i do still cook, i swear it

Back to the food, eh?  This has been a week of easy dinners.  We even ordered pizza on Tuesday.  But I have been cooking, I promise.  On Monday, I made this:

chili with vcon skillet cornbread

I never really have posted my chili recipe...  It's one of those things that I am just naturally good at making.  I don't have to think about it, I just do it.  Onions, peppers, beans, tomatoes, chili powder, garlic powder, cumin, chipotle pepper in adobo...  Oh, but this time I added 2 cups of water and a 'beef' bouillon cube.  It was ohsogood.  Spicy.  Yum.  We ate it for lunch for 2 days afterwards, and it was wonderful.  It's been rainy and chilly (ha!) here this week, so a big bowl of steaming chili with some cornbread broken up in it is just what the doctor ordered.  (by the way, I'm not sick anymore!)

daddy bowl and mama bowl

I made both of those bowls, too.  A lot of the dishes you see (besides the fiestaware) is stuff I've made.  Did you know that?  I'm crafty as hell, people.

Last night, Michael and I wanted sloppy joes.  We went to the store to get tomato paste and basil to put into the mix we had in the cupboard.  Then we came home and realized...  no mix!  Well, luckily I knew about the sloppy joannas recipe in YRR.  It turned out startlingly similar to the Fantastic brand mix we usually buy.  How nice to know that we don't have to buy it anymore!  

yep, those are curly fries you see.  jealous much?

We did change the recipe a bit, but not too much.  First, we doubled it so that we could have some for lunch today.  Instead of 2 cups of TVP, we used 1 cup TVP, one cup of crumblers.  Added into the mix were a green bell pepper and about 1/2 cup fresh basil.  Have you ever put basil in your sloppy joes?  Do it, it's amazing.  It adds a flavor dimension that will knock your socks off.  I can't take credit for this, it's on the back of the box of the mix we buy as a suggestion.  But a good suggestion it is!  Indeed.  Oh, I think we also added a bunch of garlic powder, onion powder, and salt to the recipe as well.  I made a salad to go with it, I promise, I do eat green veggies occasionally.

I ate mine on a slice of homemade bread, openface style

So uh...  lots of fake ground beef, tomatoes, and peppers this week, eh?  Oh well.  It was all very, very good.  And!  Since Virginia got her cookies, I can now show a picture of the cookies I made last week.  These aren't identical to hers, but they are damn close.

my new favorite cookies.  f'realz.

I really must thank Celine again for coming up with such a fabulous pumpkin cookie recipe.  These have white chocolate chips.  And I doubled the recipe and made like 2 dozen small cookies instead of 6 big 'uns.  Virginia didn't get white chocolate chips in her version, but honestly...  I don't think they added much.  These chips are going to be best when I put them in a full-on chocolate cookie, I just know it.  In these, they were just little pockets of sweet.  The flavor got lost in the pumpkin.  That's why I made hers with just regular semi-sweets.  They go nicely in this cookie.  

Now it's time to go work on dinner again.  And there is possibly a trick up my sleeve.  Stay posted!