Chili Bread Bowls

Coming from the mid-west, it's probably a crime that I'd never cooked chili prior to two weeks ago. But it made for the perfect weekend cooking project when the hubs said how good it sounded to have a big old bread bowl full of spicy chili.

In my search for a recipe, I found dozens of "best chili ever" recipes on the internet. So I decided to take some of the best parts of each recipe to make ours. I ended up cooking some steak, ground beef and bacon into a habanero, poblano and jalapeno pepper mixture. The smell of the chili in the kitchen all afternoon was amazing, and we ended up with some great left overs!

Although they turned out more square than round, I made home-made bread bowls in our bread maker. And despite the super simple ingredients, the fresh bread really made this meal what it was.

Tandoori Lamb

To get a little more adventurous, we decided to try cooking lamb steaks a few weeks ago. We keep watching these cooking shows on TV, and lamb always seems to be a big challenge with even bigger rewards when it's done right.

I found a recipe for Tandoori Lamb in our International Cook Book, and we decided to give it a try! The sauce was delicious, and the meat turned out really well. Some pieces were a little less done than others, but that worked out perfectly for us. I prefer my meat more rare, and the hubs prefers the meat a little more pink. So that made it really easy to divide up the pieces.

Stuffed French Toast

We were looking for a "brinner" option for our new meal this past weekend, and decided to cook up a recipe that we've been eyeing for a while, but had just never tried... Stuffed French Toast! Fairly simple, and just how it sounds - two pieces of French Toast make the sandwich ends. We decided to "stuff" the sandwich with ham steaks and cream cheese.

My French Toast loving husband devoured every bite. On the other hand, it ended up being a little rich for me. The sweet bread was a lot to eat, and I eventually just finished the ham steak on its own. I'm glad we tried it though, because now I can stop staring at that page in the recipe book. I'm feeling that we're needing to step our game here a little bit. I'm hoping I can have something really good to report for you next week!