I just love weekends in October. This October seems to be a bit more rainy than others I remember, but I am still doing a lot of fun autumn activities. This weekend we have focused on great food.

Yesterday for lunch I was treated to a homemade open faced tuna melt – I loved it:

The bread was rosemary olive oil bread from Wegmans. Topped with Tuna, a sprinkle of cheddar cheese, seasoned with freshly ground pepper and a couple of other spices, warmed on the griddle just enough so that the cheese was melted and the bread was crunchy. A perfect lunch! On the side I also snacked on a (October perfect) apple and a handful of Trader Joe’s Olive Oil popcorn (I love this stuff!) and a couple of glasses of water.

After lunch I went off to Trader Joe’s for more great food. We were having a friend over for dinner so I decided to make turkey chili, corn bread and a spinach salad for dinner. We were able to get all of the ingredients we needed at Trader Joe’s and while we were at it we returned one of our jars of peanut butter that fell under the so sad peanut butter recall.

While we were at Trader Joe’s we also picked up some Autumn limited edition Trader Joe’s items… like:

(more on this in a second!)

Dinner came together easily last night. When you are entertaining, I really like to fall back on an old classic recipe that you know and that you have made a lot because it takes some of the stress out of the evening. Turkey chili is definitely one of those items for me. I made a spinach salad to go with it with some great TJ ingredients:

This salad is so good and so easy to throw together. Ingredients: Spinach, orange segments, cucumbers, pecans, dried cranberries, croutons and I used a champagne vinaigrette dressing from Trader Joe’s. I had two big servings of salad.

My turkey chili took a little over an hour to put together and cook. I served it with three different garnishes, cheese, sour cream and fresh scallions:

We also had corn bread on the side served with hot sauce (yum!) Dessert was also on the healthy side (sort of?) reduced guilt Trader Joe’s brownies and vanilla frozen Greek yogurt. I loved this dessert!

Dinner was a lot of fun, and we were up until 1 o’clock in the morning talking and laughing – fun times! I slept in a little later than I had expected to on Sunday morning. Once I was awake coffee was ground and brewed and I through together pumpkin pancakes. I was so thrilled when I saw the limited edition Pumpkin Pancake & Waffle mix at Trader Joe’s yesterday, I bought two boxes. The pumpkin pancakes were such a treat this morning:

Topped with a little maple syrup, brummel & brown and a veggie sausage on the side.

That wraps up the weekend in food so far! Today for lunch or dinner I am sure we will have turkey chili and corn bread – I love left overs! On the agenda for the day: pick up some pumpkins. Hope you are having a great weekend, too!