Favorite Recipes from September

 

This month was NOT an impressive month when it came to cooking. We missed almost the first week because of vacation. Then I missed a few more days because of the staff retreat. Add in some dates and other events, and the cooking felt a bit lacking. But here are a few recipes I tried and enjoyed this month!

Avocado Egg Salad – I didn’t even know if I liked egg salad, so this one made me nervous. I still don’t know if I like regular egg salad, but I do like this! It involves eggs, avocado, bacon, and tomato. The avocado is what provides the creaminess, so it’s mayo-free! I added the avocado at the very end each time I served it so it didn’t turn brown. The only down-side to this is that when I made it, the eggs we’d purchased were super small, so it took two eggs to equal one. That was a LOT of peeling!

BLT – I don’t have a recipe for this, as it is fairly self-explanatory, but we did enjoy making them! I made mine using small tortilla shells, and Ryan made his on homemade bread. We used spinach instead of lettuce, because that is what we had on hand. But they sure were good, even with substitutions!

Slow Cooker Italian Beef Hoagie – I made this with pork rather than beef, simply because of the price. I also made it overnight while we slept, and waking up to the house smelling SO GOOD was kind of mean…when we had to work out instead of eating! But the seasoning blend in this was amazing, and even with pork instead of beef, it tasted so good. Because it’s a slow cooker recipe, it’s so easy to make! (I ate mine as a bowl instead of a sandwich.)

Cinnamon Swirl Coffee Cake – Our small group met a couple of times this month, and one of them included a breakfast-themed dinner. Ryan wanted to take a dessert, so I went with coffee cake. I wanted to try the recipe from the Unsifted website, so I could use our freshly milled wheat. I hadn’t made this recipe before, but it was well-received by our friends. I loved it!

Pumpkin Spice Sauce – I shared this recipe on a Saturday Suggestions roundup and decided to try it! I’m still not a diehard pumpkin spice girl, but this was a fun deviation for my evening coffee. It is true that this is a very thick sauce – almost like apple butter in consistency. I learned to keep a spoon in my coffee so I could keep stirring it, because it would settle in the bottom. I did cut the amount of brown sugar to ¼ cup instead of ¾ cup and also used a better-for-you version of brown sugar.

Chicken Taco Rice Poblano Bowls – I made these earlier this week and we enjoyed them! Instead of a poblano pepper, I used a can of green chilies. I used brown rice for Ryan and cauliflower rice for me, and we both thought these were tasty!

Roast Chicken with Rosemary and Lemon – I feel bad saying I made this, because I mostly framed a dish after this one. I didn’t have a whole chicken, so I used frozen chicken breasts on a sheet pan. I skipped the onion because I was too lazy to walk all the way back downstairs to get one from the pantry. And I forgot to add the lemon juice. But the rest of the seasonings were good! I served it with the potatoes (below).

Roasted Baby Potatoes – I made this with the chicken mentioned above. I DID follow this recipe more closely! I added some steamed green beans with these two things, and that was a tasty meal.

Strawberry Banana Smoothie – I like having a handful of smoothie recipes in my rotation for busy mornings. I bought a strawberry/banana frozen fruit mix to speed this one up. I did not add any additional sweetener, and I did use chocolate protein powder, because that’s what I have. It was good

High Protein Scrambled Eggs with Cottage Cheese – I’ve made these before and knew I would like them. Cottage Cheese is the new cauliflower, right? It’s in EVERYTHING now if you want extra protein. Even if you don’t love cottage cheese, you would probably be okay with this because I don’t think it’s noticeable in taste!