My Sister Kira is a great cook,but when Grant and  I were first married I couldn’t afford to make a lot of her recipes due to some more expensive ingredients like seafood and certain spices or sauces that the recipes tended to include. One dish though that she would sometimes make became a staple in our early marriage because it tasted great, was fast, and was VERY inexpensive to make. I don’t know exactly what she called it,but it stuck as Rice-a-Roni Dinner around these parts.
Grant is a very good cook,but his recipes tend to be Mac and Cheese when I am sick or don’t want to cook,but whenever he gets in the mood to really make something it almost always turns out amazing. He is amazing at grilling among other things. I can’t even list all of the ones he has made,but here are the amazing ribs he made for us once. Enjoy!
I sometimes feel like a broken record on this blog because most of the recipes that I post are from family and friends that I got them from. My sister Tanya is a great cook, and this is one recipe that she came up with after tasting it at Olive Garden. You can see her posted recipes HERE. I like to do the step by step photos because I feel it makes a dish less intimidating. If you see each step, I feel one is more likely to give it a try since there is no mystery of a certain word that you have never seen or heard of; hopefully you feel the same and I am not wasting my time ;p. This is the Five Cheese Alforno Olive Garden Copy Cat. If you want it to taste exactly like it, then use a spaghetti sauce that is as close to marinara as you can. I just use the same pasta sauce I use for lasagna to spaghetti to this recipe because it is easier to buy one type.
Here is another great recipe that I have made a few times thanks to Tanya sharing another great recipe!
I feel like everyone in my family on both sides and extended family have SO many great cooks! This is a recipe that Tanya made and is AMAZING! There is some prep work,but I have made it a ton of times because of how good it tastes.
Ever since Grant and I have been married, I have been having him rate recipes on a scale from 1-10. This is important for us because a typical recipe that I would consider at 7 like Meatloaf , Grant considers a 3. This isn’t because my recipe didn’t taste good, it just isn’t a dish that Grant wants to eat all the time and just helps communication. Now, homemade pizza on the other hand is a lot higher on the scale, in fact he would want it ever night for dinner if I didn’t want more variety. I have been so blessed in the recipe department because I have so many talented cooks and bakers in Grant’s and my family. But every once in a while, we like to try new recipe some of which are great, other not so much. This recipe is a copy cat of P.F. Chang’s Spicy Chicken, which I would highly recommend if you eat there. I found the recipe here.