The good, the bad, and the ugly

Last week, before everyone in our house was stricken with “the plague” as my  husband has been calling it—really its just a nasty virus that is kicking our butts and keeping us in bed trying to sleep it off.  Wow, that was a tangent.  Ok, back on track…back before we were sick I had tried several new recipes in the kitchen.  I’ll spare you my awful photography skills (mostly ‘cause I don’t have any pictures!  thank me later).  If you wanna see a photo click the links given and they all have great photos.

The good:  Blueberry Muffins –the lemon sugar on these is to die for.  I may or may not have eaten the leftovers straight from the bowl (don’t tell my kids!)  I’m making these again this week and skipping the syrup step to see how they turn out. 

Mulligatawny soup – I had originally planned a simple chicken noodle for our menu, but I had all the ingredients to change to this recipe and it didn’t disappoint.  I did halve the curry since my family aren’t huge fans and it was still a bit too strong for us so next time I’ll quarter it and see how that is.  It was great and pretty fast to put together. 

roasted broccoli – I saw a post somewhere about roasted broccoli not too long ago that made me want to try it, but couldn’t find it when I needed it so used this recipe instead.  I loved it.  Em thought it was too lemony and no one else would try it.  Warning though—if you eat too much you might just be “tasting” it all night if you know what I mean…

Oatmeal Chocolate Caramel bars – I made these to take for the Young women in our ward to eat for a treat.  They were good.  REALLY easy—the hardest thing was unwrapping all the caramels.  REALLY sweet—I think I would have liked a little more salt or something to counteract the sweetness of these.  They were still devoured quickly so they were still delicious.

The Bad

Honestly I can’t remember what it was I wanted to put in this category…one thing that might fit was the gross cookie dough we were given that someone bought from a school fundraiser.  Seriously, is any of that stuff good??  I much prefer to make my own cookie dough it tastes so much better!

The Ugly

So, the ugly was our crock pot lasagna that I made for dinner last Sunday.  I’ve been hearing about this a lot lately for some reason so I thought I’d try it.  I have a lasagna recipe I like so I wanted to just cook it in the crock pot but got times from 4 hrs to 8 hrs.  I needed it to be done when we got home from church so I split the difference at 6 hrs and it was too long.  It still tasted ok, but the noodles were WAY too mushy for me.  I will try it again sometime especially with our late church time, but I will be sure to cut down the time to 3 hrs and then go from there. 

Also ugly, but by no fault of the recipe.  We made these pancakes from the mix I made and have in the freezer.  It was the day a few of us finally felt up to eating again, but I was still so tired I just couldn’t make them very pretty and kept breaking them when I flipped them.  Good thing my kids don’t care what their food looks like and they still tasted good. 

If you didn’t notice www.melskitchencafe.com is my go to site for recipes.  We have loved everything we’ve made from her site and I love that she just shares recipes she loves and doesn’t worry about all the advertising, reviewing, giveaways, etc. that tend to take over other blogs about food.  Check it out!

What is your favorite go-to place for recipes and menu ideas?