falling in love with autumn

I have never been much of an autumn enthusiast, summer has always been my season of choice, followed by spring, fall and lastly winter. I think I have always just taken fall for granted, Tess always tells me how lucky I am to have fall and how much she misses fall at home, that being said I decided to open my eyes and actually look around, so often we get caught up in the craziness of life and forget to stop and look around. Campus is just so pretty with all the trees changing and the weather has been great lately (watch me be jinxing it..). It's so nice to be able to put on a light jacket and be comfortable. Along with fall comes all the fun fall activities, like decorating our apartment on October 1st, it's never too early to start decorating. Haunted houses, hay rides, pumpkin and apple picking, carving pumpkins! Much to my dismay, we are going to fright night at the fair on Friday, I mean it would be all fine and dandy if I found being scared for fun, enjoyable..Enough fall ramblings and on to the important: what's been cooking!



Sadly, school has been getting in the way of our dinner routine but we've managed to prepare some meals the past week and a half..

 Staples in our house include variations of pasta and chicken mainly so we decided to switch it up and have turkey burgers.

 They weren't just any ole' turkey burger, they were stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and feta with a sun-dried tomato mayo. Definitely a repeat.

Another side dish staple in our house: peas. Mariah might want to kill Emily and I due to the mass amount of peas consumed in this house..Also we had a sweet potato mash, probably could of passed for dessert it was that sweet, but it was delish!








One of my favorite meals at home is homemade chicken fingers, so simple yet so good.

 Some days we like Mariah to help in the kitchen, usually she hovers and makes me so nervous. Here she is touching raw chicken, we had to document because she said no one would believe her.

 Such a good worker bee!

 Another classic side dish at home, again, so simple yet so good.










I don't get to take credit for this meal, a quick trip home Thursday night for some laundry and a flu shot and of course a home cooked meal by momma

 Going home always means coming back with left overs, Mariah and Emily thoroughly enjoy all of momma lembo's creations. Emily thought this recipe should be made in mass quantities and sold in grocery stores.

My mother is one of the greatest people alive, all that she does in her crazy busy life, she always makes sure that we are happy. She wasn't even home for dinner Thursday, yet made dinner for my father and I, all we had to do was pop it in the oven. You never cease to amaze me mother :)

 Weekend mornings are one of my favorite things, our routine is usually as follows:
-Sleeping in, how great it is to not wake up to an alarm! I'm usually the first one up so then sends out the text saying come here and the two wandering in to climb in bed and cuddle, mind you my bed is twin sized, but the three of us fit so nicely.
-We finally get up after recapping the nights activities, usually dying of laughter, especially after looking at pictures
-Time for breakfast, Mariah makes the coffee, just right, might I add. This weekend was coffee cake muffins, yum. Another favorite is pancakes, and since it's fall and all, we are on a pumpkin kick, pumpkin, chocolate chip pancakes, yum, yum, yum. When we have them it always reminds me of the time I went to visit cousin last year and we made pumpkin pancakes..with squash..so special we are.


We got our days a little mixed up this week and had Sunday soup on a Tuesday..

 Because I'm a nutrition nerd, this picture makes me happy. Emily and Mariah had never had escarole before, good thing I have not picky roommates!

 Such big garlic cloves!

 Mariah, this is for you! You're all time fav food :)

 This was inspired by my parents who had this earlier in the week, I had chicken broth from mother and it just sounded so good and worked perfectly because I had a meeting at 6 and Emily has class late so we needed a meal that could be made quick.

Simple goodness.

We have gotten into this habit of establishing family meals with our friends. It all started with the Watson boys back at my birthday and we've kept that going and are having one Friday night but now we also have family dinner plans with Willy and Jon. Tonight they came over and made us dinner and are up for weekly Wednesday night dinners. We're going to have to make a family tree to keep all the different families straight!

I'll combine the two family dinners in the next post, partially because its almost 1:30 in the morning and because I may or may not of forgotten to take pictures tonight..