One night recently, Corelyn stated, “I want to make this recipe that my dad gave me. He made it up.”

“Ok, what’s in it?” I said. I was ready for something delicious…

“It’s got pasta, and chicken, nuts, and orange, and wine, and…”

“…and?”

“…and cheese. Baked on top.”

You’re with me, right? Cheese? On top of orange-chicken pasta? With wine? What?!

I know what you’re thinking: weird. So weird. I was concerned we were going to get done and it was going to be too orange-chicken-cheesy to eat, and we were going to have to eat something else.

False. YOU GUYS: it was delicious. SO good. Photographs of the process:

So good. So very good.

We made it. I hated it. Sorry, PW, but gross. Also, we apparently did not photograph it. Luckily, Corelyn made this infograph to explain casseroles, which is what Chicken Spaghetti was, for certain.

That’s some gluten free flour. I swear.

See, there it is! It’s marvelous!! Thank you King Arthur, thank you.

The Pioneer Woman is BACK. We are back on, PW, we are so back on.

So first you make a roux (with the gluten free flour and buttah…)

Then you add the enchilada sauce…

Then you add some ground beef (by which I mean ground turkey) and an onion together, and you let ’em have it.

Then you add some green chiles. Yum. And you know, some spices.

You have to soften the corn tortillas with some canola oil.

We decided to make beans alongside the enchiladas, to knock two recipes out.

Mmm bacon.

Then you gotta put the enchiladas together, using the ground turkey and onion mix, with green onions and some cheese. We missed the step where you are supposed to dip the tortillas into the enchilada sauce. (Elliott says we don’t need to do that, anyways, which was proven when we ate them and they were still delicious.)

And then, they were done. Here they are:

Here we go, PW. We’re so back on. Delicious.

A few weeks ago we wanted to have the girls over for one of our usual bring-your-own-toppings pizza night, but I made things slightly difficult by being on the South Beach Diet. That’s okay, though! We came up with an excellent solution. Make Your Own Salad Night!!

We started with a giant bowl of greens. Good thing I impulsively bought this giant-size salad bowl at Costco…

Then we started adding salad toppings to the table.

Cup labeling: an important part of any girls’ night.

The toppings multiply!!

Pretty good spread, right?

Oh Hey! Friends getting their salad on!

It turned out to be a great idea and a lovely evening with the girls. I think I had three plates…

Thursday night was Pierogi Night at the HAP House, in order to fill our Daring Cooks’ Challenge!

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

We used a recipe for Potato Pierogis.

We put potatoes on to boil, then cut up an onion to saute.

I decided to add some zucchini to the onions, because we just had so much zucchini from Liz.

Corelyn started the pierogi dough, using cream cheese, flour, etc.

When the potatoes were done, I added cheese, and some salt/pepper, and mashed along merrily…adding onion/zucchini as I went…

Then it was time to put everything together…

Thank you, Corelyn, for touching the flour. You know I hate it…

Then we boiled the pierogis, and of course didn’t get any photos of THAT process. But here they are, done!

Of course there are no photos from the actual meal, because everyone ate quickly! And, Liz told me that I should have fried them after boiling (which was an option on the recipe I used, but didn’t seem to be a necessity) so the pierogis were a little slimy, not going to lie. Everyone seemed to like them though (even Jeff, who ate them with sauce!)