Red Velvet Wisdom

Today was for me the first party of the holiday season.  It starts with Halloween and before you know it we will be drinking eggnog and singing carols.  But for this weekend, it’s all about being scary, eating so much candy your belly hurts, and of course, parties.  If you haven’t read it before on here, I work with children who reside in a psychiatric treatment center, and they can’t always get out and about for holidays, so we do our best to make sure they have a good time with a haunted house, trick or treating, costumes, and a party.  I have been elected  the party planner at work, and lucky for me we have a catering department to help out!  We chose finger foods and of course cupcakes for the kids.  Ms. Karen who works in the kitchen is sweet enough to take the time make these goodies for our kids so they have a good time.

pigs, i mean fingers in a blanket

pinwheels that doubled as bone slices

As you can see we had some fun with the names of our food, and I made some cute little cards for the food using a little cardstock and some scrapbooking tags.  Look out Martha, once again I am out for your job!

We also had a bit of fun with the punch by adding in some cute skull and bones ice cubes.  We made sure to have regular and sugar free witches blood.

Not a bad start to the party season at all!  We are excited to have blast at Thanksgiving and Christmas too!

A few weeks ago some friends of mine decided to have a potluck at our friend Bev’s house.  I pondered about what I should take, and decided early on that I wanted to take some sort of dessert.   My friend Sergio mentioned that he was making enchiladas, so my mind wandered back to some Mexican cheesecake that Dena had made before, and I settled on making that.   I vaguely remembered what it tasted like, and I had honestly forgotten how yummy it was until I made it.  It’s so good.  It’s the kind of food you can just stand there and eat on until your stomach hurts and you hate yourself.  Not that I have ever done that.  Don’t judge me!

Ingredients

• 2 cans of crescent rolls
• 2 pkgs of cream cheese, softened
• 1 3/4 cup of sugar
• 1 stick of room temperature butter
• 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup of honey

Heat oven to 350 (maybe slightly higher depending on your oven).  In a large mixing bowl, cream together 2 packages of cream cheese, 1 cup of the sugar, and the vanilla.  In a 13×9 inch baking dish, roll out on can of crescents into one large rectangle.  Pour cream cheese mixture evenly over the crescent rolls.  Roll out the second pack of crescent rolls and place them on top of the cream cheese.  In a separate bowl, mix butter, cinnamon, and the remaining sugar together, and spread that over the top layer of the crescent rolls.  Place in the oven and bake until golden brown, probably about 25-30 minutes.  Drizzle with honey as soon as you take it out of the oven.  Allow it to cool completely in the pan and then cut it into squares and serve.