puppy chow

Seriously addicting!

You'll need:

• 1 12 oz box of Chex cereal (12 Cups)
• 1 12 oz bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 3/4 C peanut butter
• 1.5+ C powdered sugar

What you'll do:

In a large sauce pan (I use a stock pot) over low heat, melt the chocolate chips. Stir in the peanut butter. Once smooth, remove from heat and add the cereal. Gently stir the cereal to coat it with the chocolate/peanut butter mixture. After it's coated, dump half of the powdered sugar into a gallon ziploc bag. Dump the cereal into the ziploc bag, and then dump the rest of the powdered sugar on top. Seal the bag and shake it to coat the cereal with powdered sugar. You may have to add more powdered sugar. At some point, it's usually easier to dump the cereal into a plastic container that you'll store it in - save room in the container to shake it up some more. You'll want to use a spoon to break up any huge chunks of cereal so it can all be coated evenly. That's it!

cream cheese pickles

Yes, really. These are perfect for the holidays since they're red and green, but they're great all year too! I'm not sure the first time I had these, they're very 80s to me, kind of like Porcupine Balls.

Anyway, the recipe!

You'll need:
2 - 32oz jars whole dill pickles (or so - it depends how many you want to end up with) (it works better if you don't get the super gigantic pickles)
1 - 8oz brick cream cheese
3 - 2oz packages thiny sliced lunch meat (I use those 80 cent packages of Carl Budding)

What you'll do:

Let the cream cheese come to room temperature so it is spreadable. Drain 1 jar of pickles and lay them between a few layers of paper towels to absorb the surface moisture. On a cutting board, place two slices of meat side by side, overlapping a few inches. Spread the meat with a layer of cream cheese (don't be too thin with the cream cheese, but don't go overboard either or the pickle will fall out). Place the pickle on one end of the meat and roll it up. Slice off the ends of the rolled pickles (you can eat those yourself, you deserve it) and then slice the remaining pickle and place them on a serving tray.

1 pickle makes approximate 5 half inch slices.