Making and Baking Mondays

* Photo credited here.
At our house we have spaghetti about every couple of weeks. I always have the ingredients on hand, and it's a quick & easy dinner. Lately I've been pretty tired of my standby recipe. So I gave my friend's spaghetti sauce a try. It's not your average spaghetti sauce - it's hot, sweet & spicy. And I love it. I've had it at her house before and so I was anxious to try it at ours. And it was a big hit. It might be a while before I go back to the standard spaghetti.

For lack of a better name, I'm going to call it:

Sweet & Spicy Spaghetti

Ingredients:
1 lb. Italian Turkey Sausage (sliced)
1/2 chopped onion (Vidalia or sweet)
2 TBL Olive oil
2 TBL Worcestershire sauce

1 jar of Classico Vodka Sauce
1 15oz. can of diced tomatoes

add the following to taste:
Chopped sundried tomatoes (soaked in olive oil)
Jalapeno Mexican Hot Sauce (I used approx. 1/2 jar of the 5.5 oz size)
- or use any hot sauce & juice from a jar of nacho jalapenos
1 TBL Lime Juice
2 TBL Worcestershire
2 tsp. splenda

Pasta noodles - I often use wheat noodles.

Directions:
1. Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium/high heat. Brown the turkey sausage with the onion . Add the Worcestershire sauce while the meat is browning.

2. In a large saucepan add the remaining ingredients, playing with the amount of hot sauce, lime juice, Worcestershire sauce & splenda you add.

3. Serve over pasta of choice.

*Photo credited here.
While I haven't had the most success with making breads (unless it was Banana bread or Monkey Bread), I decided to go ahead and give this recipe a try. I had made a weight watches veggie soup and I knew the hubby was going to need a little something to go with it. I wasn't about to run to the store just to pick up a loaf of fresh bread, so out of curiosity I looked up bread recipes on food.com and when I sorted by popularity a "Beer Bread" recipe came up. After reading the reviews it looked easy enough and I had all the ingredients on hand so I gave it a shot!

Click HERE for the recipe.
Oh, and I used Bellhaven Scottish Ale - not the one pictured. That was the ONE beer we had in the fridge!
* Be sure and read through the hints. I added 1/2 tsp. of dry yeast, next time I will probably go ahead and add 1 tsp. as my bread could have risen a bit more. Anyways, it was quick and pretty fail proof! Oh, AND good.


One last thing. I WON'T tell you how I tried Olivia's Caramel Sea Salt brownies for the 3rd time and threw the entire batch away. Seriously, how can I not get these right? The first time the batter was a really weird consistency and disgustingly oily. And I couldn't get the caramel right. The second time they actually turned out okay - except I used a brownie batter mix and my caramel didn't really caramel. This time, I tried "sifting" the flour and cut back on the oil. The "batter" is this really weird consistency that doesn't pour, but instead I have to "press" it into the pan. I did get the caramel to caramel. But the brownies were horrible. Okay Olivia, if you read this, can you PLEASE give more details instructions - and for the sake of my sanity, what is the batter supposed to look like? I have never been able to "pour" my batter when I follow your recipe, so please quit taunting me with your delicious photos.

Okay, so I told you about it anyways. Make or bake anything good?