Tailgating with Dr Pepper Mole Sauce

Brought to you by Dr Pepper® and Albertsons Companies.

With school in season now, our family is getting prepared adding a few fresh tailgating ideas to our usual menu. We love Dr Pepper® so much we have decided to make a special sauce with it today – a showstopper for any tailgating party! Hope you enjoy this Dr Pepper Mole Sauce recipe that I have created today – such a simple sauce, so versatile, and can work with so many different recipe ideas!

I wanted to create a recipe today based on what I happen to have in my fridge, and experiment a little bit with some new and also familiar ingredients.

I have had mole in some of the best restaurants before but I couldn’t eat very much because it was just too hot for me. However, I have heard so much about it that I just wanted to try making it myself, adjusting it to my taste, and utilizing some of the shortcuts that I have developed in my cooking. I also wanted to take advantage of all of the amazing fall produce that we have now in season here.

I chose to make this Dr Pepper Mole Sauce recipe because Dr Pepper we love Dr Pepper, and, as a bonus, the college football cans were recently on sale at our Albertsons store. There is also a special promotion going on for tailgating parties and the football season.

Right now, if you buy any 2 Dr Pepper12-Pack 12oz Cans, 6-Pack 16.9oz Bottles or 8-Pack 12oz Bottles and text FANGEAR to 811811, you can get a $5 Fanatics promo code offer for your game day gear. Follow instructions to send a photo of your receipt to get a $5 Fanatics promo code. For more information go to www.GameTimeFanGear.com

I wanted to make this Dr Pepper Mole Sauce because I think it is actually perfect for parties – it can be served warm or even room temperature over any favorite protein, either with rice, or on a tortilla, with salad, beans, or any type of side that you may have – it is so versatile. This is the first time I made this Dr Pepper Mole Sauce, and I had my reservations. I was planning to just make it for my husband, as he is usually the one who orders mole, and I just wanted to try a bit of it. I ended up eating 3 plates full of food covered in this mole sauce it was so good!

Starting today this new recipe, I have created, is going to be my favorite American classic. It combines so many of my favorite ingredients – chocolate, tomatoes, and Dr Pepper, of course.

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Tailgaiting Dr Pepper Mole Sauce

We modified the traditional mole recipe to use Dr Pepper for a new flavor variation

Ingredients

1 cup chicken broth
4 assorted fresh hot peppers
2 flour tortillas
1 tomato
3 tomatillos
2 teaspoons of duck fat
½ onion
3 garlic cloves
2 TBSP chopped peanuts
3 TBSP of raisins
1 TBSP cumin seeds
½ TBSP dried thyme
2 cinnamon sticks
a pinch of whole cloves and allspice
2 ounces of chocolate
1 can of Dr Pepper
salt to taste

Instructions

Sweat hot peppers in oil for a few minutes until they are cooked.
Heat up chicken broth and blend together with peppers.
Toast tortillas and blend in with the chicken broth mix.
Cut tomatoes and tomatillos in half, and cook on a skillet for a few minutes until they are softened. Add to the blender mixture, and blend it well.
Toast spices, raisins, peanuts and onions in lard. Remove large chunks of spices that are removable, and blend the onions with the rest of the blended sauce mixture.
Add Dr. Pepper, melted chocolate and salt.
Serve mole sauce over your protein or rice dish. Enjoy!

Have you ever made mole sauce before? What do you usually serve it with? What other recipes have you cooked with Dr Pepper?

Try this sauce, and you will be pleasantly surprised that despite many different steps, this sauce is extremely simple to make, and oh-so delicious! Enjoy!

Updates from our family – a big event!

I haven’t been publishing a lot of updates from our family on the blog, primarily because I have just been so busy blogging! You might notice this if you check my feeds on social media accounts – they are busy as can be – lots of updates and news that I post – check out and follow us on social media.

Our baby girl is growing up so quickly – I cannot believe she is almost 3 years old now! Time sure flies!

This past week we actually gave our baby her first haircut! Just wanted to post a few pictures with her today – it is so hard to catch her smiling, but I was able to this time! She is always on the move! The first picture was taken when she still had her long hair, and she was just ready to eat her breakfast.

The second picture was taken shortly after she got a haircut – she just looks so cute! I used to wear my hair this way as a child a lot, I see a lot of resemblances with myself even though my daughter looks more like my husband.

Enjoy the pictures! In these pictures the baby is wearing Carters outfits and her favorite U.S.Bilby bib! She got the necklace from her sister’s birthday party favors, and she is just so cute and happy to look pretty – what a cute girl!

Don’t forget to enter a new giveaway we are still running where you could win a set with one of these bibs by U.S.Bilby, and a whole lot of other prizes – ends 2/28/17!

This is a sponsored post.

Weekend Pictures and Updates – celebrating and a new cake

This weekend was so busy for us, and today is the end of Thursday, and I am still in the relaxing mode – trying to unwind after the weekend, even though it was also relaxing, but I always need a vacation from a vacation, and am sipping some sangria right now that I made a few days ago – check out my sangria recipe. On days like this one, I love being a blogger! What other job in the world has a completely flexible schedule allowing you to work from your bed if you want to, go for a walk and take pictures of birds or flowers if you wish, make a cocktail in the middle of the day, and enjoy it! There are no meetings, no commute time, and no boss! On the days like today I am seriously enjoying being a blogger, and I hope that if you are reading this, you are also already a blogger, and if not – what are you waiting for?

So, what were we up to this weekend? We were celebrating my middle daughter’s birthday, and I have told almost everything about it in my post about Altitude Trampoline park in our area where we had this amazing celebration this time. I tried not to go off course in that post too much, but still wanted to show a few pictures of my daughter that I took there, as well as in a restaurant we went to in the evening of Sunday. The girls were sipping their fancy fizzy drinks, and the baby was sporting her new bibs by U.S.Bilby – have you seen my review of the bibs yet, and there is also a giveaway there for a set of bibs that is still on, not too late to enter! These bibs are adorable, and this is where you can get them – U.S.Bilby is the best source for your baby bibs.

The cake that was served for the birthday party was a fancy bundt cake that we bought – this was my daughter’s wish. She goes crazy over these bundt cakes, and while I could probably make a mean bundt cake myself, we just went with what she wanted. It was awesome, and so delicious!

Of course, me being the typical me, I started going the bundt cake craze route, and finally got myself a bundt cake pan. After all this blogging I do, I deserve a little something for me. So, we were at Costco, and saw a bundt cake pan. I got one – yey! Now, today I finally got to it, and actually made a bundt cake of my very own! One reason was that I always need something sweet on hand at home. The other reason was that we ran out of the commercial bundt cake. And the third reason was that I wanted to spoil yo’ll with my stunning food photography (pat pat pat).

The bundt cake turned out awesome! The recipe was meh! so I won’t list it here, but the main issue for me was the technique of actually baking a cake in this new pan, and getting it out of the pan without damage – which I managed to get done!

My middle daughter was a bit flustered that I baked a cake without her, but I got her to make the icing, and decorate the cake. We picked a different icing, and we only had milk, and no cream cheese on hand, so the icing turned out also meh! But I know this cake will probably only last 2 days anyway, it is an amazing recipe, but next time we will kick it up a bit to make it more interesting. However, for now, the plan of testing the pan worked greatly – I say from now on I am making my own bundt cakes! The cost of a homemade one is cheaper even if we add the cost of a pan itself that can be reused forever from now on!

Have you made or at least eaten a bundt cake before? What is your most favorite kind – what flavor?

This is a sponsored post.

Lots of Updates, and a New Book Giveaway

Phew, today was a lazy day but ended up quite ok, as I was able to accomplish some new blog development projects, and some things have gone a bit sour, of course – never without that!

We have been moving the blog to a new system – my husband is our tech specialist, and as he had a long day, and I had a long day, and as the year is coming to a close, we have a few bugs we are working through with the blog back end, and you may have noticed that the blog has been a bit clunky the last couple of days. Not to worry, once the blog has been fully moved to the new environment, it should all come back to normalcy – here is a hope!

So, what are the plans here on the back end of the blog for the coming year? Well, I think that we have a few small projects we are working on for this particular blog, and as you know we run a few more other sites as well, and those sites have been in the stop-growth-stop-growth mode for quite some time as well, and we will continue concentrating and spreading our efforts on those as well in the coming year.

What is in store exactly? I wish I knew! A lot of bloggers keep a perfect content calendar with posts planned out in advance, and saved, I wish I could say the same! Projects come and go, but our daily updates will continue in the next year – I love to put together daily top posts for beauty, food, crafts and fashion ideas – I hope you find those useful!

Other than that, I don’t really have a lot of projects going on. Most of what I do here is non-commercial in nature, that is I like to share information that I find with you, my readers, and compile it into themed lists for reference – I am just amazed at the great content bloggers produce, and love to share it!

I have a few new giveaways coming up – please, be sure to check back often to participate if you love giveaways!

Other than that, what is new here? I am still wondering about my resolutions I need to work on for the coming year – I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing that I don’t have a clue what resolutions I need to work on. I find myself in a kind of zastoi mode these days. I am not depressed at all whatsoever, but I don’t really have a goal for the next year that I can propose, I have no clue. Of course, I am planning to work on more blog education, and improvements throughout, but it is harder and harder to find the time to get all that actually accomplished. I am also sort of over making plans and goals that I drop within a week of starting them. These days my attention only allows me to work with the smallest bite-sized chunks of tasks that I can quickly start and finish, and move on to the next batch of tasks – the time game is really getting to me, and I just don’t know how I can stretch the time to accomplish more. They say, work smarter, not harder, but this has been an uphill battle for me, and the amount of manual tasks is sometimes just over my head.

The biggest disaster this week has been my broken dishwasher. All of a sudden on Sunday it started smoking on us, and I have no idea what happened with that, and that just flew into this whole added layer of hand dishwashing and drying, as we don’t really have a dryer rack at home, and I simply cannot believe I lived most of my life without a dishwasher. First world problems, I know, I am rotten spoiled.

What else is in the works, other than finding a cure from the manual labor, is a few small ideas I will be working on in January for this blog. This all depends on my free time, and how quickly I can finish the project, but I am hoping to unveil it closer to the end of January as per my tentative idea of a schedule, really in my head, but I am hoping the Christmas break will give me some time to work on this, as I don’t have a lot more projects coming up, so hoping you will stay tuned, and get to see it just as it is finished.

Here are some more updates and plans – I have a few more products I will be reviewing this week that are close to getting done, and getting published here. I want to write up a few more posts about our travelling to NOLA that we did – I have published a lot of photos on my Instagram, but far from all, and I can’t wait to share!

Let me know in the comments what type of content you would like to see on my blog in the New Year, and what you mostly like to read on blogs about. I am looking forward to the next year, and lots more to discover with my readers, and show! If you are looking for a Free Holiday Printable to help you plan your meals and celebrations, don’t forget to check this post of mine!

Today we actually went out to a new restaurant near our home here, and the food was a-mazing! Nothing like a broken dishwasher to force us out of the house for a dinner out! We loved the food, and now we have discovered a new place to eat at – what a great and awesome surprise! We live in the suburbs, and there are some restaurants that are ok here, almost no dingy places, no holes in the walls, but nothing outstanding, really, except maybe one place here. Now we have found a new one, a bit pricey, but will work as an exception. Here are some pictures from our dinner out!

Love taking pictures of our toddler! Here she is sporting her new bibs by U.S.Bilby – will be telling more about those in future posts, and if you love them as much as I do, check them out! Happy that our cuteness will keep her clothing cleaner now with these new bibs! She actually kept them on throughout the meal, which is unusual for her.

I will try to add some more photos with the food tomorrow as well, and for now just wanted to finish up the post with a giveaway. I have recently reviewed and read a book “What Teens Want You to Know”. This is an interesting read for any parent. I am giving away my own copy of the book.

Here is more about this book, you can check out its sale listing

One winner will be picked at the end of the giveaway by the widget. This is a US only giveaway. After the winner is picked, the winner will be contacted and will need to provide a valid US residential address and phone number to receive the prize. Once the prize is mailed out, there will be no substitutions, refunds or returns. Box Roundup will be mailing out the prize.

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This giveaway is actually part of a blog hop. Be sure to enter other giveaways in the list below –

This is a sponsored post.

Improving Health and Wellness in the Workplace

Today has been so busy I didn’t know how much I would be able to get done, and when I would be finished with my assignments. As a blogger I have to follow a lot of deadlines, and it may sound very strange if you are not familiar with blogging, but there is a lot of behind the scenes work, and a lot of accountability to other parties to get things done on time. This reminds me a lot any office job except I have more freedom in what I do. If I am too tired, I crash on my couch, and go to bed early. I even get to take a nap sometimes with my baby. I am also not tied up at home, and can leave and come back as I please.

My laid-back lifestyle makes me think back to my working days at the office. I used to have a regular cubicle job, and some of the only great things about those jobs were free cookies and free coffee. Nowadays, I find, office jobs are much more lenient to employee needs, and provide a lot of accommodations and help to improve the workflow, and let employees rest, work out, walk outside when necessary, and encourage more productive environment.

Some of the best companies that place employees in the center of their success allow employees go and come as they please, and certainly not restrict employees to be inside all day when the Sun is shining. It is pleasant to hear of companies that have only half day work on Fridays during the grilling season, let employees work from home when employees are sick, and provide accommodations for breastfeeding mothers. It is great to know that companies are not all these homogeneous thoughtless monsters.

I think every workplace should strive to keep employees happy and healthy. It is so important for employees to maintain healthy lifestyle to simply be able to work more days. If you are overworked, you are going to crash from exhaustion, and that is not helpful when you need to be at work every business day. It is so inspiring to know that some jobs provide places to recharge and nap during the day for employees who need it. Right now I work from home as a freelancer and a blogger, and I know that I have this advantage over most jobs, and will be looking forward to seeing more places implement this great idea. I know that a lot of people suffer from chronic sleep deprivation when they have a lot to take care of daily, and this could be improved so much by the ability to rest and recharge.

Healthy food during the day is also a great way to be able to get your energy back. I suffer from a 4 o’clock crash that happens almost daily, where I need to have a snack. As I am at home and have access to my fridge I can create practically anything to eat, but at jobs people are limited to what is provided by vendors inside their work building or office. Therefore, it is so important to have that capability when you are working in the office to have access to fresh products, and not just candy and chocolate bars. I know a lot of jobs provide fresh salads, sandwiches, fresh fruits and veggies, and protein bars for employees at low cost or at no cost at employee cafeterias. What a great way to help employees stay healthy!

I am so encouraged by great new improvements that have taken place at workplaces lately helping people live and work in a healthy way. I hope to see more jobs looking like home to people, and providing employees with the necessary accommodations to achieve a more relaxed, and more fulfilling day schedule.

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This blog is being sponsored by Sodexo, global leader in Quality of Life Services (www.Sodexo.com)

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Posted in Daily updates from my household

Tailgating with Dr Pepper Mole Sauce

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Updates from our family – a big event!

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Weekend Pictures and Updates – celebrating and a new cake

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Lots of Updates, and a New Book Giveaway

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Improving Health and Wellness in the Workplace

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