Gracious, it’s been a whirlwind few days! As mentioned, I had the pleasure of filming TWO episodes for Rainbow Communications, set to air in December. Planning menus for parties and events is about my favorite thing to do in the whole wide world, so it just makes me so indescribably happy. It’s so funny with recipe testing, sometimes the simplest things turn out to be the most complicated. My poor family! They get tired of testing things, I fear. By the time we get to filming an episode they never want to see that food ever again!

So yes, the first episode centers around kids, called “Kids for Christmas” which will air the first Monday in December. It features kid-friendly snacks and treats that one can take to any kind of gathering. The second episode is more of a traditional Christmas dinner.

My favorite recipe of all had to be the Peppermint Affogato. My friends, pouring hot chocolate over ice cream so funnnnn! It cools the hot chocolate down so it’s perfect for kiddos, and you get the cold with the hot. I’m not a huge one for drinking my calories (unless it’s wine, hello) but Affogato is hands-down worth it.

It was also eye-opening to get to film a couple episodes back-to-back. Filming once a month gives me a nice little breather, but after a month-long break, I’m always nervous for the team to come back. Filming on a Thursday and then again on a Monday, I was super chill for the second time around. I’ve always wondered how the star chefs seem so relaxed on camera all the time, but if they film in a block, it makes more sense to me now.

It was also so sweet (pun intended) to have my little Liesl film with me! She helped me put the Affogatos together in one segment. My darling son Cal, bailed on me for the cookie segment with ALL the kids. One of the film team asked him to put a toy away or something as we were just getting ready to start filming the cookie segment, and that did NOT sit well. So, here I was was walking around behind the counter trying to help seven kids with all their cookies AND get them to eat, an here is my sweet son, a puddle, hanging onto my leg the whole time! Then I tried picking him up, thinking he’d be ok if I just carried him. Nope! Scream sesh! Thank goodness Grandma was on standby. Should make for an interesting segment, ha ha!

I could talk about HBDH the food series ad nauseum, but I’ll just leave it here. Click Here to watch ANY of my past episodes on Rainbow Channel 68 video-on-demand.