Catz in the Kitchen

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Champagne Blondies

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These champagne blondies are a sweet little treat, with an added lightness and complexity courtesy of the bubbly in the mix and glaze!

Champagne Blondies

Let's see...how well do we all know Chels? Does Chels love brownies or blondies more? The answer is blondies because I don't love chocolate that much! Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy a brownie - it is my favorite form of chocolate. But if you had a brownie in one hand and a blondie in the other, I would choose a blondie any day of the week! The texture and the color just gets me every time.

The year 2022 is coming in hot and fast and this dessert is perfect for ringing in the New Year. This is not a fancy blondie or a complicated one to make. It's actually a pretty simple and basic recipe, but the flavor of the champagne (okay, ours was from California, so it's technically sparkling wine) is what really what makes this dessert special.

Champagne Blondies ingredients
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Baked Brie with Dried Apricots and Pistachios

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This simple recipe for baked brie with dried apricots and pistachios is a savory, slightly elevated snack that will delight your tastebuds!

Baked Brie with Dried Apricots and Pistachios

Do you guys have a New Year's tradition? One of my sisters watches Lord of the Rings and makes homemade pretzels most years, I think, which sounds delightful. I know others always make black-eyed peas for good luck...I think? We don't really have a set tradition! At least not one I can point to and say this is what we do every year.

If I had to claim a tradition it is usually this - we make a lot of snack food (a different variety every year) and we play board games. A few years ago we played Catan...I can't remember what we played last year. I can't even remember if we had people over last year (hey, it was 2020...)!

Baked Brie with Dried Apricots and Pistachios recipe
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Weekly Menu for the Week of Dec 27

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I can't believe I'm writing this (because I'm still in a state of disbelief), but as I'm sitting here in my favorite white chair, it is currently snowing outside. We were promised a white Christmas and while it did not snow during the day on December 25th, it started coming down around 11:30pm. So we indeed, did have a white Christmas after all. Simply never happens here!

This will be my last weekly menu for the year and I won't pick it up again until probably the last week of January or first week of February. The blog is going to be on a break. A vacation. A sabbatical. I love writing for the blog - it really fuels a creative outlet for me, but like so many people, I need a break so I don't burnout. Over the last few weeks with all of the holiday hustle and bustle, it has leaned more into frenetic side, which I don't like to let happen!

In addition to the weekly menu coming out this week, I will have one or two New Year's recipes for you. And then, probably on New Year's Day, Josh and I will send out an email - just for email subscribers - with a recipe round up featuring some of our favorite healthier recipes to help you start 2022 off right and to detox off of some of those Christmas cookies!

Not that I'm against eating Christmas cookies and indulging in sweets a bit more around the holidays. I know for me that I never eat as many cookies as I do around the Christmas season and that is okay! But for me personally, I'm ready to purge the sweets from my system as soon as the New Year hits.

Let's talk about this week's menu. I'm all for easy this week. We celebrated my birthday last week and essentially had three separate Christmas celebrations - one with my family, one with Josh's family, and one just our little family. The funny thing is last week, I made a soup with some leftover ham on Tuesday and then both Friday and Saturday we had ham with both of our families for Christmas dinner. We're a little hammed out (haha) so I'm keeping the recipes ham-free and super easy. I suggest you do the same thing if you can!

Here's what's on the menu:

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Peppermint Hot Cocoa Brownies

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Add a little variety to your holiday baking this year by whipping up these festive peppermint hot cocoa brownies!

Peppermint Hot Cocoa Brownies

This is the last dessert post before Christmas and it's a good one. I do realize that I did not share even one cookie recipe and I'm okay with that. I have lots of ideas for cookie recipes for next year though.

This recipe is special, though. Kind of a one and done. No need to go to any unnecessary work, doing all kinds of Christmas baking (unless that sounds like fun, which sometimes it definitely does...). If you're showing up to someone's house for the holidays, don't bring another plate of cookies...bring brownies. Peppermint Hot Cocoa Brownies to be precise.

Peppermint Hot Cocoa Brownies recipe
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Overnight Monte Cristo Breakfast Casserole

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This simple recipe for Overnight Monte Cristo Breakfast Casserole is the perfect choice for an easy holiday breakfast or brunch!

Overnight Monte Cristo Breakfast Casserole

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm a big fan of the Monte Cristo sandwich. In fact, we have a couple of (non-traditional) Monte Cristos on the blog already - the Monte Cristo Club, and the Apple Bacon Cheddar Monte Cristo (yum!). When it comes down to it, though, I think our entire family's favorite Monte Cristo (and related Monte Cristo memory) is the one you can order at the Cafe Orleans (or the Blue Bayou) inside Disneyland. It's a huge sandwich (or at least it was the last time we were there in 2017), and definitely one we would split up and enjoy as a family. We have great memories of sitting out on the cafe's patio, people watching and dipping the deep-fried cheesy meaty goodness that is a Disneyland Monte Cristo in jam for the irresistible sweet-savory combination we were all craving.

Overnight Monte Cristo Breakfast Casserole recipe
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Weekly Menu for the Week of Dec 20

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It's the week of Christmas!!! I can barely believe it myself. I only have maybe one or two gifts left to buy, which I'm going to take care of today, but what about you? Are you done? If not, hopefully you can just get it done and be able to relax for the rest of the week.

I don't know what the weather is doing where you're at (hopefully snowing because it's that time of the year), but it is just pouring down raining here...with no end in sight. I'm not thrilled about it, but this is the PNW, so I guess it's to be expected. I would be fine if it was just really cold, but combined with the constant grey clouds and pouring rain, it might just be killing my soul a bit.

Not to sound too dramatic or anything.

On this week's menu for us, I'll admit I'm experimenting with two recipes (not on the blog) mainly because I've got leftover ham from a meal last week and frozen ground chicken in my freezer that I want to use and not waste. We're having family come into town this week, so I want to make sure I'm utilizing the ingredients around me before I go and buy stuff for all new recipes! But for the majority of the week I am keeping it easy and this week's menu will reflect that for you guys. I don't really know how much any of you actually feel like cooking, so let's make it easy!

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Eggnog Coffee Cake

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This easy eggnog coffee cake recipe makes a perfect brunch, breakfast, dessert, or snack with its light eggnog flavor and crumbly texture.

There are two kinds of people in this world. Those that love cilantro and those who don't. Those who love bananas and those who don't. Those who love to eat fish and those who don't. (I'm drawing these conclusions from some very real people in my life.) (Editor's Note: Wouldn't that be, like, potentially at least six different kinds of people? Or are we saying that everyone who like cilantro also likes bananas and fish? Hopefully not together.)

Which means...there are also people who love eggnog and people who don't. For those who do, you're in luck. For those who don't...I still think you should stick around and consider trying out this recipe. It might be the eggnog recipe that changes your mind; which brings me to a quick little story.

Eggnog Coffee Cake
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Weekly Menu for the Week of Dec 13

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Happy "almost" Christmas week!!! This week we're celebrating Christian's birthday - he's going to be 9 years old and I don't think I can take it. I've loved sharing my birthday month with my son - I've dubbed him my birthday buddy. Only people who share a birthday as close to Christmas as us understand what a challenge having a Christmas birthday can really be. We're both within a week or so, and it's really nice to have a birthday friend to kind of commiserate with.

I think we're getting ready to do our annual Christmas baking next week, on the baking menu will of course be our Sugar Cookies, Thumbprints, Crinkle Cookies, Snickerdoodles, and possible fudge. I might even make some Peppermint Bark.

Speaking of recipes, Josh and I made this "Merry Mocktail" from Pinch of Yum over the weekend. We like to make drinks that the kids can also enjoy during the holiday season, and this one is definitely yummy! It has a beautiful flavor profile with cloves, rosemary, and pomegranate, and it is just delightful!

On to this week's menu! As we ease into the actual holiday week, my cooking gets simpler and slightly easier. I don't like to complicate anything when our schedules begin to pick up with holiday fun!

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Spiral Ham with Cranberry Glaze

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This simple recipe for Spiral Ham with Cranberry Glaze is an easy holiday dinner that won't have you on your feet in the kitchen all day!

We're done with that Thanksgiving turkey and now it's time to move onto that Christmas ham! I actually love ham, which is not surprising since I adore bacon, but I think there is something special about ham...and I'm not sure what it is. For many years, my dad would send us a Honeybaked Ham as our family Christmas gift and I always looked forward to that...because ham leftovers are pretty much the best thing ever.

Spiral Ham with Cranberry Glaze

Now for the record, I don't cook a ton of ham. Like I just don't buy it very often. But when I do buy it. I'm always left puzzling why don't I buy it more often! This recipe is just really simple, though it does require the use of your oven, which like on Thanksgiving can always be kind of stressful because other dishes are usually competing for the oven space as well. If you're looking for a main ham dish that doesn't use the oven, check out this recipe for Sweet Slow Cooker Chai Ham. It's also really simple with minimal ingredients, but with a lot of flavor. I love a good recipe that doesn't skimp on flavor!

This recipe uses a spiral ham which is pretty easy to find around Easter or Christmas - although this is definitely more of a Christmas recipe because of the cranberry glaze. Spiral hams generally have the bone-in and are fully cooked, so you're essentially going to just be warming the ham up without drying it out (which is really easy to do with pork). My best advice is to watch it once you get close to the 90 minute mark of cooking. This recipe calls for a cooking time of up to around 2 ½ hours, but I would be surprised if it actually needed to go quite that long. I cooked mine for about 2 hours and it was just right.

Spiral Ham with Cranberry Glaze recipe
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Weekly Menu for the Week of Dec 7

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It's the first full week of December and it's already the 7th! That means that there are only 18 days left until Christmas. Eek! Thankfully, this year, I'd say I've got about 87% of my shopping done. Which feels so good! Usually we're shopping up until the last minute, but in October I came to Josh and told him that this year, it needed to be different. I just couldn't do all of that again. He was on the same page, so we've been getting it done.

If you need a gift idea for some, might I recommend Trekking The National Parks. We played the game on Saturday when we hosted a game night at our house and it was so much fun. I caught on quickly (and even won...yay)! Let's just say it's like Ticket to Ride meets Sorry. So fun and it would be really easy to play with a lot more people than we did because you could divide yourself into couples teams.

I don't know if we're still coming down from all the prep of Thanksgiving or if it is just because of the holiday season, but Josh and I are beat, so we're keeping the menu really easy this week. Good food. Easy recipes. Perfect for some light entertaining.

Here's what's on the menu this week:

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