Dinner(s)

Today is the first day of October! And it's been quite a day - especially cooking-wise. After a crazy busy week, I was unable to prepare dinner hardly at all. It is hard to have a sense of groundedness when you eat out all week (lunch and dinner, sadly).

Anyways - I went with some fall dishes!

First, I made turkey chili. It is a standard recipe I've used, which I inherited from my mom, and this time I let it simmer in the crock-pot. I still had to cook the chicken, onions and garlic on the stove top, but it seemed to thicken up well in the CP. As I'm writing this, I realized I didn't include chili powder - but I did season the meat while it was cooking. Oops! :)

Second, I made soup! I'm trying to use up some ingredients as we're going out of town next week, and I had three big sweet potatoes left in our pantry. We had a lot of sweet potato fries lately, so I was trying to think outside the box. Seeing my curry powder earlier, I was trying to find a way to combine them. I found this recipe simply googling "sweet potato curry soup." In looking at a couple other recipes, I decided to cook up sweet potatoes, carrots, and apples. They all softened together, and then I blended em up with chicken stock in our blender. At the end I added some more spices and let it thicken some more as well. (I'll put my recipe in the next blog!)

Lastly, I wanted to have something on hand to pull out of the freezer and warm up some night. I poached some chicken and pulled it apart. I also cooked up some pasta, dumped some left over tomato sauce and mixed it all together. Slicing up some sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and excellent cheese purchased by my parents, I made a haphazard spaghetti casserole-thing. Sometimes they work out, sometimes not. Still fun to try!

Trying to stay away from baked goods this week - Mike and I are holding off from desserts. But I will definitely be making some pumpkin bread soon!!