Yummy Kitchen Eats

Hey there y'all. How are ya? Yesterday it was at least 70 outside, which is extremely odd for mid-December in our part of TN. I have to admit, it was really nice to walk around in short sleeves and no socks! It looks silly to see all of the Christmas decorations up in the subdivision with no snow or really cold weather in sight. I know that will change but for now things just seem kind of odd. We had every intention of washing our cars but alas, my grocery shopping took way to long. That's what happens when you run out of all the basics! Several hours and a whole lotta money later, I got home with a car load of stuff and the girls were diligent to help me put things away. I had been promising my hubby I would make an Italian sausage dish for him since last week. After my grocery trip, I really didn't feel like cooking but I hung in there and did so anyway. I'm really glad I did too because we had a couple of wonderful things that I want to share.

First, the Italian sausage dish. We don't eat this a lot and I had already determined (in my head) that no one would eat this dish except for hubs. We all LOVE meat but when it comes to something we don't eat very often, the girls and I automatically decide we won't like it. This is bad because we miss out on good food sometimes. Anyway, a few weeks ago, hubby went to the home of one of the guys in the bagpipe band. They were having a meeting and this guy's wife was kind enough to feed them lunch. She made lasagna and this Italian sausage dish and hubby came home raving about it. I heard him but never thought to go search for a recipe. Last week, hubby was still raving about it so he emailed the guy and asked for the recipe. To make a long story short, I got all of the ingredients while shopping yesterday and came home to make it. It was fabulous! I could not believe how tasty it was and very simple to make. By the time I thought to take a picture of it, the dish was all messy and most of the sausage was gone so I'll share the recipe with you:

For our family of four, we used:

• One package of good Italian sausage (I used Johnsonville Sweet Italian Sausage)
• One jar of Classico meat sauce (I used tomato and basil flavored Classico sauce)

That's it! All you have to do is cook the sausages on the stove top until browned (according to package directions). Next, put the sausages in a baking dish with a lid. Pour the sauce all over the sausages. Put the lid on and pop them into the oven @350 for 45 minutes. You will not believe how tasty this is! I'm sure it's not figure friendly but what's a little fat and grease now and then! I served this as a side dish. My main dish was fettuccine alfredo and I threw in some french bread.

For dessert, I made Apple Cranberry Crisp. I found the recipe over at Kelli's place and she made it look so good, I knew it had to be yummy! I used gala apples too since they are my favorite. The crisp was tart but you could easily tweak that by adding fewer cranberries, if you don't like tart things. I think it was wonderful and we served it with ice cream last night. I'll be trying it with Redi-Whip this week. It smells wonderful while baking too! Very easy and very yummy.

It looks wonderful while you're putting it together.

It smells great while baking and is very yummy topped with ice cream.

Have you made anything special lately? Was it as yummy as the things I told you about?