Bacon Blue Burger Skins

Another recipe from How Sweet Eats.

Sweet Eats made these as game day food but since I don’t watch games on television I made these as a meal and they were devoured!

INGREDIENTS:

• 6 large Russet Potatoes, cleaned
• 8 slices bacon
• 1 stick of  butter
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 cup crumbled Blue Cheese

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  Poke the sides of your (washed) potatoes with a fork and place them on a baking sheet.  Place them in the oven and allow to cook for 1  1/2 hours.

Cook your bacon in a skillet until nice and crispy.  Remove to drain on paper towels.

I just wipe out the skillet and then placed the ground meat in there to cook on medium-high heat.  Add just a sprinkling of salt and pepper while cooking and then drain the grease away when the meat is browned.

Once the potatoes are cooked allow them to cool for about 15 minutes.  Once you can handle them without burning yourself, cut them in half, lengthwise.

I used a small sized icecream scoop to hollow them out.  A spoon or mellon baller would work great too.  You want to leave a layer of potato around the sides and bottom to hold the potatoes up.  (use the insides for mashed potatoes the next night)

Melt your stick of butter in the microwave and proceed to brush the butter over the entire outside of the potatoes.

Flip them over and brush the butter throughout the inside of the potatoes and place them back on the baking sheet. Sprinkle salt and pepper inside the potatoes and stick them back in the oven and switch the oven to high broil.  You will broil these potatoes for 10-15 minutes until you start to see some golden color around the sides.

Pull the potatoes out of the oven and gather your ground meat, bacon and blue cheese to assemble.

Fill each skin with ground meat then sprinkle the bacon on top.

Top this with the blue cheese and place back under the broiler for 3-4 minutes to melt the cheese.

Add some extra blue cheese to the top and a dollop of sour cream to finish it off.  Are you dreaming of that first bite?  Now my daughter is not a blue cheese fan like the rest of us so for her I added cheddar cheese instead, which she loved!

Basil Butter Parmesan Shrimp

I love shrimp!  Any recipe that calls for shrimp has to be a good one and so I was pleasantly surprised to find a recipe that did a cool twist to some roasted shrimp.

http://www.howsweeteats.com/

And yes, it tasted as good as it looks!

Ingredients:

2 pounds raw shrimp; peeled and deveined

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon salt and pepper

1 stick of butter (room temperature)

a handful of fresh basil (5-6 leaves)

4-6 cloves garlic

1/4 cup shredded parmesan

Place butter in a bowl and let sit until it is soft at room temperature.

Chop the garlic and basil.

Add the basil and garlic and just a pinch of salt to the soft butter.

With a fork, squish and mix this together completely.

Take a small piece of wax paper or parchment paper and scoop out the butter and place it on the paper.  Roll the paper with the butter to form a log and stick this in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Place your shrimp that has been peeled and deveined into a casserole dish.

Add 1/4 cup olive oil.

Add 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon pepper.

Toss and mix all of this so that every piece of shrimp is coated.

Place this in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes.  Just until the shrimp is pink.

Remove from oven.

Get the basil butter out of the refrigerator and slice and then quarter your butter.

Put shrimp on a plate, top with basil butter pieces.  Sprinkle ith parmesan and extra basil.

Enjoy!

T

Olive Cheese Bread

Ahhhh… Olives

This is a recipe that I fell in love with the moment I saw it on The Pioneer Woman’s website.

Ingredients:

loaf of French Bread

can of black olives

jar of green olives with pimentos

1/2 Cup mayonnaise

8-12 ounces of monterey jack cheese

1 stick butter (room temperature)

chives

Slice your French bread lengthwise.

Drain the green and black olives.

Chop.

Chop your chives.

Dump olives, chives, 1/2 Cup mayonnaise and 1 stick butter into bowl.

Grate monterey jack cheese and add to bowl.

Mix it up.

Spread this over both halves of bread.  Put into a preheated 325 degree oven for 30-40  minutes until melted and getting golden.

Right out of the oven.. hot.. is the best way to eat this.  Add a little marinara sauce to dip and heaven on earth.

Enjoy!

 

Avocado Dip

So this is a recipe my mom used to make.  My mom was not the main cook in our home but she had a few recipes up her sleeve that I still love.

Ingredients:

1 medium ripe avocado

a few splashes lemon juice

8 ounces cream cheese

1 cup sour cream

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

8 ounce block cheddar cheese

your favorite lettuce

4-5 ripe roma tomatoes

tortilla chips

(sorry bad picture)  One medium ripe avocado.  Now I am no expert but it needs to be soft to the touch.  Share with me the ways you know a good avocado cause sometimes it is hit or miss.

Peel avocado.      Green is my favorite color so I am loving this picture.

Now I just run my knife around the pit and twist the two halves apart and pull out the pit.  This pit was the size of a baseball.

Slice then dice up the avocado and put in a bowl.

***note***  I would normally be tossing this and everything else into a blender but my blender is having issues so I am going to be doing the handheld mixer but a blender is soooo much easier.

Add about three splashes of lemon juice.  This will keep the avocado from turning from it’s beautiful color and lemon juice just always adds a little bit of a twang that I love.

8 ounces of cream cheese.  I allow this to soften on the counter for about 30 minutes so it is easier to incoorporate.

Add that to the bowl (or mixer if that is what you are using)

Add 1 teaspoon salt.  Now salt is salt is salt or so I always thought but I now only cook with sea salt or kosher salt.  I save table salt for the table.

1 cup sour cream

Toss that in there.

1/2 cup milk.  We are a fat free milk family but use what you have.

Pour it right on in there.

Like I said, a blender would be a ton easier but I will use what I have and you do the same.  Mix that baby up.

Looking good, just keep at it until it is a smooth, creamy texture.

Pour this into a large pie plate.

8 ounce block of cheddar cheese.  I am partial to sharp cheddar.

Grate the cheese.

2 cups of cheese will about do it but add more or less depending on your love of cheese.

Cover the top of the avocado dip with the cheese.

Grab your favorite lettuce.  I love the curls and color of green leaf lettuce. Tear some of the leaves into small pieces to sprinkle over the top of the cheese.

Grab 4-5 roma tomatoes.

Dice these up.

Layer the lettuce and tomatoes on top of the cheese.

Now that I think on it, the lettuce then the tomatoes and then the cheese might look better just add less cheese so it is just sprinkled on top so you can see the green and red colors.  But that is just me.  I like the way food looks and the better it looks the more fun it is to eat.

Scoop some out and eat it up with some tortilla chips.

Hot Wings.. well not so very hot

This recipe is from my dad and me being a lover of all kinds of wings could not resist.  And I was not disappointed.

15 ounce tomato sauce

12 ounce bottle Louisiana hot sauce

1 stick of butter

1/2  can cream of mushroom soup

2 teaspoons garlic powder

1 Tablespoon worcestershire sauce

4 Tablespoons honey

2 bags frozen wings and drummettes

Cook your wings and drummettes on the grill on medium-low heat for 1 hour.  You want to brown and crisp the outside.

Take all other ingredients and mix them up in a medium pot until completely heated.

Looks nice and done.  If you like a little more “heat”, add a couple of dashes of tabasco sauce.

Pour this over the wings in a cassarole dish and stick in a 350 degree oven until you are ready to eat.  The longer it sits in the sauce the better it is but they are ready to eat right away.

Serve up with some blue cheese dip (my fav) or some ranch dip (my kid’s fav).