked for a better situation!

Then on Sunday we went back and watched this HUGE parade-- we actually only watched less than half cause the parade was like over 3 hours long and I just started getting bored! We met a super nice retired couple from the states that day on the train and joined them for the parade. They were touring Europe for like 45 days or something insane that we were jealous of! We then just wasted time walking around the fairgrounds and killing time until we had to get our luggage and head to the airport for our flight back to paris.

Entrance to the grounds-


Inside Hippodrom, which is where celebrities will be. This year I know Hayden Panetierre and Kim Kardashian were there- go figure I didn't find anyone famous.


Here's just a few shots to show the crowds and atmostpher and all the rides and tents!





Here was our tent-- we actually got a spot outside on some picnic tables they had setup.


The pretzels were enormous!!


And enormous beers to go along with that!



They sold these cute iced gingerbread cookies everywhere-- I bought a few for souveniers for friends.


I got some video footage, but don't know yet how to post that, so here is a still pic showing the people at our table. They would stand up occasionally and sing this song...but unfortunately we had no clue what they were ever saying, so couldn't join in!


And then it was goodbye Munich!


We arrived in Paris and just stayed at a hotel in the airport-- next morning we got our flight home and it was back to the Lou!

I must say that overall this trip was awesome and we can not wait to go see more countries!!!!!

Europe Day 14- Munich

It's Friday and we start the day by taking a tram/bus to Nymphenburg Palace, which is just a tad outside of the city. This was the summer residence of the palace (Residenz) we toured yesterday.



The place was enormous and it was really amazing that besides the palace, it had a HUGE garden/park area (490 acres) with all sorts of little buildings. Here was the view standing on the terrace of the back of the palace. It was also much windier/chillier than expected, so dustin was such a sweetie and traded jackets with me cause his was much warmer. I couldn't believe he actually fit into my fleece-- and of course I had to get a picture of how ridiculous he looked!



So we started tackling all of the little buildings and exploring the park. First up was a building I believe they used for when they were hunting-- they would stay at this place. You can notice in the bedroom there is a door that blends into the wall-- a lot of the bedrooms at these palaces had those and were so the mistress could slip in and out of the bedroom. the last picture is what the kitchen looked like.




Here's a few shots of the area-- some of it was basically like a walking trail and more wooded, while other areas were huge open fields. We even spotted a deer!




I can't remember what this next building was used for, but I took a picture of the bathroom/washroom. You can see the water spouts on the wall, so not really sure how this whole setup worked.



This next building was a japanese style building and everything was decorated with a definite asian inspiration.



Lastly, we went to the chapel building. The inside was small, but incredible-- every inch was decorated with shells and rocks. It was beautiful and my pictures just don't do a justice!




Luckily one of the buildings was converted to a restaurant, so we stopped for some food and I FINALLY insisted to Dustin I was ordering my Diet Coke, even if it was like $5 for 4 oz. or the tiniest portion ever. But every last drop tasted heavenly! We decided to get a light lunch since it was late and we wanted a decent dinner. So we see they have a snack menu, so dustin orders the sausages off the snack menu and I got a salad. His snack was FOUR sausages and fries!


Lastly, we finished a part of the main palace that stored all of the carriages/coaches used. It was really cool to see how many they had and all the different styles.


We then were just playing by ear what to do in the afternoon and decided to go to Dachau. We got there mid/late afternoon, so we knew we didn't have much time. We started with a museum that was indoors cause that closed earlier than walking around the outdoor parts. Well unfortunately we went waaaaaaaay too slow because we weren't even halfway through when they closed. I found it very interesting and wish I would have known there was so much more to see and would have gone faster. We walked around for a bit outside, but there really wasn't much to see out there. Rows of buildings used to stand here, but they got rid of all of them but 2 that were setup still as models of what it looked like inside.



My view from the inside looking out-- always bars on all the windows.


There was a trench around the entire outside perimeter, along with tons of barbed wire, concrete walls, watch towers, etc.




We then went to Altes Hackerbrauhaus for dinner, recommended by rick and was decent. More just awesome traditional german food!


Afterwards, we checked out Jodelwirt (also one of Rick's recommendations) and was glad we stopped in. It was a very TINY place and definitely seemed like where the locals hang out....they would be playing music and everyone singing along and shouting things out! We got one of the last seats in a corner by the bar area so decided to stay for a drink and I was hoping to order dessert. So we ask if they have a dessert menu and the girl is like, "uh, normally we do, but today is special celebration and we only have pig...so if you want some pig for dessert, that is what we have." Obviously i'll pass on that! But then they were so nice to us and said they would specially make something for us...so I got the Apple Struedel with ice cream and it was THE BEST I'd had there-- exactly what I had been searching for!

Europe Day 13- Munich

Our last city! We started out our morning by having to move hotels. We originally thought we would only be in Munich for Thu-Sun, but had found such a cheap flight for Wed, that we came a day early...but then our hotel didn't have availability to extend our stay a night earlier. So this took up a couple hours-- we took the metro to the stop by our new hotel, which was more out in the suburbs. We get off at the stop and seriously feel like we are in the middle of nowhere and have no clue where to walk to get to our hotel. It is in a somewhat residential area and then there is also just some abandoned areas and areas with factories. We ask a couple people and no one can help us. Finally a taxi shows up to drop people off at the metro so this kind girl offers to go speak german to the taxi driver to try to get us directions...well it ends up the driver is from the US, so we talk to him and decide to just pay him to take us there. And thank goodness we did cause it was quite a walk to the hotel and dustin's suitcases had a wheel in the process of busting off. So we get all checked in and then head back to the metro to go sightsee.

We went to Marienplatz, which is like the town square area. We watched the Glockenspiel for about 5 minutes since we were there when it was set to go off-- it was some music that played and these little puppets that would twirl around. You can see it best in the second picture and if you look closely in the first picture, you'll see it in the tall spire. We went in a few churches and of course climbed one to get a view of the city. You can see the city overall just has more modern buildings. Marienplatz is the open area in the center-ish part of the picture.




We ate lunch at Spatenhaus and it was very good.


We then went to Residenz and I really enjoyed it-- it was amazing how much of it you got to tour! Unlike the other palaces, we got to view over 100 rooms! The palace was built back in the 14th century and where the Wittelsbach rulers lived. Much of it was destroyed during WWII (as was most everything in Munich), so a lot of the palace had to be rebuilt. As with any palace, you'll see it has it's own chapel...of course!




One of the rooms had the flat ceiling painted to make it look 3-D. I took a picture of it cause it looked pretty amazing-- this is all just on a normal flat ceiling, but appears as if it is much taller and ornate!


For a part of the tour, you got to just see a few rooms that contained all of the family's royal jewels and belongings. It was amazing cause I believe they said this diary belonged to one of Charlamagne's grandson's. That means this book is from around the year 1000 or even before-- just befuddles me how ornate it is and that it could be that old! This was one of several crowns that I'm not sure how old, but believe it was from waaaaaaaaaay back then around the year 1000 or so too. I'm just amazed how people created stuff like this!



By now it was late afternoon, so we went to the Hofgarten and English Garden. We were somewhat idiots and decided to walk to this English garden cause Rick told us there was a nice beer garden area to sit and have a drink. We walked FOREVER and come to find out, this park is larger than central park! It was cool though cause on the way to find this beer garden, we stumbled across a stream where people were actually surfing! This was the start of the stream through the park, so the water was rushing out and making waves and they would just take turns surfing for like 20 second stints.




We went to Augustiner for a small dinner and sat with 2 really nice girls from NY- Gina and Marian. It had been a while since we had made some friends, since most of the time in Paris we just ate and kept to ourselves! We ordered some appetizer that was traditional for German's-- I can't remember what it was called, but is basically some bread with raw onions and a cheesey-butter spread. It was okay. The city was hopping that night and we were glad that we did Hofbrauhaus the night before...there was such a mammoth crowd outside of it, you didn't look like there's a chance to get in.




Ok, this post was way too long-- what happened to trying to cut back on my trip recap?!