The holiday season is upon us and I don’t know about you guys, but for my family that means Gram’s world famous pumpkin bread. My Gram has been making pumpkin bread for our family for as long as I can remember. This year she’s planning on backing about 15 pumpkin breads and 10 cakes for Thanksgiving. Everyone in the family is really looking forward to this, but I’m sure my Gram isn’t. For the past ten years she’s been making her pumpkin bread in a KitchenAid mixer that has been starting to become run down. I was telling my Gram about this cool Hamilton Beach® Stand Mixer that I saw on the Hamilton Beach website and she got jealous!

The Hamilton Beach® Mixer is much better than the one that she has. It has more power, more capabilities, more attachments, and on top of that, it looks better. It’s available in six delicious colors - sugar, ultramarine, apple, pineapple, sterling and licorice. The Hamilton Beach® Eclectrics® Mixer is also priced to be affordable. Since my gram has decided to make so many treats for my family for Thanksgiving, I think we should all chip in to buy her a brand new Hamilton Beach® Mixer for Christmas.

I hate the stove in my kitchen so much. It’s the kind of stove that should have one of those range hoods, except it doesn’t. So usually when we cook with oil or anything else for that matter, it splatters all over everywhere, including the wall above the range. I don’t know why, but for some reason that really irks me. I see a lot of great range hoods that would be so perfect in our house. I don’t know why we don’t have one. I think if we bought a newer, more up to date stove, we would probably buy the range hood with it, but since ours didn’t come with one we never really bothered. That’s too bad, because I think they look awesome!

I have some news that is sure to be music to the ears of most women. Researchers have found another reason for us to love chocolate. OK, so this time it’s not candy, but instead it’s cocoa. Chocolate is chocolate. I’ll take it any way I can get it. Is cocoa even considered chocolate? LOL. It kind of tastes like chocolate if you buy the one made by Hershy’s and you make it with milk. I’m probably reaching, but I’ll take what I can get. Anyway.

Some may see a cup of tea as soothing but chocolate is more likely to lower one’s blood pressure, German researchers reported on Monday.

Foods rich in cocoa appear to reduce blood pressure but drinking green and black tea may not, according to an analysis of previously published research in the Archives of Internal Medicine, published by the American Medical Association.

Brownies might just be my favorite snack. Here’s a quick and easy recipe for amazing brownies. Don’t forget, brownies should be chewy, not hard. They will harden as they cool, so don’t over bake them!!

Here’s what you’ll need:
1 brownie mix (for 9×13 pan)
1 cup caramel apple dip
1 cup chopped pecans

Preparation:
Prepare brownie batter according to directions on box. Spread half the batter in greased 9×13 pan. Warm caramel dip in microwave until it is pourable (20-30 seconds). Drizzle a layer of caramel over brownie batter, staying 1 inch away from pan sides. Cover with chopped pecans, if desired. Spoon remaining brownie batter over caramel, spreading carefully to cover. Bake about 35 minutes.

I don’t know about you guys, but I usually hate using cutting boards because they’re so big and heavy and hard to clean. Well, there’s a really cool product that will replace those. It’s called the Epicurean Cutting Boards.

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