The Charcuterie Board

When you hear that word – charcuterie – do you start getting nervous?

I see pictures of all of these boards for meat and cheese or hot chocolate or roasting marshmallows.

And I get charcuterie-paralysis.

What do I put on it? What cheese should I put on it? Salami or Pastrami? Fruit, no fruit?

Just the thought puts me in a stand still.

Until this past Thanksgiving.

I decided to just do it.

The kids love salami, so I had my husband buy salami. I enjoy goat cheese, so I had him buy two small packs of goat cheese. We had a berry jam and apricot jam so Iput them in small dishes. My mother bought crackers and regular cheese. There were grapes in the house and cherry tomatoes.

That’s when I grabbed a beautiful wooden board and put it on the counter. I filled it with crackers, cheddar cheese, cheddar jack cheese, a small plate with goat cheese, salami, crackers, grapes, and cherry tomatoes. I made sure to have little knives and little spoons. Then, I had to continuously refill the board.

Surprisingly enough, I was the only one who ate the grapes and tomatoes.

After making the charcuterie board, I wondered why I had never done this before. Everyone tried it. They put jam on cracker and cheese. They mixed cheese with the Salami. They ate just salami.

So have you made a charcuterie board? Was it successful? Share your pictures in the comments.

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Wookie Blondies

It’s Christmas. Which means cookie making.

But this year is a little different.

I am on strict orders to stay off my feet as much as possible. This makes cookie making a tough feat with doing the drops and taking pans back and forth to the oven, getting cookies off of the pans, and guarding them from roaming marauding cookie eaters – i.e. the husband and teenaged son.

So this years I decided to make my favorite Christmas cookie – the Wookie Cookie from a Star Wars cookbook – into a bar. And to ensure there would be enough to fit onto a cookie sheet, I combined my recipe with a blondie recipe. The sweetness of the Blondie combined with the cinnamon, semi-sweet chocolate chips, and milk chocolate chips seemed like a good idea.

Oh, and it was.

The blondies are made with brown sugar for a butterscotch-y richness. The cinnamon adds depth of flavor. The two types of chips are simply decadent. When I make this again, I am thinking of adding pecan or walnut bits to offset the richness and give the cookie a little more crunch.

Try the recipe and tell me what you think.

Wookie Blondies

1 cup butter – soft or melted

1 cup brown sugar

2 eggs (room temp if you want)

2 t vanilla

2 1/4 cup flour

2 t cornstarch

1/2 t baking powder

1 t salt

1 t cinnamon (add more if your really like cinnamon)

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1/2 cup milk chocolate chips

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees

Start with butter and brown sugar, mix till smooth

add eggs, stir

add vanilla, stir

add salt, cornstarch, baking powder, and cinnamon, then stir

add chips, stir

add flour. stir

spray or place parchment paper on your cookie sheet

spread mixture onto your pan, making sure every corner is filled

Bake for about 25-30 mins. (mine were good at the 25 min mark but everyone’s oven is different.)

Cool, cut, enjoy!

Mkae sure to comment below how your version of the Wookie Blondie turned out