Welcome to the weekend, friends! Are you as excited as I am about FALL??? It might as well be my personal Disneyland outdoors right now. I can’t stop gawking as I drive through our streets. I’ve been detouring down side streets everywhere I go lately.

ON THE BLOG this week: Sourdough stuffing filled with sweetly tart apples, chewy sweet cranberries, savory sausage, plenty of herbs, and cubes of toasted sourdough is a sure win for your holiday dinner.

Corn Pudding is beloved throughout my family. I grew up eating my mom’s corn pudding for every holiday and plenty of Sunday dinners in between. My siblings and I have been known to sneak the leftover corn casserole out of my mom’s house and I’ll even admit to “accidentally” bringing home my sister’s share of the leftovers (along with mine) once upon a time.

When I first came across this recipe named, “I Want to Marry You Cookies.” I laughed, the name reminded me of “Marry Me Chicken”. We’ve been calling these “Marry Me Cookies” for years now. This is NOT your average chocolate chip cookie. They are hands down the best Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies.

Boiled Baby Red Potatoes are beyond easy and simple to make. Served with an easy slow cooker roast beef and these roasted green beans, this is a company-worthy meal that only requires a few minutes hands-on effort.

This is a sweet and spicy homemade bbq sauce with just enough heat to linger in your mouth. I’ve been slathering this sauce on darn near everything in my kitchen for a few weeks now!

What I’m CRAVING: My friend Meseidy’s almond crusted french toast filled with peanut butter, banana and honey is one of the best looking, best tasting, French toast breakfasts you can make. (I made this years ago, and I just put it on our Sunday brunch meal plan.) If you like sweet, crunchy and gooey you’re going to absolutely love this french toast.

My FAVORITE THING this week is my new colander. I know, I know. It’s a colander. What could be so great? Actually a lot! I have been using a cheap little $3 colander for years and it finally bit the dust. So I fell into my usual “read way too many reviews” and “overthink all the things before just buying what you need” kind of shopping.

I stumbled on this OXO colander and oh my word. Over a thousand 5-star reviews wer

This is a sweet and spicy homemade bbq sauce with just enough heat to linger in your mouth. I’ve been slathering this sauce on darn near everything in my kitchen for a few weeks now!

Sweet and Spicy BBQ Sauce

This barbecue sauce is tangy and sweet, it’s perfect on chicken, as a dipping sauce for potato wedges, with steak bites, and mixed into ranch dressing for a spicy kick.

Best of all, not only can you pronounce all the ingredients, but you can whip it together in your own kitchen in less time than it would take to check out at the grocery store.

As you know, I love a great homemade barbecue sauce, so whenever I find a new one to try and it’s a winner, I have to share it with you.

This barbecue sauce is lightly adapted from Half-Baked Harvest’s Sweet Baby Ray’s Copycat Recipe. And I’ve been told by many that this Sweet and Spicy Homemade Barbecue Sauce tastes just like Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce.

However, in all fairness to Sweet Baby Ray, I think this sauce blows the store-bought version away.

I actually went out and bought a bottle of the original sauce, just to compare the flavors. The store-bought sauce was really tasty, but the flavors here are deeper and I prefer them. (Of course, I can’t think of many instances where a homemade version won’t trump store-bought!)

Ketchup is, of course, the base but the combination of brown sugar, molasses, and apple cider vinegar really brings the sweet to this sauce. Hungarian paprika, known to be sweet and mild adds depth without being overly sweet.

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This is NOT your average chocolate chip cookie. They are hands down the best Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies.

Calling them the best chocolate chip cookie is a big deal. That is a statement I don’t make lightly, but they are certainly the best I have ever made. When I first came across this recipe named, “I Want to Marry You Cookies.” I laughed, the name reminded me of “Marry Me Chicken”. We’ve been calling these “Marry Me Cookies” for years now.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

When I finally had the chance to make these cookies with his mouthful of cookies my husband declared that yes he would have likely proposed sooner if I had made him these cookies.

There are several variations of this cookie. I finally had the perfect opportunity to try them one weekend while we were at the cabin. Pretty sure this recipe is where the phrase, “Bet you can’t eat just one” came from.

When making these I stayed as close to the original recipe as possible, in an effort to see what the fuss is all about. (As far as I can tell, the source below is the original author of this recipe.)

The thing that sets these cookies apart from every other chocolate chip cookie I’ve made is the melted butter. Such a small thing, but it has an enormous impact on the flavor. The best part of making these? Everything happens in a single pot. Easy cleanup makes this girl very happy.

I feel like I should clarify that these are chocolate chip cookies with oatmeal, a different kind of cookie from these classic Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. The oatmeal flavor in Marry Me Cookies is very very subtle.

I shared these with a self-proclaimed oatmeal hater years ago and he reluctantly agreed that while he still HATES oatmeal, these cookies are delicious and “the oatmeal doesn’t ruin them.” That’s a WIN, my friends!

How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies Chewy

The warm butter is blended together with the sugars and it creates a rich toffee flavor that I have never before tasted in a chocolate chip cookie. The cookies positively melt in your mouth.

I will caution you not to skip the step of chilling the cookie dough before adding the chocolate chips. If you add the chocolate too soon, it will melt into the dough, leaving you with cookies that are tasty, but nothing at all like the original.

This is the BEST second-day cookie I have ever made. They taste phenomenal warm from the oven and they taste even better the next day. I froze several of them to see how they would handle it and they were excellent as soon as they thawed.

I’m

Boiled Baby Red Potatoes are beyond easy and simple to make. Served with an easy slow cooker roast beef and these roasted green beans, this is a company-worthy meal that only requires a few minutes hands-on effort.

Little round red potatoes are a side dish that’ll never steer you wrong. This delicious and easy side dish can complete a meal any night of the week; we rarely get tired of potatoes!

I love potatoes in just about all their forms. From Crispy Cheese and Bacon Potatoes to fancy tasting Vanilla Bean Whipped Sweet Potatoes, there are potatoes on my dinner menu more often than not.

Typically, I find myself veering toward roasted or baked potato recipes like  Rosemary Roasted Potatoes and BBQ Chicken Stuffed Baked Potatoes. When boiled potatoes aren’t done right they can be grainy and flavorless.

These potatoes, I’m happy to report, are neither of the above. Each baby red potato is tender, salty and melts in your mouth.

For a real treat, put a smear of butter on your plate and use your fork to break each potato in half as your eat them. Dip the halves in the butter as you devour them.

What are baby red potatoes?

Baby red potatoes are small round potatoes with pinkish-red or brownish-red skin. They have a light and creamy flavor that makes them perfect for roasting and boiling. Red potatoes can also be mashed like in this Garlic Parmesan Mashed Red Potatoes recipe from Big Bear’s Wife.

Red potato skins are thinner and milder flavored than Russets so they’re typically eaten with the skin on. As a bonus, the skin is full of lots of beneficial nutrients! My favorite thing, though, is that cooking with red potatoes saves me the extra step of peeling.

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Sourdough stuffing filled with sweetly tart apples, chewy sweet cranberries, savory sausage, plenty of herbs, and cubes of toasted sourdough is a sure win for your holiday dinner.

Sausage Apple Cranberry Stuffing

Sage sausage, dried cranberries, fresh herbs, tart apples, and cubes of sourdough add up to create the best stuffing I have ever tasted.

For as long as I can remember, I steered clear of stuffing and dressing. People would tell me that it tasted amazing, I’d take the “polite bite” but it never was something I enjoyed. Stuffing was always the one thing on the Thanksgiving table that I avoided at all costs.

So, when I tell you this is fantastic stuffing? You should probably trust me on that. It is a far cry from the flavorless bread mush I have always thought of stuffing as.

About ten years ago, I decided to try stuffing once again and I started looking around for something different.

I found the original recipe for this stuffing on Allrecipes. Could 1,628 5-star reviews be wrong?! No, they were not.

I’ve adapted the original recipe a bit over time, according to our tastes, and it has become a favorite of our friends and family.

Filled with sweetly tart apples, chewy sweet cranberries, rich savory sausage, plenty of herbs, and perfect cubes of toasted sourdough. This is truly awesome stuffing.

Sourdough Stuffing

One or two days before baking the stuffing: Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Spread the bread cubes across a large baking sheet.

Toast the bread for 10-15 minutes or until crispy on the outside. Remove from the oven and let cool completely before storing in a bowl or container with a loose cover.

Let the bread dry out for a day or so before making the rest of the stuffing. The bread cubes will seem rock hard when it is