Updates!

Ok, where do I start?  Oh yeah.  Chili.

1st off, this chili was awesome.  I chose to omit the seeds of the jalapeno because my Irish boy husband can't handle the heat (his words, not mine), and I opted to sub in ground turkey for the veggie ground round.

2nd, wow, this makes a LOT of chili.  I just finished it today.  And of course I forgot to take pictures, well, except for this one.

That would be my 6.5 L stock pot.  Formerly full of chili.

I would definitely make this one again!

The pumpkin pancakes were really tasty.  We had them for breakfast on Halloween as is totally fitting.  I didn't thin out the batter at all, so they were a little thick and took a while to really cook through, but they were still really good.

It also makes me laugh that everyone had so many leftovers.  I guess they don't live with Derek.  We had 1 pancake leftover.  Which we shared cold a few hours later. 

Next time, I'll serve with bacon, but there will definitely be a next time for these!

Fall and soup are two of my favorite things!

I love fall and I LOVE soup! I always try through the fall and winter to make soup on a Sunday so that I can eat it for lunch all week...Not only is soup an easy lunch, but I also tend to use it to clean out my fridge of anything that I didn't get a chance to eat over the week. This soup was no different--which means I didn't follow the recipe super closely.

First of all, I added yellow and red peppers to my soup since I had about half of each one left in the fridge. I also used ground turkey breast instead of chicken because I had it. I used the rest of the ingredients in the recipe, but I made the soup nice and thick so it came out as a mix between a soup and a white chicken chili. It was delicious for dinner Sunday night and I ate it every day this week for lunch! Perfect!

Oh, and lest I forget...what else would I have for a perfect fall dessert...Apple crisp! Yep, perfect meal.

A Plethora of Updates

I haven't been on here in awhile...so I have lots of recipes to update. The last three weeks, in fact.

Last weekend I went to Boston to visit a friend and we decided to make the lettuce wraps for dinner one night. We used ground turkey breast rather than pork and were worried about it being too spicy, so we used a sweet chili sauce instead. The result was rather lime-y and not overly thai-tasting. It was alright for a light dinner, but probably not something I would try again. The wine was excellent though.

Then today was a kitchen day! Ed went off to golf for the day and I got the house to myself, so I did some laundry and then played in the kitchen. The same friend from Boston came up tonight and we got to enjoy all of the goodies.

First I made the chocolate hazelnut thumbprint cookies. Let me just say...OH MY GOODNESS! Anything that gets me to buy Nutella is a good recipe for me, but these were divine. I used dark chocolate powder rather than the unsweetened cocoa powder, and I didn't have parchment paper or wax paper, but everything worked out fine. The batter itself was to die for (and yes, I ate it raw eggs and all...I figure with the recent egg scare the eggs are probably safer than usual right now...), and the finished cookies were awesome!

And then finally, I made the pizza pot pie. I didn't measure anything for this recipe, but I used a lot less of everything than the recipe called for. I used fat free ricotta, two egg whites rather than the egg (saved from the cookies, since they only used yolks), low fat mozzarella, chicken sausage and whole wheat pizza crust. I thought it came out fairly well, though if I were to make it again, I think I would put a bottom crust on too for just a little more chewy factor. However, it was a tasty, easy meal that would be great to bring to a potluck sometime...and was an excellent pre-out-to-the-local-bar dinner for my friend and me!

So there it is...three weeks worth of recipes...finally updated!