The Best Cheat Day Ever

In the life-long, ongoing battle of the bulge, Chad and I try to have bread, pasta & sugar only once a week. We call it our cheat day....it is the best day of the week! 
I found this fabulous website a couple months ago: Confessions of a Pioneer Woman she has a cooking section that looks fabulous!  She has these 3 recipes that I've been dying to try. So I invited our friends Bill & Katie and their cute kids over for our Pioneer Woman food night. I made Pioneer Woman's Favorite Sandwich, and Her Most Favorite Salad Ever. Ever, Ever, Ever! Now this is what Ree considers Cowgirl Food but Chad and Bill are dorky-girly-men so of course they loved it! We made the Sandwich in Katie's panini press which cooked them evenly on both sides and melted the cheese really nice. And I don't know it does it, but the grill marks that a panini press makes on a sandwich somehow make sandwiches taste better. Look how pretty the salad and sandwich looked. It was hard to eat it, it looked so pretty.

Now if you make this salad....it makes an enormous amount! So be prepared.

Of course I had to make dessert so I made Pioneer Woman's Apple Dumplings The picture on her website looks very yummy, but I really wasn't prepared for these. Even though in the last sentence of the recipe it says when you are done eating to "...go to confession. Quickly." I still wasn't prepared for these apple dumplings. Being Mormon, I don't go to "confession" but I did consider calling up the bishop. They are sublime! You've got to make them. I can't wait until my next cheat day so that I can make them again.

Of course, as with every cheat day I hate myself the next day. I had heart burn the whole night and was sick to my stomach the next day from eating so much food. But it was so yummy and fabulous it was worth it.