Kelly Times Two

When I was a teenager, my siblings used to make fun of me for putting coconut in almost everything. I'm a coconut enthusiast--what can I say? None of them will be surprised to see a version of this divine recipe that I discovered at Mel's Kitchen Cafe , then made a few minor changes to. If you are as crazy for coconut and chocolate as I am, you will have mounds of good things to say about this familiar concoction. I'm supposed to provide refreshments for a baptism at the church in a couple of days, so I've made these these Chocolate Haystack Cheesecake Bites and put them into the freezer, and hope they will be pleasing to our Taiwanese congregation. Here's everything you will need to make them, only nine ingredients--five for the crust and four for the top layer. I use this Flexipan, which nothing sticks to, and they simply pop right out. CRUST: 2 cups firmly packed ground graham cracker crumbs (from about 19 rectangles) 2 cups coconut 1-1/2 cups semiswe...

Every Saturday we usually do our shopping for the week and often spend part of the day doing some sort of activity with our church friends. Last Saturday our stake planned a big charity event that was essentially a flea market or garage sale where loads of second-hand items were donated then resold, and the money raised would be donated to a charity. Several people cooked foods to sell at the event. Our ward Relief Society asked me to teach others how to make dinner rolls to be able to sell in packages of five for the service project. I spent most of the day on Friday in the kitchen at the church teaching, or rather showing, how to make the rolls. Most of them don't usually bake or even use flour to cook, so they were very excited to learn how to do it themselves. We ended up making more than a dozen batches of rolls. Later, I made some little labels to jazz the packaging up a bit. Appearance counts with food! By the time Kelly and I got to the fund raiser, all the rolls we...

Two days before I was going to return to Taiwan after being home in Texas for the holidays, my sweet Uncle Wally passed away. Thankfully, I was able to rearrange my flight to be able to attend the funeral and be in northern California to see my extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brother, and mother, to be able to celebrate his life of 89 years. He is one of my Mom's six brothers, and was always one of my favorites. He and his darling wife, Aunt Arlene, were kind enough to provide a home for my brother and me several years ago when we were little kids, when our mom had suffered from a nervous breakdown of sorts, in between marriages. All five of us kids were sent out to California from Oklahoma on a Greyhound bus, farmed out to different family members until Mom got well. We initially all went to Aunt Ollie's and Uncle Andy's house, but Marc and I somehow ended up at Uncle Wally's for a month or two. Since I was only 8 years old at the time, I don...