It has Protein and Calcium

Who needs a protein shake after a run when you can refuel with cheese, sausage and buttermilk?

Saturday I made these sausage cheese puffs for Mrs. Smith's baby shower. I think they are definitely worth having a baby for. I was hoping to bring a couple home for MS to taste, but

no such luck.

I didn't feel too bad for him as he was busy eating here.

I borrowed this photo and now am curious to know who in their right mind drinks Corona with ribs? Surely not this guy...

False alarm. Just MS in a little costume he put together in the hotel gift shop. This is what happens when men are left to their own vices, I assume.

Back at the homestead, I was mixing up previous ingredients. It looked something like this.

Scoop onto an ungreased cookie sheet. I first scooped them out with a cookie scoop, but those made nice dainty little balls, and there is nothing dainty about sausage and cheese, so I washed my hands for a full 30 seconds under hot water and then rolled them myself. With love.

Ta-da.

I think I'm going to make these for MS this weekend, because that's just the kind of wife I am.

In case your into exact measurements:

1/2 pound sausage

1 1/2 cups biscuit/baking mix

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

6-7 Tbps buttermilk

In a skillet, cook and crumble sausage until no longer pink; drain. In a bowl, combine biscuit mix and cheese; stir in sausage. Add buttermilk and toss with a fork until just moistened. Shape into 1-1/2-in. balls. Place 2 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 400 degrees F for 12-15 minutes or until puffed and golden brown.

For reference, I doubled the recipe and baked for 12 minutes and they were just right.

Iron Chef

For my birthday, one of my gifts from the in-laws was a cast iron skillet. Mostly I’ve used it as an upper body workout moving it in and out of the oven - because where do you keep a 30 lb skillet – but decided when making this week’s menu to put it in the lineup. And the crowd went wild.

Naturally, I started with something as close to fried as possible – baked chicken parmesan. I let Matt handle the gross part of the chicken while I took this picture of the Grizz. See, I did listen in the 'sharing household responsibilities' portion of pre-marital counseling.

I thought he looked svelte and would appreciate being shown off. He’s rocking his new exercise routine – one full block 3x a week – ever since a neighbor called him a fatty.

After dipping the chicken in egg and coating with Italian bread crumbs, do a quick swirl in the skillet of EVOO. Add chicken. Sear chicken on each side for about 3 minutes.

Pour a glass of wine. Yes, I buy most wines because of the labels.

Admire new spring kitchen towel while ignoring the fact its 48 degrees out.

Spoon some pasta sauce onto the chicken. The beauty of the cast iron – move directly to the oven for 25 minutes. With a few minutes left, sprinkle on cheese. We were out of parmesan, so I used cheddar. Livin’ on the edge. At some point in your prep, boil some pasta, toss with some basil and oregano.

Tip: If you wait to eat dinner until 9 p.m., even a sub-par meal gets a happy plate. Next time I would probably take fewer pictures of the dog and pound out the chicken breasts so they are a little flatter, cook more evenly and seem like more food.

Took this picture as an afterthought, so my apologies the presentation isn't cookbook worthy.

Chicken Hiatus

In these last few weeks, it seems our schedule consists of run, work, eat, rinse, repeat. So it was nice last Friday when we got to cook a good meal and relax.

MS just returned from Wisconsin with some fabulous appetizers.


All meals need something green. I forgot to lop off the ends of the asparagus, but isn't it pretty anyways? Olive oil, coarse salt, fresh pepper...

and this is what sealed the deal.

Meanwhile, MS was hard at work grilling.

I kid, I kid. He did a bang up job on the steaks. The marinade was fantastic. Who knew you could use ketchup as a marinade base?

I had no idea baked potatoes were such a complicated subject matter. Googling 'how to bake a potato' made my head spin. Foil? No foil? Oil rub? Salt or no? 400 or 425? Holes? No holes?

After much deliberation and advice : holes, oil, salt, foil, 425.

This would be the sound of me tooting my own horn. They were delicious. I ate the entire potato, peel and all - and I'm not that kind of girl.

The Wisconsin sharp cheddar helped matters as well.

I'm 98% sure that potato was my saving grace for the next days hilly 10K. See? Carbs are your friend.

Stewed

MS loves stew and soups and recently requested more in the recipe rotation. Luckily, I had just received a recipe in my power bill (convenient, I might add:) for an easy brunswick stew.

They had me at easy.

Put all this in the crockpot.
(1 cup of ketchup. 1 T of worcestershire. Hot sauce to taste. Brown the meat.)

The sourdough in the background was a nice complement as well.

It was a little sweet for my taste, so next time I might use tomato paste rather than ketchup. Move over, Giada.

Meatball Sliders

Is there anything better than tailgating food? I think not. In homage to tailgating cuisine, here's a new recipe I recently tried a couple weekends back.

Meatball Sliders

1 bag frozen Italian Style meatballs (32 meatballs)
1 jar (28oz) pasta sauce
2 cans refrigerated crescent rolls
11 slices mozzarella cheese, each slice cut into thirds

Preheat oven to 375. Simmer meatballs and sauce over low heat until warmed through (5-10 minutes). Separate crescent rolls into triangles. Cut each triangle in half to form two triangles. Place 1/3 slice of mozzarella cheese on top of crescent roll, top with meatball and roll up the crescent roll. Place on cookie sheet. Repeat with remaining crescent rolls. Bake at 375 for 18-20 minutes, or until golden brown.

I had plenty of cheese left over, so next time I'll probably use more cheese in each slider. These are a hearty snack, and is a nice way to mix up your tailgate from all the dip recipes. Note: this is not an insult to dips. They are my first love.

Roll Tide!!

A Grand Weekend

This weekend, I headed down to the coast for a relaxing weekend with the girls. We started off with a Starbucks run for the road, and I got my new favorite...skinny vanilla latte. Delicious.

We were anxious to get to the pool and catch the last couple days of summer rays. Mission accomplished. And we saw the last of the sun as it set on the bay. Hurricane in hand. Not a bad way to start the weekend.

View from the room.

The hotel was obviously on my plan to lure fall in and had the fire pits flaming. Friday we sat outside, enjoyed some seafood and drank some wine.

Saturday was a combination of all my favorite things. Spa, pool and Alabama football!

In case you didnt watch, the game was a nail biter. Thanks to Brad the Bartender for recommending a Bama vodka and diet tonic. It seemed to be lucky, since after ordering we managed to pull through for another W.

We headed back to the room, enjoyed the sunset and played a little "newlywed game" during the lingerie shower. I missed some obvious questions about MS, but I think I got the important ones right.

We went out for sushi and drinks in Fairhope. It was so nice to catch up with everyone! Life gets so busy, so it was so relaxing just to get away and spend time with some friends.

No more time for relaxing until October 31st.

Change of Season

Isn't amazing how a change in weather can put you in a whole different mindset? It's still hot enough to hit the pool, but it's cooled off just enough that it feels like football season. Cool or not, the games started Thursday, and by Saturday, we were ready for Alabama football.



We watched the game with some friends and my job was to make cake balls. Have I mentioned our engagement pictures are Sunday? And after months of eating whatever I wanted I picked the kickoff of football to try to lose the couple pounds I've put on? And volunteer to make one of my favorite desserts? That involves lots of interaction with cake batter and icing? If not, I'm mentioning it.

Here's the recipe. Because everyone should experience cake balls in some form or fashion.

It really gets your hands dirty if you don't have a melon baller (more on that later), so my apologies for the lack of pictures for every step.

You'll need:
Cake mix (and the ingredients to actually make the cake)
Frosting
Almond Bark
Sprinkles

These are great because there are a million combinations you can make. For football, I made red velvet cake with almond bark. For obvious reasons.

Make your cake in a 9x13 pan following the package directions.

When it's done, let it cool. Cut the cake out of the pan, eating discarding the edges. You don't want the crispy parts of the cake in your mix.

Break the cake up in a bowl. Like this:

Then add the icing. I used cream cheese. If you know me in real life, this is also an obvious choice. Here's where its hard not to just sit on the couch with a spoon and the bowl and watch episodes of Teen Mom. But keep moving forward.

From here you make balls out of your batter. Here's where a melon baller or a small cookie scoop comes in handy. Red velvet is especially messy. Melt the almond bark. Yes, you will use the whole package. And then some. I put a little vegetable oil while its melting to make it creamier.

Dip your cake balls in the almond bark, place on a greased and foil lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle. With sprinkles.

To tack on to Friday's post, another lesson: The $3 tiny box of bakers white chocolate that you have to buy two of and totally ruin your Publix total for the week does not work near as well as the almond bark.

They were a nice sweet to complement all the salty food on the spread. See that near empty dip bowl? That's the buffalo chicken dip I've mentioned. It's totally diet friendly if you use celery as a dipper.

Is there any other way to watch football in the South?

Roll Tide!!!

Move over, Stacy.

Thanks to recent Publix sales, I've stocked up on pita bread and hummus. Sounded like a great appetizer before last night's dinner salad, but I wanted something with some crunch. I LOVE these - could eat them by the bagful.

So, I attempted to make them myself. Super easy.

Thaw out pita bread (if you're like me and bought like 3 packs because they were 50 cents a pack and had to freeze them. If not, skip this step.)

I bought the whole wheat variety. So I like to think my version is a little healthier (Erin - 1 Stacy- 0).

Looks something like this. Cut into eight squares, then seperate the top from the bottom, so two loaves makes 32 chips. Being around engineers for five years means basic addition may have rubbed off on me.

Place on a foil lined cookie sheet and brushed with olive oil. I tried to go easy on the olive oil. While it's a healthy fat, no one cares about this fact when it's hanging out the top of your jeans. Sprinkle with ground black pepper. They would also be great with sea salt (why didn't I think of that last night?!), basil, greek seasoning. The world is your oyster.

We baked ours for 10 minutes on 400 degrees. As you can see, they got a little brown, but still tasted great. Next time, I'll probably cook for 7 or 8 minutes.

We had some jalapeno and cilantro hummus from The Pub, which got rave reviews from Matt. I could drone on about the merits of cilantro, but I won't. I think its so fresh tasting and delicious. I'm really sad to notice now that it's limited edition. It was pretty spicy, so I had to wash it down with a beer.

Great appetizer, healthier than the bagged version at about a third of the cost (Erin - 2, Stacy- 0). This might be a new staple.