Mini S'more No-Bake Cheesecakes

The kids are all coming over for dinner and FHE tonight, so I thought I'd try a few new recipes. I made the dessert before anything else. It seems like if the dessert turns out great, everything else seems good, too!

I tried the recipe for Miniature S'more Pies from Chef-In-Training. I LOVE her recipes, and many of them have become staples in our meal repertoire. Check out her website (chef-in-training.com) for the original recipe. I tweaked mine a bit (I always do!). I also would call them Cheesecakes instead of Pies, since the filling is much more cheesecake-ish. 

The recipe calls for 6 mini graham cracker pie crusts. These are the ones I bought:

I really don't know if there are other types out there, but these are the only ones my grocery store carried, so the choice was pretty easy. When I made them, I doubled the recipe so it would feed the masses.

The slightly tweaked recipe is as follows:

Mini S'more No-Bake Cheesecakes

Makes 6

Ingredients:

6 mini graham cracker pie crusts (they come in a pkg of 6)

8 oz. cream cheese, slightly softened

1 c. Cool Whip

1 c. powdered sugar

1/2 c. marshmallow cream/fluff

6 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, chopped into small pieces

  *I used half milk chocolate, and it was still fairly dark

1/2 c. heavy cream

chocolate shavings

In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese, Cool Whip, powdered sugar, marshmallow cream and beat until well combined.

Evenly distribute the cream filling into the 6 graham crusts.

Smooth tops with a knife.

Pour heavy cream into a small saucepan and heat on medium heat, stirring constantly, until it reaches a boil. Remove from heat and stir in chopped chocolate until it melts and combines evenly. Let cool almost completely.

Spread chocolate ganache evenly over the tops of the pies, covering all of the cream cheese mixture.

Sprinkle with chocolate shavings, if desired.

This is a very simple dessert to make, and the individual cheesecakes are a perfectly satisfying portion. When I bought them, I thought they seemed so tiny, but since the filling is mounded into them, there is much more in each little crust than would appear!

Yummy, simple, and even looks a little fancy! We all loved this dessert!

Chicken and Fruit Lettuce Wrap

We are trying to eat lighter this year. We are pretty good at going down to the basement workout room to exercise, but we haven't worried too much about what we eat. So, since I'm the one who provides the meals, it seems like its up to me to get some lighter fare into our diets. I can't say that I make sure every single meal is purely healthy... we're getting there slowly but surely.

The other night, I needed to make a quick meal that we could eat between Bob getting home from work and running off to his Tuesday night meetings.  I had seen a chicken and apple lettuce wrap on Pinterest, and thought it might be just the thing.  I tweaked the recipe, and made it something we would love, and of course didn't take any photos of the finished product (but then I'm not really a food blogger, so I guess its okay).

We each ate one lettuce wrap and had some baked sweet potato fries to go along with. It was a perfectly satisfying and quick meal. The leftover chicken mixture was really good for the next couple of days for lunch. I'm sure if you are really cutting back, there are ways to make this even more healthy, but it was a good compromise for a husband who isn't really into diet food. :)

The recipe is as follows:

Chicken and Fruit Lettuce Wrap

1 rotisserie chicken (or 3 cooked chicken breasts) cut from the bones and chopped
1 Fuji apple, chopped (leave peel on)
1 c. red seedless grapes, cut in half
1 T. light mayo
1/2 c. coleslaw dressing (Lite dressing is best, if you can find it)
salt, pepper, onion powder
iceberg lettuce

Mix mayonnaise, coleslaw dressing, salt, pepper and a little dash of onion powder together in a bowl. Add chicken, apples and grapes and mix until everything is coated with the dressing.

Remove a leaf of the lettuce, and place some of the chicken mixture down one side of the lettuce leaf. Roll the leaf up like a wrap. Makes 6 lettuce wraps.

My tried and true week-by-week food storage and emergency prep system

Since its January, its time to start my food storage rotation all over again. I have been using a system that I have fine-tuned for a few years now, and I'm pretty sure I have most of the kinks worked out. The thing I really like about this particular system is that it breaks it all down to week-by-week. I also like that you can jump in wherever you are in the year, and just start from that month. Its a good, "non-overwhelming" way to get started (and continue!) on your food storage!

This is the sheet that I use that shows each month with four weeks listed and the items to work on each of those weeks:

The first year I implemented it, I just stocked our shelves with whatever was on the list for the week. The next year, at the beginning of each week, I checked my inventory of each item for the week, rotated if needed, tossed out expired things, and then made sure that my stock was up-to-date and consisted of the correct amounts for what our family needed.

To go along with the above week-by-week sheet, I have a corresponding inventory sheet (notice how the colors match up with the colors on the weekly schedule). It has all of the items in my food/emergency storage. This is one page of six in my inventory sheet set:

Every year I tweak it a bit according to our needs. Bob and I are pretty much empty-nesters (until our son comes home from his mission in May, and also not including the times our other kids come around), so we have adapted it all to the needs of two people, more or less. I also look at other lists that come across my desk and add things that aren't yet in our emergency storage. So, the list is ever-changing, which is good. I hate to throw food out, so I don't want to store more than I need to be storing. I try to store what we will use in the coming year. That way, it turns out to be about a year's supply of everything.

I'm going to post the food storage "items for the week" on this blog so that it will remind me and maybe spark something in somebody out there in blog-land to make sure you and I both, are ready for any upcoming emergency. One thing you need to know is that items for the week are guidelines. You can decide what in that particular category you would really want to have in your food storage. For instance, in the 2nd week of January, the items are cleansers. This could be just the basics that you might want to have set aside in case of an emergency, or the full-blown array of cleansers you might use in a year's time. I decided I wanted to do a true "year's supply" for my family, so I try to keep the basic items that I will use within the year. I may or may not include stain remover, or floor cleaner. It all depends on what you want to have in your supply. You also may want to start out with the very basics and then add to the list as the years go on. (A bit easier on the pocketbook!)

The first week in January, the items are easy...

January Week 1: Watch for and buy 50% off on Christmas items, cards, paper, ribbons, etc. If you don't care to score on any of the Christmas buys, then you get a pass this week!

The second week in January, the items are as follows:

January Week 2: Detergents, bleach, cleansers, laundry detergent, dish detergent, bathroom and window cleaners. Many cleansers last for several years, but I like to rotate through mine so that they don't get old or stale. You may not think of dishwasher detergent as an emergency item, but I like keep enough in stock so that I never find myself running out or in extreme need to run to the store. :)

Notice I've highlighted these in pink. They will correspond with the items on my inventory sheet set (6 pages) so that I can find them right away on the list, know how many I should have in storage, and then know how many I need to put on my shopping list for that week. On my inventory sheet set, I record the quantity I have, the size of the package, the expiration date, and the amount I should have in storage. There is also a place to mark off if I have enough of the item and the date that item was checked off.

Does that all make sense? Clear as mud, right? It makes perfect sense to me, but I KNOW I don't think the same was as everyone else, so it might just be a bunch of jibberish to all of you. If any of it is helpful, then its all good.

If you would like me to send you copies of the inventory sheet set, and also the week-by-week item list, just leave a comment below with your name and email address, and I'll zip one off to you!

Cleaning the Craft Room

Whew! The holidays completely flew past. I love Christmas and everything that goes along with celebrating such a wonderful holiday. But I must admit, it tires me out... and this year for some reason it did more than others. I think its because I was probably less organized and had more projects and things going on. This year, I am going to make a goal to get everything done by December 1st: tree up, house decorated, shopping done, Christmas cards addressed and ready to mail, projects completed, etc, etc. I hope I can do it!

I do love January. I may be in the minority with that, but I really, really LOVE January. I love to have my house back to a more simple decor, I love to get to the dust that's been collecting in and around the Christmas decorations, I love to organize closets and drawers and rooms that desperately need it. Its a great month to "catch up" for me, and I take full advantage. This particular January, we have our first grand baby due, so when that happens, everything else will be at a stand-still, but that's as it should be! 

So, when I took all of my Christmas decorations down, I piled them down in the basement, just to get them out of the way. This is what my basement looked like on Saturday morning. 

I spent a few hours boxing and putting away so that we're all ready for next year. I might add that another project I have slated is to go through the boxes of Christmas stuff that I haven't opened up for the past few years and take it to D.I. I only use about 25% of the Christmas decorations that I have, so its time to get rid of things.

I don't really have an "after" photo of my basement, because that would be boring. The photo you see above would pretty much be just a photo of our carpet, now that the things are packed away.

One of the unfortunate casualties of November and December is my craft room. I start with it all organized, and I end up tossing things in there and shutting the door. This, my friends, is what my craft room looked like this past week. Not a pretty sight, and not something I'm particularly proud of.

I'm just keeping it real. As you can see, there are piles of things on every surface, and not much floor space left, either. After about 3 hours of rolling my sleeves up and getting to work, I now have it looking like this:

Why do I put that off for so long, thinking that it will be days and days of work? I still have some more things to go through and organize, but at least its a usable room. It feels so nice to go in there and to be able to find whatever I need, and then to be able to actually put it away afterwards. Where the little brown table is in the center, we are thinking about putting some sort of a cutting table/island. I think it will start where the chair is on the left, and then go across to where the table is, sort of like a peninsula. It will be great for larger fabric cutting.

And that is what I've been up to this weekend! I need about 20 more Saturdays to get the rest of the house done, but at least its a start!

Activity Days Chocolate Scriptures

Yesterday we had the first Activity Days for the year (and my first one ever!). My group is the 8-9 year-olds, and there are three leaders, so we each are in charge of an activity every 6 weeks. Not a bad gig, actually. And the girls are absolutely darling and so excited about everything!

We have made a schedule that has a different theme each month, rotating the following: Faith in God Requirements, Learning and Living the Gospel, Serving Others, Developing Talents. This month's theme is the Faith in God Requirements, so we are just reinforcing the things that they will have to do (mostly at home) to fulfill those requirements. I chose to do the activity based on "reading scriptures daily". We talked about why its so important to read and study scriptures, and how to make that something we do every single day. After we had a great discussion/lesson, we made these cute little chocolate scriptures.

It was a great project for the girls to make all by themselves, and they each were able to make two (one in silver and one in gold).

The supplies were all things I had on hand, so it was an easy and inexpensive craft. Actually, I didn't have the chocolates on hand. If I did, we would have eaten them, so I wouldn't have had them on hand anyway.

Supplies for each set of scriptures:
2 chocolate Hershey nugget bars (silver or gold)
black chipboard rectangle 1-1/2" X 2-1/8"
white cardstock rectangle 2-3/4" X 1" with scripture printed or written on it (I used John 5:39 --
    Search the Scriptures)
red ribbon or cord for bookmark

We started by giving each girl a piece of black chipboard.

The girls spread a think layer of Elmer's glue on their black paper, and then glued their chocolate bars to it.

They then took the pre-printed white cardstock with the scripture on it and folded it in half. I helped them put double-stick tape on the back of it, and they pressed it on to the chocolate bars.

After pressing the paper down over the bars, they put a thin bead of glue down the fold of the white paper, and pressed their red cord onto the glue. We let their "scriptures" dry a bit while we updated their books and reviewed the Faith In God program.

I also gave them all a scripture reading chart that I found online to remind them to read every night.

New Year's resolution

Hmmmm......

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Hard to believe that it's 2013 already! But I'm excited about it -- I feel like great things are ahead, and I love thinking about the possibilities!


We started a new tradition this year. Last night, on New Year's Eve, we each wrote about the past year on sheets that I printed off from thedatingdivas.com

It seems like a great way to collect everyone's thoughts and memories and then save them from year to year. I'll be putting ours in a binder in sheet protectors. It will be fun to look back on them in years to come!


I have loved looking back at 2012 and recognizing the countless ways our family has been blessed.  Its been a truly great year! During the year last year, we kept a stack of cards next to a jar so that we could write down all of the good things that happened.

Then, on New Year's Day, I'll incorporate the jar into my centerpiece on our dinner table. During dinner, we'll open the jar and read the cards. It should be a fun way to remember. I'm sure some of the things we've sortof forgotten about, so I think we'll love having the reminder and then being able to talk about whatever it was and "relive" it a bit. Such a fun tradition!

One thing I keep thinking about is that I need to get more organized this year. I love being organized, but I haven't given myself the time to keep our home that way lately. When we were kids, my favorite thing to do while my parents were away for the evening was to organize the pantry, or clean the garage, or rearrange my furniture in my room. I loved trying to make things more efficient. In my youthful mind, I thought I was doing something nice for my parents. In hindsight, they probably weren't all that thrilled to come home and find the house all re-done, and things not where they thought they were. Oh well. Its the thought that counts, right? (Sorry Mom!)

I am using the month of January (and probably well beyond) to get things organized and into shape. In a perfect world, I would have Deseret Industries (a local thrift store) come and drop a pod on my driveway, and I would fill it to the brim and have them haul it all away. I would LOVE that! But, since they don't do that, I'll have to do mine bit by bit and get my son to drop a truck load off at D.I. every now and then.

There are so many great things all over the internet and Pinterest, in particular, that have great organizing tips and tricks. I'm going to try some of them out and see if I can get things in ship-shape around here. If I find anything really great, I'll pass it along!

Til then....

from lilluna.com