Whole Wheat Blueberry Pancakes

The one thing I absolutely love about my work schedule is that once a month I have a 4 day weekend. These weekends are often spent visiting friends and family that live in different states. This long weekend was spent at my parents', helping with some gardening and a little furniture building. My dad is amazing at what he does with some plain boards and a few screws. I have a long list of birthday and Christmas presents that I am anxious for him to build me. What can I say? I'm a spoiled only child.

One thing that has always been a part of weekends at my parents' is sitting down for a family breakfast on weekends. While I continue to make delicious breakfasts almost daily, there is something special about the times I can still do this with my parents. I guess I am getting sentimental in my old age.

This morning, before I set off on my 7 hour drive home, my dad whipped up a batch of these delicious pancakes while I attempted to gather my belongings that seemed to have spread across my parents' entire house.

Bourbon Croissant Bread Pudding

I am excited to be off work today. I have nothing to do all day except relax on my porch swing and read a good book.

Since I have no reason to put effort into anything today, there is no reason not to add a little something  extra to my breakfast. Who ever said that you can't have bourbon for breakfast? It just requires a little creativity.

Salted Caramel Milkshakes

Some  days just call for a special treat. Especially those days that are already over 80 degrees in the beginning of April and you decided to turn on your oven and make your kitchen close to 100 degrees. Plus I have that salted caramel sauce in the fridge that has to be used up.

This milkshake seemed like a great use of some of that caramel sauce.

Salted Caramel Sauce

It's been one of those days. Most days I love my job and working with children is an amazing experience. Not so much today. Let me tell you. Four year olds can be VIOLENT. Not just mean, down right violent.

Today, I dodged chairs flying at my head, broke up fist fights, and have teeth marks in my arm. I also had my death described to me in detail while trying to convince a 4 year old to just lay still on her cot at nap time.

Today I deserve the Redbox movie I rented, the pint of Ben & Jerry's Half Baked, and the pizza that I picked up on my way home. Even though it is filled with brownies and cookie dough, it just wasn't enough to erase my day, it needed more. So I whipped up a small batch of salted caramel sauce to pour all over it.

Salted Caramel Sauce can improve anybody's bad day. You. Must. Try. It.

Warm Lemon Pudding Cake

Today may not be the first official day of spring, but it was certainly the first day that has felt like spring. And I was lucky enough to have this beautiful day off work. The weather was perfect and I spent the majority of the day outside, on my porch swing reading the second book in the Vampire Academy series. Nothing like an easy read for a lazy day.

While eating lunch, I happened to be looking through the April edition of Cook's Illustrated and came across their recipe for Lemon Pudding Cake. While I'm sure their  recipe was dead on, it also involved a lot of steps, which in turn would result in a lot of dishes having to be washed. So I did what all great cooks do, I improvised and skipped a bunch of steps that didn't seem necessary. My cakes turned out very lemony and perfect pudding-to-cake ratio.