I was browsing one of my favorite blogs, Picky Palate , and came upon a recipe for Peanut Butter and Jelly White Chocolate Blondies. Hold the phone! Those are the three most heavenly things on this earth, all put into one scrumptious treat. I’m not surprised…Jenny is the queen of sweets, after all!

These blondies had a texture similar to pound cake, which is just fine by me.

You all know that I’m obsessed with peanut butter, right? I could eat it at every meal. I try to limit myself to 1 serving (aka 2 tablespoons) per day, but sometimes I can’t do it. I love getting a spoonful of peanut butter and dotting it with white chocolate chips.

These blondies are sorta like that, but people don’t look at you as funny.

Hope you all enjoy! Have a fabulous Thursday and wonderful weekend. I’ll be trapped in my house doing homework. BLAH! The Duchess

So, if I were a truly awesome blogger, I would have been giving you a minute by minute account of my NYC trip while I was actually there. Since I’m too lazy to lug my laptop across the country and stay cooped up in my hotel room writing posts, I’m now bringing you the goods a few days late. I sincerely hope you don’t mind.

Let’s start at the very beginning…a very fine place to start.

The Duke and I arrived in NYC last Thursday evening. We were starving by the time we arrived and decided to go to Cuba Cafe for some latin spice. We visited this place the last time we were in NYC (in 2006) and remembered the killer mojitos.

We shared a tamale that was topped with pulled chicken and peppers in a spicy broth, which was really good. It tasted like cuban comfort food.

Friday morning we made our way to the Lower East Side in hopes of finding the Clinton St. Baking Company.

This modest breakfast joint was featured on Throwdown with Bobby Flay for their pancakes. I remember drooling during the episode, and knew we had to go.

The wait was really long, but this cute little pup kept us company.

After our hour-long wait, I ordered a biscuit with homemade raspberry jam while our breakfast was prepared.

This was seriously the BEST jam I have ever tasted. I would have eaten an entire bowl of it. For my main course, I had the huevos rancheros with chorizo and the Duke ordered the famous banana nut pancakes.

Both meals were delicious! The Clinton St. Baking Co. was definitely worth the wait. This was probably one of our best meals.

After breakfast, we walked around the American Museum of Natural History while we digested. This place was huge! We were in there a good two hours and walked at least a mile or two.

Since we were already in the Upper West Side, we ventured to Levain Bakery for a mid-afternoon treat.

I’d seen their gigantic cookies on Food Network, and put them at the top of my must-eat list. HOLY COW. Best. Cookie. Ever.

I ordered the chocolate with peanut butter chips and the Duke picked the oatmeal raisin. Each cookie was as big as my hand and worth every penny of the $4 that they cost!

After this large dose of sugar, I was one happy Duchess!

We dined at the swanky Fig & Olive Friday night, but I didn’t snap any photos I was too busy catching up with my friend Hunter. I’ve known Hunter since Kindergarten, and he now calls Manhattan home. He joined us for dinner and we had such a great time!

Stay tuned for the Grand Central Station Market, Bar Americain, Little Italy and so much more! The Duchess

Ok, this cookie is out of control good. If there is one food that I can’t live without it’s peanut butter. I eat more of the creamy concoction than anyone I know. I just adore it. I eat it for breakfast with toast or swirled into oatmeal. I eat it for snacks with apple wedges or carrot sticks. I even eat it for dinner with chicken satay. Nothing beats a peanut butter cookie, though. There’s just something so right about a peanut butter cookie that makes me feel nostalgic.

How does one improve upon a classic peanut butter cookie? Stuff it with a chocolate bar, of course! Since all of the Easter candy was on sale at the grocery store, I picked up a bag of fun size Snickers. I knew these little chunks of peanutty and caramelly goodness would be great nestled into a peanut butter cookie.

Boy, was I ever right! These cookies nocked my socks off. I used a recipe from Paula Deen that calls for bread flour. The cookies were thick and chewy…just perfect.

I took a batch of these to school and the teachers devoured them! They could not stop talking about how good the cookies were. It’s nice to have so many coworkers to take my baked treats to…that way I can get them out of the house.

Make these soon, and be sure to have plenty of milk on hand. You’re going to want to chug down an icy cold glass of milk with these sweet treats. Have a great day! The Duchess

Have you heard of the website Eat Better America? I discovered it last summer and I just adore it. It’s got tons of great tips for living a healthy life and hundreds of wonderfully healthy (and more importantly, tasty) recipes. I subscribe to their E-newsletter, and last week a recipe for a breakfast cookie popped up in my inbox.

One of my friends had asked if I knew a recipe for a breakfast cookie a while back, so this was just perfect. It’s a very wholesome recipe, packed with honey, peanut butter, bananas, dried fruit and nuts. They’re quite moist and very filling…the perfect morning fuel!

I chose to stir in dried cranberries and pecans, but the cookie would be great with any dried fruit and nuts. I’m thinking of trying dried apricots and maybe even toasted coconut next time.

I like eating these cookies straight out of the fridge with a dollop of honey Oikos on top. The creamy yogurt and hearty cookie really get me going for the day.

I hope you all have a wonderful week. Only two weeks until Spring Break! Woohoo!!! The Duchess

To power up for the day, I made myself a bowl of plain oatmeal with skim milk, chopped peanuts and cashews (leftover from the peanut sauce the other night), craisins, cinnamon and agave nectar.

It was the perfect warm breakfast to get me going.

I also want to share a delicious and very healthy muffin recipe with you. I stumbled upon on a recipe for Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal muffins from Eat me, delicious a few months back. I’ve had it in my recipe file for ages, and finally bit the bullet and made these little guys. They’re incredibly most from the peanut butter and bananas and are wholesome thanks to the whole wheat.

They’re also not overly sweet, which allows you to slather on some vanilla greek yogurt or even another dollop of peanut butter…but I don’t know who would do such a thing

I enjoyed mine with greek yogurt and chopped apples all weekend long.

Mmmm mmmm good! Click here for the recipe. Have a glorious day.The Duchess

I spent today doing homework and studying for the dreaded FTCE, which is on Saturday. Check out my stack of flash cards.

Let me tell you how much fun that stuff is. Between breakfast and lunch I snacked on a handful of Annie’s Honey Bunnies, topped with a dollop of greek yogurt, half of a banana and a drizzle of honey. It was such a good snack! I’ll definitely be having this again.

After a bit more studying, I was in the mood for lunch. I had been looking forward to leftovers from last night. We ate all of the chicken tenderloins, but the brown rice, sesame cucumber relish and peanut sauce were excellent the second time around.

I ate EVERY last bite. After venturing out to the grocery store, I decided to make cookies. My dad gave me a Meyer lemon from his garden a few weeks back, and I wanted to use it up before it bit the dust. Look how yellow it is…almost a mustard yellow.

The flesh is slightly sweet, almost like a grapefruit. It was delicious!

I didn’t feel like exerting a whole lot of effort to make cookies, so I decided to make cake mix cookies. They’re so easy (I’ll share the recipe soon), and you can mix in anything you want. I used classic white cake mix and stirred in the zest and juice from my lemon, some white chocolate chips and toasted almonds and coconut. How good does this batter look??

I won’t lie…I had a small scoop of batter with some sugar-free cool whip as my afternoon snack. I just couldn’t resist. Is there anyone else out there that likes the batter even more than the baked cookies??

The finished product was equally as good (yes, I also ate a baked cookie).

I had big plans for the gym, though. Our trainer has been out of the country for a month, and we scheduled our first appointment in a long time with him tonight. I ran two miles at a speed of 6.3 before the work out. The Duke and I then endured a solid hour of dumbells and abs with Zoli, the trainer. It wasn’t all that bad, but I’m sure I won’t be able to move tomorrow. Though the Duke and I have been pretty good about cardio and strength-training while Zoli’s been gone, it felt great to have him back and get into the groove again.

Dinner was quick and simple. I picked up these beautiful whole wheat kaiser rolls at Publix while shopping.

Aren’t those puppies big?? I used half of a roll to make a veggie pizza, complete with caramelized onions, spinach, feta, marinara sauce and provolone. It was indescribably good!

I made the Duke a panini with caramelized onions, spinach, ham and provolone. We each had a huge salad on the side.

All in all, my three-day weekend was great. I’m excited to get back to reality. We’re taking the Pre-K students to a concert on Wednesday, which should be interesting. Have a great night!! The Duchess

This week’s My Girl, Paula! challenge is anything chicken. I found a delicious and easy recipe in Paula’s Quick & Easy magazine for a Satay-type chicken dish. The Duke and I both love Asian flavors, but I rarely cook them because the ingredient lists always seem so daunting. Not this one! The chicken tenders marinate for a quick hour, then the whole thing comes together in about 15 minutes. Cook some brown rice while the chicken marinates so that everything comes together at once. I also created a cucumber relish loosely based on a recipe from the same magazine. The cool crunch of the relish was great with the sweet and spicy chicken.

This peanut butter sauce is amazing. Seriously. It changed my life. I’m already looking forward to lunch, which will be leftover brown rice, sesame cucumber relish, and LOTS of peanut butter sauce.The Duchess

Before I left for the review, I filled up on a breakfast of a Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal muffin (will share recipe soon) topped with a dollop of Greek yogurt and some apple chunks.

These muffins are so great. They’re made with 100 % whole wheat flour, mashed bananas and oatmeal. Oh, and my favorite food in the entire world: peanut butter! They’re healthy and satisfying.

Fast-forward through my study session. It was at a community college that’s about half an hour away. I stopped by the grocery store on the way home and shopped for the week. It’s so nice to have that chore out of the way already(don’t get me wrong, though. I LOVE grocery shopping. Most certainly my favorite household duty). When I got home I was starved. I knew I wanted to make whole wheat buttermilk pancakes, so that’s just what I did. I used this recipe from Cooking Light. It uses half all purpose flour and half whole-wheat flour. I followed the recipe exactly, but may try it with all whole wheat flour next time. The Duke freaks out if I try to alter a recipe, so I just went with it. The finished product was ah-mazing!

The batter was really thick and made the pancakes hearty and perfectly chewy. I topped mine with chopped pecans, sliced bananas, and a mixture of sugar-free syrup, regular peanut butter and chocolate peanut butter (I probably used about 1/2 tablespoon of each of those ingredients).

This was the perfect dinner after a loooooooong and tiring day of elementary review.

Aren’t pancakes just so comforting? Next time I think I’ll put some chopped pecans and mashed bananas inside of the cakes, along with using all whole wheat flour. You really need to make these soon! How about tomorrow morning? They’re great alongside a cup o’ joe and your sweet heart.The Duchess

Dinner of champions, right?? It certainly worked for me. I’ve got lots to fill you in on, though. Yesterday they celebrated all of the aides at school and it was just wonderful! My kids made me drawings, gave me candy and were extra nice all day. I’ll definitely share later. As for now, I’m off to critique some theatre students before school. Just another day in paradise! The Duchess

Gotta run! We’re off to Napa this morning. It’s not easy tasting wines all day, but someone’s gotta do it. And that someone is me.The Duchess