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!

Firestarter

I came home from work the other day and Bri and Sarah were there making CDs. And they were kinda quiet. Which makes one start to worry. Then all of a sudden they come running out of the office and they start wrestling!

Then Sarah sits on Bri and Bri is yelling at her to give her the lighter!!

Lighter??

Sarah is a pyromaniac??


Finally Bri is successful and gets the lighter away from Sarah!!

And she slips it into my pocket without Sarah knowing.

Yep Sarah, that's where it went!


Then Sarah went crazy!

And thinking Bri still had it she attacked her again.


And again.


And then they left and I made cookies :)

The end.

The Princess!

Edited to add: If you're interested in any of the recipes on this post click on the hightlighted name of the recipe (not the picture) and it will take you to where I found the recipe :)

This is my dirty, old, unorganized recipe binder. I kept thinking that I would make a pretty cover for it. But I never did. Probably because I knew that this wasn't how I wanted to keep my recipes.

I would pull the pages out of the binder and leave them on the counter as I was cooking. They inevitably would be covered up by ingredients or splashed on.

Eventually I even stopped punching holes in the pages and would just throw them in the binder. There was a silver lining to that though. While searching for a specific recipe I would have to shuffle through all of them and I'd get to see recipes I'd forgotten about!


Then I found this Martha Stewart recipe tin. In RED!! I love it so much!


It holds tons of 4 x 6 index cards and I've been busy writing all my recipes on the hundreds of cards I bought to fill it up.

One problem though, now it's 4 x 6 index cards getting covered up on the counter while I'm cooking. So I had to come up with a solution.


Enter the Princess! I found her at Hobby Lobby. She was faded black and that just wouldn't do in my kitchen so I spruced her up with some pretty red spray paint. Stuck a couple of magnets on the bottom of her feet and she stays nicely on top of my lovely red box.


And her crown holds my recipe cards perfectly!! And high enough for me to still see once I have all my ingredients and junk on the counter. I'm so in love with her!!


When I said I've been busy writing all my recipes on the 4 x 6 cards I wasn't exactly being truthful. I've really only finished about 15. But, those 15 recipes are delicious!

These Shrimp Tostadas were yummy. I found the recipe on PW's Tasty Kitchen. I liked that the tortillas were baked and not fried.


This Pico de Gallo and Guacamole is the best I've ever had. Courtesy of Pioneer Woman. And the awesome thing about it is that it makes a ton and I'm the only one in the family that eats guacamole. More for me!!


Chicken & Dumplings in the south is not the same Chicken & Dumplings that I grew up with. Whenever we go to Cracker Barrel Bri orders them. But I kept thinking they looked wrong. Turns out that here the dumplings are more like noodles, not biscuits. But I found this recipe on Tasty Kitchen and made it one Sunday night for Duane and I. The real Chicken and Dumplings. Loved it so much I made it again the next night when the girls came back home to us!


And then we have the Individual Scalloped Potatoes. These are the ones that Blaire loves so much that she wants to marry them! Another find from Tasty Kitchen. If you haven't visited that site, you need to. So many delicious recipes. And on the TK Blog right now, Pioneer Woman is generously counting down the 7 days before Christmas and you could be one of the lucky recipients of her generosity. Run, don't walk, on over there, if you know what's good for you!


Today I was using the Princess to hold my Sugar Cookie Icing recipe. I got it years ago from All Recipes and it's the best sugar cookie icing ever. It dries hard and shiny, so you can stack the cookies once they're dry.

Which reminds me... I have cookies to decorate!!!!


Merry Christmas to you all!!