Today's Special: Pot Stickers w/ Soy Dipping Sauce, Chicken Wellington, Kelly's Chili, and Deep-Dish Apple Pie

I resisted the urge to raid my "new recipe" feeds on Google this week and dug out the old-fashioned cookbook. These are definitely some of my favorite recipes!

Pot Stickers with Soy Ginger Dipping Sauce- These pot stickers rock my world. It's a little time consuming to make all the individual folded pouches, but so worth it. Also, do not skip the dipping sauce, it'll take you five minutes to make it and it's amazing! I usually make double batches of these because it's more common to find 48 packs of the won ton wrappers (usually in the produce section) and a full pound of ground pork.

Chicken Wellington with Creamy Mushroom Sauce - So remember a couple weeks ago when I made Crap in Rolls? Well think of this as its more sophisticated, incredibly delicious older sister. The recipe calls for 8 small chicken breasts, but I used 4 large ones and cut them in half. I also pounded out the chicken to a uniform thickness to make sure they cooked evenly (I don't have a mallet... just used the side of a can of beans!). Also... I have a confession to make... I completely forgot about the corresponding Mushroom Sauce this time around. Which was fine... they are totally awesome on their own. HOWEVER. I have made the Mushroom Sauce before and it is awesome. And I would have made it this time had it not completely slipped my mind. Oh, and the recipe says to take the puff pastry out of the freezer 10 minutes before you use it. I'd say make it more like 20-30 minutes. But seriously... this looks really fancy but it's not hard at all to make!

Kelly's Chili- I'm not usually big on chili. In fact it's typically one of my least favorite "soups." But this chili is so good! It always turns out with the perfect amount of heat and it doesn't have a lot of beans in it. In fact I add an extra can of beans to make the meat/bean ratio a little better. I made this for a work party once and everybody loved it. And Seth and I were able to make it through an entire crockpot full of this stuff before it went bad, so that's saying something!

Deep-Dish Apple Pie- This week a friend of mine at work gave me a bag of homegrown apples so of course I had to make a pie! I love making this pie because it always turns out delicious. And look how beautiful! This isn't exactly a fast recipe to make (what apple pie is?) but it's well worth the effort. I use an apple peeler thingy which helps cut down the prep time a lot. A food processor is also a very useful tool with this one.