I made one of our favorite dinners tonight, chicken bacon mac & cheese, we got the idea several years ago after eating at Dave & Busters. I also made cake mix cookies for dessert, yum!
We found the base recipe for the macaroni and cheese
here. For some reason I have a hard time finding monterrey jack cheese, and usually just end up using a colby-jack blend.
For this dinner I actually cook the bacon instead of just using bacon bits. I really don't like cooking bacon, but I have gotten much better at it, and it tastes so much better. I crumble the bacon once it has cooled and I just kind of eye ball the amount of bacon I want to add, (
or whatever is leftover after we've snacked on it while cooking) approximately half the package.
I use 2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut up into bite sized pieces, and pan cooked. I cook it in a little bit of extra virgin olive oil with some onion, garlic, and italian seasoning. I usually make extra chicken so I can use it on chicken alfredo pizza later in the week. (I make my own
dough for the pizza, usually adding a few extra seasonings)
I mix in the bacon and chicken before I add the macaroni, then bake as directed in the recipe. Super yummy! Even though this dinner is usually in our rotation, for some reason it still takes me quite awhile to make. So make sure you give yourself plenty of time if you decide to make this.
For dessert I made these
cake mix cookies, I found the recipe on one of my new favorite blogs. These were by far the
easiest cookies I have ever made, and they were delicious! I used devil's food cake mix and added some Reese's peanut butter chips to the dough, I cooked them for 12 minutes and they came out perfectly! Since dinner was so time consuming, I wanted something quick and easy for dessert. I can't stress enough how easy and yummy these are! I did underestimate a bit how much these cookies would spread while baking, so make sure to space them a good distance apart. I yielded just over 2 dozen cookies.
Enjoy!
I did in fact get stuck working until 10pm on Halloween, I wasn't very
happy about that. Then to top it off I had to be back at work at 7am. I
was not a happy camper. We did have a pretty good week though, aside
from work. I baked like 6 dozen Halloween sugar cookies. I rolled them
out, cut them into fun little shapes, and frosted them and everything.
I made a big deal about carving a pumpkin and we had a lot of fun!
John had to cut the top off the pumpkin, but the boys and I did
everything else (well ok so I did most of it). Oliver wasn't too into
it, but Owynn had a great time. We tried really really hard, but we
just couldn't stop Owynn from trying to eat the seeds and pumpkin guts.
Mr I didn't want to eat my grilled cheese for dinner just couldn't
stop! 
