I am always so impressed with the effort that goes into food gifts this time of year. Ellaborate trays of cookies, breads of all kinds, gingerbread houses… bakers are busy in the kitchen cooking up things to give to others. A gift of homemade goodies, in my opinion, is a true gift of love.

I think I am going to do an assortment of pumpkin bread, cookies and something a bit different this year. My closest friends are going to get a pan of Caramel Rolls. I read about this idea last year, but with using your favorite cinnamon roll recipe. Purchase several alumnimum round cake pans and whip up a few batches of your favorite cinnamon roll dough. Roll and slice the dough and place 6 rolls each in the round cake pans. Tightly cover and freeze. When you are ready to gift your cinnamon rolls, take them out of the freezer, wrap in clear plastic wrap, decorate the packaging as you wish and attach instructions for thawing and baking on a card. Your friends will love the idea of having home baked goodness given to them to bake fresh in their own oven. Imagine how nice it would be to wake up to hot cinnamon rolls on Christmas Day without the effort of actually making them.

What food gifts are you giving your friends and neighbors this year? I would love to hear your ideas!

Mom’s Caramel Rolls (from Sidd on Recipezaar)

First, a couple of notes. These are the best caramel rolls I have ever tried! Buttery and delicious and full of sweet ooey gooey caramel flavor. I halved the recipe since it was just for my family and did all of the work in the bread machine. I took out the dough and then followed the rolling and baking instructions from there. I got 10 large rolls.

2½ hours | 2 hours prep

SERVES 18

I made homemade fortune cookies today. I know…fortune cookies are probably not something that most people are spending time in their kitchen whipping up two days before Thanksgiving. I had a thought though… I wanted to somehow give all of our guests at Thanksgiving dinner an opportunity to be reminded of the blessings in their life. So, what I have done is emailed everyone and have asked them to send me one or two things that they are especially thankful for this year. Then, I’m going to create a “fortunate cookie” for them specifically to open before our meal. Each individual fortune will have something specific to do with what they are thankful for. Isn’t that fun?

I have a lot to be thankful for this year. My family, for one, including the surprise unexpected little family member that will be joining us in May. We live in a nice home and really are blessed that we don’t want for much of anything. My kids go to good schools and have caring teachers. I am able to stay at home to raise the kids and my husband has a good job that allows me to do so. I have wonderful friends, including those of you who have supported my blog over the last couple of years.

Something else I am greatly thankful for is the number of opportunities that have come my way since beginning my blog. I have been given the opportunity to write for some wonderful organizations and to have the ability to do something I love and get paid for it is icing on the cake.

The Right@Home Community

I’d like to take this moment to tell you about a new opportunity I am very thankful for. I was recently contacted by The SC Johnson Company to be a guest blogger on their community site, Right@Home. I will be joining three other very talented bloggers in contributing to regular articles which will be featured within their community. My contribution to Right@Home will be within their Food/Recipe section. I am being joined by:

Amy Clark of The Motherload (and several other fab blogs!): Amy Clark created Mom Advice online that contains articles on frugal living, saving money, work-at-home opportunities, inexpensive recipes and tips for organizing life. One part of Mom Advice is Amy’s blog, The Mother Load, where she posts on everything from parenting advice to fun family activities and things to do around the home.

Cathe from Just Something I Made: Cathe writes and works from home in Petaluma, California as a graphic designer, mother of three and wife. Cathe blog, “Just Something I Made” is about one of her biggest passions, crafting for the home. Cathe has also appeared on Design Mom as a guest blogger.

Sarah from Organize Your Life: Sarah pens this blog as a stay-at-home-mom of 2-year-old Maddie. She has been married to her husband, Trevor, for six years. She is the co-creator of the Daily Home Planner, the only software program designed by a mom to help other moms get their families organized, and also manages www.organizedmom.net.

The Right@Home Community is perfect for anyone wanting to make their home a better place. With great product tips, organizing advice, recipes and more, there is something waiting there for each of you! I hope you will join the community and keep an eye out for my upcoming feature posts.

Oh! Do you want the fortune cookie recipe? It is just one of the many treasures I found over at the Right@Home site. Click here to check it out

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! May you always have plenty to be thankful for.

The most recent cover article I did for Her Life Magazine was about a young man named Jeffrey Owen Hanson. The article mostly focused on his mom, Julie… an amazing woman who has the desire to give to others more so than anyone I have ever personally known.

I don’t want to give the story away here, but I’ll give you a brief wrap up. Jeff was diagnosed at age 6 with a rare genetic disorder called Neurofibromatosis. Jeff is now legally blind, but during part of his chemo and radiation treatment for a tumor on his optic nerve, Jeff found a hidden talent in painting and a passion for helping others. Jeff’s work has gotten noticed from people all around the world, including Sir Elton John.

Please click here to take a look at Jeff’s website (and make sure to read about Jeff’s Bistro)… his story is so inspirational. He has some gorgeous notecards for sale as well as a 2008 calendar benefiting charities close to his heart.

So, why am I blogging about Jeff today? Well, Jeff’s mom, Julie is a stay at home mom, but her work as a stay at home mom goes beyond what most of us would say is in our typical “job description.” Julie’s day is spent managing Jeff’s charity work and his commissioned canvas sales. She is trying to get the word out about his calendars, she is filling orders, she is on the phone from dawn to dusk managing this “foundation” all by herself. Her days are very happy and full doing her part to help raise money for the charities that are meaningful to their family… all this with a monetary paycheck of nothing.

When Julie has a rare free moment, would you like to know how she spends her time? She spends it baking… a hobby she loves to do. She bakes as often as she can and then…this is what I love so much about her… she gives her baked goods to others. She always wants to have something on hand. A loaf of bread to surprise someone just because. A batch of cookies to take to the community center. She surprises people randomly with her baked goods often.

I have always had an admiration for people who perform Random Acts of Kindness. I remember being at the drive through window with my mom and watching her give extra money to the cashier to buy the car behind us ice cream cones. Random or not, acts of kindness make us feel good and they definitely can turn another persons bad day around.

With the economy the way it is, and people suffering so, can you imagine how nice it would feel to be the giver and the recipient of something unexpected? Randomly pay for someones lunch. Buy something off of a strangers Amazon Wish List and have it sent to them. Bake up some baked goods and take them around to people you care about. Just do something… small or big, practice acts of kindness as often as you can.

For the next Taste of Home giveaway, I would like to hear what you have done or plan on doing to pass on kindness to others. Leave a comment after this post with the details of your act. Only comments sharing this information and with a valid email address will be a part of the random drawing. The deadline to comment is midnight CST on Wednesday, November 26th. There will be two winners… one for Light & Tasty Annual Cookbook from 2004 and one for the Taste of Home Low Fat Country Cooking.  Thanks again to Kate from Kate in the Kitchen for her act of kindness in sharing these wonderful cookbooks with you.

Pumpkin Bread

1 (16 oz.) can pumpkin

1 2/3 cups sugar

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

4 large eggs

3 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon baking powder

1. Move oven rack to low position so that tops of pans will be in center of oven. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 2 loaf pans.

2. Mix pumpkin, sugar, oil, vanilla, eggs in large bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients. Pour into pans.

3. Bake loaves for 50-60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans.

I do not remember ever having a meal at home that included seafood when I was growing up. My mom made a lot of delicious meals, but I never recall having shrimp, salmon, cod… any of that. My husband, growing up on a cattle farm, was the same way. Everything was meat and potatoes. He never had seafood growing up except maybe during Lent and for that they would go to a little town nearby for some fish at a restaurant (Masonville, IA… the best fried fish around. YUM!).

My husband and I love seafood. In fact, if we are going out to a nice dinner, a seafood restaurant would top our choice of places to go. Cooking seafood is one of my favorite things to cook. My kids love it, I love it, hubby loves it. We have become quite the fish family.

Of course, living in the midwest is nothing like what some of you experience living on the coast. Fresh seafood is not something that is readily available at a price I can afford. A lot of the fish we buy comes frozen from Costco. Either way, we do with what we can get our hands on and enjoy to experiment with different varieties and flavors.

I am slowly but surely building up my seafood recipe repitoire. In fact, I imagine that a lot of the recipes my kids will remember when they grow up have something to do with seafood. That is what I love about family recipes… they can be from the past generations, the current generations and then what the future generations take and do with them. The family recipe box is ever expanding!

What is your favorite family recipe? Do you think it could win you a $1000 Williams Sonoma gift card? How much would you love it if your favorite family recipe won you that coveted KitchenAid mixer you’ve had on your wish list forever? The Viva Diva Family Recipe contest is going on now. Remember to enter your favorite family recipe and you could possibly be one of the big winners! Head over there now before the rush of the holidays gets the best of you… you can enter until December 15th. Good luck!

Side note - you have until tomorrow night to win one of two Taste of Home annual cookbooks from a giveaway partnership between Kate from Kate in the Kitchen and I. Go to this post to enter to win.

Parmesan Crusted Tilapia (from Recipezaar.com)

(OK - small world time… just found out that the submitter of this recipe on Recipezaar was a Zaar user named Mommy Makes. Mommy Makes happens to be none other than Katie over at Chaos in the Kitchen! All this time I never made the connection that the two people were the same.)

25 min | 5 min prep

SERVES 2

OK - Kate has so many Taste of Home cookbooks to give away! As promised, some of our giveaways are going to be quickies. Here we go…!

The first person to comment on this post (and keep in mind that some comments if the person is commenting the first time go into moderation, so I’ll have to check times) will be the winner of the Taste of Home Annual Cookbook from 2002.

The comment must include the correct name and correct age of Kate’s son (the handsome cutie pictured above seen holding his baby cousin).

The answer can be found in Kate’s Blog, Kate in the Kitchen.

Ready? Set? Go!

Bummed that you weren’t the first to comment with the right answer? Don’t fret… you can still win! We have lots more to give away and our first giveaway is still going on over at this post.

Sign up to have Dine & Dish delivered to your email inbox to receive the latest news right away! See the right hand sidebar to sign up!

Strawberry Cream Cookies

I started the Dine & Dish blog in November 2006. Back in my beginning blogging days, I was a very eager, typical new blogger. I cooked and posted on my blog almost every single day. I spent hours reading through blogs and learning the ropes, so to speak. I spent a lot of time networking with other bloggers, reading through magazines getting ideas of what I could blog about, and generally working on an attempt to build my blog up to be one with a decent reputation in the blogging world. Of course, back then, there weren’t as many food blogs as there are today. The network was quite a bit smaller and seemed a little easier to navigate.

Some of the bloggers I feel the most connected to today are ones who I met when I first started blogging. One person, in particular, is my friend Kate over at Kate in the Kitchen. Kate and I first connected on a crazy whim. Being a new blogger, I had over eagerly committed on my blog (and in a published letter to the editor of Food & Wine) to try the Food & Wine 100 Must Try Tastes. Soon after I posted this ambitious goal, I got an email from Kate saying that she was going to try the same thing. We had an immediate connection with common goal and eventually grew to become friends beyond blogging. (I must note that I quit the Food & Wine challenge part way through… some of the items were extremely expensive and impossible to get my hands on living in the Midwest. I was naieve, to say the least!)

Kate is one of those people who has managed to stay true to herself with her blog. She is a talented writer, an excellent and creative cook, and has a genuinely warm heart that comes through in all that she does. She hasn’t fallen prey to what I call the “blogging game” and has managed to still be successful. I admire her a lot for her ability to balance and to keep her blog organic to who she is.

Kate has generously offered up TEN cookbooks from the Taste of Home Annual Cookbook collection for me to give away on my blog. TEN cookbooks! That means over the next couple of weeks you will have the chance to add some of the best Taste of Home cookbooks to your collection.

For this first giveway we are giving away the Taste of Home Annual cookbooks from 2000 and 2001. There are going to be two winners for this particular drawing. All you need to do to be entered in the giveaway is leave a comment on this post. You must include a valid email address… just makes sense so we can get a hold of you if your name is drawn from the Random Number Generator.  It would be great if you would head over to Kate’s as well and give her a shout out… tell her thanks for offering up these great books! While you are there, stop and browse a little but be prepared to have your bookmarks locked and loaded to go… she has a lot of great recipes you’ll want to save to try!

Comments must be left by midnight on Friday, November 21st. Winner will be notified on the next day.

Oh - and stay tuned. You never know when a new giveaway for some of the other cookbooks might pop up. To keep abreast of it all, make sure to subscribe to Dine & Dish by email or follow me on Twitter. Some of the giveaways are going to be quick, and some may last a little longer… you will want to be the first to know!

This recipe is from the Taste of Home Best & Loved Cookies and Bars cookbook that is on newstands now. Delicious!

Strawberry Cream Cookies from Taste of Home

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 package (3 ounces) cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• Seedless strawberry jam

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg yolk and vanilla. Add flour and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour or until easy to handle. Shape dough into 1-in. balls. Place 2 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Using the end of a wooden spoon handle, make a 1/2-in.-deep indentation in the center of each ball; fill with about 1/4 teaspoon jam. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes or until set. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 5 dozen.

I have been contemplating going to BlogHer 2009 which I was so excited to find out is in Chicago this year. Last year I was on vacation (if you call being in a hurricane a vacation) when BlogHer occurred so I didn’t make it. This year, of course, I will have a 2 month old baby. I have been weighing my options to figure out if BlogHer 2009 could really be feasible considering how my life will be at that point.

I called my sister to see if she would be willing to go with me. She could watch the baby for me, hang out in Chicago, while I attended the conference. Since I will still be nursing, she could bring me the baby when that needed to happen and all would be well. Then I thought about how you look and feel at month two post baby. Tired, fat, flabby, pudgy, leaky, etc. Would I really want to meet some of the people I have known through blogging for the first time in real life while I was a walking pudge ball? Then I thought… I could use BlogHer as my excuse to not gain much weight and to get back into shape after the baby is born. That could be my motivation.

Well, I’m here to say I really want to go to BlogHer, but in order to do that I am going to have to give up two of my main food staples right now… Wendy’s French Fries and Caramel Corn Puffs. Seriously, one cup of these caramel corn puffs has enough fat and calories in it to instantly make my rear the size of Texas. But, they are soooo addicting… if you like that sweet / salty combo, then these fat inducing snacks are so worth it.

I have a choice to make now… continue enlarging my rear or meet you all at BlogHer. Stay tuned to see the outcome!

Addictive Caramel Corn Puffs

I have been thinking a lot about family recipes lately. The other day I called my mom for the millionth time asking her to repeat her spaghetti and meatballs recipe to me. I know most of it by heart, but I like calling her to hear her version of it, just to make sure I have it exactly right. I then end up writing it down on a post it note or on the back of an envelope, usually never to be seen again.

My sister recently went through a divorce…in fact her divorce was final at the end of October. It is hard for me to write about because it is still so fresh and personal with all of us. I have known her now ex-husband since they started dating when I was 14 years old. I looked up to them both and felt like they had the “perfect marriage”. As things often are, what appears to be reality often isn’t. I love my sister and hate that she has had to go through this pain…a pain that I know she never envisioned being a part of her life. Even though the marriage has ended between the two of them, some wonderful things have come out of their relationship. I have a nephew who is incredibly talented, brilliant, witty and wonderful. I also have a niece who is loving, beautiful, compassionate and smart. We have lots of great memories, laughs and family moments that will always be in our heart. And, last but not least, our families have swapped some pretty tasty recipes.

What would our birthday parties be like without his great-grandma’s sugar cookie recipe or our grandmother’s homemade ice cream recipe? I have several emails from his mom sharing family recipes that I have asked for. Not to make light of the situation, but if these two families didn’t unite at some point in history, our recipe boxes would be void of some great tasting things.

The Viva Diva Cafe (home of Viva paper towels) is hosting a great family recipe contest on their website and they have asked me to be one of the judges when the contest has closed. The prizes are fantastic… top prize is a $1000 gift certificate to Willams Sonoma. 2nd prize, a KitchenAid Professional 600 series mixer and a set of OXO utensils. 3rd prize is an Apple iPod Nano 8GB and JBL On Stage II Speaker System.To enter, all you need to do is register with The Viva Diva Cafe (which seriously takes less than a minute) and then enter your favorite family recipe. Whether it is one passed down from generation to generation within your own family, or a recipe snagged up from a relationship lost, head on over to The Viva Diva Cafe and share it with us.

The recipe I am sharing with you today is not one that has been passed down from generation to generation in my family, but the cup and saucer shown have a story to go along with this post. My sister, one evening feeling hurt and angry about the divorce, decided to take her wedding china out to her back porch and have a little therapy session with it. She put a blanket down on the concrete porch and began throwing pieces of her china against her homes brick wall watching the pieces fall into the blanket (which I thought was brilliant… much easier to clean up!). After she broke the first setting, she called me feeling much better and explained to me what she was doing. I, being the sensitive sister that I am, applauded her for finding a way to let out her aggressions and then thinking of the most important thing first said… “Ummmm, if you are just going to be crashing your china against the wall, would you mind saving out a place setting for me for my food photography photos?” Yep… you can call me Mrs Sensitive if you want.

Chai Tea Latte (from Simple and Delicious Magazine, October 2008)

15 min | 5 min prep

SERVES 2