It’s Monday afternoon already, and despite my greatest effort, I did NO baking over the weekend. We did, however, reorganize our refrigerator and our laundry room/walk-in closet, and I am very excited about that!  I am hoping to amend my lack of baking this evening during the Monday Night Football game (Giants v. Rams) because one of John’s fellow Giants’ fans is coming over and I think they’ll be totally involved in the game ~ which will allow me to pop in and out while checking the oven.  (Always thinkin’ ahead, says I!)

I had planned to bake on Saturday, but as mentioned above, we tackled the very necessary project of our closet/laundry area.  Yesterday, after church and a baby shower, I went to the store to purchase pumpkin puree and semi-sweet chocolate chip morsels, and the shelves were empty.  I’m talking, not even a single, solitary can of pumpkin puree or bag of chocolate chips.  Nothing.

Was everyone baking this weekend? Seriously.  I was so bummed out.

John cheered me up with a second firepit night ~ sometimes it’s just nice to relax together and talk about life, and goals, and ideas …. Then we wound down by watching the Emmys. Just as a sidenote, Ty Burrell of “Modern Family” fame is a graduate of my program at PSU. Cool, huh?

I’m hoping that tonight my grocery store will be re-stocked (I did ask at the Help Desk, and they said they usually get deliveries on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, but to call ahead to make sure that what I was looking for was on the shipment).  Since we have to stop in and get ingredients to make MNF Polenta, I figure I’ll risk it.

Hopefully, I do not make that choice in error.

I realize that I haven’t blogged a recipe in awhile, so in addition to adding photos to the Polenta recipe, I am also making the easiest Jalepeno Poppers ever (they are also highly addictive!) and hopefully some Pumpkin Bread.

I didn’t realize that after awhile I would have to have a little more forethought regarding what I’m cooking and blogging about ~ I’ve run out of tried-and-true recipes, I’ve made a lot of things that I’ve always wanted to make … and doing spur of the moment cooking doesn’t really work with the heavy workload I’ve been carrying of late.  So please, bear with me as I navigate through this new phase of blogging!  I’m still super excited about trying new things in the kitchen, and I like sharing my recipes (they’re usually pretty easy, too, which never hurts!).

So, as always, watch this space ~ I’ll be back tonight with some yummy recipes, and probably some thoughts on football (Opening Day was so utterly painful that it’s taken me some recovery time to think about it logically ~ I hate it when the Steelers break my heart like that … luckily, they didn’t do it again yesterday, which is at least a relief until this upcoming Sunday!).