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As I promised, I'm sharing more recipes and general cooking info today.

I've made this recipe twice so far. It's really becoming a favorite.

The first time I made it exactly as the recipe goes, with the mashed potatoes & broccolini. Well, I did change one thing. I didn't use chicken sausage. I actually used this awesome Jennie-O ground turkey. Overall I loved this whole meal. The potatoes were really just "Ok" for me, but that's easy enough to omit from the meal. If you make this let me just warn you - it is not the prettiest meal you'll ever make, but it is soooo yummy & the leftovers are awesome.

The second time I made this recipe I just did regular ol' mashed potatoes, and for the veggie I did roasted Brussels sprouts - YUM. I love Brussels sprouts. I am aware this makes me weird, I'm ok with that. They're delicious. Ted definitely gave me the "side eye" when he saw them, but he even liked them. (or so he said?).

A few weeks ago we made our own canned jalapeno relish. Preface: We went to dinner at Slaters 50/50 and Ted got their jalapeno relish on his burger, and it was love at first bite. After that he went on & on for days about how good it was and then dropped the bomb on me saying "I want to make our own jalapeno relish and can it." My reaction was "wtf?! are you crazy?! who knows how to can?!" Of course I'm an awesome wife so I really just said those things in my head, and then smiled and said "Ok!" or something to that effect. Well we did it. It was stressful & fun at the same time. I admit I was worried and right before we started I was thinking of any excuse to get out of it. I'm really glad we did it, though. It made Ted really happy & he's already gotten a few requests for it from other people. We're thinking about giving it out at Christmas. Luckily our batch will be ready to eat just in time for Thanksgiving, so you know it's on our table this year.

Speaking of canning... I'm not completely determined/obsessed with making & canning my own apple butter to give out with our jalapeno relish. A whole sweet & spicy thing.

Tomorrow I'm going to let you know what pies I'll be making for Thanksgiving... since ya know, I demanded that I make them all... that's going to come back to bite me in the ass. When my in-laws were calling people to invite them to Thanksgiving and find out what they were bringing, they also let them know about the "no store bought pie" rule this year, and apparently a few people replied with "Well her pies better be good then." Ouch.