Early Valentine or how I'm way too good to my husband

Sunday is by far my favorite day of the week.  We always start off by eating a big breakfast (this morning it was eggs and bacon...the same eggs from this post).  We do laundry and clean a little but mostly we just relax.  Sean will play video games while I read a magazine and Louie cuddles in between us.  I love laying on the couch with my little family and smelling dinner cooking.  Which reminds me...I was really good to Sean today and made dinner AND a special Valentine's Day dessert.

For dinner I used the Greensgrow Sausages--Chicken sausage with sundried tomatoes--and made sausage and peppers.  This is just about the easiest meal you can make and it's always a crowd pleaser.  Today, since we only had two sausage links left I cut up some chicken breasts as well and now we have lunch for tomorrow.  Basically the recipe is as follows:

Sausage (however many links your family likes) you can either cut it up into pieces or leave them long.  I usually only leave them long when we are planning on making sandwiches which wasn't the case today.
1 Large onion cut into chunks
1 pepper/person, also cut into chunks
Potatoes (as many as you like) cut into chunks
Italian dressing or vinagarette, really whatever you have on hand.  Just use enough to coat the meat and veggies and leave a little bit of liquid at the bottom of the pan.  I used a lavender berry vinagarette today and it was YUMTASTIC!

Now you can pretty much just leave it at this, toss everything together and throw it in a 400 degree oven for about 45min-1hour uncovered. (Once the potatoes are soft you're good to go!) Today though I added the following:

• Chicken breasts sliced into tenderloins
• Crushed Red Pepper flakes
• Salt
• Pepper
• Fennel Seeds
• Garlic Powder
• Fresh Rosemary

I always just season to taste but I would guess that about 1-2 tsp of each spice would do it.  I just threw a whole rosemary sprig in there so I could take it out before serving since when rosemary is roasted it tends to be unpleasant to chew. (blech)  And here you have it:

before cooking...we ate it so fast there was no time for an "after" pic!

 So darn easy and incredibly delicious.  This is a go-to meal for me since it's quick to throw together and smells amazing when it's in the oven.  yum yum yum.

For Sean's Valentine treat I made him Man-Cakes.  My husband loves chocolate more than anyone I've ever met.  He also loves good beer and bacon.  So after thinking about the bacon and chocolate bar from this post, I figured there must be a way to combine these things in to one epic dessert.  I followed a cupcake recipe that used chocolate and guiness as the base.  I also added a pinch of chilli pepper to the batter.  Now, before you give me the judge eyes a little bit of spice brings out the flavor of the chocolate and adds depth to any recipe.  Try it, and then you can thank me.  Seriously though these little babies are moist and amazingly tasty. 

The buttercream I just made up--2 sticks of butter in my stand mixer, then I added cocoa powder and powdered sugar until it looked and tasted right plus a splash of Guiness.  Now for the ultimate in amazingness...on top of these cupcakes I added....BACON!   I cooked extra at breakfast this morning and it. was. perfect.  Just enough saltiness and crunch to make this Man-Cake really phenomenal.  Sweet, Spicy, and Salty all in one...YES PLEASE!


Man-Cake

 I'm just going to say that my bad picture taking is actually me trying to make the cakes look....rugged.  yeah, sure. 

Sean is happy, and I'm happy that he's happy.  So with that...HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, everyone!