Sausage Potato Bake

We’re breaking out the crockpot again. Unfortunately, after a failed attempt at making crockpot monkey bread this past weekend, we are down one since the burnt concoction is impossible to get out of the crock. Believe it or not…I burnt something in the slow cooker.

I left last night’s dinner to Jon, who managed to not fail miserably at slow cooking. Unfortunately, we both failed at picture taking and so have no tasty images to dish up to everyone. But I do have a recipe to share:

Sausage Potato Bake

Jon didn’t seem too thrilled with it at first, at least not with the theory of it. But I thought it tasted great and he ended up liking it too. I even ended up buying the vegetable soup with the letter noodles, so that made if fun too. We used smoked sausage and canned potatoes we had in the cabinet which were surprisingly good. I ended up bringing some to work with me for lunch, though it’s now been designated to tomorrow’s lunch due to an unplanned pizza delivery bought by one of my co-workers.

Frugal Girls Giveaway: Home Free Organic Chocolate Chip Cookies

While working to be healthier, the fiance and I aren't about giving up anything completely. We are, however, open to trying new things. One of my favorite snacks is a chocolate chip cookie, and Frugal Girls is currently hosting a giveaway for Home Free Organic Chocolate Chip Cookies. While we want to try them for the good/organic value, these cookies would be great for anyone with food allergies or a palate refined to natural ingredients.

Visit the Frugal Girls Cookie Giveaway Post for your chance to win two boxes of these cookies. Everyone can earn up to six chances to win, so head on over and hook it up. Who can say no to cookies??!!

Kitchen, Cookies, and the Farmer's Market

As promised, I managed to get a few pics of our kitchen, but let's face it...there's not much to it.

Friday night was my first trip to one of our local farmer's markets. In truth, it was my first trip to a farmer's market anywhere. Believe it or not, I've always just done grocery store produce. I may have continued to do so too, but the peaches I bought at the store a few weeks ago were really bad, and I've been craving a good peach.

The bananas are actually from Aldi because that's the cheapest place to get them in town. At the Farmers Market (Eastside Market if anyone in the area reads this), I also picked up a garlic clove and an onion for a recipe I'm doing this week and a jar of honey. I've been wanting honey for awhile now, but I prefer it fresh and local than processed in a bear. Not that the bear isn't cute, but this honey jar was perfect.


On Friday night, I also got the baking bug and decided to make some cookies. I found this recipe and made some tweaks, substituting applesauce for the butter and shortening and ignoring the orange peel. They game out pretty good...a little over chewy and maybe a little too sweet (my bad for using regular applesauce instead of unsweetened), but I'll probably make them again.

I have everything I need to make banana muffins except a few ripe bananas. I also have a recipe for crockpot monkey bread that I was going to make this morning. I still might make it this afternoon for an evening snack. It'll go perfect with the chocolate milk I picked up this morning.

Post Move Update

It’s been about forever since I updated this blog. It’s hard to keep up on it when you don’t have a kitchen of your own, and baking and cooking both kind of got pushed to side. However, we just moved into our own apartment and can use our kitchen whenever and however we want.

The downside…it’s extremely small. In fact, I hesitate to call it a kitchen at all. It’s more like a sink, a counter, and an oven in a hallway (not so strategically placed next to the bathroom, I might add). But it’s great because it’s mine (for the time being).

How much have we cooked in it? Well actually quite a bit, though nothing worth getting excited over. Money’s tight so we haven’t really had the funds to buy things to experiment with new recipes. Mostly it’s been hot dogs, since we got a bunch of them on sale and they’re easy to make. One of our first meals consisted of a crockpot steak, salad with balsamic vinegar, and some “gourmet” bread:

Another one was white cheddar mac and cheese with hot dogs. Not gourmet, but definitely tasty:


One of my new “interests” is Bento boxes done with the food I like (which doesn’t include sushi or most vegetables) in cheap plastic containers (not the $30 traditional boxes you buy online). In reality, it’s nothing more than a packed lunch, but it’s so much more swanky to call it a bento…not to mention the fact that it makes it okay to get artsy with it. My first foray into this was a breakfast bento.


Mine is really messy looking compared to the one my fiancé made me this morning, but we didn’t get a picture of his work of art. This is a banana wrapped in a tortilla shell spread with peanut butter, then chopped to resemble a sushi roll. The colorful things are gummi worms (they were on hand and colorful) and the green stuff is pistachio pudding. I don’t know if it’s Kroger pudding or the fact that I use skim milk to make it, but the pudding always looks strange…not that creamy color but a glassy color. It freaked me out for the butterscotch pudding but it looks neat with pistachio.

Next time I’ll try to have some pictures of my itty bitty kitchen and who knows? Maybe I’ll have made some brilliant baked good by then too!