GO PHILLIES!!!!

It didn't look good for a while because we lost on Saturday night but we all knew it was just a fluke and the Phightin Phils would bounce back - AS THEY DID - quite nicely on Sunday Night with Roy Oswalt at the helm.  We had the family over for the game on Saturday and we wanted to do something to give them the flavor of the ballpark.........our 1st thought was PEANUTS and sad to say we couldn't serve our normal Planters Peanuts in the shell from the Ocean City Boardwalk so I did the next best thing and purchased them at our local Acme - they weren't too bad!

Next we had to serve some other type of nourishment so we decided to do cheese steaks OF COURSE but because we are ALL conscious of our health and how much fat we are eating we decided to do chicken cheese steaks and smother them with cheese whiz.  It's kind of like having a diet coke with a salad?  Anyway I bought chicken chip meat from a good deli around here and the freshest rolls from a great bakery that just opened up in our neighborhood ($3 a dozen!) and I caramelized a TON of onions and we were good to go with some jarred hot peppers.  Everyone (kids and elders) loved them.

I also made some Applesauce Cupcakes with a Chocolate Glaze - we used to buy something like these cupcakes when we were kids on our way to our cousins' house in DE and in our adult years have never been able to find anything like them so I went hunting online for ANYTHING that would remind me of our childhood deserts - I found this Martha Stewart recipe (of all things) and they were pretty good....

Applesauce Spice Cupcakes

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves (I didn’t have any and the recipe was just as tasty)
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 4 large eggs, room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups unsweetened applesauce
• Preheat the oven to 350. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.

With an electric mixer on medium-high speed, cream butter and both sugars until pale and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Reduce speed to low. Add applesauce and then flour mixture, beating until just combined after each. Stir in pecans by hand.

Divide batter evenly among lined cups, filling each three-quarters full. Bake, rotating tins halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in centers comes out clean, about 20 minutes. Transfer tins to wire racks to cool completely before removing cupcakes. Cupcakes can be stored overnight at room temperature, or frozen up to two months, in airtight containers.

Glaze ingredients:7 oz. high quality bittersweet chocolate, chopped
½ cup hot water, milk, half-and-half
1½ tsp. ground cinnamon
1½ tsp. ground ancho chile powder
½ tsp. freshly ground nutmeg
¼ tsp. dried ground ginger
1 pinch ground cloves
1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
16 Red Hots candies, for decorati

To make the glaze:Carefully melt the chocolate, either in the microwave or on the stove with a double boiler. Stir the hot liquid, the spices and the vanilla into the melted chocolate until smooth.
Spoon the glaze over the cupcakes immediately, while glaze is still hot. Decorate each cupcake with one Red Hots candy in the center.

We had a fun time on Saturday Night but the bad thing was the Phils lost and now nobody wants to come back because it might be bad luck - I keep telling them we watch every game....every pitch....every night and they USUALLY WIN!  But the good thing is they did pull it off on Sunday Night and we didn't even have dinner.......we were too stuffed from the night before!


Here are some of the nieces and nephews ready for a BIG week of baseball!