Sweetphi

Fast and easy recipes for busy people

Happy Holidays {goodbye 2015 and hello 2016}

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First and foremost, from the bottom of my heart I wish you Happy Holidays! As we say goodbye to 2015 and hello to 2016 I wanted to reflect on some of the highlights and failures of the past year!

Christmas ornament

First of all, the holidays, they’re amazing! What are your plans? Are you traveling or doing anything fun, I’d love to know! This year I really want to enjoy them so I’m taking a little break to unplug and recharge, you can follow me on Snapchat, username: Sweetphi or follow me on Instagram for the latest updates, I’d love to stay connected and I’ll be back the first week in January with a bunch of new recipes and travel adventures!

Oven mitt Christmas ornament

There are close to 600 recipes in the recipe index, so you have plenty choose from. Need some additional inspiration? I’m pinning like crazy over on Pinterest.

The best recipes of 2015 from @sweetphi

Also, here are the top 20 most popular recipes of 2015 (these are the ones that had the most views in 2015):

  1. How to make a mimosa bar – it’s perfect for New Years!
  2. No bake coconut date energy bites – I’ve made these more times than I can count, they’re great!
  3. Chicken feta spinach tomato pasta – this one is great for a quick dinner, and it’s the first meal I ever cooked for my hubby!
  4. Egg salad sandwich with bacon and what to do with leftover hard boiled eggs – sometimes a simple classic is all one wants.
  5. 5 ingredient peanut butter cup ice cream cake – why had I never made ice cream cakes before? They’re so easy and everyone loved it!
  6. 5 ingredient ramen with an egg – even though I literally just posted this, it has quickly shot to the top of the list of most viewed recipes on my blog, it’s AMAZING and I’ve had readers send me pictures of them making this dish, I promise I’ll update reader recreations soon!
  7. Creamy cashew curry chicken and cauliflower rice – this is a healthy recipe that honestly is sooooo good, totally worth making. And cauliflower rice? Who knew how easy it was!
  8. The best salted caramel chocolate chip cookies – these truly are THE BEST cookies, I make them pretty much all the time, they’re simply amazing!
  9. Coca-Cola brownie crinkle cookies – brownie meet cookie, enough said
  10. Chocolate chip oatmeal stout cookies – these are a very fun cookie to make for the beer lover in your life
  11. 5 ingredient goat cheese and egg souffle cups – this makes for one delicious brunch menu item!
  12. Banana caramel swirl cake – it’s like banana bread, but in cake form, it’s such a great cake!
  13. 5 ingredient green power smoothie – green smoothies are still all the rage, and this one is delicious and doesn’t taste ‘green’ at all
  14. Roasted kale and salmon detox salad – this one is perfect for a healthy start to the new year – and it is made on one pan so it’s easy clean up!
  15. Roasted vegetables and sausage – this is one recipe I make all the time, one pan roasted vegetables and sausage are delish!
  16. The best nachos with pulled pork and green chiles – this is my hubby’s recipe and is perfect for game day, or any day really, nachos rock, don’t they?
  17. 5 ingredient raw honey and goat cheese appetizer – looking for a super easy last minute appetizer recipe? This is it my friends, it’s one of my faves too!
  18. Strawberries and cream icebox pie – for when you don’t feel like baking, this pie is the one to make, it’s super easy and super delicious!
  19. Vietnamese chicken rice noodle salad – I always love salads that don’t taste too ‘salady’ and this one is amazing, it has lots of veggies and great flavors!
  20. 5 ingredient Mexican shredded beef and beef tostadas – if you follow me on Snapchat, username: SweetPhi you’ll know that I just made this again last week, it’s such an easy and delicious recipe for busy weeknights, make one batch and you’ll have meat for 5 meals all ready to go!

Did your favorites make the list?

@sweetphi travel in 2015

Some of the the highlights this year were the travel I got to do! I loved getting to travel with my hubby (we got to go to along the coast of Oregon and to Portland) and all the travel I got to do with my bestie Lynn (we got to go to Portland, California,  Arkansas and Chicago together). Whenever I travel I buy a little ornament for our Christmas tree, like the below sea lion from our trip to Oregon (in the background you can see a little whiskey barrel ornament from our trip to Louisville and a little lobster from a trip to Maine my hubby and I went on years ago), or the ornament we got a few years ago from our honeymoon in Alaska.

Ornaments from @sweetphi travels

I have a serious case of wanderlust, always, so I cant wait to share all the exciting trips that will hopefully take place in 2016!

Other highlights this year were of course the announcement of my cookbook that is coming out in 2016-I can’t wait – and my new website design, it’s a work in progress and there will be some additional cool features (like a menu planning feature) in 2016!

@sweetphi five ingredient recipes cookbook

Now on to some of the failures, oh boy this one is always funny… so last year I shared some fails and the big theme last year was name fails – Starbucks kept giving me very funny names (maybe they saw the post because this year I don’t think I’ve had a single name fail!). This year there were a few funny failures, like that time I tried to make cookie crumble iced coffee from Cosmo magazines snapchat, or that time I was recipe testing cookie truffles and put way too many cookie crumbles in and they were hard as rocks (hey-it looks like I have issues with cookie crumbles LOL). Another failure (that luckily wasn’t worse) was when I put carafes from the ‘how to make a margarita bar‘ post into the dishwasher and they melted. In my defense, I had no idea they were made I out of cheap plastic, they were hard like Tupperware!

Recipe fails of 2015

Another one of my failures I have to share is my endless requests of my amazing hubby to hand model. He deserves a medal, or some extra cookies or something. LOL, I captured the moment on the far left during one of our photo shoots when I was telling him to spread the butter ‘more naturally’ and the middle picture was captured by Lynn when Nick was demonstrating to her how I asked him to hold salad tongs. He’s amazing that man.

Food blogger husband hand model

I’d like to finish the post by saying THANK YOU for reading my blog, happy holidays and I hope to see you in 2016!

The @sweetphi Christmas tree

 

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  4. Aww! This is so fun! I love it. What a great way to look back on the year. Also, that’s so cute… always asking your hubby to be the hand model!! 😛

    Reply

    • Thank you so much girl, thank you for your constant encouragement and for following my adventures! I hope you have a fantastic holiday season and awesome start to 2016!

      Reply

  7. Cute ornaments. I have made more recipes from this blog than any other this past year. Keep up the good work! and THANK YOU for this past year of your incredible blog!

    Reply

  11. First of all, we hope you had an amazing time, surrounded by all the people you love.
    We went to Evia ourselves (of course) and stayed there for a week. We took the opportunity to visit a village right under the peak of Dirfys mountain, called Steni (perhaps you saw a couple of photos we put on Twitter that morning). We also got the chance to cut the vegetables and fruits ourselves, straight from the plants and trees.
    These holidays we baked and baked and baked. We baked 3 batches of kourabiedes, 2 batches of melomakarona, our own homemade vasilopita, tried some cookies…We also bought a new stand mixer, so we were very happy to put it to the test:)
    We also cooked some hearty meals, like beef kokinisto, bolognaise etc, and tried many many Greek and French wines.
    Now; regarding your list: No3 is definitely one of our favorite recipes! And you just reminded us that we need to make it again:)
    As for the cookbook, we’re really so HAPPY FOR YOU! We honestly can’t wait to see some sneak-peek pages when it’s ready!:)
    The failures part was so funny!:) We do remember the post with the Cosmo recipe:) Our worst failure was when we tried a new idea for stuffed cucumbers in the past year. It was a total disaster:) Water from the cucumbers and stuffing everywhere, and a very strange flavor as a result. You should’ve seen our faces when we tasted those canapes:) Of course it never got published. But we all do learn from our mistakes. And if you don’t try you want succeed.
    Thank you for a great blogging year, it is always a pleasure to read your posts, we learn so much and we do have a great time reading them!
    Lots of hugs from both of us!
    Panos and Mirella
    xoxoxo

    Reply

    • Happy holidays Panos and Mirella! I hope you are adjusting well to the New Years and having a great start to the year. Your trip (and certainly the wines) sound absolutely lovely! The stand mixer will for sure see some fantastic recipes made, what a great gift to yourselves!
      I’m so glad you like the recipes and that one your faves made the list too 🙂
      Aren’t failures funny? I love the story you shared about the cucumbers…HAHAHA!
      Best of luck for the coming year, and thank you so much for all your support and encouragement and your lovely comments!
      xoxoxoxo
      Phi

      Reply

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