Just a quick note today to let you know that I decided to leave Brownies for Dinner where she is for now. I moved all of the posts I’ve written since January 2013 to my new blog at: http://patricialawless.com. So if you are looking for any of those, you can find them there.

I may decide at a future date to move everything (food posts & all) to patricialawless.com, but for now I like the idea of having a place to put an occasional recipe. (And when I say occasional, I mean not very often).

Anyway, change is hard. But I keep putting one foot in front of the other. I can’t wait to see what things look like a year from now.

By the way, if you have a saved link to one of the newer posts that I moved, it will automatically redirect to the new location.

If you like my writing & want to stay in touch, be sure to follow to my new blog.

Read More

Wishing for you that wherever you are is the happiest place on earth.

As the calendar rolls over, I wanted to let you know that I’ll be making changes to this blog… starting over in some ways, and moving into a new direction.

What you can expect:

• more posts than there’s been the last year or two (that is, more than the dismal 5 posts a year I’ve managed this year… you can expect more like 1-3 posts per week).
• less of a food focus. (I’ll still post recipes occasionally. I still love food and love to eat, but to be honest, my heart isn’t in it enough to keep this a “food blog” any more)
• more life focus (what’s important to me like relationships, living intentionally, inspiration, health, balance, simplification, and fun… and interaction around things like: what’s important to you?)
• some design changes (including a name change)

All of this will be happening starting in January. I think we’ll have lots of fun so I hope you stick around through it all.

Happy New Year!

Read More

Image Credit: Otto Bettman via Pinterest

Do you recognize that line I used in the post title? It’s stuck in my head as I write this, even though I had never actually listened to the song until I started writing this post (cause I wanted to get the lyrics right). “It’s Friday, Friday, blahblahblahblah Friday”… that’s what’s stuck in my head on an endless loop.

If you’re still not sure what I’m talking about watch this: video (Rebecca Black’s Friday, which went viral last year). Yeah, I’m sorry.

(I only watched the first 52 seconds of it. I just couldn’t go on.)

ANYWAY.

Moving on… to this week’s roundup of goodies from the interwebs.

Read More

With all these pancakes lately, I’ve had to drag my butt back to the gym. Back to spin class…

Sometimes, I hate it. Like when the instructor has us cranking up the resistance to “climb a hill” and the song sucks. Or I look up at the clock thinking we must be close to the end of class and we haven’t even reached the middle.

But then I love it. I love spinning because I feel like I get a real workout. I sweat a lot (which I normally don’t like but in this instance I love it. I think of it as all of the calories I’m burning escaping through my pores). And after I’ve been at it for a few weeks or so, I love what it does for my legs and butt.

But most of all I love that spinning makes it possible for me to eat breakfasts like potato pancakes (with lots of applesauce and sour cream), blueberry pancakes, and pumpkin pinwheels – mostly guilt-free.

Just imagine what I could eat if I went to Zumba more often too.

Cinnamon-Apple Oatmeal Pancakes

First, let me say that these are my current favorite pancake. The spices are bold and balanced, the texture is almost like an apple fritter, and they make me smile.

Read More

I’ve only had the last name Lawless for 1.5 years now, so I’m still getting used to cashiers and waiters saying, “Cool last name” when they see my debit card. But I have to say I really do like having it. It just sounds so… rebellious.

Anyway, I’ve been kind of obsessed with pancakes lately (nice segue, right?). I’ve been playing around with recipes for pumpkin, chocolate, and (my new favorite) oatmeal-cinnamon-apple pancakes in the last couple of weeks (all of which I’ll be sharing here over the next few weeks).

And then on one of the backburners of my mind, I’ve been thinking about family recipes… wanting to document them and try them out in my own kitchen. Stuff like my grandmother’s macaroni and cheese which I don’t even remember eating, but my Aunt Helen sent me the recipe. So, now I have to try it (there’s something about it being my grandmother’s recipe that makes it feel special and more comforting somehow).

And there’s something about being connected to the past. A thread that weaves into the present and I get to pass onto the future. I love how food is one way to preserve that connection.

And that brings me to this recipe for potato pancakes from Dan’s grandmother. Technically, I got the recipe through Dan’s sister who got it from their aunt who had to tweak and figure some things out from memory. And from there, I tinkered and measured and put together what you see here.

Read More