M: Recipes Every Man Should Know and Baking Madness

First of all, the winner of our Tate’s Giveaway is Lynn from The Actor’s Diet!! Lynn, just e-mail us at itzyskitchen at gmail dot com with your address so we can get your goodies to you!! Congrats!!

So, I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! I had a VERY busy one…Well, Saturday was pretty crazy. We got our Christmas shopping done and ran errands all day long. You know, one of those errand-running days where you are literally driving everywhere in town to get everything? Oh well, it’s all good, I do love shopping during Christmastime =) All the shops are decorated and the lights are all out around town, it’s so festive and fun! Oh, and we did order up our Christmas cards – here is the pic of the pups we decided to use, they did some good posing!

Speaking of being of a super busy day, Sunday morning was so great, I got to meet a couple other Charleston bloggers for the first time! But as soon as I got home and sat down to make my grocery list for the week, it hit me….a migraine…ugh! Always at the most inopportune times!

Well, my hubby being the fantastic hubby that he is decided to do the laundry and vacuum and all that good stuff that I just didn’t feel up to! And last but not least, he made dinner! This was actually a perfect opportunity for him to get to use this new cookbook (disclaimer: we received this cookbook for free), Recipes Every Man Should Know.

It’s such a fun book, and really great for any husband, bachelor, boyfriend, father, etc to have! It goes over everything from kitchen tools and what they are to cooking terms and then lots of recipes that use simple ingredients and detailed instructions. It’s actually a pretty funny read too. Some of their anecdotes are seriously hilarious.

So, the hubs decided to make up their Baja Fish Tacos (I did manage to get off the couch long enough to take a few pics of course). He’s so cute cooking =)

And look how these babies turned out. He did such a good job!

They were SO good! And let me tell you, living in Charleston we have our pick of some amazing fish and fish tacos alike. I tend to like mine with simple, fresh ingredients…and I like the fish to be the star of the show. And I think this recipe did that beautifully =)

Maybe get this little book for your significant other as a stocking stuffer (wink wink)…maybe, just maybe, he’ll decide to surprise you with an awesome dinner!

Onto the fun stuff that I decided to bake up for the blogger baked goods exchange. First up, 101 Cookbook’s Nikki’s Healthy Cookie Recipe. Of course, I was in full bake mode at this point and completely forgot to take a picture of the end product. But I taste-tested! Isn’t that what a good baker does? These turned out so good! The combination of banana, coconut, and chocolate was seriously awesome.

Second, 101 Cookbook’s Carrot Oatmeal Cookies:

And last but not least, Sunflower Whole Wheat Quickbread from the Tate’s Bake Shop Cookbook:

I hope my blogger enjoys her goodies! I have never shipped baked goods before, so lets hope she gets everything in one piece!

Have you done any of your holiday shopping yet? I'm surprised we're done...usually I'm such a last minute shopper!