Cheddar's Restaurant - Why Does Everyone Love Them So Much?

Do you love Cheddar's Restaurants? You're not alone! Since 1978, when Aubrey Good and Doug Rogers opened the first Cheddar's outlet outside of Six Flags in Arlington, Texas, Cheddar's restaurants have become an American institution. It is a constant favorite of hundreds of thousands of families, many of whom eat there once a week or even more!

Particularly since their commitment is to fresh food and recipes made from scratch, it is no wonder that their restaurant outlets and their style of cooking has swept the nation. They are well-known for their friendly, attentive staff and their mouth-watering and affordable cuisine. In the thirty years since the opening of that first restaurant, more than sixty additional Cheddar's outlets have opened across the country.

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I know that I, for one, greatly enjoyed my trip to Cheddar's when I was visiting a friend back east. We ate at no less than ten restaurants during my week-long trip, and Cheddar's was by far the best. In fact, we ate there three times! You really can't beat the gourmet-style food and family-style prices. Also, the atmosphere was happy and fun and the wait staff was friendly and attentive.

Cheddar's menu focuses on family-style cooking, much like their atmosphere focuses on being family-friendly, as well. They have appetizers ranging from Chicken Tenders to Nachos to Cheese Fries. The entrees are equally appetizing, including such items as Key West Chicken and Shrimp, Grilled Tilapia with Mango Salsa, Dijon Chicken and Mushrooms, and Honey Barbecue Baby Back Ribs. Don't forget to save room for dessert. Their specialty is the Cookie Monster Wow! and it is described as legendary. It's made to order, and it consists of a fresh baked chocolate chip cookie, made in a skillet, topped with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, chopped nuts, whipped cream and a cherry.

Doesn't that sound mouth watering?

Cheddar's Restaurant - Why Does Everyone Love Them So Much?

Luckily, you can now impress your friends and family and make Cheddar's Secret Restaurant Recipes at home for a fraction of the price! Check out http://vovvar.net/restaurant-recipes to find out how.

Cocoa Nibs

Cocoa nibs are roasted cocoa beans separated from their husks and broken into small bits, not yet crushed or ground, not yet transformed into unsweetened chocolate or processed into smoother or more refined forms of sweetened chocolate. Simply put, nibs are cocoa beans on the brink of becoming chocolate and, as such, they are a unique and fascinating new ingredient. These little delicacies are a delightful treat for the adventurous.

Nibs are even crunchier than toasted nuts, and unsweetened, making them relatively bitter so they may take some adjusting to. You will find some nibs to have a sweetness and fruitiness and others will be nuttier. Some will be very astringent and some will be tart. If you are a taster, you will notice more flavors than you ever imagined were in chocolate, such as banana, peanuts, pineapple, lemon peel, cherries and coffee. But do not make the mistake of thinking nibs will act like chocolate chips!

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Some of the uses for nibs are to grind some nibs with your coffee beans before making coffee; sprinkle nibs, as you would toasted nuts, on a simple salad of field greens dressed with good olive oil and red wine vinegar; add nibs to Bolognese sauce; make your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe but omit the chocolate chips; sprinkle nibs on bread and butter; sprinkle with sugar if desired; sprinkle nibs over ice cream. My personal favorite is to mix the nibs with salted nuts of various kinds and add in bittersweet chocolate chips for a trail mix of sorts!

As I always say, "A balanced diet is chocolate in everything!"

Cocoa Nibs

To learn more about me and what I do go to http://www.DonyaMaries.com or Donya Marie's Beyond Chocolate Blog at http://donyamaries.wordpress.com

Donya Schweizer, President / Donya Marie's Beyond Chocolate

Simple to Make Sweet Treats!

Simple and quick! These sweet treats are especially great for Valentines Day!

1. Celebration Cake -- EASY, EASY! Looks beautiful and NO cooking at all!

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You'll need: 1 prepared angel food cake, 1 can pie filling and 1 tub prepared cream cheese frosting. Place cake on a cake plate. Frost it! Pour the pie filling in the hole in the middle of the cake. Serve slices of the cake topped with some pie filling. Decorate with added coconut, nuts, or candies! Cherry pie filling is perfect for Valentines Day!

2. Love Cakes -- Extremely beautiful, yet simple to make!

NO cooking! You'll need 1 prepared pound cake, 1 tub prepared vanilla frosting, some red food coloring, 1 tube chocolate decorative frosting with a plain tip for writing, 1 (14 oz) bag M&M'S Milk Chocolate Candies for Valentine's Day.

Line a cookie sheet with waxed paper and top with a wire cooling rack; set aside. Cut pound cake into 1-inch thick slices. Using a heart-shaped cookie cutter, cut out cake using cookie cutter. Place the heart-shaped cake pieces
on the wire cooling rack. Spoon 1/4 cup of vanilla frosting into a zipper-seal plastic bag and set aside. Tint the remaining frosting to a light shade of pink using food color and spoon it into a glass-measuring cup. Heat the pink frosting in the microwave for 5 to 10 seconds, or until it can be poured. DO NOT OVERHEAT. Pour the pink frosting over the heart-shaped cake pieces, covering the tops and the sides. Reuse the drippings and reheat, if necessary.

Refrigerate until set (about 30 minutes). Fill a zipper-seal plastic bag with frosting, then snip a tiny corner of the bag and use it to pipe lacy designs on the tops and sides of the heart-shaped cake pieces. Add candies to make different designs, then pipe messages on the tops with the decorative chocolate frosting.

3. Flavorageous Crispy Treats -- Kid Tested!

5 T butter or margarine

9 C miniature marshmallows (16 oz)

1 envelope Kool-Aid, any flavor**

9 C Crispy rice cereal

Grease a 10x15x1" pan. Melt butter; about 45 seconds on high in the microwave. Add marshmallows; toss to coat with butter. Microwave on high 2 1/2 minutes or until smooth; stirring every minute. Stir in drink mix. Immediately add cereal, mix lightly until well coated. Using greased spatula or wax paper, press into prepared pan. Cool. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters or cut into squares.

**Favorite Kool-Aid Flavors are Fruit Punch and Cherry

Simple to Make Sweet Treats!

Leslie Sausage lives with her husband in rural Texas. She is the mom of four grown children, a freelance writer and an elementary school teacher! She is the author of several eBooks. For creative, practical and fun ideas please visit her web site at http://www.heart4home.net

Homemade Biscuits The Quick And Easy Way

Do you remember how good homemade piping hot biscuits are? Maybe your grandmother made them for you in days past but you haven't had them in years. Perhaps your children have rarely had homemade biscuits.

It's time to change that! It's also time to change the way we make biscuits. We no longer have the time to get out the rolling pin and cover the kitchen in flour. But luckily, there is a quick and easy way to go homemade without the homemade time and mess.

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1. Assemble a mixing bowl and mixing spoon, 2-cup measuring cup, set of measuring spoons, and a baking sheet. You will also need a 2 ½-inch metal scoop - the type that has a handle you squeeze to eject the food.
2. Put the following ingredients nearby: buttermilk, vegetable oil, all-purpose flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
3. Turn on the oven to 425 degrees.
4. Pour 1 cup of buttermilk into the glass measuring cup. Add enough oil to bring the total volume to the 1 ½ cup mark.
5. Put 2 cups of flour into the bowl. Add 2 ½ tsp. of baking powder, 1 tsp. of sugar, 1 tsp. of salt, and a scant 1/8 teaspoon of baking soda.
6. Here's the secret of good biscuits - stir to blend, but don't over-stir. Be sure to scrape the sides so you don't end up with pockets of flour.
7. Fill the scoop, scrape the edge to level the contents, and eject the dough onto the baking sheet. (If you do not have a scoop, you can drop the batter from a spoon.)
8. Bake the biscuits until they are brown on the top and bottom - about 15 minutes.
9. Brush the tops with butter.

These biscuits will have a slightly more irregular shape than rolled biscuits, but the scoop gives them a more regular shape than dropping them from a spoon.

Here's a more traditional look at the recipe:

Laurie's Biscuits

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup buttermilk
• ½ cup vegetable oil
• 2 ½ tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 tsp. salt
• scant 1/8 tsp. baking soda

Mix dry ingredients. Add buttermilk and oil. Roll and cut or drop by spoonfuls onto a baking sheet. Bake in a preheated oven at 425 degrees for 15 minutes or until brown. Brush tops with butter.

That's all there is to it. Oh, except for picking out your favorite jelly.

Homemade Biscuits The Quick And Easy Way

Laurie Stroupe is the owner of Laurie's Cobalt World at http://cobalt-world.com, which offers quality cobalt glassware for your home including drinkware, serveware, dishes, decor, and gifts. She learned to cook from her mother who earned her degree in home economics at the University of Texas at Austin when Laurie was a girl.

Wireless Thermometers - Mourning Two Pins and a Magnet

I love all things wireless. Cables and wires have always found a way to get wrapped up between my feet. I broke my first thermometer sometime around the beginning of the 90's, in Crossgates, Leeds. It was winter and the weather forecast was predicting a particularly cold night. Being the weather buff/geek that I am I decided to trail the outdoor thermometer cable as far out of the window as I could, to record the overnight minimum. A simple enough exercise except I had to leave the window open so as to not trap the cable. Unfortunately I woke up freezing in the small hours and, in a sleep induced haze, pulled the window tight shut, severing the wire sufficiently for the outdoor function to never work again.

This started a pattern of tripping, kicking and general weather station abuse until the wireless phenomenon came to my rescue. Suddenly the black cables reaching from the mantelpiece across the cream wall and into the back garden were a thing of the past. Wireless thermometers or weather stations allowed me to close all windows on a cold night if I so wished and still get an accurate overnight temperature. An important factor for gardeners, farmers and weather geeks alike.

Biscuit

A wireless thermometer (or weather station) is a simple device which allows you to check the weather outside without ever actually venturing out there yourself. You fit the outdoor probe to whichever part of the garden or house you like and it wirelessly sends the current temperatures and recent historical temperature data to your weather station positioned inside, preferably next to your favourite chair beside the fire with a hot mug of cocoa and a biscuit.

The technology is moving on quickly these days as with all things wireless, and it is now possible to get a fully functional wireless weather station recording all aspects of the weather from wind speed and temperature to humidity and pressure. They can also look good too, with more and more aesthetically pleasing stations being produced in a multitude of designs and colours.

There is a part of me that misses some of the more traditional thermometers though. My dad had an old fashioned U-shaped mercury thermometer with 2 pins and a magnet on the garage wall. Each night you would move the pin with the magnet to the top of the mercury column and the next morning wherever the pin had reached its highest point indicated the coldest overnight temperature. And then we would tap the barometer to check the air pressure. No more tapping with wireless! Oh well, times change and so must we.

Incidentally, I still have my first weather station, complete with the severed cable. It records the temperature indoors just fine, however the outdoor display is permanently stuck on -50 degrees Celsius. I don't think we'll be seeing temperature like that in Britain until the next ice age.

Wireless Thermometers - Mourning Two Pins and a Magnet

Mark Boardman BSc dip.hyp is a leading author and expert on The Weather For more information about World Weather, feel free to visit these sites.

Beauty Look With Maxi Dress in the Evening

Most women will always want to look good and beauty every time and everywhere, especially in the evening. Some women, who are care about performance and their fashion style, will try to find something nice and elegant to be worn in this time. Cute and long maxi dresses can be the perfect outfit for you, especially for plus-size women. This is very suitable for daytime casual or dressy evening parties.

Maxi dresses are one of the greatest inventions in fashion world, actually. No matter what women have been told about wearing long dresses because they are too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too mousy, too flamboyant, too whatever. As you know, with a well-designed long gown for evening wear, you will be flattering and make you look taller as it gives an unbroken line from head to toe.

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Whenever you wear this kind of fashion, you will feel soft like wearing a night gown that will make you look elegant at night. You don't have to worry whether you cannot run if you wear these. It has been designed to help a rushed woman get out the door faster so she can pick up the kids, pick up the grand kids, or even run to the store and pick up some cookies. As you know, some maxi dresses will be easy to pack as they are made of knit jersey, which is free from wrinkle.

However, wearing a dress is a great learning, especially for the girls. They even ever dream of wearing a beautiful gown. Choosing the right outfit and accessories can make you look beauty and fashionable. That is why you have to learn some knowledge about fashion. Combining the right color and the types of your clothes is one of the skills that you should learn.

Beauty Look With Maxi Dress in the Evening

Or you can also wear Leather Riding Gloves [http://aleatherridinggloves.com/] to look stylish. You can read the complete guidance in the website Leather Riding Gloves [http://aleatherridinggloves.com/leather-cashmere-gloves-%E2%80%93-the-stylish-protection-for-women/].

Finger Jello Recipes

Kids, especially preschoolers, love Finger Jello! They love it
even more when they get to help make it. Let your preschooler
cut the Jello into shapes with cookie cutters when the Jello is
set. Make green and red for Christmas, orange for
Halloween. Making finger jello can be a fun family activity!

Finger Jello Recipe #1

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3 3-oz. pkg. Jello

4 pkg. Knox unflavored gelatin

4 c. boiling water

Mix all ingredients together until dissolved. Pour into
13x9x2-in. baking dish and refrigerate. Cut into squares or use
cookie cutters to create shapes.

Finger Jello Recipe #2

3 3-oz. pkg. Jello

1 c. whipping cream

2 1/2 c. boiling water

Mix Jello and boiling water together until dissolved. Add
whipping cream and continue stirring. Pour into 8x8-in. pan and
chill well.

Finger Jello Recipe #3

1 c. sweetened condensed milk

1 3-oz. pkg. purple Jello

1 3-oz. pkg. orange Jello

1 3-oz. pkg. yellow Jello

1 3-oz. pkg. green Jello

1 3-oz. pkg. red Jello

7 pkg. Knox unflavored gelatin

To prepare filling, dissolve 2 envelopes of Knox gelatin in 1/2
cup cold water. Add 1 cup boiling water to sweetened condensed
milk. Add dissolved gelatin to milk and stir in 1 additional cup
of boiling water. Set aside.

To create layers, prepare one box of Jello at a time. Mix 1
envelope Knox gelatin with 1/4 cup cold water. Add 1 cup boiling
water and 1 box Jello. Pour Jello into greased 13x9x2-inch baking
pan. Refrigerate 15-20 minutes until set.

Pour 3/4 cup filling over set Jello. Chill 15-20 minutes.
Continue layering Jello and filling, ending with Jello on top.
Chill each layer 15-20 minutes before adding next layer.

Finger Jello Recipes

Rachel Paxton is a freelance writer and mom of four. For more inspirational articles and tips for everyday living, visit http://www.christian-parent.com.