Family Cooking Night

With the evenings getting a little chilly and the days a little shorter

 we have already started spending a little more time indoors in the evening.  

I have been trying to think of some activities we can do as a family in the evening.  

I love the Soule family's Family Writing Club idea.  I don't think we are quite there yet.  

We have had game nights, 

drawing nights 

and Ella is always a fan of dance party nights, 

but we haven't really established a consistent routine with any of these activities.  

This fall/winter I want to establish a little more of a routine. 

Last week I thought it might be fun to have a night where we could all cook dinner together.  

Sunday seemed like the best night for that so last night we tried it out.  I'm not great at planning ahead for meals so we kind of just winged it. 

 I'm hoping to get a little more organized so that I have our meal planned out ahead of time next Sunday.

This is what we made last night.

I jumped on pinterest and found this recipe from Pioneer Woman.

YUM, right?

Well, since I didn't plan ahead I didn't have any spinach or artichoke hearts, 

so I substituted red bell peppers and olives. 

 It turned out really good. 

 I will have to try it with spinach and artichoke hearts soon, because it looks so yummy.  

I made dinner while Andy and the kids made dessert.

 I had some pumpkin on hand so they made pumpkin bread.

This is the only picture I took from our first family cooking night.

I actually took this pic this morning, ha!

The pumpkin bread was really good with my coffee this morning, especially since I added a little spiced cream cheese frosting on top.

Here is how I made it...

Since I was just making a small amount for my slice and a little left over to spread on the top of half of a loaf, I didn't measure any of the ingredients, but it is really all to taste.

Spiced Cream Cheese Frosting

whipped cream cheese

brown sugar

vanilla extract

nutmeg

I really enjoyed all of us being in the kitchen together.  

We only had one little mishap with Julian. 

He didn't like the smell of the raw pumpkin and he has a really sensitive gag reflex...

well you can guess what happened after that.

It was pretty funny.

Here are a couple of other pumpkin recipes that I came across yesterday.

You can bet we will be trying these very soon.

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I am already looking forward to next sunday night!