Old standbys

So I promised some more deets on what we snacked on when the soon-to-be in-laws came for a visit (hi Jim and Rose!). So with this post I will share some of my old standbys when it comes to snacks for company. They are easy, tasty and will impress your crowd whether it's parents or ravenous young men hungry for food and football (we seem to have a lot of the latter at Casa de McBitter).

Pizza bites, mmmm.

So first up, the pizza bite. What's more delicious than a bite size morsel of pizza? Nothing. Seriously, if you find something more satisfying than this let me know, you might also be able to solve global warming and peace in the Middle East. You can find the recipe over at Annie's Eats.

Sammies.

My other regular entertaining snack is also from Annie's Eats, enter the ham and cheese pretzel bites (sorry I forgot to take a picture). Are you sensing a trend? Bite sized treats are the best. It takes a little extra time to make the pretzel dough and boil the finished product, but believe me the hassle is well worth it.

And my final standby snack is the ham and cheese sammies from Tasty Kitchen. Yum. These are insanely easy to make ahead of time and you can just pop them in the oven 15 minutes before your guests arrive.

Enjoy! Look for a future post on some new recipes I tried out when the Bitters came for a visit, there will be cake and carbs!

Cupcake Monday!

So several of my colleagues have advised me Monday should be treat day. After all Mondays all on their own are pretty lame, so why not perk up the start of the work week with some sweet treats? So I've been trying to bring in some sort of goodie on Monday with varying degrees of success. Usually cookies are my treat of choice (see peanut butter, white chocolate, pretzel cookies below) because they are easy to make and transport.

BUT this Monday is a birthday so I threw caution to the wind and made some special cupcakes. Enter chocolate cupcakes with strawberry swiss-meringue buttercream frosting recipe via Pink Parsley Catering. The frosting almost threw me, I had to really crank up the Kitchen Aid to get the right consistency but after a few minutes it was perfect. Stay tuned and I'll let you know what the co-workers think.

Cookies and pizza (mmm sounds good to me)

OK, so this post will include details on two of my favorite bloggers. For anyone who is not acquainted with them already, please meet Picky Palate and THE Pioneer Woman. The recipes I tried out here come from their sites.

Both seem like pretty cool ladies in addition to being light on their feet in the kitchen and rockin' bloggers. Pioneer Woman is a particular favorite of mine. I own her cookbook and recently purchased her new book "From Black Heels to Tractor Wheels." Drop what you are doing right now (drop it!) and go buy her book.

PIZZA.

And now on to pizza and cookies. So this weekend I made an old standby, PW's perfect pizza dough, and tried out PP's newest cookie recipe. The pizza we had for dinner this week and the cookies were for work. Both dishes were wolfed down. The cookies are a perfect combo of sweet and salty -- translation they were extremely addictive.

And since I was feeling particularly adventurous I also decided to make my own pizza sauce. Also tasty and found on Annie's Eats. I am insanely jealous of that blog name by the way.

See the pictures. If one thing is obvious here besides the fact that I'm awesome (kidding, kind of) it's that my photography skills leave a lot to be desired. I'll work on that, in the meantime get crackin' and try these recipes

Cookies