CROCKPOT SAUSAGE TORTELLINI

During our snowy weekend I put our crockpot to good use. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I LOVE MY CROCKPOT. Seriously, it's great.

One of the things I made...I mean my crockpot made is this Sausage Tortelloni recipe! I made it a few weeks ago and we both loved it so I thought it would be a good recipe for a snow day.

Ingredients:

- l lb of sausage or ground beef (I used ground beef)

- 20 oz Buitoni Frozen Three-Cheese Tortellini (I used Sweet Italian Sausage the 2nd time I made it)

-  32 oz Chicken Broth (I always buy the low/reduce sodium kind)

- 2 cans diced tomatoes (Basil, Garlic & Oregano seasoned kind)

- 1/2 t Garlic Powder (not pictured)

- 8 oz cream cheese

- Grated Parmesan (Optional. And not pictured) for topping

Directions:

Step 1:

 Take your cream cheese out of the refrigerator and let it sit while you are browning your meat.

Step 2:

Add the tortellini to your crockpot.

Step 3:

Add the diced tomatoes. I actually puree the two cans of tomatoes because we don't like chunks of tomatoes :)

Step 4: 

Add in the Chicken Broth.

Step 5:

Add in cooked meat.

Step 6:

Add in garlic powder and cream cheese in chunks and give everything a good stir.

Step 7:

Cook on Low for 3 1/2 - 4 hours or High for 2 1/2 - 3 hours. Stir occasionally.

Here is a picture of it when it was about half way finished

And here is a picture of it when it was finished

So easy and so delicious!

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CROCKPOT SAUSAGE TORTELLINI

WEEKEND RECAP: SNOW EDITION

Hope y'all aren't tired of all the snow posts, if you are, well then just skip right over this post ;)

Let's back up to last Monday...about 6:30 a.m. I dropped Matthew off with one of his coworkers and they headed up to Knoxville for the week. One of their big clients is up there and they had to spend the week up there working on them. I spent the week packing up our apartment and watching One Tree Hill. Fast forward to Thursday... all day Thursday there was talk of a "big snow storm" heading our way. I watched the weather all day and I'm positive it changed back and forth at least 3 times. At first they were forecasting the snow storm to hit early Friday morning, then they changed it hitting late Friday afternoon, and then changed it back to the morning. I talked to my boss and she told me that if it's going to do what they say it's going to do then they will close the office. I got off of work and did what any other sane person would do...I went to the grocery store....along with half of Nashville. I didn't get milk and bread though...just milk and other stuff for crockpot recipes. ;)

Thursday night I decided to take a night off from packing and spent it parked on the couch. I talked to Matthew for a little bit before he said he was going to bed, and then decided I was going to watch another episode of OTH before calling it a night. I got a call from Matthew five minutes later saying they were leaving in ten minutes and coming home. They were going to come home Friday mid day but decided it would probably be best to come home that night. So I cleaned up and then ran back to the grocery store to get breakfast sausage (the store I went to earlier was sold out- told you half of Nashville was there too) for breakfast in the morning and then headed to pick Matthew up. It may have been midnight but I was THRILLED!!!!!! We got back in a little after 1 that morning and went to bed.

We woke up Friday morning a little before 6 and this is what I saw outside our apartment! We are SO thankful they decided to come back Thursday night instead of Friday mid day! 

And that was the start to our snowy weekend! It snowed, and snowed, and snowed, and snowed, AND SNOWED all day Friday. Seriously, I don't remember it ever snowing that much and for that long. We watched it all day Friday and couldn't stop talking about how pretty it was. We decided (I talked Matthew into it) to go outside and walk around in it so I could get some pictures of it and a couple of us! Had to document our first married snow day, duh ;) And I am so glad we did! Everything was absolutely beautiful. I doubt he would admit it but I think Matthew enjoyed seeing it all, too!

The walking trail at our apartment

 So much snow on our roof!

We were sad the pond didn't completely freeze over lol oh well, still pretty!

We got 8 INCHES OF SNOW!

Our apartment did a great job of scraping/salting our parking lot. (This was the before picture lol)

We spent the whole day watching How I Met Your Mother and lounging around. It was perfect!

Saturday the snow was still around most of the day. We lounged around most of the day and then decided to try and drive over to our house. The roads were still somewhat messy but not terrible. Our neighborhood on the other hand was still really bad. We are SO thankful our moving day wasn't this past weekend and is this upcoming weekend! 

OUR HOUSE IN THE SNOW!!

And our backyard! I can already tell we are going to love having a backyard! And yes, that's a trampoline in our backyard lol the sellers left it.

Friday morning I made our favorite sausage roll ups for breakfast and I made crockpot sausage tortelloni for a late lunch/early dinner, along with cheesy-garlic pull apart rolls. 

 Saturday we had cheese biscuits for breakfast and a stuffed crust DiGiorno pizza for lunch...we love them but try to eat them only every now and then so I figured a snow day was the perfect time for one! For dinner I made crockpot chicken tacos (one of Matthew's favorites) and Mexican rice.

I put our crockpot to good use this weekend! I'll be sharing both of those crockpot recipes this week.

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WEEKEND RECAP: SNOW EDITION

Slow Weekends

This past weekend was so, so good! I left work early Friday for some training downtown and took a later lunch than usual so that I could meet Matthew at the farmer's market for lunch. I LOVE THAT PLACE! I got out of training earlier than I expected but ended up getting stuck in traffic for the Taylor Swift concert. I finally made it though and got home still kinda early. We decided to go see a movie kinda last minute since we didn't have any set plans and it was a lot of fun. I forgot how fun it was to go see them lol. We had free tickets so it was a free date night! We cooked tacos at home for dinner before :) We saw the movie The Intern and it was such a good movie! If you are going to the movies soon I definitely recommend going to see that one. So sweet and funny. The perfect combination if you ask me!

Saturday we woke and had a slow morning and it was perfect. It's been a while since we've had one of those and it was really nice to just wake up and take our time. Matthew played some Xbox while I worked on a few things for my best friend's wedding. We went to Opry Mills later that afternoon so I could do a little clothes shopping! I had some birthday money and gift cards and there were some good sales. I ended up getting a few really cute shirts and a new dress. Yay for sales and birthday money! Saturday night we met my family for dinner at one of our favorite places, Cheddar's. We love that place!

Clearly I missed out on the stripes memo.

Sunday morning we went to early service at church and then came back home for lunch. It had been raining most of Saturday and Saturday night and was a bit cooler so I decided to break out my boots for the first time this fall. We walked out of our apartment to leaves everywhere. It's starting to look like fall!

I mentioned last week that we have been using our crockpot a lot and we really have! We used it for Sunday's lunch and for dinner last night. Sunday for lunch I made beef tips and noodles. Matthew's favorite is still the Ranch Chicken Tacos I made last week, he liked it so much we had it for dinner again last night lol.

I worked on our dining room chairs some Sunday night and we finally got the fabric on the seat cushions. Matthew picked out the fabric himself and I really love it too! It matches our pillows in the living room so it all ties in, which is what we were wanting! Here is a before and after of one of our chairs.

We are almost finished with the other ones and we are more than ready to have our chairs back so we can actually use our "new" table!!

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Slow Weekends

Caramel Apple Spice

One of my favorite drinks from Starbucks is their Caramel Apple Spice. I'm not a big coffee drinker and I hardly go there because of the prices. I discovered this drink there last year around Christmas and decided to try it and it was GREAT. It's also cheaper than their coffee drinks ;) Although it is cheaper it's still more than I want to spend on a drink. I have found many recipes on Pinterest for this drink but never tried any until last night. I decided I would try THIS recipe since it looked pretty simple. I also had bought a gallon of  "apple cider" at the store to try hoping it would taste somewhat similar...it didn't. It was just plain apple juice lol. So I still had this huge thing of apple cider apple juice in my refrigerator and I didn't want to waste it. This recipe calls for six cups of apple juice so it did the trick!   Not going to lie, it tastes pretty close to Starbucks!! The lady who found or created this recipe is a genius!!   Here is her recipe:

6 C apple cider (or apple juice)

4 T caramel syrup (the ice cream topping, but not the magic shell kind)

2-3 cinnamon sticks (or 2 t ground cinnamon)

5-7 whole cloves (1/2 t ground cloves)

The dark pieces are the cloves.

Mix all the ingredients together in the crock-pot and stir the caramel syrup in well so it doesn't stay at the bottom. Leave it in to crock-pot for 4 hours on low.

Easiest recipe ever!

  I put it in the refrigerator after it was finished and then warmed some up this morning and brought to work to sip on this morning!

 

This is what I woke up to this morning...our little bit of snow. The schools were actually out and I laughed until I saw the roads. I am assuming the city wasn't expecting snow becuase they didn't treat the roads last night like they usually do so they were pretty icy this morning, and I'm sure the back roads were even worse. Better safe than sorry, I suppose!

 

Happy Tuesday! Hope y'all are staying warm!!

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Caramel Apple Spice