Oh man... that was a long drive!

*If you were unable to reach us via e-mail today, I apologize as there was a mix up (ugh, big surprise) between us relocating and our former cable company. The issue has been resolved and our e-mail access is back, so feel free to shoot us another note if you sent us anything today.

We drove up to Pittsburgh on Wednesday afternoon to see the pups and kitty at Jeff's Moms house - we stayed the night there and headed out towards Minneapolis Thursday morning. We were going back and forth on how long we should drive that day and when we got to the hotel in Janesville, Wisconsin, I still felt good so we decided to just to the drive in one day! I say "we", but I drove the entire way as Jeff was browsing through the maps, nodding off or working on a couple sudoku puzzles! 15 hours and just over 1130 miles later we arrived in Minneapolis! Whew - my back was pretty sore by the time I went to sleep!

Not wasting any time, we are meeting with Lori our new Realtor friend and will spend most of this afternoon starting our house hunt! We are probably going to be at a hotel for the next couple days before we move into our furnished corporate apartment - maybe then we can actually cook again! I am going to do my best to keep the blog updated as often as we can, but I just don't know how much time we are going to have until we get somewhat settled in. I will get caught up on the comments and e-mails as soon as we get back from house hunting tonight.

I do have something for you today though! A day before the packers and movers came, we thought it would be nice to have a plate of cookies for them to snack on. Because I was still trying to get some of the pantry staples used up, I had to be choosy with the recipe as I didn't want to have to buy anything new for it. After rummaging through the pantry to see what we had left, I found a recipe for Mocha Mudslides and used up the last of the cappuccino chips, brown sugar and butter... bingo!

This cookie gets a boost of chocolate two ways, once with natural cocoa powder in the dry ingredients and the second from a good dose of bittersweet chocolate chips. To give them that mocha chocolate/coffee combo, a heaping tablespoon of instant espresso powder is added when you are beating the base butter/sugar mixture. The chunky cappuccino chips also bring their own "coffee" depth to the cookies - right out of their oven their flavor is fairly mild, but we noticed that the coffee factor crept up the longer they sat.

The cookies have a smooth rich flavor with a firm chewy texture - I don't think I would necessary call them "crisp", but they were not soft and they were not hard either. Since we used a few tablespoons of shortening, we baked them right after mixing and they flattened out just enough without going too thin. If you feel like you have to use all butter, you may want to chill the dough for at least a couple hours before you bake the cookies.

Recipes
Mocha Mudslides