Coffee Anyone?

Who doesn't love a good, hot cup of coffee? While I prefer my Starbucks over most places and homes, I do love a good cup of coffee in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. I also love my New Jersey Housewives! Which is where I got this great Cinnamon-Hazelnut Biscotti Recipe from! Teresa, from RHONJ, came out with a cookbook last year and I found this recipe and love, love, love it!

Ingredients

3 large eggs, room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup toasted, peeked and coarsely chopped hazelnuts
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar, for kneading

1. preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

2. Whip eggs, granulated sugar, vanilla and Cinnamon in a large bowl with an electric mixer on high speed until thick and pale yellow, about 3 minutes. In another bowl, stir in flour, baking powder and salt together. Stir into the egg mixture to make a stiff, sticky dough. Stir in the hazelnuts.

3. Stick in fridge for 30 minutes to chill.

4. Sprinkle the confectioners' sugar over the work surface. Transfer the dough to the work surface and knead gently until the dough is cohesive and loses its stickiness.
** This is where after making this recipe several times, I change the recipe.
I shape my dough into a large rectangle about 10 inches long and about an inch think. Then I cut across the middle of the dough and then cut strips about 1/2 inch wide.

5. Place them on the cookie sheet and back for 20 minutes!

Enjoy!

What is your favorite Decade?

September has almost come and gone and I have been a busy lady! We had a breakfast promotion at work the first week of September so that kept me going and going. The second week of September was our event week! Due to some changes, we decided to have a Customer Appreciation Week/Decade's Week promotion. Of course, with this comes decorations and some cheap food :) Because I honestly did not realize that this week was coming up so soon, I thought I had another week before this event, I didn't have everything together. While I couldn't go out and solicit great donations and decorations from companies, I could go to Party City and raid their store! The week was planned as the following:

Monday: 50's & 60's Day - .50 Chicken Sandwich
Tuesday: 50's & 60's Day - .60 Small Milkshake
Wednesday: 70's Day - .70 6-Nugget Kid's Meal
Thursday: 80's & 90's Day: .80 8-Nugget Entree
Friday: 80's & 90's Day: .90 Spicy Chicken Sandwich

 

In order to get any of these items at this price, customers had to come in dressed in that particular decade. All employees got to dress up and I even partook in dressing up for 50's, 60's & 70's Day! No pictures though because I am sure I looked ridiculous.

 

** Notice the Peace Signs hanging from the ceiling. NOT ONE STORE in the Atlanta area has anything to do with 70's decorations so I found scrapbook paper, traced a peace sign on the back and cut them out. It had 60 pages in the book, so we glued two together for different designs on each side to make them!

Decorating our large restaurant also took a toll on me that week. We had to decorate on Monday AM (5AM!!), Tuesday night, Wednesday night and take everything down on Sunday. It was definitely not something I recommend. I bought all the decorations from Party City, Wal-Mart and Hobby Lobby and we even made some of the things.  

We hung records, some cut outs and blow up instruments from the ceiling for most of the days. We interchanged the cutouts for other decade themed items. When we moved to 80's & 90's, we removed the records and hung CD's. We also made Rubix Cubes!

           

Rubix Cubes:

1. Get a cardboard box from Hobby Lobby and black spray paint from Home Depot. Spray your box completely black and let dry.

2. Punch a hole in the tops or sides with a metal hole spike (you can get them at Home Depot. Turns out I got my dad a set for Hanukkah last year. Who knew!) and string fishing wire through the holes and tie.

3. Hot glue the tops and the bottom of the boxes together. YOU MUST STRING FIRST!

4. Measure the box, take 1 inch away from the height. Divide by 3 and that is how big your squares need to be! Cut the square out of foam sheets you can get at Hobby Lobby. Hot Glue them to the box!

5. Hang and accept all compliments!

While Decade's Week was fun, I am glad it is over!