Midsummer Night's BBQ (Brownie Cheesecake Bars)

Right now, as I write this, I'm sitting down, feeling Hennebaby play soccer in my belly and eating a piece of heaven.  All three things are equally exciting - sitting down, feeling the baby and eating heaven.  In the past less than two weeks, I have taken an unfortunate trip home for my grandmother's funeral, painted a bedroom, worked 6 twelve hour shifts, relocated all the furniture in our house so that we could have our hardwood floors refinished, moved two people and a dog out for a week so that said floors could be completed, moved both people and dog back in, cleaned up after said floors, had two doctors appointments, did 5 loads of laundry, moved all the furniture back and hosted a barbeque for 20 people.  

Today I'm sitting down.  And enjoying Hennebaby dancing the Macarena in there.

It's wonderful.  :-)

On to third exciting thing:  the heaven.  Brownie Cheesecake Bars.  My good friend Liz celebrated her birthday yesterday, and was sweet enough to spend some of it on our deck, getting bitten by bugs and eating my husband's grilled hamburgers.  I wanted to make something special for her, something creamy and delicious and decadent and not too hard, because - let's face it, this pregnant girl was tired.  Since I couldn't reach my cookbooks until it was too late, buried as they were under the dining room furniture stacked in my kitchen, I turned to my handy dandy bookmarked list of desserts, where I found this gem from one of my favorite blogs, Brown Eyed Baker.  How I managed to bookmark this and not make it until this weekend I'll never know.

These bars completed my life.  For realsies.

Spicy Saturday BBQ (Spicy Pork Burgers)

Baby Watch, Day 173:  Last week we found out that Hennebaby is a boy!!  So now it's time to paint the nursery, buy some furniture and start our collection of blue baby blankets.  :-)

In other news:  since putting together our grill last summer, I've been looking for new things to try on it.  Hubby would be content with Bubba burgers and hotdogs, but I was feeling a little creative this Saturday.  We had an impromptu cookout with our besties, and in a mini-panic over what I should make, I turned to the mountainous pile of recipes ripped out of magazines that's been sitting on my kitchen table, waiting to be filed and put again in my Binder O' Recipes.  

Red, White and Blue (Blueberry-Raspberry Crisp)

Happy Independence Day!!  Today we had a little barbecue with the in-laws today.  Knowing that they would supply enough meat to feed the troops, I stopped at the farmer's market on my way home today for some produce.  Red tomatoes, blueberries and raspberries beckoned to me patriotically from the stands.  I decided this was the perfect opportunity to try out a new recipe I found on one of my favorite blogs, Erza Pound Cake - for Southern Tomato Pie.  I'm not going to recreate the recipe here, because she's done it perfectly on her blog already, so head over and check it out.  Even my somewhat veggie-phobic husband told me it should be one of those things I "definitely make again".  Score!!

For dessert, I wanted something quick and easy, something light and simple.  I wanted a crisp.  Remembering the success we had with Apple Cranberry Crisp from my Tate's Bake Shop Cookbook, I opened it up again and on the opposite page found a recipe for Blueberry Crisp.  I subbed out 1/3 of the blueberries for raspberries and - voila - perfection!