What's been cookin'?

Today I wanted to share some of my favorite recipes that have I've been brewing up in the kitchen. 

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This soup is so easy and delicious! I'm so glad we had left overs, and I can't wait to make it again!

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Ree is a genius once again! These breakfast muffin melts are a great way to get all of your yummy breakfast food in one bite!

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This gnocchi and sausage soup was pretty good. Not my favorite but a good and different from our normal.

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Crockpot Cream Cheese Chicken Chilli is a new favorite in our house! I made it two weeks ago and making it again this week. So yummy and you can put it in tacos, on a salad, or eat it plain!

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I made PW biscuts and gravy a few weeks ago for breakfast. I normally am not a fan because it's so heavy but ohmygosh this recipe is delicious! I cannot wait to make it again!

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I wanted to try a new kind of chili. I don't have a recipe that we love so I usually try different ones each time. This time I tried the 2 Alarm Chili Kit. It was so easy to use and makes a lot of chili. You literally just pour the ingredients into the chili, simmer, and done! The chili turned out really yummy too! I told my mom she needed to go out and get this pronto (she hasn't mastered cooking chili either).

My mom did not prepare me to cook a Thanksgiving feast

Don't forget to enter my BlueBird Couture giveaway! Ends TODAY!

Last week I talked about my Thanksgiving decor problem. If you missed it, you can find it here. J's family is coming for Thanksgiving dinner and I have no idea what I'm going to do with the table...still. But that is the least of my worries.

Let me tell you a little story about my mom and Thanksgiving dinner  cooking.

My mom is not a cook. She will tell you she has gotten better, which I guess she has, but she's still no Paula Dean Rachael Ray. Therefore I know very little about cooking. I can bake. I don't know where that came from but I'd like to say I bake well. Unless it's a pie. Or cookies. Okay, I can bake cakes and cupcakes well. Trust me on that.

So when it comes to Thanksgiving dinner I'm in trouble. Thank goodness J's parents are amazing cooks and they are bringing most of the food. Southern food, might I add, which just makes it better! And what does that leave me with? Well, I get to make a small ham, salad, green beans, and mac and cheese. They know me well. These are the things I can cook! Kind of...

Here is how the a conversation went with my mom about dinner.

Me: "I have to make a small ham."
Mom: "Oh, that will be good!"
Me: "But there's a problem."
Mom: "What's that?"
Me: "I have no idea how to make a ham"
Mom: "HAHA" (This went on for several minutes)
silence
Me: "You do realize this is your fault, right? You never taught me! You just had to order Thanksgiving!"
Mom: "I know. That makes it even better."

Yep, you read it right. Any time we had Thanksgiving at our house my mother had dinner catered. She would rather spend the extra money than try to cook it on her own (because it's been know to not work out). I always thought this was normal. People get their dinner catered. No biggie. Until I went to college and realized that most people don't do this. It's not like we have people come in serving us. In fact, we go and pick up the dinner the day before all ready to go. We warm it in the oven on Thanksgiving morning, throw out the trash, and put it on pretty platters. It's no secret, we just pretend we cooked it. :) Totally normal!

Flash forward to today and I've realized I've gotten nothing out of this but a belly full of delicious food. I have not the slightest idea how to cook a Thanksgiving dinner. I don't know how to keep everything warm to eat at once. I couldn't tell you how to prepare a turkey or even pick a good one out! Can you put a turkey in a crock-pot? Because then we would be all set!

So for this year's Thanksgiving feast, I will prepare my few easy food items and continue living in my Thanksgiving food bubble where the food just magically appears on the table.

Note: I'm pretty sure I never really got into the whole cooking aspect of Thanksgiving dinner because I never really have cared for it. I'm not a big fan of a lot of the food at Thanksgiving dinners. I'll just stick with that excuse. 

Menu Monday

The past few weeks have been SUPER busy now that school has started. I really can't keep up. Here is a quick Menu Monday post! Hope to be back in the blogging world soon!

Sloppy Turkeys

Just like Sloppy Joe's but clean eating and made with turkey! I put mine on a piece of wheat bread...less carbs!


Chicken Fried Rice

This we made up on our own
-1 rotiserie chicken
- 2 servings of brown rice
-1 egg
-veggies
-soy sauce

Cook up the rice. Fry one egg and add the veggies. Combine rice/egg/veggies. Add soy sauce and chicken.

Did it taste like Chinese food? Not really. But it was worth a shot!



I know there was something else that we made but I can't remember to save my life!! Hopefully next week will be more eventful.

Don't forget to link up with Rachel!

What I'm loving Wednesday: Create-A-Crock Edition

Instead of focusing on a lot of things I love {because there are a lot} I decide to focus on one specific thing I recently found!


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Without a Crock Pot some days there may be no dinner.

If you read my Sunday Social post from this past Sunday, you may have noticed the answer to my last question...

"Share one of your favorite recipes and the story behind it.

This is actually really tough. Over the last few years, especially this year, I have really expanded my cooking. J and I also have been eating a lot cleaner. Before this, I rarely cooked and when I did it usually didn't taste too great. After using the Crock Pot, my meals started turning out much better. It's pretty difficult to mess up a CP meal (and trust me I could do it). So if there is a recipe that involves the CP, then it's probably one of my favorites because when I cooked in my CP, dinner actually tasted good! Thank you Crock Pot for boosting my cooking confidence!!"

Seriously. Cooking with the Crock Pot really did boost my cooking confidence. I cook so much more both with and without it. I've cooked more this summer than in my whole life...not a joke. 

Recently, we lost the lid to our Crock Pot. I wish I knew how but it literally disappeared. I've torn the kitchen apart and still cannot find it. {No worries, aluminum foil is acting as the lid for now.} So that made me thinking about getting a new one. The one we have is great for just me and J, however when I want to make a big pot of chili or have the family over for dinner it doesn't really hold much. I told J last week that for my birthday I really want a nice Crock Pot.

Yes, I am asking for an appliance for my birthday...and some Tory Burch shoes, so it evens out.

Anyways, when thinking about what kind of Crock Pot I wanted I knew I wanted one that had a timer that I could control, held a meal for 6-8 people, was safe, had a lock on top if possible, and one that was pretty would be especially nice.

As I was searching the Crock-Pot.com, I came across the coolest thing e.v.e.r.

You can design your own Crock Pot!! 

Don't all jump up and down at once.

I'm still trying to figure out if I can just get a solid color pink Crock Pot instead of one with pictures. Since it's just J and I think it would be silly to have pictures of just us...or Oliver and Wembley since they don't eat Crock Pot food. I'll let ya know what I figure out.

So if you're in the neighborhood for a new Crock Pot and you want to even design your own with a little family flare, then you definitely need to check out Create-A-Crock!

I was not asked or given any compensation to write this post. I seriously think it is the coolest thing ever and I love my Crock Pot!

Menu Monday

Linking up for Menu Monday with Rachel!

Over the past two weeks our lives have been crazy. Our kitchen was torn apart while my dad was tiling and I've been trying to get into the "back to school" mode. So dinners over the past two weeks have not been as amazing as other Menu Mondays. Since we couldn't use our kitchen for about four days, we ended up eating out or making something easy like a bagel or PB&J (we had no oven). But in the end it all worked out and our back splash looks beautiful!

Here are some of the things I did cook!

Pesto Turkey Burgers

I forgot to take a picture, but here is the one from the site.

Slow Cooker Chicken Quesadillas 

I have to eat lettuce with any Mexican food

Pasta with Turkey Meatballs & Pesto Sauce

The link above (title) is to the turkey meatballs from Rachael Ray. Instead of frying them in a pan, I just put them in the oven on 350*. The recipe made SO many that I have enough for two more dinners that are freezing. The pasta is just a whole wheat penne and I added green peppers, mushrooms, and pesto sauce!

Those are all of the bigger meals I made over the past two weeks. I will be much better this week hopefully. Don't forget to link up with Rachel!

Blog Star: Hi! I'm {Not So} Newlyweds

Since this blog is rather new, I decided to participate in Blog Star hosted by Mrs. Monologues. I have just recently started to read Mrs. Monologues blog and she is a riot! Blog Star is all about "meeting" new people and showing who you are. If you want to participate, don't forget to link up here!

Hi, I'm Brittany and that (above) is my husband J. 

We are quite the pair.

Our blog was created to share our life events with family and friends, but over time has evolved into so much more!
Living in Columbus, Ohio,  J and I pay homage to the stereotype and are fanatics for anything Ohio State Buckeyes. When not decked out in scarlet and grey (and sometimes when we are!), you can find me in my fourth year of teaching fourth grade (going to 5th next year) and J working on a for a certain huge university in Columbus. We currently do not have any real children but are madly in love with our two furbabies, Oliver (mini goldendoodle) and Wembley (orange cat, who thinks he is a dog).

{our little lovies}

Some quick info bytes about us: I can't cook unless it's in a Crock-Pot. In my previous life, I was a party planner and interior designer. I always strive to become a better teacher. I love to learn. I am addicted to Pinterest and the blogosphere.

J is amazed by the amount of great-tasting dishes a crock-pot can produce even though he is an amazing cook! He hates large parties and would be happy with bare walls as long as there was a computer and an internet connection (and his lovely wife). J is addicted to technology, from calculators to supercomputers, and I'm thankful to have figured out how to blog.

 

Follow us in our adventures as {Not So} Newlyweds!