Put a smile on your plate

I know I saw this on some one's blog.... who saw it in some one's magazine..... but that is all I remember.

Breakfast quesadilla! It was easy to make and fun to eat, a great spin on the ordinary breakfast burrito.

I cooked bacon in the microwave, scrambled 3 eggs, and stuffed the two into flour tortillas and sprinkled the inside with cheese before folding it over and browning it in the toaster oven.

I dunked mine in homemade ranch from our local Italian dive... it was awesome! That is coming from someone who isn't really a breakfast fan much less a scrambled egg fan.

How to tell if you grew up in the country....

Attention Carb Lovers

You're gonna love THESE!

They bake up super crispy on the outside.... but the inside... oh man the inside... it's like mashed potatoes in there!

It is by far one of the best frozen foods I have purchased in quite some time.

Not to mention, when I googled them to get a picture for this post, I discovered they make all sorts of frozen foods. Can't wait to try some of their other stuff!

http://alexiafoods.com/index.html

Fall Dinner

The ultimate fall dinner to me is a great soup with an equally great something to dip in it. Usually that is my cream of mushroom soup, but on a week night.... that doesn't work for me. Although I did use to do it while Bradley and I were dating. But I was trying to impress him and there were a lot of things I did while we were dating. Things that are now biting me in the butt. "Oh I love to clean" "No, don't you move a muscle!" "I will cook, serve you, refill your drink, take your plate away, clean the kitchen, make your lunch for tomorrow. I AM super girl"

Right.

I'm off track as usual. Back to the point. This week some weird things have been happening to me. Right when I am cooking dinner, I start feeling bad. By the time it is ready, I can't even eat. I tried to eat last night and all of it tasted really weird to me. Bradley ate all his and the other half of mine, so it was definitely just me. I thought long and hard about what I was doing different and I have been drinking a LOT of coffee now that its chilly outside and not so much water, if any. So today I am going to change that and hopefully be able to enjoy dinner tonight.

The soup was campbell's tomato - once again, wanted to make my own, time was not on my side - and the sandwich (which is really why I'm blogging this dinner) was a ham and cheese on rosemary focaccia. But the cheese was something the two of us had never eaten, it was havarti. It was really good, the package said to pair it with something sweet. The tomato soup was a little sweet but I think they meant apples or grapes. Either way it was pretty good and I'm glad I have some for sandwiches now.

I made them with just meat and cheese, I forgot to add mustard, and popped them into the toaster oven. Very easy dinner!

It's Fall, y'all!

Which means it it my absolute faaaaavorite time of year!

Pumpkins, hay, cider, apples, soup, cool weather, scarfs, boots....... oh yeah, count me in.

I buy for fall all year round. I bought harvest place mats back in the summer and broke them out at the first hint of cooler weather. Don't even get me stared on all the pumpkin pie and mulled cider candles littered around the house, either.


These are so cute and versatile for the season. Because the pumpkin is just a pumpkin and not a jack o lantern, the mats can be used from mid September until Thanksgiving! And I love that they are made from a very rugged khaki linen.



Hmm.... but I don't have any Christmas place mats.....

Baptist versus Presbyterian

I have always considered myself to be a covered dish baptist. Meaning that my church is a tiny church where everybody knows everybody and we look for any excuse to have everyone bring a covered dish and stay after the sermon for some good fellowship. We also don't care if you wear jeans and cowboy boots to church.

So when Bradley and I got serious and he asked me to go to his church with him.... I was a little apprehensive. What is a presbyterian? Will my church be mad? Will it un-do all my covered dish teachings?!?!

He explained to me that there were two things that made them different from my church - 1. they have chairs instead of pews. 2. there is a band in the choir loft.

So I went and he was right it was pretty much the same thing. There were bulletins, people singing hymns off key, prayer, the occasional old man nodding off and his equally old wife jabbing him in the ribs. Church is church people, I think naming them should be done away with.

But the longer we've been together and the more I've met people from his church and visited his church, I found out that there were an additional two differences he left out.

1. they don't bring covered dishes, they caravan down the road to guadalahara

2. a lot of the guys.... make their own beer. they even meet up every so often to taste each others creations.

Now I'm not implying they're meeting up and getting sloshed for Jesus. They're just good guys fellow shipping around a common hobby. What's wrong with that? Nothing.

Bradley's first attempt at making his own beer ended up as an alcohol free beer that tasted like apple juice. His second attempt worked just fine and we now are the proud owners of two cases of a "sam adams" knock off. The whole process is very interesting and it's fun to drink something that you actually brewed.

When I saw a recipe for Cheddar Ale Spread I thought of his latest creation and how neat it would be to make an appetizer that included it. This stuff is really good, addictingly good. I used spicy brown mustard instead of dijon, and actually think it could use a little more than just 2 teaspoons.



So, Jason - give Anne Marie this recipe and tell her to make it for your next get together of "sips and sermons" or "pale ales and parables"..... I could go on all night :D

I heart chips n salsa

So much that I'm going to have them for dessert!!!

While the above statement is somewhat true, I put a spin on the traditional chips n salsa to make it more dessert friendly. Because only a special breed of people would actually want salty chips and spicy salsa for dessert, and just because I fall into that category doesn't mean the guests coming to my house last night would.

Last night there was a mexican theme in the Webb household. Instead of making soapapilla's for dessert, I wanted something that could be prepared ahead of time.

I took 5 taco size flour tortillas and sprayed the tops of them with a non stick cooking spray, and sprinkled cinnamon sugar on the spray. From there I cut them into triangles and spread them out on a baking stone.

They almost look like grill marks, huh?

Now they go into a preheated 350* oven for 15 minutes.

For the salsa part, I chopped kiwis and strawberries, sprinkled with sugar and let them chill in the fridge. I actually did them the night before to save time, and the kiwis lost their color. So if I were you I would chop just the strawberries ahead of time and sprinkle with sugar and right before serving, add the chopped kiwi.

Either way it plated so cute! Looked just like chips n salsa!


It tasted equally as good, just in a totally different direction!