| Happy Sunday friend! How has your weekend been going? Restful? Happy? Productive? Have you been doing some cooking? I sure hope so! I've been busy on a project on the website and I hope it will really be helpful to you as we go along! I'll tell you more about it later, but for now, it's a pretty big project. But let's get on to the FOOD! This week at Loaves and Dishes, we've been busy with this project - updating all of our older recipes! You'll find the oldy and goodies like Potato Cheese Soup (it really is a great in a bread bowl!) This Cheesy Meatball Bake is easy and delicious and you won't be sorry to have it as a side dish or as a main dish, either one! This Zesty Drunken Chicken will remind you of a Bourbon Street Chicken, you can make it as a marinade or cook the chicken right in the sauce in the oven, either one! Sarah's Chocolate Covered Strawberries have been going great gangbusters on YouTube, you can go check those out any time you like! _______________________________ HOT COOKING TIP OF THE WEEK Recently I was asked to prepare a veggie tray for a party. Another guest was also asked to prepare one. The other guest picked up a tray from the grocery store, removed the plastic film from the tray and from the dressing. That's it. I noticed that the grocery store tray offered VERY LARGE cuts of broccoli, cauliflower, dried out carrots and broccoli. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to bite into such a large piece of broccoli at a party and how it doesn't taste very good? Here's some tips on preparing veggie trays. - For harder veggies, it's best to blanche them to give them some color, moisten them and give them flavor. To blanche, get some salted water or broth boiling. Dip the veggies into the boiling water for about 20 seconds. Then plunge into an ice bath. Dry the veggies on a papertowel and then place into your veggie tray.
- Cut all veggies to smaller bite sized pieces. This helps the guests to consume a reasonable size veggie.
- Offer toothpicks or a way to pick up the veggies without having to dig your fingers into the tray.
- Offer fresh dressings. It's easy to make your own.
- Take note of the cauliflower, often there are black or brown spots on the cauliflower. Cut those spots off.
- It's easy to set the veggies on a nice looking tray with a small bowl for the dip. Take these extra steps to give your veggie tray a special look and feel.
_________________________________ THREE LITTLE THINGS Trying to remember to be thankful for the little things in life to remind me to be thankful for the larger things in life too. - Thankful for the short two person play I got to see on Friday night. It was well done and was on a topic that I need to continue to be more educated about: Black History Month. I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn.
- Grateful for the frustrating person who answered the phone at an H&R Block office this week. It gave me the opportunity to practice my patience.
- Thankful for the invitation to the zoo with my grandson this week, I couldn't go but his invitation was so sweet!
__________________________________ A FINAL WORD Recently, Loaves and Dishes was hit with the "Helpful Content Update" by Google. This doesn't mean a thing to you, probably. Anyway, Google downgraded some websites that it sees as having unhelpful content. It took me a while to try and figure out what to do. In looking over the website, I find that my old website posts (from 10 years ago) really weren't that helpful. So, I'm undertaking a huge project to update all of those old posts. This is great because it's reminding me of all of those fun old recipes that I had kind of forgotten about. I hope you'll join me as I work through these recipes. I've been renewing about 5-6 recipes per day during the week. So, all you have to do is to navigate to the Main Page for Loaves and Dishes and whatever is new will show up there. Look for changes daily! I appreciate this opprotunity to update things and make everything old new again! I hope you'll give me your comments, let me know if you made the recipe and what you thought! I LOVE hearing from you! I answer every comment. You can write to me individually by clicking "reply" to this email and it will come straight to me. I am the only person who will see it and I'll answer you! Your support and love means more than you know! I appreciate you so much! I love you! Till next week! Wendi | 
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