Rolo bites
My mom’s idea of cooking for the holidays is ordering all the food, picking it up, then bringing it to the party. That can get really expensive, so my sister and I said we would make the food ourselves this year and she could pay us. We were only (half) joking about the pay us part… We did manage to make my corn casserole, green bean casserole, stove top stuffing, and these rolo bites on our own and everyone seemed to love it all! My sister also made a turkey and a ham, but I can’t claim that I helped with that at all.
It was extra exciting this year because it SNOWED on Christmas in Dallas. The weatherman said that it hadn’t snowed in Dallas on Christmas for 83 years. I’m so glad my niece and nephew got to have that experience, even though they probably won’t remember it since they are so young.
Ingredients:
Pretzels (the waffle looking ones work best)
rolos
pecans
m&m’s
Put the pretzels on a cookie sheet, put a rolo in the center of the pretzel and put in the oven at 250 degrees for 4 – 5 minutes. 
Add an m&m or a pecan on the top of the semi melted pretzel/rolo.
Put in the fridge for about twenty minutes or so to cool them off. Put on a plate and enjoy!!
Sausage Waffles
One of the gifts from the cookie exchange was the movie Elf with a bottle of syrup. The movie got stolen from me, but I got stuck with the syrup. Since I had syrup, I had to make some waffles. I really liked the idea of making sausage waffles, so I thought I would give it a try and make the people at work try it with me. I think everyone that tried this is now a fan of sausage waffles!
Ingredients:
Waffle mix…I used bisquick and their recipe
Ground sausage
Syrup
Butter
Make the waffle mix
Put Sausage on the waffle iron and then add the waffle mix on top. Cook until brown.
Add butter and syrup and eat!
Box of Chili
It’s December and the weather has been really warm prior to this week. Since I knew it was supposed to get cold, Sunday I decided to make some chili. I have always been afraid to attempt making chili until I heard that you can buy chili in a box. It’s really a lot better than it sounds. It’s actually just the spices in the box and you add all the good stuff to make the chili your own. Let me tell you, this was REALLY easy to make. I highly recommend making some to keep you warm this winter!
Ingredients:
1 box of Carroll Shelby’s Chili Kit (There are other brands out there that I hear are really good, too)
1 8 oz. can of tomato sauce
1 can of diced tomatoes, (drained)
1 can of rotel
2 8 oz. cans of water
1 lb of browned ground beef, (drain fat)
1 lb of browned stew meat, (drain fat)
Add tomato sauce, diced tomato, rotel, water, spice packet, cayenne pepper, and salt packet in to the crockpot and put on high.
While the sauces are cooking, brown the ground beef, drain the fat.
Brown the stew meat, drain the fat.
Add the meat to the sauce mix and cook on high for three hours.
Add the Masa flour (from the kit) and 1/3 cup of water into the crockpot and cook for another 30 minutes. 
Once it’s cooked, put fritos in a bowl, put the chili on top and then add cheese on top of that. YUMMY Frito Pie!
You can also add additional things if you like to make it your own. I just don’t like all the extras, so this is all I added!
Salted Caramel Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies
For the last few years, we have had a cookie exchange with the girls at work. Every year, I try to make my own cookie. Last year, mine turned out so bad that I had to throw them away. It was a really simple recipe, so I’m not sure what possessed me to attempt to make a cookie from scratch this year. I followed the recipe EXACTLY the way that I found it on The Diary of Dave’s Wife website.
We also do a gift exchange at the party. I brought a leopard print santa hat and an iTunes gift card. I LOVE doing white elephant exchanges, but I always stress about what I’m going to bring. I have decided that everyone needs gift cards, so that is going to be my new go to for the future exchanges. At first I got the movie Elf and a thing of syrup in the exchange, but someone ended up stealing that from me. They didn’t want the syrup, so I ended up going home with syrup, a bottle of wine, and a corkscrew with a mustache top.
Ingredients:
3/4 cup unsalted butter, (softened)
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 cups of all purpose flour
2 tsp. cornstarch
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 cup Kraft caramel bits
1/2 cup crushed pretzels
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
cream the butter and sugars together
Add egg and vanilla and blend it all together
Mix the flour, cornstarch, baking soda and salt
Stir in the chocolate chips, caramel bits, and crushed pretzels
Drop the dough on to a cookie sheet. The cookies don’t spread a lot, so you can put them fairly close together. I kind of smooshed them down a little bit on the cookie sheet and then added salt on top of them.
Bake for 8 – 10 minutes or until kind of browned around the edges. (Don’t over bake)
S’mores Bake
There is something about a s’more that puts me in a good mood! I’m not sure if it’s the chocolate or the crispy marshmallows, but either way, they make me happy! Unfortunately, I’m not around a campfire very often, so I rarely get the opportunity to actually make a s’more. I found this recipe on Pinterest that allows you to make a s’more in the oven, so I had to try it out for Thanksgiving. I liked it so much that I’m planning on making it again for my potluck on Wednesday.
Ingredients:
Graham crackers
Cookie Dough
Chocolate
Marshmallows
Line the pan with graham crackers
Cover with cookie dough, (I bought premade cookie dough) Cook this for about 10 minutes at 350.
Put chocolate on top of the cookie/graham crackers
Cover with marshmallows
Cook the whole thing in the oven at 350 until the marshmallows are browned a little – or to taste.
Fabulous after FIFTY 