Michele's (Amazing) Peanut Butter Icing

1 C icing sugar
1 C creamy peanut butter
5 Tbsp butter, at room temperature
3/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 C heavy cream

Place the icing sugar, peanut butter, butter, vanilla and salt into bowl. Beat with electric mixer on medium-low speed until creamy, scraping down sides as you go. Add the cream and beat on high speed until the mixture is light and smooth.
Lick the beaters, the bowl, and whatever you don't put on the cake.

Cherry Crisp

Pour 2 cans of cherry pie filling into a 9x13 pan. If you have real cherries that need to be thickened, consider yourself blessed and then thicken them. Now get a big bowl and use a pastry blender to mix together ¾ cup packed brown sugar, ½ cup flour, ½ cup oats, 1/3 cup butter or margarine, ¾ tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp nutmeg. Taste the crumbs. Sprinkle these crumbs over the cherries. Bake at 375* F for about 30 minutes or until topping is browned. Serve warm with vanilla ice-cream. Eat the leftovers for breakfast. If you can’t get real cherries, I suggest making something else so you’re not disappointed.

Easy BBQ Bork Sandwiches

Put 2-4 lbs of beef and/or pork roast in slow cooker. Make sure that you’ve taken off any strings if your meat is tied up, but don’t worry about trimming fat. (A combination of beef and pork is really tasty!) Pour enough Coke (That’s right. Good ol’ Coca Cola.) over the meat to come up to ½ the depth of the meat. Cook on high for 6-8 hours, turning the meat over after 3-4 hours, then turn the slow cooker to low or off.

When the meat is very tender, take the meat out of the Coke and shred it with two forks in a pan large enough to add the BBQ sauce to the meat. If the pieces are too long, snip it with a kitchen scissors (if you don’t have a kitchen scissors, I’m sorry) right in the pan*. Just point the scissors straight down and snip away. Take it from me, kids don’t like to eat this if the meat is in long strands that are hard to bite.

Ok, now dump in about 1 cup of your favourite BBQ sauce**, 1/3 cup of the Coke/broth mixture in the slow cooker, ½ - ¾ cup ketchup, 3 tbsp vinegar, 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce, 2 tbsp brown sugar, 1 tsp mustard and ½ tsp liquid smoke and salt to taste. (These measurements are for about 4 lbs of meat.) Stir it all up and heat till it’s steaming. Add more of the broth if it’s too dry. Serve on buns or rolls of some kind.

This is really good with homemade mac and cheese or potato salad or potato wedges or veggies and dip or coleslaw or 3-bean salad. Or all of the above. I would guess that 4 lbs of meat serves about 10-12 adults.

*I give all the credit for cutting it this way to my sister, Robyn. She is a brain in the kitchen.

**I suppose you could use all bottled BBQ sauce, but for me BBQ sauce is a little expensive so this is what I do.

Homemade Mac and Cheese

In a microwaveable 4-cup measure, melt ¼ cup margarine. Whisk in ¼ cup flour, ½ tsp mustard, ½ tsp Worcestershire sauce, ½ tsp salt and ¼ tsp pepper. Gradually stir in 2 cups milk and microwave till thickened, stirring at 1 minute intervals. Stir in 2 cups grated cheddar cheese.

Boil 2 heaping cups macaroni as directed on package. Drain and return to pan. Pour cheese sauce over macaroni and heat. Taste it to see if it needs more salt. Don’t worry if it looks a little soupy at first, it will thicken up.

If you use a larger pasta (spirals or shells) use 3 cups. I use about ¼ cup cream cheese, 1 ½ cups grated cheese that’s kind of like strong mozzarella and about 4-5 cheese slices. Once in awhile I add a big glob of the “sour cream” we have here, or more cream cheese. Or spreadable bleu cheese. Use your imagination. I also add some yellow food coloring because we don’t have yellow cheese and isn’t mac and cheese supposed to be yellow? Also, the original recipe says to bake this till it’s bubbly, but in my opinion that just dries it out. It’s nice and creamy this way, so why bother?