Just One More Winter Meal (hopefully)

One of my favorite meals in the winter is chili and cornbread. It doesn't take a terribly long time to make and I love the way it simmers on the stove and smells so good. Even though the last couple of days have been nice and warm --I even mowed the lawn for 4 1/2 hours yesterday-- today it has snowed and rained for the majority of the day. I figured that I could make this meal one more time before spring (wishful thinking really, I am ready for spring!)

When we were married my husband informed me that he didn't like cornbread!?! I couldn't believe it, who doesn't like cornbread? Just kidding, but I was on a quest to find a recipe that we both like. I love to try new recipes and move on, but this one is a keeper! I have used this same recipe for the past several years. It is the BEST!!! (no offense to anyone else who also makes the BEST cornbread).

It is a sweet cornbread which I think balances out the spice of the chili very nicely. Try it, and let me know what you think.

The BEST Cornbread

1/2 cup butter, melted (no substitutions, really why would you want to?)

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 cup cornmeal

1 1/2 cup flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cup milk

Mix butter, sugar and eggs. In a separate bowl combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt. Add to the butter mixture, mix just until combined. Add the milk 1/2 cup at a time. The mixture will be quite runny. Pour into a greased 9" pan. Bake at 375 for 40 minutes or until golden brown on top.

We make two pans at a time at our house, and eat it all!

Please excuse my food photography, I am definitely not an accomplished food photographer.

Teacher Gifts Courtesy of Blogland

Tomorrow is the last day of school before Christmas. I am excited to have my children and husband home with me. I have seen some great ideas all over blogland for teacher gifts. This is what I chose to do.
Obviously, the "M" jar holds pencils (this will be given along with a bag of cookies to my older kids' teacher), the "H" jar is filled with cookies (this is for our principal), and the "W" is filled with lifesavers for my husband. Since high-school teachers rarely receive gifts from their students, I figured that I would take care of that.

The jar ideas are courtesy of My Mix of Six (her pictures are MUCH better than mine).

I can't remember where I saw the recipe for these cookies...if you recognize it, let me know. I would love to link to it and give her credit; she has a great tutorial with pictures.

I only have the recipe and a couple of notes, bear with me it is long but not actually difficult:

Perfect Chocolate Mint Cookies

3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 T water
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 eggs
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp. salt
36 Andes Mints

Melt butter, brown sugar, water over low heat, add chocolate chips and stir. When partially melted, remove pan from heat and continue to stir until the mixture is smooth. Let cool for 10 minutes (15 for a double batch). Pour into a mixing bowl and mix in eggs, and then dry ingredients.

Refrigerate cookie dough for 1 hour (the original poster said that she doesn't refrigerate hers, mine was a little soft to roll into balls; I think that it would work well to refrigerate it for about 20 minutes.) Roll the cookie dough into balls (I used my cookie scoop from Pampered Chef). Place on un-greased cookie sheet (I used my stoneware pan) about 2 inches apart. Bake 8-10 minutes at 350.

While the cookies are baking, unwrap your mints and cut them in half. (I couldn't find the mints so I tried the Andes mint chips, although they taste great, I wouldn't recommend them. It was a hassle!!) Place one mint on each cookie immediately after removing them from the oven, let sit for 5 minutes and then gently spread the mint/chocolate mixture to form an "icing".

Yum, Yum, Yummy!