Whoa!  Where do I begin?  Day 3 kicked my ass, to put it bluntly.  I sat on the couch in the family room this morning, leisurely sipping my coffee, and looking through the cookbook, trying to choose my next 3 recipes.  After looking at the ingredients and directions, I thought that the twice-baked butternut squash, mashed potaotes 101 and classic oatmeal cookies (with chocolate chunks) looked pretty harmless. I was sooo wrong.

My first mistake was trying to make all three recipes at the same time, starting at 5:00 pm.  I should have made the cookies earlier in the day, and the two vegetable dishes at dinner time.  With three different things going on at the same time, my kitchen was in a state of utter chaos.  I felt like a  mad scientist on the verge on insanity.  Check out the pictures below.

 The twice-baked squash took an hour and a half to make, and the whole time I was thinking that I could have whipped up some squash in the good ole' microwave in like 8 minutes.  However, I must say that the squash turned out well; it was beautiful and impressive to look at it, and it tased delicious.  The mashed potatoes 101 were a pleasant surprise.  The recipe called for about a quarter of the butter I usually use and 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg (?!), and despite the limited amount of butter and the addition of nutmeg, the mashed potatoes were just as tasty as my own, if not tastier.  As for the oatmeal cookies, they came out really well too, and I'm still baking batches as I type this.

Twice-baked butternut squash

Mashed potatoes 101

Classic oatmeal cookies (with chocolate chunks)

So, despite the amount of time I spent prepping and cooking tonight, the recipes turned out well.  My husband did the dishes, and I LOVE him for that!  As you can see from the photos of our kitchen above, that was a pretty big deal.  :-)

MELISSA