The Super Bowl is this Sunday night! No matter who you’re routing for or if the game is even important to you at all, one thing is for sure – SNACKS are a must. This year I thought I’d share a classic football snack – Potato Skins. And once you have the skins under control, you can really fill these guys with anything!

First: bake your potatoes at 350 for about 45 mins to an hour. Cook until soft. Let them cool, cut in half, and scoop out a fair amount of the potato from each half. That is so vague, but it’s really up to you how much potato you leave in. I like a moderate amount of potato left in my skin.

Next: place your skins, cut side up, on a baking sheet and coat with butter (the perfect job for your sous chef). Bake at 400 degrees for 5 to 7 minutes (depending on how crispy you want them to get!). Then flip, coat the outsides with butter and bake again at 400 degrees for 5 to 7 minutes.

While all that baking, buttering, and flipping is going on you can prep your toppings. As I mentioned above, we went classic with these and opted for chives, cheddar cheese, and crumbled bacon.

Watch out for that snacky sous chef…

Once your skins are at the desired level of “crispy-ness,” take them out of the oven and load them with toppings! Bake one last time for 3 to 5 minutes or until your cheese is melted.

Top with sour cream (or we actually used creme fraiche because I had it on hand) and ENJOY!

Chinese food. Boy, have I been craving Chinese Food this pregnancy but it sure is BAD for you! I am always trying to find at-home Chinese Food recipes that give you that same satisfying flavor of take-out without the unhealthiness. We’ve made our own fried rice and Chicken Tso’s Chicken that come out fantastic (and worth the time investment these recipes take to make) but recently we were looking for more of a homemade Chinese Food QUICK fix. Then we found this recipe for Beef Lo Mein in the Cooking Light cookbook that is just awesome so I had to share it with you…

First, saute a clove of garlic and ginger in olive oil for just a few seconds. Add your broccoli and sliced onion and cook for 3 to 5 minutes. Meanwhile, boil water and cook your spaghetti according to the box directions.

While that cooks, whisk together your sauce – soy sauce, brown sugar, oyster sauce, and chili paste with garlic.

Stir beef into the broccoli and onion mixture. When the beef is just about cooked add the sauce, spaghetti, and stir. Cook for just a couple minutes until sauce us heated through.

This really curbs the Chinese food craving and not only is it “not bad” for you, it’s from Cooking Light so it’s low calorie! For a 1 1/3C it’s only about 330 calories. Eat up and enjoy!

And ps. we’re not usually into leftovers in our house, but just like take-out Chinese, this lo mein is delish the next day for lunch.

Ok, let’s talk about Cookie Butter for a minute. I had never had it until Santa brought me a jar in my Christmas stocking and we opened it a couple weeks ago, remember? According to the Trader Joe’s website (the only place you can buy Speculoos Cookie Butter) it’s the #2 selling item in their store (Triple Ginger Snaps are #1, FYI). It’s made from crushed Belgian speculoos biscuits and is a sweet spread reminiscent of gingerbread with a slightly thicker than peanut butter texture.

Well, it’s awesome. It says on the jar that you can dip things in it or put it on just about anything (dip pretzels, crackers, melt and put it on ice cream, pancakes, waffles). So, we had a thought…what if we put it IN the ice cream? Even better, right? And this past weekend we did just that.

We started with a basic vanilla ice cream recipe and made it in our ice cream maker.

As with making any ice cream with something in it, we added dollops of cookie butter just as the ice cream was getting thick – or, when the machine sounds like it’s working very hard. Someone had to take a peak to see what was making all that noise!

We mixed the dollops of cookie butter in at the very end so they would remain as small chunks and not just mix in the ice cream.

We let it chill for a few hours…then had a couple scoops. DELISH! This is an unbelievable mix of flavors – the sweet vanilla ice cream with the occasional creaminess, molasses flavor of the cookie butter, it’s just perfect.

So good…enjoy!