Livin' the Dream in Lima

Yes, a vegetable. After my last three recipes being cinnamon rolls , milkshakes , and brownies , it must come as a surprise that we actually eat vegetables in this household. But we do. Usually in the form of spinach salads or steamed broccoli. Not too adventurous. However, this recipe is pretty adventurous. Heh, a whole five ingredients. I first ate this slaw when I was home at my parents a few weeks ago. My mom got the recipe from one of the markets up in Door County - the original recipe called for cherry poppyseed dressing. Well I wasn't about to pour the majority of my $6.95 bottle of cherry poppyseed dressing into coleslaw, so I made some improvisations.  This slaw is a great combination of crisp veggies & chewy dried cherries, with a sweet dressing & salty sunflower seeds. It seems that my favorite recipes combine the sweet & salty flavors together... what can I say? I think it all stems from mixing my m&m's with the popcorn at the movies w...

My goodness. What a week/weekend. Combine the first week of school + an (out-of-town) BFF's wedding + making 1000 chocolate-covered pretzel favors for said wedding = one happy, but exhausted Sara! I almost need a weekend from my weekend. Heh. Just kidding. I had grand plans of doing a huge recap of the fabulous wedding... but am waiting on a few more pics to come my way. So here's a recipe instead. I made these to celebrate the first day of school. I am very excited to have people to bake for again! (Not that I can't bake for just my Business Man & myself... but we don't plow through it too quickly. Unless it's cinnamon rolls.) I've had these Peanut Butter Fudge Pretzel Brownies bookmarked from How Sweet It Is ever since Jessica posted the recipe. Salty pretzels + sweet chocolate + peanut butter? Only like the best combination ever. (Ever heard of a Take 5 bar? My absolute favorite candy bar.) I doubled the recipe to fit a 9x13-inch pan si...

Yup... school starts tomorrow. Time to say hello to working 40 hours a week. And early wake-ups where I actually have to do something with my morning rather than sit on the couch and watch the Today Show. And spending my days with teeny-boppers and their drama. And trying to teach them math at the same time.  Oh, and making milkshakes? Not so much for school. More for my Business Man. One night when I was browsing Pinterest he spotted a picture over my shoulder. For Cake Batter Smoothies . Of course the recipe linked the picture to a healthy recipe. Using all these crazy ingredients like frozen bananas (ok not so crazy), coconut oil, xantham gum, guar gum, cashew butter. What the junk?! So off we went scouring the internet for a non-healthy recipe with ingredients we already had. Heh. And we found one over at Confessions of a Cookbook Queen . And this is definitely not a healthy milkshake. And yes, it is now a milkshake, not a smoothie. Yes, we have sugar, crea...

Well friends, this is my last Sunday before school starts up again. (Though I have tomorrow off still... gotta ease back into the school year with a short week.) I am excited for fall and football games and big pots of chili. Oh, and pumpkin spice lattes. The start of the school year isn't too bad. The start of the school year also means the start of cross country season. Last week, there was an Open Cross Country Race in a town about 15 miles from here. So of course I participated. How could I not, it was only $2 to enter! Putting my Dirt Divas on... all photos courtesy of my awesome Business Man. The purpose is mostly to give high school teams a chance to have a 'practice meet' before the official season starts. I think there were only 2 or 3 people in the race that were not high school athletes. Heh. But I didn't really care. At the start. The race went well - but I forgot how hard  cross country races really are! It'd been about 2 years s...

And parade . Oh, yes, it has been a day full of celebrating the lifestyle of the Midwest. Emma is such a good dish washer. Oh, and we had visitors arrive last night! I now have a little helper in the kitchen doing dishes. (My Business Man's family is visiting... his mom & dad and his two little sisters Sarah Beth & Emma.) We've been fortunate because there's actually a lot going on in the Bean Town this weekend. Yesterday kicked off the first day of the Allen County Fair , and today there was a parade downtown to celebrate. My parade buddy. We'd never been to a parade in the Bean Town and didn't know quite what to expect. There was lots of interesting  things to see. We waved hello to Ronald McDonald. Unfortunately he was not handing out fries or McFlurries. Boo. We saw the policemen & women on their horses. Emma commented that it was a bit smelly. I didn't disagree. We cheered on the Lima Senior High mar...