B is for Baking

Seahawk’s birthday was earlier this month. He’s 11 now. I still can’t believe it. His birthday fell on a Friday, so we did the “Grandparents’ dinner” on the day of. We served pasta with three sauce choices (marinara, Alfredo, and vodka, all from jars – I can make pasta sauce from scratch, but honestly, a lot of the jarred sauces are very tasty, have no questionable ingredients, and are cheaper than their from-scratch counterparts, which makes them a win all around), and homemade bread sticks. This is my go-to bread stick recipe. It’s so easy and so delicious. If you’re looking for a good one, try it out! It’s truly foolproof.

He also decided that he didn’t want to do cake this year. Instead, he wanted pumpkin pie. Pumpkin happens to be my favorite pie, so there were no complaints from me on that request! Unlike pasta sauce, however, pumpkin pie is cheaper to make than buy, and it’s not so hard, so I baked four pies for the occasion. Nothing fancy, just the recipe on the back of the Libby’s can.

As luck would have it, half of our guests had to cancel at the last minute. (My brother and his wife ended up with a very sick 4-year-old, so they had to stay home. Will’s grandparents got stuck in traffic and then got a tire with low air pressure that they had to take care of, so they had to turn around and go home when they were partway here.) This meant we only ended up using about two-thirds of the food I bought, so we’ve been eating a lot of pasta with various sauces since then. Also, we only ended up eating two of the pies on the big night, so the kids and I have been slowly making our way through the other two (Will doesn’t share my love of pumpkin pie; he ate a slice on Seahawk’s birthday to be polite, but he hasn’t had any since then).

What’s your favorite thing to bake?

Blessings,

Wendy