I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend – it went by so fast even with having Friday off of work!  Before I get to the recap, I have to announce the winner of my 500k pageview giveaway. . . .winner, winner, lobster dinner of the cookbook giveaway is:

True Random Number Generator 36

Betsy says:

My current favorite (and not too healthy, might I add) is Bakerella’s Cake Pops Book. I’m making the Easter eggs and chicks for this weekend – so adorable!

Congrats Betsy!  Please send me your street address to mybizzykitchen@gmail.com and I’ll get the cookbooks out to you. 😀

My MIL, SIL and I shopped on Friday – it was nice to have that extra day to get ready.  Tony and I love these garlic crisps – we buy them at Fresh Market even though they are $3.99 for a small container – they are so addicting.  Tony thought we could make them ourselves, and we actually like our version better.

We can buy French bread at our local store – 2 loaves for .99 cents.  I simply mixed together 4 tablespoons olive oil, 4 teaspoons minced garlic and 1 teaspoon of garlic salt, and brushed that over the sliced bread and baked it for 15 minutes, or until the bread is completely crisp. 

My favorite appetizer of the day – the garlic crisp with goat cheese and super thin proscuitto on top.  Next time I’ll drizzle a bit of balsamic over the top – yum!

Next up is something I had completely forgotten about – this will age me, but growing up we could buy shrimp cocktail in a jar – you could literally it eat with a fork, and I remember my mom saving those shrimp jars and we’d have orange juice in them for breakfast.  I couldn’t find those – so I bought cooked salad shrimp, tossed it with cocktail sauce and poured that over room temperature cream cheese – holy yum – so simple, yet so delicious over a crips cracker.

And while I was working on other things, Tony put together this relish tray – he loves those black olives with the pits in them – I love the salami and pickled jalapenos!

Another favorite though is the quickest to put together – 5 minute roasted red pepper hummus.

  • 1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed
  • 1 glove garlic
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoons tahini
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • pinch of salt
  • cracked pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon paprika
  • 1 7 oz. jar of roasted red peppers, undrained

Throw everything into a food processor – add a splash of water to get the right consistency.  So delicious!

We had so much food – I really didn’t take a lot of pictures in the heat of the cooking.  I did a spiral ham on the gas grill, a beef roast in the oven, my Italian Sunday gravy in the crockpot – my MIL brought delicious green beans, strawberry pie that was out of this world and cupcakes. 

My plate:

My MIL’s strawberry pie – holy cow I will need to get this recipe – its not low calorie, but its not very sweet which is why I loved it.

And my MIL didn’t want any of her pictures on the blog, so I will give you my nephew and his girlfriend – she makes the best bacon wrapped water chestnuts, but the picture came out blurred of her dish, but here’s a picture of them in my back yard.

She’s a really sweet girl – and she has some kick ass tattoos – I liked this one – I’ll have to ask her next time what the dynamite symbol is for!

I did not go to my WI on Saturday.  I needed to regroup with all the stress, but I think it may have backfired – I haven’t counted a point since last Thursday, so I have to get back on track stat.  I have the free membership at the gym near my new office this week so I plan to take full advantage.  Another bad thing about not exercising?  My average blood sugar last week was 170!  Eek!

Goals for the week:

  • minimum of 60 minutes of exercise each day
  • count all my points
  • no alcohol
  • drink a minimum of 64 ounces of water each day

So here’s to having a clean week and I promise to go to my WI on Saturday!  Happy Monday!