"cookie dough" blizzards

when i was growing up the official start of summer was marked by the opening of dairy queen- you could hear the buzz around town "only 5 more days until dairy queen opens, that means it is almost summer!", the owners would begin the count down until opening day on the marquis for all to see-the line on that first day would be nearly a mile long, everyone looking to get their ice cream fix after a cold & snowy new england winter. ask each person what their favorite first of the season treat is and you are sure to get a different answer from everyone- my dad; peanut buster parfait or a dilly bar, my mom the same, she loves the spanish peanuts that adorn the top of the buster- sometimes she would go with a twist cone, my sister a cone with the red dipped hard candy shell and my choice; almost always a blizzard- snickers, butterfinger or cookie dough!

mushroom stroganoff

when i was younger it was a rare occasion that my mom would treat us to a box of hamburger helper- more often than not it was  when my dad went off to his boys only camping weekend in the fall and us girls where home for our own girls weekend. it was tradition for us to go to the grocery store and pick out any item our hearts desired for dinner - our 2 top picks. hamburger helper and chicken pot pie; why these 2 things you ask? first my dad loathes peas and pre-made chicken pot pies ALWAYS has peas & he thinks hamburger helper is disgusting. growing up i never paid any attention to ingredients, my mom cooked 90% of our meals from scratch, convenience foods for dinner were far and few between. once i grew up a bit i realized hamburger helper was filled with not to good for you ingredients along with more ingredients than i care to count. so i graduated to the grown up version- annie's homegrown beef stroganoff, at $4.79 a box it was a bit more than i wanted to pay. thus deciding how hard could it be to recreate the same meal- come to find out, not hard at all