Bzzzzz! A Recipe Review and Product Recommendation!

A few years ago I got really hooked on coupons and saving money and most of all getting free stuff! Social marketing is so big these days and one of the marketing things I got into was BzzAgent. Fun stuff! It's a model based on word of mouth marketing - when you get into one of their campaigns, you usually get a free product and then you are tasked with trying it out and sharing your opinions with people that you interact with. So, here's my first BzzAgent post on my blog!

Recently I was picked for the Progresso Recipe Starters campaign and I'm really glad!

 I probably would not have tried the Recipe Starters out unless I heard a lot of good things about them from friends. But since I got a can of the Creamy Portabella Mushroom Recipe Starter in the mail I had no excuses! After perusing the Progresso website for recipes, I decided upon the Mushroom Swiss Burgers.

Source: Progresso.com

When you follow the very quick and easy recipe, the burger patties come out pretty runny, and we had a bit of trouble keeping them together once on the grill. However, most of the burgers survived and wow, these were delicious! My husband and I thought they were so flavorful and my daughter gobbled her's down, completely oblivious of the bits of mushroom inside (haha!). This is definitely a recipe we will be repeating, probably tweaking it by adding something to bind the burger better. But the Creamy Portabella Mushroom starter was flavored really well - I used the leftovers on baked potato like a gravy - and I think I will try some of their other recipes too. But why stop there, I liked this so much that I'll be trying some of those other Recipe Starters flavors too!

Happy Day after Thanksgiving!

Did you have a great day yesterday? We sure did! Well, another year has passed and I have yet to roast a whole turkey! That's right, I've never been in charge of the big bird.

Ever.

in my life.

15+ years as wife and chief cook.

:)

Tim smoked our turkey again this year...and it was delicious! (His choice, I was actually up for trying my hand at the roasting this year.) He's really perfecting his technique. It was actually done about 5 hours before we had everything else ready and all our guests assembled for the big meal. Tim read up and discovered that you could keep it warm and juicy by wrapping it up and keeping it in a cooler. We left the thermometers in so as to monitor safe temps and it all worked great. Mmm good! We had a very enjoyable evening with great friends. And now we have lots of leftovers! I do LOVE smoked poultry for all sorts of recipes. Can't wait to use this stuff!

I had this great picture of the little girl digging into her big turkey drumstick, but unfortunately the file is corrupt. Bummer. Here's a photo collage of the kids playing in puddles the other day. We had massively heavy rain for about 24 hours and with all the leaves blowing off the trees too, the drains got clogged...great huge puddles to jump in while the cold rain came pouring down!

Know what else the passing of Thanksgiving means in our family? Time to pull together Christmas lists! As I was browsing through Black Friday on-line stuff last night, I was thinking we really should start doing this before Thanksgiving. But many in this family of ours are procrastinators (oh, yes, definitely me included!) and I find that unlikely to happen. But it really would have been great to know who my secret sibling is for gifts this year and what he or she is pining for. Or maybe she's Pinning for something this year!

Well, without further ado...I'm going to start posting stuff I find on here and my Pinterest board.

Pinned things on my All I want for Christmas board --

• Anything from Williams-Sonoma. Yep, you could just walk in there and buy me anything and I'm pretty sure I'll be thrilled with it. All sorts of fun, that store is!
• New cozy slippers. My beloved ATM ones pretty much fell apart from daily use for several years. I wear about size 6 usually.
• I want a food processor. Not sure which size. Seems like lots of recipes recommend using them though.
• Well, lots of cooking gadgets on my list...I think I'm gonna need a new kitchen too. Need more storage!
• I need a flash diffuser for my camera. Haven't done any research as to which one I want though.
• A good tripod for our myriad of photography and videography equipment is definitely in order! Again...no research yet.
• More stuff coming soon...as soon as I think of it!

*Christmas list image credits: Kate Teague "Berry Days", Bella Gypsy "Talk Like A Pirate" red alpha, Shawna Clingerman "Frolic" plaid alpha

Turkey Day, Delicious Turkey Day!

I came into the Thanksgiving holiday with plans to keep it simple and low stress, give myself some much needed time to relax. So we decided not to invite a bunch of people over and I decided to keep the meal simple and to the point - turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and of course pumpkin pie. It turned out to be one of our best Thanksgivings ever!

Despite my plans to keep it simple, I had invited my brother and his family over for the meal, with the "simple" disclaimer. They decided to come over and they brought some delicious depth to our meal! Sweet potato apple pecan casserole, Paula Dean brussel sprouts (includes butter and bacon of course!), chocolate pecan pie. Wow!

However, the big deal is always the turkey, right? Well, let me tell you. My husband can cook a mean turkey! He can smoke a mean turkey, to be more specific.

Let me take you back 14 Novembers, to our first Thanksgiving as husband and wife, our first Thanksgiving thousands of miles from our families, our first Thanksgiving in the much cooler Pacific NW. We love smoked food, and we had a small vertical column style smoker that had served us well back in TX and in the early fall in WA. On Thanksgiving day, a typical 40 degree day for these parts, our relatively small turkey was in that smoker forever, just not getting hot enough. By about 8 pm we gave up with the smoking and finished it in the oven. It was pretty much inedible! (Oh, and naturally since it was my first turkey, we found the blue plastic bag of giblets in the turkey as we cut it up! Oops.)

Fast forward to 2010, we have this awesome new southern barrel smoker with the smoke box on the side and lava rocks in the barrel. We also have snow on the ground, and its been below freezing for the last 3 days. We cautiously ventured again to smoke the big bird, fully ready to finish it in the oven before it got smoked beyond being edible. But not this time...my husband aced the turkey smoking this time. It was ready on time and absolutely beautiful. Our kitchen smelled like a TX bbq restaurant...it was melt in your mouth yummy, juicy and tender. Take a look!

My what a difference 14 years can make!

And bonus? My mother-in-law, whom I love, showed up about 11 am to surprise us with a visit. How cool! She lives in TX and we didn't expect to see her until next spring. Boy were the kids excited to see Grandma! And she rocks...always helping with the kid stuff, the kitchen stuff, the laundry, whatever needs to be done.

And double bonus? The Aggies beat tu. Awesome.

Truly plenty to be thankful for in our house. How was your Thanksgiving?