Chicken Alfredo Baked Ziti

My plan was to test this recipe last week. But I started bleeding, and to make a long story short, I miscarried towards the end of last week. So today as I experimented and as I'm writing this post, I'm on Percocet. So I apologize if this seems a little off. I'm feeling a little off. Incense and peppermints anyone?

Anyway, this recipe was pretty easy. I made the sauce and I think I added the chicken broth a little too quickly in the process because it took some whisking to get it smooth, but it ended up just fine.

I know it looks like there's just pasta in this bowl, but there was also some shredded chicken in the bottom. And as you can see, I didn't use ziti-I used rotini. Why? Funsies. Any short pasta would be fine.

I decided to mix the sauce with the pasta and chicken in a separate bowl instead of the pan I used to cook the pasta.

Before I put the whole thing in the oven, it looked like this:

After baking, I got this loveliness:

Did I mention the whole thing smelled good? Because it smelled REALLY good. The alfredo sauce alone smelled awesome once it came together. The verdict? Two thumbs up from me and Husband. It's very simple, so you could easily jazz it up with some veggies or some different spices if you wanted to. It also came together surprisingly quicker than I expected, even with making the sauce from scratch. 4 stars, I'm really happy with this one.

Buttermilk Banana Blueberry Bread

When I buy bananas, I like to get them a little more on the green side. One, so that they'll last longer and two, I like them a bit more firm that most people. So, I ended up with overripe bananas on my counter this week and didn't want to just throw them out. With summer fruit abounding, I decided to try this recipe.

I started with butter and sugar in my mixer.

Then mixed in the eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla.

After that I added my mashed up bananas.

Lastly I added the dry ingredients and mixed it all together.

I mixed in the blueberries by hand so as to not pop them.

I love mini loaf pans. Cute food is so much better.

After baking, I let them cool for a little bit in the pans before turning them onto a cooling rack. I didn't have any trouble getting the loaves out of the pans sprayed with a bit of Pam. While these were good, I feel like the banana bread recipe I usually use is better. You can find that here. So these were a fun change, but I think I'll stick with the recipe I already know and love. 2 stars.

Homemade Soft Pretzels

Soft pretzels...I've never met anyone who didn't like them. And I'll try any (well, almost any) recipe that doesn't require a special trip to the grocery store. I had planned on making these earlier this week, but it didn't happen. I was drawn to this recipe because it claimed to be fast and easy and not require a baking soda bath. I learned from my pretzel bowl adventure that baking soda baths often cause pretzels to lose their shape so I didn't really want to do that again.

I started out with yeast, water, sugar, and salt.

Then I added the flour, and with 3 cups it looked like this:

I added about another 3/4 cup of flour to make the dough less sticky. It was very difficult to stir in with just a wooden spoon. The recipe specified using a spoon instead of a mixer, I don't know why. Eventually I gave up and just tried to mix the rest of the flour in by hand.

After kneading the dough, it looked like this:

I decided to try to make 8 pretzels. Shaping them was a bit harder than I expected, but not that hard.

You can tell I got better at shaping them as I went along.

Instead of dunking each pretzel in the egg wash, I decided to just brush them with egg. I didn't have coarse salt, so I just sprinkled on regular table salt. It was a bit hard to tell how much I had gotten on each one and I didn't want to over salt them-I feel like they ended up a bit under salted but oh well.

After baking and going under the broiler, they looked like this:

They puffed up a ton! The picture doesn't show it that well, but they are super fluffy. Are they as good as the ones you get at the mall or baseball games? No. But they're pretty good for how quickly they come together. They're more bready, and it could be because I didn't do the baking soda bath. That's what creates the more....crusty? exterior we're used to. Anyway, I'll probably hang onto the recipe, Husband thought I should and they're really not terrible. But I wouldn't call them a replacement for Auntie Annie's either. I'll give them 3 stars.