Earlier this month Chick-fil-a celebrated Cow Appreciation Day and if you dressed as a cow you ate for free.  So, we dressed our calves up and headed to Chick-fil-a for some free grub.  I was actually really surprised at how many people participated - young and old.  A cute little old lady sat down next to us in full cow attire.  She was absolutely adorable.  Her outfit had a hood, utters, and a baby calf taped to her utter.  Of course when we left the kids stopped and chatted with her, called her utters a penis (Hud), and squeezed them (Hadley).  

I tried a new recipe last night and we really liked it.  It was easy to make and clean up - one dish, the way I like it. 

I'm going to be honest, my finished dish did not look like the picture, but here's why.  I cooked the turkey bacon first, then threw in the chicken, and then started adding the other ingredients.  I didn't have half and half so I used milk and added a little cornstarch to thicken up the sauce.  Oh, I also snuck in chopped zucchini - heheehee

Regardless of my substitutions, dinner was delicious so I thought I would share the recipe.  Click on the image for the recipe.

I'm going to assume that I'm not alone on this, when I say that my kids don't like vegetables.  Well, unless you count corn and potatoes as vegetables.  Yes, I'm glad they love corn, but I wish they would eat more of the "good for you" stuff.  I can sometimes slip small chunks of zucchini and onions into sauces, but it's not very often.  

Anyways, enough about their poor eating habits. I had heard about Jessica Seinfeld's cookbook, Deceptively Delicious, so I thought I would try it.  I bought a pound of butternut squash, a pound of sweet potatoes, and a pound of carrots.  I went with her suggestions to roast the squash and potatoes.  I didn't think it through all the way when I chose the pan to roast them on, I grabbed a flat cookie with no sides.  BIG mistake...the juices from the veggies ran all over the oven, making a huge mess.  While roasting the mess, I steamed the carrots on the stove in a double boiler pan.  Distracted by the juicy messy oven, it didn't occur to me that the water might boil away in the carrot pan.  Well it did, and it destroyed my pan and the carrots.  Puree night was not off to a good start, but I managed to pull through and get the squash and potatoes pureed and put in the freezer.  

I'm going to say I'm 1 for 3 on my deceptively delish success rate.  I made some Chocolate Chip Cookies.  They had pecans, chocolate chips, and chickpeas.  Hadley fell for them, but Hudson and Andy didn't like them.  I thought they were okay.  They had good flavor, but the chickpeas were kind of a weird texture.  I think I could have gotten away with the chickpeas if I would have mashed them up. Maybe I'll try again.

Second recipe I tried was Turkey Burgers - eight thumbs down.  The consistency was horrible, threw them away.  Lastly, I made Spaghetti.  Everyone liked it.  I minced up zucchini, onions, mushrooms, and added in a cup of the squash puree.  Everyone loved it, and didn't hear a complaint.  

I still have a few bags of puree in the freezer so I plan to try some more recipes in the future.  I just thought I better cool it for a little while before the fam figures me out (wink wink).