Everyday Food: Beer-Braised Sausages and Warm Potato Salad

This is my favorite recipe right now. We've been eating it once a week for a couple of months now. It's really inexpensive, and REALLY yummy.

Since we've been making it so much, I've found a couple of things that I think make it even better. First of all, we always use either chicken sausage or turkey sausage. They work really well, and don't dry out at all. I like mild Italian in this recipe.

The major thing I do differently is that instead of just plain red wine vinegar on the potatoes, I use this vinaigrette recipe from Ina Garten. But instead of champagne vinegar, I use white wine vinegar. I still use the flat Italian parsley, though. It adds a nice touch of freshness.

Allrecipes.com: Banana Muffins II

We had a bunch of bananas that were on the verge of going bad, so I decided that I wanted to make some banana muffins to use them up. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com, and I figured that the four and a half star rating probably made it worth trying.

Yum, yum, yum. Very easy recipe, and very quick to put together. A lot of these recipes involve the electric mixer, but this was very easy to put together by hand. I loved it, and so did Miller and Mike. The only complaints came from Miller when he was done with his muffin because he wanted more :)

Melissa d'Arabian: Crispy-Skinned Chicken a l'Orange

This sweet/savory chicken dish was really easy, although it did dirty a saute pan, a ceramic dish for the oven and a cutting board. However, the dishes were totally worth it, because this was delicious and turned out exactly as promised - a sweet, sticky and citrus-y glaze over really moist chicken. My husband kept stopping while he was eating to tell me how good it was, if that tells you anything. I believe we'll be having it again in very short order.

I served it with roasted broccoli (toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and stick under the broiler for 10 minutes) and brown rice cooked in our handy-dandy new rice cooker.

Giada De Laurentiis: Stracoto w/ Porcini Mushrooms

Otherwise known as fancy Italian pot roast, this recipe is amazing. It takes a long time to cook, but it's very hands off. This is a great recipe if you've got people coming over for dinner and you don't have a lot of time during the day to get something going.

I always add some carrots and potatoes for the last hour of cooking time in the oven, and then it becomes a true one-pot meal (other than the blender, which is totally an optional step, although the sauce it makes is pretty amazing).

Barefoot Contessa: Turkey Meatloaf

I tried for years to figure out a way to make turkey meatloaf that wasn't too dry, didn't have that creepy "cakey" texture and didn't require you to use dark meat turkey to give it some flavor. I should have just gone directly to Ina Garten.

This turkey meatloaf recipe is perfect. I have made it four or five times, and it has been consistently great. Moist but not loose, substantial but not dense - perfect.

It's not the most elegant-looking meal, but it's a crowd pleaser for sure. The only suggestion I would make is to use Manwich sauce instead of ketchup on top to up the flavor-factor, but that's a very minor quibble.

Cooking Light: Spicy Beef and Barley Soup

If you're looking for an easy, healthy and YUMMY weeknight recipe, I highly recommend this spicy beef barley soup, conveniently made in a crock pot. It takes just a few minutes to throw all the ingredients together in the morning, and when you get home, your house smells great, and after you heat up a little crusty bread to go with this (you'll want it to soak up the broth), you've got a hearty, healthy dinner.

I actually don't have any commentary on how to improve this recipe, because it's great as-is. I cut this out of a Cooking Light in 2007, and we still pull it out and make it fairly regularly. That's when you know a recipe is great :)

***I posted this awhile back, and recently I tried it without doing any of the browning/sauteeing that is in the directions. I just threw everything raw in the crock pot together. Guess what? The recipe was every bit as good! Woo hoo! Makes an easy recipe even easier.

Real Simple: Chicken and Pepper Stew with Olives

When I saw this recipe in Real Simple, I had to try it, because it contains two ingredients that I absolutely love - olives and golden raisins. However, I was a little concerned, because looking at the recipe, I just wasn't sure this was going to come together in an appealing way.

Well, there was no need to be concerned, because this recipe really turned out amazing. The peppers, olives and golden raisins all come together to make a super-tasty sauce that was really good over cous cous. I think maybe next time I'll put it over polenta, as the cous cous got a little lost under this hearty stew.

I think the most important part of success in this recipe was the olive selection. I used Mezzetta pitted Kalamatas, and they were perfect. Salty, garlicky, but not overwhelmingly so. I would highly recommend them, and really most Mezzetta products in general. I was pretty much obsessed with their pickles when I was pregnant. They are amazing.

My one quibble with this recipe is that it really isn't a weeknight recipe as advertised. Even though I halved the recipe (which still made 4 big servings, and thus some really yummy leftovers), it still takes quite awhile to brown all that chicken. That part alone took me the better part of half an hour, since I wasn't using a super-huge pot and I could only do about five pieces at a time.

But overall, if you like olives, peppers and golden raisins, this recipe is a must-try. Just wait until a Saturday when you have a little more time to do it.