Try and Tell Tuesday-Tried and True Recipes

When my husband and I got married, I had 2 main meals that I could cook: Spaghetti and Frozen Pizza. We ate out a lot. When I was a working mom, I had zero guilt about eating out or throwing a frozen meal together and calling it dinner. But, when I got laid off and we decided to take it as an opportunity to see if we could manage with me as a SAHM, I decided that I should cook a homemade meal every night. I have always been a believer that if you try hard enough, you can succeed at everything. Everything but cooking, apparently. There were many times that my husband came home from work to find the kids starving and me crying over a disaster of a dinner. My mom was a great cook, his mom was a great cook. What was wrong with me?

One day I ran across a food blog and started reading comments about recipes. The posts and the comments taught me a lot about the recipes and how to cook the meal. I am now addicted to food blogs and have found some amazing recipes! I always read comments to see if I should tweak the recipe or if I need to change an oven temperature or time. I also print the recipes and add my own notes (who in the family liked the meal, who didn't, ingredients to add next time, etc.). I even got brave, at some point, and started cooking from cookbooks again. I can't say that I am a great cook, but I have started to surprise myself with some edible dishes.

Here are some of the recipes that I have tried and enjoyed recently:

French Onion Soup-who knew you could make this at home! This is one of those meals I thought only restaurants knew how to make:)

Sausage and Roasted Vegetable Pasta-Melissa D'Arabian from Food Network is great! Love her show, her recipes, her tips.

Best Brownies Ever-Annie's Eats is one of my favorite food blogs. Her recipes are easy to follow and so unbelievably yummy! I have always struggled making homemade brownies, but these were easy and so good that I wrecked my healthy eating plan on one batch!

Bacon Wrapped Chicken-this was one of the meals I cooked while cleaning out my pantry/fridge/freezer. Super fast, Super easy and Super tasty! Fairhope Foodie is one of my more recent finds and I have already bookmarked half of her site for future dinners.

I have found that I enjoy cooking a meal for my family. There is a sense of pride when I place a meal that I created on the table....even if Jackson hardly every eats it:)

This post is part of Try and Tell Tuesday from Mom Tried It. If you would like to link up, head on over to Mom Tried It and share your tried and true ideas, recipes, tips, etc.