Ooey Gooey Chocolate Insanity Cake - and our winner announced! :D

Happy Monday! Did you have a good weekend? Did you get what you wanted to accomplished? Did you try anything or anyplace new???

I'll announce our winner for Jen Hatmaker's INTERRUPTED in just a moment; let's do the review of this Ooey Gooey Chocolate Insanity Cake from The Slow Roasted Italian first. :D

I followed this recipe to the letter except for one thing: I did half milk chocolate chips, half semisweet. I didn't even half the recipe; I'd already started measuring and combining ingredients before I even thought of it!

Kenn LOVED this cake. It was too sweet for me, and when I make it for him next time, I will NOT put the chips in. It was chocolately enough without them, and they made a hard layer on the bottom of the cake that I thought spoiled the texture of the whole thing. Also, the timing is incorrect for the baking time; it says 20 minutes, but I think I was closer to 45 minutes.

It's an easy recipe, and like I said, Kenn loved it - that makes it a winner in my book. :D

Speaking of winners...

Congratulations, Katherine! You won!!!!

Will you message me your address again? I'll get this ordered for you as soon as I can. :)

OK, y'all, I'm outta here! Have a WONDERFUL day! Be blessed - and leave me a message. I'm feeling all alone out here. :D

Overnight Yeast Waffles

It's FRIDAY! Are you ready for the weekend?!? :) Do you have big plans? I need to make sure I have some cookies baked by the end of day tomorrow; I need them for Sunday! :D

Today's recipe review is for these Overnight Yeast Waffles from Mel's Kitchen Cafe.

This recipe really interested me; one of the things that stops me from doing more breakfast recipe reviews is that I just don't get going well in the mornings. :D By the time I'm able to think clearly, it's later in the morning and I'm HUNGRY, and it's easier to make a peanut butter sandwich than to take a long time making something else. With these waffles, you mix them up the night before and let them sit in the fridge until you're ready to cook. I LIKE that.

What I, personally, didn't like was that they tasted like bread. Waffle-iron-cooked, but yeast bread nonetheless. Kenn liked them - but he likes waffles, and he likes it when we get a chance to eat breakfast together. :D

SO. I am putting this into my category of "Good Recipes to Have", but I'm still on the lookout for a tasty waffle recipe that can sit in the fridge overnight! :D

Have a wonderful weekend! Enjoy your day - and be BLESSED, my friend.

Fresh Caprese Quinoa Salad

Welcome to Wednesday! Are you having a good week? Is your heart breaking over #Ferguson? Mine is. But that's another blog and another topic. Today, I'm sharing with you this recipe for Fresh Caprese Quinoa Salad from Fit Foodie Finds.

My family decided to try this salad for our Fourth of July celebration; we all love Caprese salad, so thought this looked delicious enough to try. :)

The truth? While quinoa is really getting a lot of hype right now, I still really have to watch the carbs on it. Even though it's "full of protein", some of it's still high carb, which kind of negates why one would want to eat it in the first place, in my shoes. :D

They salad was really fresh, really easy to fix. I think everyone enjoyed it as a different change of pace, with the texture of the quinoa. HOWEVER. I doubt we'll make it again. As a side salad only, I think we'll probably stick with a regular (or deconstructed!) Caprese salad, and leave the quinoa for another place. It's just a personal preference with this recipe; if you absolutely adore quinoa, you'll probably love this salad! :)

OK, that's if for me for today. Have a wonderful day, friend! Be BLESSED! (And if you didn't enter for the drawing in Monday's post, it's got EXTREMELY low entries right now!)

Book Review: INTERRUPTED by Jen Hatmaker

Happy Monday Morning! How are you today? Did you have a good weekend? Was it eventful, or relaxing? :)

Today, I want to talk about Jen Hatmaker's revised and expanded INTERRUPTED. As a disclosure, I was one of 250 bloggers to receive a copy of her book to read and review. Opinions will be all mine. :)

Here's what the back of the book says:
Have you ever felt like you are completely missing the point?
Are you one of the millions who crave a new direction in the church, fed up with religious games, empty promises, and cultural Christianity? You are not alone You are not crazy. Maybe Jesus is ready to interrupt your life.
In 7, Jen Hatmaker and her family started an experimental mutiny against excess. Interrupted is the prequel, the story before the story - when God stepped into their comfortable faith and called them to join Him in something greater. Walk with Jen into a transfomrational journey that began with one dangerous prayer: "Raise up in me a holy passion," and concluded with a life of service to the last, the least, the forgotten, and the forsaken. Transparent and imperfect, Jen will engage and inspire you to go beyond comfortable and answer for yourself the question she faced: is there more to faith than just safe and sequestered, predictable and boring?
God is moving and stirring our generation. Are you ready? 

I started this book last week, and devoured the first two sections. And then I put it down, because I feared what the book's call to action might be. But that part of it never really showed up. Let me try to explain. :)

The first part of the book, Jen talks about how she and her husband were on their way up the comfortable Christian ladder. I think anyone who grew up in the church in the last 30 years, especially, knows what she's talking about: knowing the right things to say, knowing how to talk the talk and walk the walk and wear the T-shirt. Her husband, Brandon, was on staff with a growing church. They were making a good living, both ministering to the flock, but underneath it all was the "Isn't there more to it than this? I'm just not feeling FILLED." And so, Jen asked God, "God, raise up in me a holy passion."

Have you ever noticed that God's just WAITING for you to ask Him something like that? :D

The second half of the book talks about how our concept of church needs to change to reach the postmodern person in America. It talks about doing missional work where we live. It talks about how Brandon and Jen and Austin New Church all started, and there's a LOT of great information in here.

Jen writes the same way in her book as she does her blog (jenhatmaker.com), with a lot of love, a tiny bit of sarcasm, and a little flow-of-consciousness. :) She has SO much passion for this book, and for its themes. I, too, have been trying to find out how to live more as Jesus would. I think the best thing about this book is that Jen is honest in showing the steps she and Brandon went through - from asking the questions to how they walk it out. And perhaps, no matter how much *I* want it, the greatest things she's done in the book is NOT give us a checklist to work from on how to accomplish living a missional life. (And that is where the "call to action" became different from what I wanted/feared!!)

I really recommend you read Jen's blog post about Interrupted if I haven't convinced you to read it.

And to one person, I will send you a copy straight from Amazon.com! Just enter the Rafflecopter below. :) Have a wonderful day, my friend! Be BLESSED!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Cake

Happy Friday! Have you had a good week? Can you believe we're at the middle of August already? Goodness, but this year's flying by. :)

Today's recipe is for Peanut Butter Cup Coffee Cake from Inside BruCrew Life. (For recipes on any of the reviews, just click the link that's the website's name!)

The only thing I did to adapt this recipe was half it, and bake it in an 8" square pan.

What I didn't like about it? That's a LOT of oil to use. And I didn't like that the peanut butter cups were only on the top.

I was thinking about this, and thinking about ways to doctor this recipe, when my husband said to me, "I really love this cake! It's really moist!"

Well. What's a girl to do?!?! I might try something else besides PB cups on top. I know for a fact that's not something Kenn's attached to. :) But I guess I'll keep the recipe! He's not a sweets fan, so to get that kind of response means something. :)

Let me know what you think if you try it! Have a WONDERFUL day! Be BLESSED!!!

Bacon Cheeseburger Roll-Up

Happy Wednesday! How are you? Have you had a good summer? Are you ready to roll back into the fall/school routine? Routine. What a nice, safe word that sounds like... :D This year has been all OVER the place at our house, and "routine" days have been few and far between.

SO. Today's recipe is for a Bacon Cheeseburger Roll-Up from Melissa's Recipes.

I made this as an easy take-along dinner for some friends who'd suffered a sudden loss. (This has been a ROUGH year for many of my loved ones. :( ) I wanted to take them something that was easy for me, and easy for them to reheat, since most of the family had just come back from a long trip. I made them TWO of these - they've got four kids, most of them teens or pre-! - and made myself one to do for this blog post. :)

Let's see. The only thing I think I did differently was that I used a little less bacon per roll, but it wasn't a LOT less. The roll turned out to be pretty long, and wanted to break easily. I did wrap and transport both of theirs in one piece, because I didn't want the insides to come out all over the place! :)

This is what mine looked like on the inside. I got about a dozen pieces out of the roll. I ate these two for my lunch that day, and froze the rest - I wanted to know if it would do well if frozen. And YES, it worked wonderfully! I wrapped two pieces in paper towel, and heated for 1.5 - 2 minutes.

I'm NORMALLY a big ketchup person, but I liked the flavor of these without my ketchup this time. The filling - and yes, I know Velveeta's got lots of bad things in it, so I don't use it often at all!! - was really good and quite creamy. The crust held up well to the rolling, even where I was afraid it wouldn't.

SO. This gets a YES, PLEASE! And my friend came up to me Sunday and told me her kids were begging her to get the recipe. :D So let me know if you try it, and what you think of it! :)

Have a wonderful day, dear friend! BE BLESSED!!!!!!!