First thing we made were Pumpkin Spice Blondies. I got the recipe off the back of the bag of Nestle Pumpkin Spice morsels, so I don't have a link for it. Closest I could find was this. You just replace peanut butter chips with pumpkin spice. I didn't really have high hopes for this one, but I had bought the Pumpkin Spice morsels on a whim and had to do something with them. To my surprise, they turned out great! Then we baked some breads. First we made Cinnamon Bread. This was an alternative for Amish Friendship Bread. It didn't take days to do and no kneading was required. I love Amish Friendship Bread, so I wasn't sure what I would think of this. It was pretty good. I like the Friendship Bread a touch more, but this was still very good and great for a quick bake. Sunshine loved sprinkling the cinnamon sugar mixture on top! After that we made some Chocolate Buttermilk Bread. I am not a fan of chocolate, so I actually didn't try this, but my kids loved it! Even Sunshine, who doesn't eat bread (seriously, how can a kid not eat bread?!?), ate half the loaf. Since I didn't get to do any Christmas baking due to illnesses and going to Florida, I also had to bake some cookies. I'm not an eggnog fan, but my kids are and I really wanted to try something new, so we made Eggnog Cut Out Cookies. Oh.My.Gosh. These were so good! In fact, they were so good that I had a plate of a dozen set aside to give to a neighbor, and we ate them before we could deliver them (that's after eating the dozen set aside for us!) The plan was to also make kolachi cookies, but I came down with the crud before getting a chance to do so. Sunshine did have a friend over after I was put on antibiotics and I made them a special snack, Cheesecake Crescent Rolls. This was very, very good. It was actually better chilled rather than room temperature. I did have to change this a bit. It says to use an 8 x 8 pan to half the recipe. One would assume that if you half the recipe, you only need one can crescent rolls, but this isn't the case. I did half everything else, but it still took cans of crescent rolls.
Moments of not feeling horrible, I also tried out a couple of new dinner ideas. One Pot Cheesy Smoked Sausage seemed like it would be pretty good. It was very disappointing. It was basically mac and cheese and hotdogs. It was nothing special. I won't be making this one again. The Spaghetti Carbonara that I made, though, is a keeper. That was fantastic! OK, so I did set the smoke detector's off, but that's because I had to cook bacon. It traumatized the dog, but it was worth it. I also made Lemon Chicken Romano. This is one I will have to try again. I can't fry things. I really can't. So, the frying part of this did not go well, but the coating did have a good flavor. It's worth trying again when Husband is cooking. Last week, Husband made Italian Wedding Pasta. It did not go as planned, so we actually ended up having it the day after he made it. I think that was really a good thing. Husband and I both feel that it didn't look as appealing right out of the oven as it did the second day. Everyone, other than Sunshine, who just picked out the meatballs, enjoyed this. Worth trying again, but when we allow more prep time!
I'm really hoping that we are all over all the crud going around. When I have moments of feeling good, my plan is to try out new recipes and have fun cooking. Sunshine loves to bake with me. I only have a limited time left when it's just the two of us at home, so I hope to take advantage of it!