Have You Checked Out Holiday Yum Yet?

art by Ellen M. Gregg
It’s the Holiday Yum Blog Fest!
Looking for the perfect recipe to share at a family dinner? A dish to pass at the next work potluck? Well check this out and stay tuned for much much more! Many of your favorite bloggers are sharing their best holiday recipes with you in this very tasty blog hop!
So Get Ready to Savor the Flavor!
- On November 17th, Jenny Hansen kicked off the hop with her Gluten-Free Thanksgiving Meal. There are lots of great tips for folks who need to eat GF, including some sneaky foods to watch out for!
- On November 19th, I shared the salty-sweet, super-easy Spiced Pecans appetizer.
- Ellen M. Gregg has us all drooling with The Chocolatiest Chocolate Cake – Evah on Monday, November 26th.
- Jenny Hansen introduces us to her luscious Almond Roca, famed of song and story, on Wednesday, November 28th.
- Estee Lavitt shares her mouth-watering Baked Latkes on December 2nd, just in time for Chanukah!
For the full Holiday Yum schedule check out the tab at the top of the blog!
And from all of us to you and yours, have a very Happy Holiday Season!
Patricia Sands’ 10 Most Delectable French Foods

Patricia is author of the friendship phenomenon, The Bridge Club, and she shared stories about her real life bridge club last Tuesday in a guest post, Thank You For Being a Friend! Be sure to enter the e-book giveaway by commenting on that post too! Contest ends Saturday at Midnight.
Guest Post by CJ West: His 10 Chocolate Guilty Pleasures
And we’re back! This past Tuesday, I had thriller writer, CJ West over talking about his new short, Thugbook! Today, CJ’s back at the Happiness Project reminiscing about his 10 untouchable guilty pleasures, and they all have to do with chocolate! You see, CJ is working out for his upcoming debut on MANday, but a guy can be guilty once in awhile. Check out his faves!
My Ten Chocolate Indulgences
I’ve been a chocoholic since birth so my ten indulgences had to be chocolate flavored. For those of you who follow me, you know I’m working out hard to get ready for the MANday wager I’ve got going on with Jillian Dodd. We have a bet that I can get in good enough shape to show off my abs on her blog in July.
Needless to say, I’m not eating a lot of chocolate right now. At least I can share my love in pictures. Drool with me.
#1 Chocolate Ice Cream
Before MANday, chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and chocolate sauce was a regular treat. No special occasion required. Just open the freezer and there it is waiting for you to dig in. Everyone has a little stress, right?
#2 Hershey’s Special Dark
At some point in my chocolate loving life, I moved on from milk chocolate to dark chocolate and I never looked back. Hershey’s makes this giant bar that is way too much for one person to eat in one sitting, but when you sit in front of the computer for hours typing away, it is quite possible to eat the entire bar without realizing.
#3 Nestle’s Toll House Morsels
Once upon a time I always had a bag of these in the house, not the little bag, but the giant bag. Okay, I admit it, I usually had two or three. They are great kept in the freezer. They don’t stick to your hands that way. You can carry them around for 5 minutes or so before they are all gone. If chocolate was a vegetable, there would be no need to stock other foods.
When these are in the house I eat way too many so I had to stop stocking them.
#4 Lindt Dark Chocolate Truffles
I discovered these about two years ago. Delicious. They melt in your mouth the way harder chocolates can’t. A great indulgence, but not a diet staple.
#5 Entenmann’s Chocolate Donuts
I did a horrible thing to my ex-wife. I introduced her to Entenmann’s Chocolate Donuts for breakfast back when I got tons of exercise and was young enough to burn off the extra calories. DO NOT start eating these for breakfast. They are like crack. Not as bad for you, but they are every bit as hard to give up. Just say no!
#6 Toll House Cookie Dough
In my mind there isn’t another kind of cookie. I judged a baking contest last year and tasted some great cookies. The winner was an amazing combination of nuts and cranberries and dark chocolate. Still, if it was up to me, I’d pick a basic Toll House Cookie any time. And before you can get to the cookie, you have to eat some dough. Could you really bake cookies without eating at least one spoonful?
#7 Toll House Cookies
Yes, I do bake some of that dough! In my younger days we didn’t get sweets unless we baked them ourselves. I can remember my brother and I, we were teens, eating an entire batch before they cooled!
#8 Devil Dogs
One of the few store bought treats we got as kids. Mom got them from the thrift store and froze them so they wouldn’t go bad (like that would happen). We never waited for them to thaw before eating them and to this day I prefer them frozen. If you live in a place where they don’t have these, get in your car now.
#9 Peanut Butter squares
In tenth grade a friend’s mother gave me a recipe to make these. They are similar to a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup minus the preservatives and salt. To this day I can recite the recipe and whip them together in 15 minutes. If there was a number 11 on this list, it would be a peanut butter square sundae with chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, and whipped cream. Pure Heaven!
#10 Brownie Sundae
My ideal dessert wouldn’t look exactly like this one, but I chose the image because the brownies have chocolate chips! A must when you make brownies. I’d switch to chocolate ice cream and add a generous layer of whipped cream. Ahh.
Thanks for joining me in this virtual orgasm of chocolate goodness!
Thanks CJ for sharing your guilty pleasure list with us! I had no idea what loving chocolate was like as I only eat 1-10 of those. 😉
Your turn! What guilty pleasures sneak their way into YOUR cupboards?