We’ve all made Rice Krispies Treats. They’re easy. They’re delicious. They can be made into snowmen. Well, they can!

However, have you made Cocoa Krispies Treats? I mentioned them when I talked about my great Christmas Bake of ’09, but I wanted to spend a little more time on them. Why? Because they have become a HUGE FAVORITE at the House of Hills. HUGE!

You are basically making Rice Krispies Treats, but using Cocoa Krispies instead. The official recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of butter and 4 cups of mini-marshmallows. I use 4 tablespoons of butter and a bag of mini-marshmallows. (Who wants to measure marshmallows??)

I added one more tbsp butter in process.

These Cocoa Krispies are SO SO SO SO YUMMY! Like seriously! We had them for the first time at a Christmas party and couldn’t stop eating them. They are amazingly addictive. Everyone who has ever had one, can’t stop at one. Have I convinced you yet that you need to try them? You could even show your love with them.

Do you do batch cooking? You know, where you make more than one batch of something and then freeze some. I love batch cooking. I did a guest post for The Finer Things in Life all about it. Jump over there and read what dinners I like to batch cook. There is even a recipe for ZITI! Yummmm…

If you read my menu plan for the week (you all did right?), you would know we were planning to have slow cooker roast sandwiches with cheese last night for dinner.

In the morning, I put the roast in the slow cooker, added a pack of Lipton soup mix, some worcestershire sauce, and salt and pepper. I let it cook all day. It smelled heavenly. When it was tender, I shredded it using two forks and then let it sit in its juices until time to eat.

Later in the afternoon, I whipped up some homemade rolls using the recipe from the $5 cookbook for hot dog buns. The Princess loves those rolls. She calls them “Funky Bread” because when she shapes them they never look like an actual roll. We make them in the bread machine (that I almost got rid of during our great purge – GASP!) and then bake them in the oven. Another divine smell.

When the rolls were done, I sliced them in half. Then I layered on the yummy shredded beef and some monterey jack cheese. I put them on some foil and then on the broiling pan. When they came out, they looked SO YUMMY. It’s hard to tell by the picture, but this was pure yumminess…

Well, I thought it was pure yumminess… My Sweetie – not so much. Oh he ate it, and he enjoyed it, but there were no “Oh honey, this is amazing!” I was thinking it was amazing. I was alone in that thought apparently.

Now, we’ve been married almost twelve years, so this would not be the first meal he didn’t LOVE. However, over the years, he’s become more comfortable letting me know when things could be improved. In a nice way of course. Here’s the thing. He likes really intense flavors. He likes spicy flavors. The Princess and I  – not so much. We’re pretty plain in our flavor love. So while I really enjoyed the beef, he thought it could use a little something more. We tried to figure out what we could add to make it more “something” for him, but we were kinda at a loss.

Then, what appears in my feed reader this morning (I use Google Reader – what do you use?), but a post from the Pioneer Woman. What did she cook yesterday to tell us all about?

DRIP BEEF!! (Which is apparently a different name for what I made last night.)

Seriously!! What are the chances? So, I read her recipe. Ummm… SO MUCH BETTER than mine. Like, SO SO SO much better. Embarrassingly so. (A secret – I almost didn’t even tell you about my miserable attempt.) In fact, she made drip beef two different ways, and they BOTH looked better than mine. And sounded more flavorful too.

So, what does a good wife do? Admit defeat immediately! I tweeted (yes, we tweet each other during the day) My Sweetie and sent him the link. I asked which recipe he would like me to try. He favored the one with the peppers, but said he would try either. You know what makes me mad. We keep a jar of those peppers in the house at all times. My Sweetie LOVES those peppers. Neither of us thought of those last night. **Sigh**

So, while the Pioneer Woman and I were both thinking about beef sandwiches yesterday, only one of us did it well. Go check out Pioneer Woman’s Drip Beef Recipe and let me know which one you would try first. Recipe 1 or Recipe 2?

Whichever recipe gets the most votes in my comments section, is the one I’ll make in a couple weeks. Then, I’ll let you know if My Sweetie likes it better than mine. I’m pretty sure he will.

Muffins, muffins everywhere!!! What do I do with all these muffins that I make? Well, some I give away (I’m taking a dozen of these to church today), some I eat (YUMMY!), some I freeze to eat later (YUMMY later!), and some I freeze to give to a family in need at a later time. Muffins are GREAT for new moms – they’re such a quick snack.

I found a pear bread recipe about a year ago when I bought a basket of produce from a co-op – I was filling in for someone. In the fabulous basket of produce were LOTS of pears. The House of Hills are not big pear eaters so I had to find something to do with them. So I searched and found this recipe. It made two beautiful loaves of bread.

Well, I prefer muffins to bread any day. Easier to freeze. Easier to eat. So, this weekend, I made the bread recipe into muffins. They turned out DIVINE!

I adjusted the baking temperature to 400 and baked for 17 minutes.

You should try them. They are so YUMMY!