Crock Pot Chicken Noodle Soup

Cauliflower Soup

I am obsessed with this soup!  It is so easy to put together, and it is delicious!  I have made it twice this last month.  I think (correct me if I’m wrong) it would be easy to make it GF if you have a flour substitution you trust with which to make a nice roux. 
recipe and image courtesy The Girl Who Ate Everything

If your kids don’t like cauliflower, you could puree it all for a creamy soup that they might like without knowing there’s cauliflower in it.  We love it chunky (in fact, I usually at least double up on the veggies) and we especially love it served with several dashes of chipotle-flavored Tabasco sauce on top!

Pumpkin Lust Pie

This stuff is so good, sometimes we have it in the middle of the summer.  The pumpkin spice pudding mix can be hard to find, so be sure and stock up during the fall holidays when you see it.  My dad, who has eaten a lot of my cooking, proclaimed this dessert “the best thing you’ve ever made”.  It has pretty much replaced pumpkin pie in our house!
recipe and image courtesy: Boys Ahoy

Slow Cooker BBQ Pork

I got this recipe when I was in a freezer meal cooking club. Oh how I LOVE meals that are easy, can be prepped days, weeks or months before. It is even better when it is a crowd pleaser.

When pork is on sale I buy extra and through everything a gallon freezer bag, label and freeze.  On the day that I’m going to cook it I just cut open the bag and dump everything into the crock pot. If I put it in there completely frozen I usually add about an hour to the cooking time.

Peach Habanero Jam

In the process of making freezer jam this year, I decided that I wanted to put up some jam that didn’t need to be frozen, and I had seen a recipe for peach habanero jam on Pinterest, so I decided to try that out.  I was curious about the combination of sweet and hot, and I have always loved (and hoarded) my jalapeno pepper jelly, so I had a feeling this was going to be a match made in heaven. 

I was right!recipe courtesy Singing For My Supper ; image courtesy Savoring Time in the Kitchen

I made two separate batches, one with the amount of habanero called for in the recipe, and one with a couple extra habaneros thrown in.  While The Messy Mister didn’t…um, appreciate…the heat of the hotter batch (he’s kind of wimpy in the heat department), I LOVED how the heat just built and built up to the point where I almost started to get concerned, then held out for a moment before starting to dissipate.  I found that when I tried the regular version on a bagel with cream cheese, the heat got a little lost (even though I could still taste the flavor of the habanero with the peach, I wanted more heat to balance the sweet), whereas the hotter version packed just the right amount of punch.  In the future, I’ll definitely be making the same two batches, and I will label them accordingly.  “Peach Habanero Jam, Too Hot For The Saucy Mister” and “Peach Habanero Jam, SUUUUUUUPER Hot, Just Like Saucy Mama” should suffice, I think.

Peach Freezer Jam

I try to make peach freezer jam every year.  I love freezer jam because I feel like the flavor of the fruit doesn’t get taken completely over by the flavor of the sugar the way it does in traditional jams (although, yes, there is an alarming amount of sugar in either!).  There is nothing like that amazing flavor of fresh peaches to keep you going through the dreary winter months.  We especially love it on top of sourdough waffles!  Last year, I didn’t get around to making any, and we were coming perilously close to running out in the freezer this spring, so I made sure I restocked our freezer FULL of peach freezer jam this year. 

 

(There’s nothing particularly amazing about this recipe; it’s simply the peach freezer jam recipe out of the Sure Jell pectin insert.  I just wanted it in a recipe card so I could quickly reference it in the future.)

    image courtesy Any Menu; recipe courtesy Sure Jell pectin package insert

Creamy Tomato Basil Soup

This soup is a family favorite year-round.  Sometimes, we even eat it cold out of the fridge during the summer!
image courtesy Season With Spice