And The Winner Is….

My cookbook contest has come to end and I want you to know that my spouse made sure that it ran fair and square to the bitter end.  I am happy to announce that the winner of Pioneer Woman’s new cookbook “Food From My Frontier” is Anna! Anna is a brand new subscriber to My Mother’s Daughter and I’ll be pre-ordering her copy through Amazon.com today. We’ll both be getting our books about the same time and I hope to take off a few pounds between now and then so that I can tear through it without counting calories. That would suck the joy out of exploring each and every recipe and I can’t wait to see what PW’s come up with this time around!

It was interesting to hear your comments. It seems that Pinterest is as popular as I thought. Food Network not so much! This surprised me since I’m a total addict but the growing fascination with food blogs is certainly good news and encouraging to folks like me. And, as expected, most of us have some sort of favorite family cookbook that we rely on for meals that are guaranteed to please. I know I have several, they are dog eared and food stained and I would hold on to them for dear life if my house caught on fire and I was on my way out the door with only a few things tucked under my arms. I truly loved hearing from each and every one of you and there will be more contests coming so stay tuned – this was fun!

On Friday night I made a fantastic dish called Brown Butter Chicken Parmesan Linguine. Oh my. This is sheer goodness. I found it on one of my favorite food blogs “How Sweet It Is” so be sure to check out the website, it is full of wonderful recipes that you’ll love.  I’ll be making this recipe often because it wasn’t difficult and I found it to be really satisfying without being too terribly rich. I opened a nice bottle of wine, popped a loaf of french bread into the oven and put a movie I’d been wanting to see into the DVD player. Voila! It was a perfect Friday night.

A dear friend and coworker has been rendered couch bound by her doctor as she counts the minutes until her twin boys arrive some time in the next few weeks.  A group of us at work all got together and packed up lots of meals for Stacy and her husband Trey and I delivered them on Saturday. One of my contributions was a Strawberry & Blackberry Tart. It looks impressive but it’s so easy to make and you’ll definitely want to master it when the spring produce is abundant in the next few months.

In the spirit of celebrating my cookbook event, I whipped up Pioneer Woman’s Flat Apple Pie this morning. I did make some changes and adaptions to the recipe but it’s still Ree’s baby – rustic food at it’s best. We’ll be having a slice tonight with a little ice cream on the side. Did I say something about counting calories???

I have some new ideas up my sleeve for next week so don’t go away for long. And as always, thank you for reading my blog and for sharing my love of food and for what really matters most of all…family 🙂

Happy cooking everyone!

MMD