Stuffed Mushrooms

I wanted to make something I had never made before. And I've never been a huge fan of mushrooms. Sure I like them on pizza and sometimes in my salad, but I've never popped a whole mushroom in my mouth and just melted from the flavor. Until now.

I found a recipe for stuffed mushrooms while perusing food blogs. The picture is what sold me. They just looked like little bites of deliciousness. And I had to try them.

So off to Oak Point Market I went for the following ingredients:

15 mushrooms
1/3 cup panko bread crumbs
1/4 cup pecorino cheese
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 TSP fresh thyme, chopped
1 TBSP fresh basil
salt and pepper
olive oil

Pre-heat oven to 350.
Clean mushrooms and remove stem.
Place mushrooms bottom side up in a parchment lined baking dish.
In a small bowl, combine cheeses, garlic, thyme & basil.

Season with salt & pepper.
Drizzle olive oil over mushrooms.
Fill each mushroom with the cheese filling.
Top mushrooms with another drizzle of olive oil.

Bake for about 25 minutes.

Verdict: The tops were a little crisp, but once you bit into the center, the cheeses were all melted and soft and yummy! I loved them! And Duane ate a few too. And he's definitely not a whole mushroom eater either!


So simple and delicious. I'll be making them again. Especially since I have more Pecorino to use up!

Bacon

I have no pictures, because we ate it up too fast. But, what I want to share is not the bacon that I cooked this morning, but rather the way that I cooked it.

I have found, thanks to Pastor Ryan, over at This is Reverb, the best way to cook bacon. Ever. No mess. What could be better?

So go pay him a visit. You won't regret it. Your hips might though :)

Geauxing to Orlandeaux

We were the lucky recipients of some Capitol One Bowl tickets to see LSU play Penn State on January 1, 2010. So we packed up the truck and headed to Orlando, FL after I got off work on New Years Eve. We got on the road around 11am and it's about a 10 1/2 hour drive, without stopping. But we stopped. We stopped for lunch and we stopped for coffee and we stopped for gas.

We finally got to the hotel around 10:30pm, after our GPS tried taking us in the opposite direction of where our hotel was. Duane went in to get us checked in and was told we had been upgraded to the hotel next door!


The Caribe Royale... or as Blaire said "The Royal Crib". It was nice and we had a view of some fireworks at midnight from what had to be one of the Disney parks, because they went on forever and were pretty big.


In addition to the view, we had some bouncy beds! Which was good because we had some kids that had to unleash some pent up energy from sitting in a truck all day.


And boy did they unleash it! Pillow fight!!!!

After a short nights sleep, we put on our warm clothes and headed to the soggy stadium. It was pouring down rain when we first got there. And I mean POURING. We found parking right near the stadium, but had to walk through huge puddles to get there and our shoes and socks were soaked by the time we entered the stadium.

But as soon as we heard those first four notes from our Golden Band from Tigerland, all was good. By the way, did you know that the Tiger Marching Band was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame this past September? First time that a marching band has been inducted into a state's music hall of fame! EVER!!

The field condition was the worst I have ever seen. Big chunks of grass and dirt flying all over the place. The players could barely stay on their feet! And don't get me started on the refs. That personal foul penalty at the end was ridiculous! Yeah, I'm talking to you, Ref! That so should have been a delay of game against Penn State!

Would have been nice if we had won, but I'm still happy that we went.

It's always sad watching the seniors in their last college game. Trindon Holliday has been so much fun to watch and Brandon LaFell has improved so much since that first time we saw him play 4 years ago.

And the girls had fun :) I'm so thankful that we were able to take them with us!!

I hope everyone enjoyed the holiday as much as I did!! Happy New Year everyone!