My recent cooking achievements

I entered a chili cook-off at Justin's office, PGAV, on my birthday and won 3rd place out of 14! It turns out that first place was a woman who used Eleanor Roosevelt's chili recipe. How cool is that? She definitely earned the right to first place! I actually got 2nd place with my same chili recipe at Progress South Elementary school about 3-4 years ago. I was proud of myself:)

I also chose to make my own birthday cake and I loved it! So did my friend Lori and Justin, who hates chocolate cake:) i got the recipe from the Chocolate Cake Doctor Cookbook and it included making fresh whipped cream and an amazing glaze-like frosting. My only critique was veering from the recipe on the number of layers. I had two, since i only had 2 round cake pans, and next time i will have to buy a 3rd cake pan so we can enjoy one more layer of whipped cream:)

I roasted pumpkin seeds for the first time too! Justin and Anna carved their pumpkin and so I used a simple recipe I found online. All I had to do was separate the seeds from the goop, rinse them, pat them dry and coat them in 2 tsp of butter. Then, I spread them in a thin layer on a cookie sheet and lightly seasoned them with Lawry's seasoning salt and cooked them for about 45 minutes. Voila! They were awesome. I wish I could say Justin loved them too, but he swore that because they were pumpkin seeds, they had to taste like pumpkin and couldn't get his mind around that. Oh well, Anna even liked them!!!!