Italian Sausage Soup

This sausage soup is total comfort food in a bowl with red pepper, spinach, and frozen egg noodles that give it such a from scratch feel to it!

Do you ever eat something and it reminds you of a nostalgic food but you can't put your finger on it? That is this Italian sausage soup for me. I think, in part, the nostalgia is due to the frozen egg noodles. The thing is...I can't remember who it was that made the recipe with frozen egg noodles. I feel like it was my mother-in-law but it very well could be my grandma. Who knows! What I do know is that you cannot go wrong with a sausage soup with red bell and spinach in it. The nostalgic noodles were just a bonus :)

Reindeer Food

If you are ready for the most addictive winter holiday snack, look no further!

I think I have found a new tradition in this Reindeer Food recipe. We have made it for the past two years and we love it! Matthew is already asking if I'm going to be making another batch this year because this year's batch lasted all of a night and then it was gone! It's ridiculously easy - with only three ingredients - and it's pretty quick to make too. My family loves to help make it because it boils down to stirring and crushing and the kids and Nick like doing those things! LOL

I'm not kidding at all when I say this is super addictive. We could not even let it set up before we were eating it. And it's so hard to not continue to eat it once you've started. I do suppose this is supposed to be for Santa's reindeer, but sorry, Rudolph, guess we're just going to leave you a carrot this year!

Menu Plan Monday - December 10, 2018

Last week, I said everyone had a hand in meal planning this month. This week, I chose spaghetti and copycat Popeye's. Matthew chose fajitas. Nick chose burgers and fancy mac 'n' cheese. And all of us wanted Skyline. We're also going to be doing a lot of holiday baking/cooking this weekend and preparing chex mix, bacon cheese spread (a family tradition) and cookies.

Monday - Roasted Garlic and Cheese Baked Spaghetti
Tuesday - Chicken Fajitas
Wednesday - Cinnamon Roll Donuts // Skyline Chili
Thursday - Copycat Popeye's Spicy Chicken with mac and cheese, collards, and Best Homemade Biscuits
Friday - Grilled Butter Burgers
Saturday - Slow Cooker Chex Mix, Bacon Cheese Spread, White Chocolate Dipped Ginger Cookies, Spiced Snickerdoodles
Sunday - Cake Mix Coffee Cake // Fancy Mac & Cheese

What are you having for dinner this week?
Feel free to leave a link to the recipe in the comments!

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Prosecco Infused Moist Vanilla Cupcakes

Celebrate any holiday with a little bubbly in your cupcakes!

I am so happy that I'm finally getting around to posting these amazing vanilla cupcakes. I had the idea last year to make wine-infused cupcakes for my mother-in-law's birthday. I didn't really find a recipe to make, so I went to one of my favorite dessert blogs to get a solid vanilla cupcake recipe. The cupcakes and frosting alone are fabulous. The frosting in particular is one of my all-time favorites. It's so creamy and just the right amount of sweetness (for me).

The wine part wasn't hard to figure out from there. My mother-in-law prefers dry wine and she likes white wine, so I bought some cutesy heart pipettes from Amazon and filled them up with this Cupcake Prosecco. Cupcake for the cupcakes :) They turned out so well and the prosecco was a perfect compliment to the cupcakes. I will definitely have to do these again.

Skillet Beef Broccoli Ramen

Steamed broccoli and marinated beef is the perfect way to upgrade instant ramen!

We have definitely been on a ramen kick lately. We eat it at least twice a month, which for us IS eating something often. I make a lot of pork ramen, so it's nice to switch it up and go with a classic combo of beef and broccoli. This is definitely a wonderful way to class up packets of ramen and really stretch it into a full family meal. The beef marinates for a few hours and is packed with flavor. I would easily eat it alone, but the ramen with steamed broccoli and more sauce really go together so well. I didn't use fresh ginger for so many years but I honestly prefer it to ground ginger. So I definitely recommend going with fresh ginger for this recipe!