Cheese Sticks (aka Cheese Straws)

Happy Wednesday (night :D )!!! Have you had a good week? Sorry I am having trouble getting into the habit of blogging again; I'm staying really busy. Kenn has turned in his two-week notice, so we're doing lots of "What if..." planning, etc., right now. :)

ANYWAY. This is a "How To Make Cheese Sticks" from allrecipes.com - and I know them as Cheese Straws. :)

I wasn't really thrilled with this recipe, but it turned out pretty good. :) First of all, it says to do this as soon as the dough is thawed enough to unfold; I really think the toppings/ingredients would do better if it came further up to temperature for maybe 15 minutes.

These are really good the first day, and pretty good the second day, and then forget about it. :) Also, think of doing something else - like using a different cheese, or maybe doing a sweet one like cinnamon sugar with butter instead of oil. :D

So I'm saying this is a YES, PLEASE, even though I'd tweak things a bit. LOL - like you never hear that from me.... :D

OK, I'm outta here. :D Have a WONDERFUL evening/day! Be BLESSED, dear friend!

Dill Pickle Dip

Happy Friday! :) I hope you've had a great week, and have something wonderful planned for this weekend. Whether it's relaxing, or getting out, I hope you live each moment to its fullest! :)

Today's share is dill pickle dip; I used the recipe I found at The Cutting Edge of Ordinary.

My stepdaughter loves dill pickles. :) She says she loves this dip; it was good! I did it exactly as the recipe said to, and got pretzels to dip in it.

I enjoyed it the first couple of times I ate it, but it never developed into a craving. :) But it was definitely a conversation-starter (I made it for a Stampin' Up! party).

OK, I'm outta here! :) Have a wonderful weekend! Be BLESSED, my friend!

BLT Nibbles

GOOD MONDAY MORNING! :) Sorry it's been so long since I posted; I got one of the viruses going around, AND I got super busy - I've done a show since I was last here! :D

SO. Today's share is these BLT Nibbles from Food.com.

I made these for an event; they were really easy - except for the complete mess of the kitchen I made when coring the cherry tomatoes! :D

I didn't change anything in the recipe at all. Yea, me! :D

They're a bit sharp at first, but they're very addictive - and rich. I'm giving this a YES, PLEASE! They add a nice pop of color to the table/buffet, you can make them in steps, and the filling-the-tomatoes part is something you can give to someone else to do! :D

OK, I'm outta here! Have a wonderful day, friend! BE BLESSED!!!!

Bacon and Cream Cheese Sutffed Mushrooms

Welcome to Wednesday! :) Are you having a great week??? If all goes according to plan, today's the day we're coming home. Ahhhhh, rest. :)

So, today's recipe review is for these bacon and cream cheese stuffed mushrooms from Mountain Mama Cooks.

They don't really look like much, do they. :) But these little buttons are RICH. Full of yummy cream cheese and bacon, the mushrooms are relatively low in carbohydrate. Oh, MY. Again, these would be a great game-day food. Be warned, though: you could easily make yourself sick eating these. :) They're heavy-hitters, not for someone who's not out for full-on flavor. So I guess that makes these a YES, PLEASE! :D

OK, I'm gone. Have a wonderful day! Be BLESSED!!!

Artichoke Bread

Happy Friday! Have you had a good week?? Got big plans for the weekend? We're out of town, hopefully getting some rest. :) (As I'm writing this, we're leaving in the morning, and I'm really excited! :D)

Today's review is this Artichoke Bread from Closet Cooking.

I won't make you wait. This is a YES, PLEASE! Ohhhhh, is it good. Like artichoke dip? You will enjoy this. So cheesy, and on bread - yum. We didn't have French bread, we had a baguette. But oh, MY. I took out the middle part of the bread, like the recipe says, to give the spread a place to live. If I hadn't been so hungry, I probably would have let this bake just a little longer, so the cheese would get a bit more browned and bubbly. Oh, I'm making myself hungry. LOL!

This would be wonderful for serving on game day. It is rich, so you don't need to cut huge pieces. I don't know how well it would heat up... Just sayin'. :D

Have a wonderful weekend!! Be BLESSED! And try something new - then tell me about it! :D

Mighty Tasty Mini Lasagnas

Happy Monday! Did you have a good weekend? I did; although Kenn's been so busy he doesn't know if he's coming or going, we took Saturday night to go out for dinner to celebrate our anniversary. We'd already planned to take Sunday off - we were going to go to Atlanta for the weekend, but he couldn't take all the time off to go. So, we woke up to the electricity off. That makes it difficult to get projects he needed done, OR get ready to go anywhere. So we took the day off, anyway. :) It felt REALLY odd, and I was REALLY tempted to go do what I was supposed to be doing, but I didn't. I hope I don't pay for that later....

Oh, well. Too late now. :D

Today's recipe is for Mighty Tasty Mini Lasagnas from Catching Fireflies.

Now, then. I used my mom's Pampered Chef brownie pan to make these in; the original did it in regular muffin tins, but I thought, since wonton wrappers are square, why not go more with the shape of them?

These are a YES, PLEASE! recipe. They were super easy to assembly-line make, easy ingredients - I tend to keep everything but the ricotta in my fridge, anyway - and pretty yummy. I do wish I'd had some ground beef to bulk these up a bit, but they were still good. I've got some in my freezer, too - I tend to be the only one who eats stuff like this, so I didn't make too many. :) That was another nice thing about the "recipe"; you really don't have to make a lot of them! I'm also going to tag them as frugal; they're not expensive to make, if you price it out per cup!

OK, I'm out of here. This is our last normal week of rehearsal for CINDERELLA, then into tech week and opening! :) Have a wonderful day! Be BLESSED!

Crab Rangoon Cups

It's FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOORAY!!!!!! You made it through another week! :D And I'm going to assume I did, too.... :D It's almost time to leave for the family reunion, and then Westward! Ho!

These are another one of the new recipes I tried for my jewelry party; they're Crab Rangoon Cups from Big Red Kitchen.

(I wish you could see the whole platter; Kenn bought it for us about six years ago, and it's the first time I've gotten to show it off! It's got CRABS on it! :D)

I did this one EXACTLY as it said. I ever treated my women to REAL crab meat - and that was expensive!! But I would have liked it better with the fake stuff, I think. :D That's probably the only thing I'd change - except I'd get real sweet & sour instead of duck sauce for dipping. :) So I guess that's a YES, PLEASE, right? :D

OK, I'm off!! Have a WONDERFUL weekend - spend some time with people you love!

Asian Meatballs

Welcome to Wednesday! Are you having a good week?

I had a Premiere Jewelry party on President's Day, and I made four new recipes. This is one of the four! This is Asian Meatballs from Gimme Some Oven. :D

One of the good things about these meatballs is that I could make the meatballs up to the baking point, and the sauce, ahead of time. Then I baked off the meatballs and heated the sauce so we were ready to eat when everyone got here.

The meatballs were really tender! The sauce, I would probably back off the hoisin a little bit - it was pretty strong. Maybe up the sesame oil JUST a touch. But overall, these get a YES, PLEASE! from us.

I will say I did NOT like them so much reheated. The meatball toughened up, and it was just not nearly as good. But you could use the meatball part of this recipe for an Asian noodle bowl, and they would be wonderful!

OK, I'm outta here. :D Be BLESSED - and try something new! :)

Olive Garden Toasted Ravioli

Good Monday Morning! :) Did you have a good weekend? Did you try anything new? I love trying new things - it breaks the monotony a little of "What's for dinner?" :D

Today's recipe is the fried ravioli I promised you last week, from Easy Restaurant Recipes. It's supposed to be the toasted ravioli from Olive Garden.

Now, then. What I did was took those wanton wrapper ravioli I made from the review post last week and put them in the freezer, uncooked. When I took them out of the freezer, I should have immediately separated them - they stuck together a little bit when I tried to do it later. But they still worked beautifully for this recipe.

I was also in a hurry, and didn't read the entire recipe before I started; I combined all the dry ingredients, instead of having two breading mixes. And it still turned out well. :D

This recipe got a huge YES, PLEASE! from our pastor and his wife, who were our dinner guests the night I tried the recipe. :D They earned me an incredible "The girl can cook!" review from our pastor. :D The sauce, again, was Prego®; it was their Very Veggie sauce, so I snuck extra veggies in on Pastor Ronnie. :D I know that I can make these for him any time I wish, and he'll be THRILLED! LOL!

I really liked them, too - this picture doesn't do them justice, because they were pretty cold by now. But even Kenn loved them; he finished these up the next day for his lunch. And he's not a huge Italian fan!

I hope you try them out the next time you've got some time. They're well worth the effort, and are obviously a crowd-pleaser. :D Let me know if you do try them!

Have a wonderful day! Be BLESSED!

Cheese Ball

Good Monday Morning!!!!!

Did you get to try anything new over the weekend? We did - but that's a later post. :D I also heard from my friend who I took the Meatball Bubbles to:
Thank you so much for the meal you sent us... those meatball things were sooo good! Even tho I was soo sick that first week, I wanted them every meal! thank you so much.

 I love the fact that something that's so easy is so tasty. I know I keep telling you that, but they really are wonderful. :D She's still not feeling too well - please pray for her! - so I'm taking them another meal this week, and doing the bubbles again. :D

OK, on to today's recipe from Chef In Training. It's a different kind of cheese ball than I normally make; I usually do the one that's partially cheddar, partially cream cheese. This one was pretty good, too!

I did modify it a bit. (Shocker, right?? :D) I didn't use the powdered sugar, and kept just a bit of the juice from the pineapple in the mix. But that's it! :)

It was really light-tasting. I *might* use just a bit more ham next time, just to up that flavor a bit. I ate it for breakfast a couple of times; the longer it sat, the more the individual flavors of the things added to the cream cheese flavored the whole thing. It was popular at the barbecue we had with Kenn's discipleship group - I served it and our homemade "salsa"(more like a pico de gallo) as appetizers. Good thing, too - it was LATE when we finally got everyone here and ready to eat! :D

This is a YES, PLEASE! for us. It might be another new addition to the open house this year. :) I hope you'll let me know if you try it! Have a wonderful day! Be BLESSED!

Mushroom Skewers

Good morning! How's your week going? Are you managing to keep cool? Today's not supposed to be TOO bad here in middle Tennessee; we'll see, though. :)

Today's recipe comes from Dinners & Dreams, and is for Mushroom Skewers.

I requested we make these for my birthday dinner, and my mom readily agreed; we really do like mushrooms around here. And what could be better than starting with baby bellas?

We doubled the recipe, because the original said she'd used them in sandwiches in following days. And that sounded good to us! So on we went.

The ONLY tweak I did on this recipe was to use red curry paste instead of the harissa; we didn't have any on-hand, we needed such a small amount, and it's really nothing any of us would use for anything else. The red curry paste is very mild, so it didn't make a huge impact on the recipe.

The baby bellas were very fresh; the skewers split some of the stems, as you can see from my picture. But they marinated beautifully, and grilled up very nicely.

Unfortunately, no one was knocked out by them. I really didn't care much for them; everyone else said they were "ok". Frankly, I'd much rather have them done in a pan with garlic and butter. The balsamic stained my fingernails for two days, too! :D

So, these are getting a NO, THANKS from me. If you like strong vinegar taste with mushrooms, go for it! I love balsamic vinegar, but not in this usage.

Have a wonderful day! Let me know if you try anything! :) Be blessed!

Spring Rolls

Good Monday morning! I'm on my way to a doctor's appointment today - nothing I'm looking forward to, I assure you - but let me share, so someone is able to enjoy this morning! :D

Today's recipe is from allrecipes.com; I use their recipes quite often, so when I wanted to try making my husband some spring rolls, why not choose their recipe when it came up in my search? :)

I found the rice paper wrappers *somewhere*; I can't remember where, but knew I needed to get them. Kenn LOVES spring rolls, and always orders them at Thai restaurants. Since rice is very high in carbs, I know rice wrappers are, so I don't eat them. <sigh>

These were really easy to make. Of course, I had to modify the filling a bit. :D I did have to purchase a HUGE bag of rice vermicelli, to get the noodles for filling, but I'm hoping they'll get used. :D I have more rice wrappers, after all.... I also didn't use all the ingredients suggested in the recipe for filling; Kenn's tastes are a little more adventuresome. :D So, I used shrimp, fake crab, English cucumber, carrots, regular basil, and cilantro - along with the aforementioned rice vermicelli. I left the dipping sauce recipe alone. :D

This was the first one, so it's a little sloppy on the end; I learned I need to wrap a little tighter. I really like the way the shrimp showed through the wrapper!

Kenn really, really liked these - even the dipping sauce, which he's never a big fan of. :) Two of these made a great meal for him. So, these are a YES, PLEASE! I pinned this recipe originally, and pinned another with different ingredients earlier today. These won't be the last I make, for sure!

OK, I'm outta here. :) Pray that my doctor's appointment goes well! <sigh> Have a wonderful day! Let me know when YOU try something new, or if there's anything you want me to try!