Breakfast sliders

Thought up this tasty little treat last night. It's pretty much just a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich, but I put it on slider buns this time around, washed down with a glass of milk. A nifty start to a Sunday morning!

Bacon cheeseburger casserole!

I've pretty much come to the realization that whenever I get creative in the kitchen, it often tends toward "heart attack on a plate" land. Tonight's dinner was no exception.

My son and I both enjoy macaroni and cheese, and I've been making it from scratch (versus a box mix) for a few years now. I often add in various things from tuna to peas to chicken to tomatoes...whatever happens to strike my fancy and call it "______cheesy casserole."

While I've added in ground beef before and called it "cheeseburger casserole," tonight I decided to go the extra indulgence and added bacon....voila! Bacon cheeseburger casserole!!

It was amazingly simple to make. Start by making basic macaroni and cheese. While waiting for the water to boil and for the pasta to cook, brown the ground beef then cook a few slices of bacon. I cooked up a pound of pasta and a pound of ground beef, then a half pound of bacon.

After the cheese sauce is done, add in the pasta and ground beef, stir to mix well. Put in a two quart casserole dish, top with sliced cheese; break up the bacon and add it on top, then pop it all in the oven at 350 for about ten minutes. I topped mine with mesquite ketchup, which tasted more like barbecue sauce, so in essence I had a barbecue bacon cheeseburger casserole...or something like that anyway.

Simple, super basic comfort food (well, sort of). It may not be gourmet, but it sure was tasty.

2011: Off to a rib-sticking start

Well, the goal of this blog certainly was not to wait months between updates. With luck, I will be able to be more faithful about it. In fact, if all goes well, I'll be updating almost weekly.

One of my resolutions for the year is to make one dish a week that I've never made before. This should help keep me from getting into a rut in the kitchen, which I hate doing, particularly since it tends to take the joy and fun out of cooking.

My first meal of 2011 started off with me doing just that. I'd never made grits before, even though I like them, and while I was in my local Natural Grocers/Vitamin Cottage, I came across a package of yellow corn grits. I bought them and the next day put my resolution to work. My first breakfast of 2011: grits with a touch of butter and Backyard Bees honey, bacon from Rocky Plains Meat, and Windsor Dairy eggs topped with raspberry chipotle salsa from Secret Recipes from the Corner Market washed down with a glass of Windsor Dairy milk and a cup of Silver Canyon Coffee right out of the French Press. Yum! Quite a satisfying start to the first meal of the new year if I do say so myself.

Making the grits was a lot easier that I thought it would be. Encouraged, I searched for a recipe for flan, which I absolutely love, but don't want to make with either condensed or any sort of processed milk. I found one, but then chickened out...for now...when I saw how much is involved in making it. The fact that I don't (yet) own any, let alone 12, custard cups was admittedly a contributor to my decision as well. Stay tuned for that down the road.

At any rate, I'm back, so stay tuned for more!