If you have kids, or want to make an estimation jar for your classroom, office, etc. you can make this St. Patricks Day Rainbow jar!

Supplies:
Colorful candy such as M&M’s and Skittles
Clear Jar such as a mason jar or an old peanut butter jar
Mini marshmallows
Gold packaged candy such as Hershey’s nuggets

How to make:
1. Put the “gold” on bottom
2. Layer the mini marshmallows on top
3. Layer purple, then blue, then green, the yellow, then orange, then red candies until you reach the top.
4. Close the lid
5. Decorate the lid as desired!

How to play the Estimation game:
1. Make everyone estimate how many candies are in the jar
2. The person with the closest estimation wins the St. Patrick’s Day Rainbow Jar!

Even though it wasn’t what I dreamed it to be, I think Allie’s class will be pretty excited to get a present in the mail!

Alb is know as Allie to some, Ms. Raney to others, but Alb to my high school girlfriends and I. One day way back in high school one of our friends started calling her Albany. Then we shortened it to Alb and the name stuck like glue. The same thing happened to Melanie, who is now known as Melb. Pretty solid nicknames I think. Jenna wanted in on this as well, but her nickname of “Nab” just didn’t work like the others.

Anyways, Alb wanted a relaxing birthday celebration so I suggested we have a french themed dinner. Really, I wanted Molten lava cake and she likes France so I figured it would be a good combination. She replies with “let’s make chicken piccatta!” Sounds great to me.

We didn’t realize until the day of that chicken piccata is Italian. And we made a brussels sprout salad that is served at the Italian restaurant where I used to work. Whatever. We had a delicious, gourmet, dinner that was yummy food themed. Who needs a theme anyways?

We were a good team in the kitchen and made a really wonderful meal. My favorite part was obviously the lava cake, but the rest tied for 2nd.

The Table:

The Menu:

Brussels Sprout Salad from Pizza Antica

Chicken Piccata from Ina Garten

Molten Lava Cake

Recipe from Joy of Baking

•  1/2 cup of unsalted butter
• 6 oz. semisweet chocolate (don’t be cheap here-use the good stuff like Ghiradelli’s)
• 3 large eggs, separated
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tbsp. white sugar
• Sprinkle of powdered sugar

You will need some sort of ramekin or large muffin tin to bake this in. Do a good job greasing these with butter so that they slide out smoothly when serving. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Now for the cake. Melt chocolate and butter together in a double-boiler. While it’s melting, start beating your egg yolks together in a medium sized bowl with 1/3 cup of sugar until it’s a pale yellow and fluffy. You can do this by hand or with an electric mixer. Add in the vanilla extract and slowly mix in the melted chocolate mixture. Be sure to beat the whole time as you don’t want the eggs to cook!

In a separate large bowl (or your mixer’s bowl) whip the egg whites until frothy. Add the cream of tartar and continue whipping until soft peaks form. Add in the tablespoon of sugar and whip the mixture until stiff peak forms. With a spatula, slowly fold in the egg white mixture to the chocolate mixture until they are blended together. Scoop into your ramekins and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Once they have a few cracks at the top and look baked on top, pull them out of the oven and let them sit for a few minutes. You want a gooey, runny, center so you can’t do the toothpick test on this one. Take a knife around the edges of the mold, and turn it upside down onto a plate to serve. Sift some powdered sugar on top for a beauuutiful dessert!

This makes 5-6 molten cakes, so I just stuck the leftover mixture into the fridge in an airtight container. I pulled it out over the next two days and made fresh desserts. I highly advise this because it is best when warm and gooey

I had to hold myself back from licking the plate clean.

I think I will plan more dinner parties around this dessert craving, because it turned out pretty nicely if I do say so myself.

Thennnn December rolls around and the word moderation doesn’t exist. The term I’d have to use instead is gluttony.

Pure chocolatebuttercookiescandypeppermintgingerbreadeggnog gluttony.

How can one resist the mounds of treats at the office, the cookies at your holiday cookie swap, or the cocktails at all the holiday events? By the end of the month, I am not even craving sweets, I am just addicted to the sugar and eating it to eat. A full four weeks of that and a Dunn family Christmas vacation to top it all off means it’s time to start fresh. Thank goodness rolling in the new year gives me a newfound strength to stop the eating madness.

I came into work last week and found out I wasn’t the only one that did some hopping around to get into their jeans that morning. My coworkers were feeling the same way, so we after a couple days of complaining about our holiday weight gain, we decided to do a “cleanse”.

This so-called “cleanse” consists of the following:

Day 1 & 2:

• 2 meals of smoothies of choice
• 1 healthy meal of choice
• No processed foods
• No alcohol
• No coffee

Day 3-14:

• No processed foods
• No alcohol
• No coffee (finally something easy for me!)

We all work in the same pod and when our boss got wind of this she was a little concerned. I was too- 5 girls in the same pod, not eating solid food for 2 days during work; could be some major potential crabbiness. But we just moaned and groaned, whined and complained, we laughed at the different shades of brown/green smoothies, and somehow we survived.

Bottom’s up!

We kinda made up the juicing part, and the no processed foods comes from a yoga cleanse that I have done in the past. Here is the basis of it and you can read more about it here (I don’t give up meat though).

I know you are thinking, “no sugar? whaaaaatt?” Guess what. I am crafty. So I am going to create some non-processed treats for me (and you!).

Any other cleansers/dieters out there? Complaints and crabbiness is allowed here.