Some of you may know Nona Nelson, the author of the Happy Wag pet blog here on Roanoke.com. What you don’t know is she is the glue that holds the newsroom together.
You need batteries? Nona’s got ‘em. Fighting with a testy printer? Nona can tame it. Need hot cocoa? It has magically appeared beside the coffee machine.

That’s what happened this morning, the third dark, dreary morning of the week. Beside the coffee machine and its indispensable hot water tap were two boxes of Swiss Miss, one with extra marshmallows and one with French vanilla, thanks to Nona.

If I have now got you craving a cozy, creamy, chocolaty treat, maybe you’d like to kick it up a notch and try this Nestle recipe I got in the mail. Nestle always seems to send some of the best recipes. Maybe because many of them involve chocolate…..

Photo and recipe: Nestle USA

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It’s Nona again. Lindsey will be back tomorrow.

Some of my favorite dishes are the simplest to make. And as much as I like to cook and bake, I also take a little store-bought help wherever I can find it.

I made one of my favorite desserts Sunday night. I started with a chocolate angel food cake from the Kroger bakery. I put the cake on a plate, poked holes in it with a fork and drizzled a big shot of Kahlua over it. I let the cake sit for an hour so it can soak up all the liquid. After about a half hour, I set two 8-ounce containers of mascarpone cheese out on the counter to get to room temperature.

To the softened cheese, I added another shot of Kahula, a quarter cup of powdered sugar and a couple of tablespoons of Hershey’s syrup. I whipped that all together into a smooth frosting and covered the cake with it. Then I put the cake in the fridge to chill until after dinner.

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Hello Fridge Magnet readers! I am Nona Nelson, the resident pet blogger here at roanoke.com, and I am honored to fill in for Lindsey today and tomorrow so she can enjoy a few days with her family.

Hope you all enjoyed the nice weather on Saturday before everything got all cold and drizzly. My husband and I enjoyed a cool, sunny afternoon on our deck and then fired up the grill to cook a flat iron steak for dinner.

If you have never had a flat iron steak, I recommend you try one. You can find them in a vacuum package in the grocery’s meat department. They vary in size from a little over a pound to almost two pounds each.

A flat iron steak is cut from the top of a roast. The end result is half-inch thick cut of meat that is often in a triangular shape that resembles the flat part of an iron.
It looks and cooks like a flank or skirt steak, but I think it’s much more tender. It should be sliced against the grain like a flank steak.

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