Grape Salad

I first had this Grape Salad at my step-daughter Amber’s wedding shower and immediately fell in love with it. Until recently, it had been a while since I made it — out of sight, out of mind! I remembered it last month when Steph was here visiting from Pennsylvania and made it for her. Now her and her family & friends are addicted to it as well. It is super easy and a great summer treat!

1 bag red, seedless grapes
1 bag green, seedless grapes
8 oz package of cream cheese
1/2 c sour cream
1/2 c sugar (you can also use splenda)
1 t. vanilla
1/4 c brown sugar
chopped pecans (to your taste, I love em so I use more!!)

Remove grapes from stems, wash and allow to dry. In separate mixing bowl, combine cream cheese, sour cream, sugar and vanilla. Beat with mixer until well blended and no lumps remain. Stir in grapes until they are completely covered in cream cheese mixture. Pour into a 9 X 13 pan and sprinkle with brown sugar and pecans. Refrigerate and serve.

DELICIOUS!!!! I hope you enjoy it as much as we do!

~ Chanin

Visit us at the Fair!!

We will be having a booth at the Warren County Fair from Monday, July 20th through Saturday, July 25th. We have some great Breast Cancer product that we will be selling to raise money for our walk.

In addition to all of the great product available, you can adopt a pink ribbon rubber ducky for a chance to win our “Taste of Warren County” gift basket that we have put together! There will only be 100 ducks available for adoption at $20 each. As a “thank you” for adopting one of our adorable ducks you will be given a free dessert or appetizer card for a local area eatery!!

Hurry and adopt your duck, they won’t last long!!!

See ya at the fair!

~ Chanin

Putting the cart before the horse ...

So I totally thought that I had to get a blog going, not just for friends and family to follow us on this amazing journey, but also for myself .. to ‘clear my thoughts’ so to speak. My mind always seems to be going a million miles in totally different directions. Having a husband and three kids living with me that have been diagnosed as “Attention Deficit”, I would not consider that to be me. What I would consider myself??? Well, I’m not really sure .. soooo .. if you have a label, let me have it!!!

The reasons for me to have a blog were also to help friends and family learn some of the wonderful things that I have picked up on since I have been stalking um, following the blogging community and all of the wonderful blogs that are out there. I have learned so much about couponing, financial frugality, cooking .. you name it .. by all of the blogs that I have stumbled across.

Since I started couponing, I have gotten some close friends and customers addicted to it as well. It’s so great to see all the savings that those around me have been having by what I have be able to “teach” them from what I have learned and read about on-line.

Uh hum, back to the topic .. so, I started the blog for our team not completely realizing that as soon as I set it up WE WERE LIVE!!!! I guess I just assumed that I would be able to set it up, start to create, fine tune things and then go live. I am still trying to find the perfect theme for the page as well as the logo .. I have so many ideas swimming around in my head but, being the blog virgin that I am and knowing absolutely nothing about HTML, I don’t know the in’s & outs of putting it all together and getting everything to look “just so”.

SOOOOO what I’m getting at .. please bear with us as we get up and running. We most likely will not have daily posts for a while but I’m hoping to get there soon!!! Please be patient with us and keep checking back and .. if you have any ideas for us, feel free to leave a comment. We look forward to hearing from you!!

~ Chanin

Abuelo's Gift Card Fundraiser

Abuelo’s in the Deerfield Towne Center on Mason-Montgomery Rd has been and continues to be a great support for our team! Besides donations that they gave us for the Taste of Deerfield, they have graciously given us the opportunity to sell gift cards!

Now through the end of October, we are taking orders for the gift cards. Gift cards will be delivered as orders are received. Our goal is to sell a minimum of $1000 worth! This is a great fundraising opportunity for us and we hope you can help!

We are also planning a fundraising benefit in the next few months at Abuelo’s and will earn 10% of the sales from that day. More information will follow at a later date concerning this. Unfortunately, gift cards purchased from us cannot be used to pay for your meal at the fundraiser. We look forward to seeing you at Abuelo’s!!!

~ Team Quest 4 the Breast

Wordpress

I had originally set up both blogspot & wordpress blogs hoping to be able to play with each and then decide which I wanted to post to .. not realizing that I was live as soon as I hit the 'create account' button, I 've had to improvise a bit. In the end, it appears that I am having a "little" better luck on the wordpress site. I am trying to keep this one updated as well and hope to post to both. In the meantime, if you are looking and don't see any recent posts, then please visit us at:

quest4thebreast.wordpress.com

Taco Soup

I got this recipe at a Weight Watcher's meeting a few years ago and made it recently. Now my DH is addicted to it so I make it frequently. You can modify it to your own liking!

1 lb lean ground beef or turkey
1 small onion
minced garlic, to your liking
1 pkg taco seasoning 1 pkg Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix
1 can black beans, rinsed & drained
kidney beans (I use 1 can of regular and 1 can of spicy, rinsed and drained)
1 can rotel tomatoes
1 bag frozen corn (if you can find fire roasted, like at Trader Joe's, even better!)
V-8 juice

Brown ground meat with onions and garlic. Drain off any visible fat. Stir in packets of taco seasoning and ranch dressing mix. Start dumping in remaining items. Add V-8 juice to your liking .. more for 'soup' less for 'stoup'. Heat through. Top each bowl with a dollop of lowfat sour cream, shredded cheddar cheese and crushed tortilla chips. YUM, YUM!!
Great low fat, fiber friendly meal!

~ Chanin

It started with a haircut ...

... well, sort of. Breast Cancer has always been a thought in my mind. My dad's sister Phyllis died from Breast Cancer when she was 30, leaving behind three young children. Granted, that was a long time ago and I had never met her since my dad was only about 10 when she passed but I still remember thinking while growing up "gee that was awfully young". Even though she is a relative on the paternal side of the family, you still can't help but wonder about the hereditary aspects of the disease.
Besides my aunt, it seems as though I have always known of someone that had the disease or knew someone that knew someone that had it.
Jump to current day. Last fall I found out that one of my very close customer's had found a lump and would be getting a biopsy. Prayers flowed but the results came back and it was malignant. Test after test was done and the doctors felt confident that they had caught the cancer early. There was no need to do a mastectomy but the cells did spread into the lymph nodes of her left breast. Surgery was scheduled and the lump as well as the affected lymph nodes were removed.
Early this year she began chemotherapy. Prior to starting she was telling me about it and how she would be taking a newer type of chemo that only had a 40% chance of her losing her hair. At the time, my own hair was about down to my shoulders. I told her that if she lost her hair from the chemo then I would cut mine off as well ...
Round 1 of chemo was given the beginning of February and things were looking good ... no hair loss yet. Then we talked again .. the hair was coming out in handfuls so she planned to have her niece shave her head that weekend. I immediately called my hairdresser and set up an appointment for later that week.
It is now the beginning of June and my hair is still short. She has just finished her chemo and her's is starting to grow back like the soft down of a new chick! I've decided to keep mine short. I'm sure that i'll enjoy that a lot more when I'm walking in the Phoenix heat!
~Chanin