Do not open until Monday.

First things first...

My dear Jessica turns THIRTY-ONE tomorrow (Monday)!!! Lots of love to you, Jessie Poo. I wish I could be there to celebrate with you and make you treats and cakes and stuff. I so would!! So here's my big fat virtual hug, and I promise, no matter how much I tease you, you will always be the same 14-year-old girl, giggling over, well, EVERYTHING, with me. :) Old's got nothin on you, foxy lady.

On to the boring stuff.... :)

I think Sundays have officially become "Make Brad & Steph Fat Day." Ha! I've consistently been spending the bulk of my Sunday afternoons in the kitchen, baking something and making a big(ger) dinner. Dinner was Brad's choice, lasagna, and I decided to bake up another recipe from the Glory of Southern Cooking.

So dinner, lasagna, I decided to revisit the skillet lasagna recipe from Cook's Illustrated I posted about a while back. I stuck with the Italian sausage variation, but not really intentionally used sweet Italian turkey sausage (still plenty of flavor despite being turkey). It did not disappoint. If you haven't tried this yet, trust me, you want to. It's so simple, so quick, and seriously one of the best meals I've made. We both ate two huge helpings.

For "dessert" (random use of quotations to illustrate it's not really a dessert -- more a breakfast treat, really), I decided on peanut butter bread. Hello? YUM! Super easy recipe, too:

2 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup whole milk (I used skim)
1 large egg
1 cup smooth peanut butter

1. Combine flour, sugars, baking powder, and salt -- stir until well blended.
2. In another bowl, whisk together milk and egg.
3. Add egg mixture to dry mixture and stir until just moistened.
4. Gradually stir in the peanut butter until well blended.
5. Scrape mixture into 9 by 5 by 3 in loaf pan (my meatloaf/bread pan has slightly different dimensions)
6. Bake about an hour; until knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Mixing the batter, I felt like world's weakest person! It's super thick and I could hardly get a grip on the bowl to actually mix it with the spoon. I kind of just smooshed it all around...

Doughy.

Loafy.

Another success! I might just get the hang of this baking thing after all.... Anyway, based on a recommendation in GofSC, I drizzled some honey on the still-warm bread and topped it off with a few banana slices.

This. Is. Delicious. It's nothing earth shattering... it tastes like a peanut butter muffin, or a peanut butter cookie... But who doesn't love peanut butter in yet another tasty form? Mmmm. Perhaps this delicious southern cookbook should be MY Julie/Julia project!