recipe round-up | April

Happy April everyone! I have some wonderful dishes in my recipe round-up to share with you for this month!

As a reminder, this monthly recipe round-up is something I came up with after cleaning out my spice & baking cabinets last month. I decided to be a little more adventurous in my cooking & baking. Plus having things all organized made it much easier to be adventurous. So I search the www and found some great recipes and then I pass them on to you!

I have a few criteria that I had to stick with:

1) the recipes had to be easy to moderate on the difficulty scale. I don’t have the time, patience – or skill – to do anything too crazy.

2) I have to feed a family of 5. All with different likes and dislikes. So, the recipes have to be pretty flexible. I have to be able to change a few ingredients if I think my family will like it better.

3) The ingredients have to include things I would use again. Sometimes that’s how I research recipes – by the ingredients. I didn’t want to buy a new spice only to use it once. Not in my new, pretty, organized cabinet!

4) I’m not going to pretend any of these are my recipes. I will link directly to the original sources. But I will give my two cents on what worked and any tips on what I did to change it or make it better for my family.

So here are my April recipe round-up picks {with my two cents added}:

Pasta e Figoli from the Food Network My Italian in laws make a version of this that is super yummy but heavy on the beans. This recipe has more veggies and has a lighter feel. And any recipe that calls for ditalini pasta is good in my book.

Slow Cooker Beef & Cheese Pasta from The Cooking Jar I made this a few times last month. Delish! I used ground turkey once and it was just as good.

Slow Cooker Thai Spicy Peanut Chicken by Dizzy Busy and Hungry Another slow cooker recipe – bonus! So easy and good!! I only added half the Sriracha sauce and it was the perfect amount of spicy. Big hit with my kids!

Lemon Cream Pie from Bunny’s Warm Oven A perfect idea for an Easter dessert! So light and yummy. But I actually made LIME cream pie since I forgot to get the lemon juice! Ha! But what a nice surprise. I did brush the graham cracker crust with a beaten egg and baked it for 5 minutes like it says on the package. I think that gives the crust a nice flavor. Now I have to try it with lemon!

Let me know if you try any of these recipes. I’m loving creating new things – and I think my family is loving not eating the same old-same old! Enjoy your weekend and have a nice Easter and Passover!