My weekend

My dear friend Jae came to visit me last weekend. We always have such a good time together. She’s so easy to talk to and we enjoyed many hours of talking. I am quite lucky to have her as one of the sides of my square (inside reference - sorry).

In her honor, I made a chocolate bar candy cake . I think it is similar to one that my mom used to make when I was younger, so I was hoping to recreate my memory. It turned out pretty good. My only complaint was the icing. I'm not a fan of cool whip and the icing was made with cool whip and cream cheese. If I make the cake again, I think I'll do a different icing - but still include the candy bars. Here’s a picture to make you jealous.

Saturday, we decided we wanted to cook some yummy stuff. So, we enlisted Rominal to smoke some ribs and chicken thighs for us. Here’s a picture of the ribs going on the grill.

And here’s Rominal cutting the finished product up. I love a man who cooks. How sexy is that! The ribs look good babe!I’ve mentioned my new love of parchment paper to my sister and I’ve been asked to explain it a bit further. Here’s why I love parchment paper. You take a nasty looking pan such as this. (And really - how embarrassing that I am showing you my nasty looking pan. Please tell me that everyone has pans, er, I mean a pan like this in their house. Please.)
And then you cover it up with parchment paper. Then add whatever you want to cook. We made my version of smashed potatoes and some veggies. The parchment paper makes everything come out crispy, and it doesn’t leave a mess. And it's easy clean-up! This picture is of the veggies, pre-cooking because the colors are prettier.
Parchment paper - get some!

I’ll finish this entry with a picture of Bailey on the morning that she left us. I'm putting this picture here because it was on my camera when I downloaded all of the other pictures I took this weekend. I’m so looking forward to seeing her next week!