Toffee Time!

Pure crack.

Sugar Free Lemon Curd

Lemon curd sounds like a fancy grown up thing to make, but then I eat practically the whole thing with a spoon and it seems less so.

Chicken Noodle Soup with Pumpernickel Croutons

Hubby is sick, so I spent 3 hours making chicken noodle soup – because that is an appropriate response. I guess I wanted to make soup anyway, but it was way more time consuming than popping open a can of Campbells. Anyway, there isn’t much of a recipe. Chop and simmer. Oh, and these croutons were f-ing fantastic.

Beef Stew

…. and a mere four hours later, we have stew! This took forever, but it was tasty. Original recipe is from the Pioneer Woman Cooks, but I made some minor changes.

Sweet Potato Pie

Tastes just like Pumpkin Pie, but you don’t have to use dumb canned pumpkin.

Spinach Artichoke Dip

I didn’t get any pictures before people had started eating, but I had to post this anyway. It was pretty much universally declared the best spinach dip ever ever.  I used a couple different recipes and tweaks, so hopefully I can get pretty close to remembering the ingredients. The main recipe I used as a base is here.

Tyler Florence’s Ultimate Lasagna

Whenever Mr. K and I cook together, we tend to cook Italian comfort food: eggplant parm, stuffed shells, lasagna, etc. This time it was lasagna. Perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. This particular recipe was good. I like that you make your own bolognese sauce as a part of it. There’s a few more steps, but you feel like you really “cooked” something. The one thing I noticed about this recipe is that I was very aware of the sausage taste of the meat. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I like sausage, but I wish it was a bit more mellow somehow. Maybe 3/4 ground beef 1/4 sausage, instead of half and half?

The original recipe is from Tyler Florence here. I used several of the updates recommended from Kayotic Kitchen here.

Pumpkin Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars

Yum! These were good. I wish they had a bit more texture, so I might add more nuts next time. I think it would have been good with craisins or something like that, but I didn’t have any on-hand. And I’m sure they would be good with chocolate, but I wanted them to be reasonably healthy. Still pretty good, and super easy. By the time the oven is warmed up, you’re ready to put them in.

Apple Cake

Something got screwed up here. I don’t know what I did wrong, but everyone says apple cake is supposed to be super moist, and mine was super dry. Maybe I over baked it, maybe my baking soda is too old, who knows. I ate it anyway, because it still tasted like apples and cinnamon and goodness. I might try a different recipe later this fall.

Spinach and Chickpeas

God bless Smitten Kitchen. This is one of my favorite things to make when I’m trying to be healthy but I still want something good. I often don’t have bread in the house, and the recipe turns out just fine if you skip it.