Nieman Marcus Cookies

I've made these a couple times. I learned the first time to 1/2 the recipe...and to use a strong mixer (oops, we overheat my mom's old one...).

Ingredients:
2 cups butter
2 tsp. baking soda
5 cups oatmeal, blended into a fine powder in a blender
24 oz. chocolate chips
1 tsp. salt
4 eggs
3 cups chopped pecans
4 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 cups brown sugar
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar, grated
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. vanilla

Instructions:
Measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder. Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder and baking soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar, and nuts. Roll into balls and place 2" apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees.

Chocolate Sauce

Who knew that the Koch's know how to cook? Nice play on words, huh? Saturday night I was invited to "The Guy's House" for dinner with a bunch of other people. Mitch hosted the entire thing, he made chili. But the magic of it all was when Mitch made a chocolate sauce to go on the ice cream. I could have eaten it with a spoon, without ice cream. So here you go...

Ingredients:
2 cubs butter
1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 can evaporated milk
1 box powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Instructions:
Put it all in a pan or pot of some sort on the stove top over medium low heat. Constantly stir until entirely melted and smooth. Serve with whatever you serve with chocolate sauce.

Body Scrub

This is a Martha Stewart recipe that I used to make a homemade Christmas gift for an exchange with my Bible Study group.

Tools and Materials:
2 cups Epsom salt or organic cane sugar
1 cup carrier oil
8 drops essential oil(s)
1 drop food coloring
canning jars

Directions:

1. Stir together Epsom salts or sugar and carrier oil in a bowl, mixing well.
2. Using pipette, add essential oil, 1 drop at a time. Add food coloring, and stir until color is even throughout. Spoon into canning jars.

Epsom salts can be found at a drug store like Longs. I used olive oil as the carrier oil. Essential oils can be found at craft stores like Michaels, just make sure you get an essential oil and not a soap oil. Being as I used olive oil, which has a stronger smell, I ended up using more of the essential oil to cover the scent of the olive oil.

Carrie is the winner that took it home. She says she loves it and that it smells like gummy bears. Humm...

Cheesey Salsa Dip

See that...

It's a dip that Katie makes often. And it's good. And it's bad for you. And it was perfect for the NYE Shindig. And well, it's perfect for every other shindig for that matter.

Ingredients:
1 block/brick/8oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup salsa
1 cup shredded cheese

Instructions:
Mix it all together. Thomas suggests that you don't put it in a nice dish that you care about because it's really hard to scrub out. So use a pie tin or one of those other aluminum disposable tins. Put it in the dish. Optional, add another 1/2 cup or so of cheese to the top. Bake at 375 for 35-45 minutes. Serve with strong tortilla chips.

Yum!