Recipe Round-Up

Here are a few things we’ve tried – and a few I have in the docket.

I made change-your-life-chicken tonight. It’s a game-changer. We’ve made it a handful of times with whatever we have on hand AND we’ve actually started to make it with frozen chicken thighs. It’s not too often we buy fresh chicken, mostly opting for the convenience of frozen. (Plus, our beloved Aldi – where we do our weekly shopping – does not carry fresh bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs.) But here’s the deal – we think it’s just as good. I made it tonight, as it was finally cool enough to open the windows and turn off the air conditioning; I thought, hey, let’s heat the house up with a 500 degree oven. (I’ve actually been toying with the idea of making it in the Traeger on hot nights. Still to come.) Tonight I used sweet potatoes, red potatoes, carrots, onion, and green beans I picked up from the farm stand down the road (because my green beans remain only an inch long – slowest growing season EVER here by the lake).

Last week, Dave and I attended a local Kenosha Kingfish baseball game, complete with tailgate beforehand. My work offered employees two free tickets so a bunch of the hospice team + families gathered to tailgate before the game. As luck would have it, I stumbled across a dessert blog a couple days prior and suddenly knew exactly what I wanted to take to share. DESSERT CUPS aka dessert in a small disposable cup. They were pretty simple to make, perfect to take to a tailgate, super cute, and DELICIOUS. Even Dave – I-can-say-no-to-dessert-Dave – loved them. I made two batches – cookies and cream & strawberry crunch. The blog has a ton of fun flavor combos.

I’m hoping to have time this weekend to give this a go – bagel bread. Dave loves a good bagel but making his own is time-consuming. I kind of hope that this bread with be an adequate stand-in when we don’t have individual-bagel-making-time available. PLUS – if you read through the recipe – I will get to dump a loaf of bread dough into a boiling water bath. Could be fun. If Jennifer Garner can do it, I’ll certainly give it a whirl.

This birthday cake babka remains on my list of want-to-tackle, along with any type of macaron. We also just used our last jar of homemade pasta sauce. DANGER. DANGER. If the tomatoes in the garden would ever ripen, we’ll be canning some more. MUCH more. (We planted, like, a million tomato plants this year with the hopes that we can become a pasta-sauce-canning-factory.)