WOW!  WE have two great and delicious desserts in our freezer today:  Candy Bar Pie – a delicious mixture of walnuts, chocolate and white candy chunks and coconut; and our own Sweet Stuff Igloo – a chocolate covered confection with a brownie, vanilla bean ice cream and chocolate caramel in a cute little 3″ cookie shell.

    These are special desserts to serve to special people – like your own family or yourself.  Call and order in quantity for a special occasion.  Here comes the YUM!

is that you can enjoy all your  great vegetables from your own garden.   For instance, we had our own yukon gold potatoes baked to delicious creaminess, a salad with our own zuchhini and tomatoes and a few cobs of corn from our local Farmers’ market.  And, as Mr. Rogers would say, it was a delicious day in the neighborhood.  Enjoy all the good summer has to offer.  Toodles

they said today that the last time the early morning 8:00temp was in the 80’s ws back in 1918.  WOW.    Right now it is 85 degrees but fells like 103 degrees,  am enjoying the a.c. indoors.  did make banana pecan bread and mango macadamia nut bread earlier today and am so happy i did.  now I can wrap it and put in the freezer while I get a wiff of very cold air.  luckey ME!!!

Okay, we’re getting ready for our Cooking Camps for Kids coming up in July and August.  Am really looking forward to enjoying the time with the kids while making some absolutely delicious dinners.  We don’t do macaroni and Cheese with Hot Dogs here.  No way.  We make full dinners like Bacon Wrappd Chicken Tenderloins, Sweet Potato Oven Fries, Salad-on-a-Stick and Orange Blondies.  and that’s just the 1st and 2nd graders!!!

This year we will also have a “What would Harry (Potter) Eat?”  We’re doing a great English style dinner complete with Quiddich Pie, Londonberry Bisicuits, Bubbles and Squeak and a Trifle.  Am sure we will all be speaking with a great English accent after eating that good stuff. 

Hope some of you can make the camp.  Just go to the webiste to get info and give us a call for reservations.  What a great way to pass summer morings

   CAn you imagine a more wonderful sight than a tray full of Blueberry Buckle Muffins with Cinnamon Struesel topping?  Neither can I but I’m looking at one right now.  It is June and June has always seemed like a blueberry kind of month.   When hubby and I bought our first home it was in September.  By the time June rolled around we realized we had these bushes that produced purple fruit as big as a marble.  The children would run to the bushes and bring back bowls full for breakfast cereal, muffins, and just to pop into one’s mouth. We found that frozen they make a grand snack while t.v.  watching.  When I found the recipe for Blueberry Buckle I tweaked it until I found the right combination of struesel ingredients and they were so good we decided to put them in the freezer so customers could also enjoy them.  Right now I see one with my own name on it.  Where is the coffee?

“Toodles” she types with purple fingers.

   Here we are back from Austria and Italy and it sure is good to be home.  There is nothing like your first night home from a big trip when you can curl up in your own bed and not have to remember where the emergency exits, the bathroom, your passport and your slippers are! 

    We had a  great time.  Landed in Vienna, stayed a few days, took a train to Salzburg, stayed a few days, ditto with Venice and Rome.  We picked up our car in Rome and then I finally felt like our vacation had really begun.  Then we were off to Radda in Chianti for Easter, Montalcino, Livorna (Lucca and Pisa), Bellagio (Lake Como), and finally Milan from whence we returned home.  Saw a lot of stuff but The Last Supper in Milan topped everything else. 

   Would we do it again?  You betcha!  Only this time we would bag the train and drive where we could.  Personally, I would skip Venice as it was very dirty and EVERYONE smoked.  That doesn’t seem so bad until you realize that the walkways between buildings are not wide enough for you to touch each side with your arms completly outstretched.  Two people can barely walk side by side.  So, when people smoke the smoke just stays there and has no where to go!  No matter where you go, into a store, around a corner, up and down more stiars over the lagoons, you can’t get away from the smell of old smoke.  And, there was seaweed in the Grand Canal! along with soaked old Marlboro boxes.  Nope, no Venice again!

    Salzburg was delightful:  small to walk from one end to the other in no time!  Mozart’s birth place, Sacher Hotel known for its Sacher Torte (yum, yum and again, yum!), as is the Vienna Sacher Hotel, and the great food at the restaurants made for an intro for the Sound of Music Tour.  Fantastic!  Saw all the famous highlights – Gazebo, the Do, Re, Mi fountain and steps, the gnome garden, where the kids and Maria fell into the lake and climbed the trees in their clothes made from the draperies, the church from the wedding scene….  Saw them all and loved it.  So much so that we are adding a Sound Of Music Food and wine pairing party to our list of special dinner parties!

   More later.  Good to be home.   Sorry about having to curtail your opportunity to respond to this blog but we were getting spam, spam and more spam in every language and alphabet I can imagine and some I had no idea existed, along with offers to make any and every of  my body bigger, again in several languages.  I hope you all  understand.

It has been too long between blogs.  Will try to be a little vigilant.

  Can you believe it is snowing here today?  Tho’t we were done with this stuff.  Won’t complain too loudly because the sun is out.  Can’t wait for Easter.  Will be doing a different kind of dinner this year and will fill you in after the fact.  Am quite sure it will be yummy!

Somehow when it snows it seems like a good time to make cookies.  This time of the year Christmas cookies are the obvious choice so today I am baking Peanut Butter/Chocolate Sandwiches.  What a delicious combination!  Reese’s did the job right the first time around.  Many have tried to duplicate and, quite frankly, failed miserably. 

Our take on this combination is not really a confection.  It is a sandwich cookie so we are NOT competing with Reese.  The delicious combination is still there, however and as good as ever.

I would like to take this time and place to thank Reese.  I am sure someone, somewhere would have thought of combinint these two quinessential flavors, but am delighted that you succeeded so well, so long ago.

Enjoy the snow, everyone.

     Sorry I’ve been away from the blog for so long.  We have been busier than I ever imagined.  But we got through Thanksgiving, loving every little tidbit we made for our customers.  We have got some great customers, too.  They come from all walks of life and are all as pleasant as can be.   Some had only a few family members for the holiday and others had a gang!  Hope they all had a great time remembering Thaknsgivings past.

    We are getting into the Christmas season and it is going to be busy and happy time.  We have lots of great Christmas cookie packages available from boxes of dozens to party cookie platters.  Check out the website, www.maryleesmeals.com/sweetside to see what’s available. 

     Gotta get back to baking and meal preparations.  Enjoy this nice weather as it will last only through tonight.  A customer just told me it is going to be a snowy, cold and wet week.  Having a great day today, tho’.  Hope you are too.  Toodles