Frugal In Florida

*This is a repost from last Valentine's Day and I'm so excited to be making this AGAIN this week!* I've been working out this week and hope to God I can stand and stir for as long as I need to when making this as my arms are like JELLY ... 9 Rounds is the place I've been after work. 30 minutes, full on cardio/muscle confusion with bags, dumbbells, kettlebells and medicine balls. I have a love hate relationship with the place but for 30 minutes I am huffing, puffing, sweating and hyperventilating ... and I feel great! It's actually motivating me to be more conscientious in EVERYTHING I do, from my water intake to food intake to what I'm doing during my "down time".  I boxed about 5, 6 years ago and loved it then and was in the best shape of my life and have not been able to find another place that had a great workout like that ... this place is FINALLY it! For those of you who are giving reasons for NOT working out (I'm one of them), just go. Do ...

*This is a repost from last Valentine's Day and I'm so excited to be making this AGAIN this week!*  Any way. I had this recipe tagged in my cookbook since Christmas morning ... and then I got the weekly email update from  Michelle  and said, heck, I should try this ... so I rooted around in my chocolate stash and had exactly 6 1.2 ounce bars of bittersweet 72% cocoa bars ... score! That made everything I needed available in house which made me decide that I needed to make it right then and there!! The original recipe is in the  cookbook  ... and also on the website. And of course, as always, I modified to suit my needs and what we had on hand! It was a little time consuming in the beginning ... I stirred and stirred and stirred for 45 minutes til my sauce was thick ... uggg. I was worried about heating the mixture TOO quickly and had the heat set a tad too low and the mixture was not heating up at all ;-) .... so medium low heat is NOT low heat ... ...

We usually watch FoodTV in the morning both Saturday and Sunday as we putz around getting the bedroom cleaned up and in the kitchen doing stuff ... sometimes I get a little inspiration and other times I get a complete recipe ;-) Another keeper that I picked up from FoodTV's Trisha Yearwood show ... most of her recipes are super simple to make and use everyday ingredients that you probably already have in stock!  That's what makes this one another winner! I'm trying really hard to NOT buy premade sweet stuff for the house as I have a HARD time saying no ... but if I have to mix up a bunch of ingredients and PREPARE the sweet treat, I'm ok with that ... at least I know exactly whats in there! This recipe is really simple, and chances are,  you have everything to whip up a batch right this second 1 1/2 sticks of butter, melted 2 cups of pretzel sticks, crushed (um, I tossed mine in the Vitamix and gave it a quick whirl) 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar 1 cup plus ...