Meat Purse Filled with Cheese!

Kevin came to visit this weekend, and as always I had the task of feeding him. He's kind of picky, but he enthusiastically volunteered chicken cordon bleu as a dinner idea, so I found a recipe and dragged him to Safeway. Even though I did most of the work while he watched Venture Brothers (oh, I guess he did make the rice pilaf Riceroni!), it was fun and delicious!

~Chicken Cordon Bleu~
Cut 4 slices of swiss cheese and 4 slices of ham into halves. Stack 2 of each and roll up (cheese on the inside). Fold a thin chicken breast around each and secure closed with toothpicks so you have 4 meat purses (hehe).


To bread, set up 3 bowls:
1. Flour
2. Egg Wash: 1 egg, 1/4 cup water -- whisked together
3. Seasoned bread crumbs (note: I overlooked this part when I went shopping, so I had to toast and cut up bread and mix with Tony's Seasoning to make my own; it looked pretty neat, but they were too big and hard on the roof of the mouth, so I don't recommend it!)

Dip in that order and place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, toothpick-side up (I guarantee your meat purses will leak delicious melted cheese!)


Bake 25 minutes at 350 F.

Serve with rice pilaf!

~*~

Shroomin'

This week was my turn to pick the ingredient. I really wanted to pick something uber nifty, but I totally forgot it was my turn until 7:44pm on Saturday, sitting in Kevin's room who I hadn't seen in 1 week (and before that hadn't seen for 3 weeks), giving me only 16 minutes to pick something and wanting to get on with my night anyway. Kevin wanted me to pick bacon. I couldn't really think of anything so I went with something pretty versatile: mushrooms. Yeah, yeah, pretty boring, but it will hopefully mean variety in the recipes the girls choose this week.

When I began my recipe hunt, I already knew, before clicking my Google search results, that I wanted to make stuffed mushrooms, because I had never made them before. I flipped through a few pages of recipes on a couple different sites, getting the idea of different things to stuff them with. I kept a few in the back of my mind when I went grocery shopping the other day and came back with what inspired me.

~Stuffed Mushrooms ~
[with bacon, just for you, Kevin!]

• fry 4 pieces of bacon [low sodium, if you're salt conscious like I am]
  - de-grease with paper towels
  - crumble into a bowl [or use Bacon Bits, if you're a cheater]
  
• while the bacon is sizzling, prepare the mushrooms -- 6 medium-sized
  - mine were from a bulk box and smelled like dirt, but I hope you're not moronic enough to forget to wash them...dry them too!
  - remove the stems from the caps/the caps from the stems (you want to keep the caps) -- I twisted and pulled, and kind of dug out whatever clung behind
  
• finely cut green onions -- about 2-3 tablespoons
• finely grate mozzarella cheese -- about 2-3 tablespoons
• combine the crumbled up bacon, cheese, and onions
  
  
  
• brush olive oil on the rounded exterior of the mushroom caps [important! do this before stuffing the mushrooms! I neglected to do so until after, which was awkward]
  
• stuff the Christmas-colored mixture into the bowl of the mushrooms [and I mean really stuff -- the openings are small and you have a lot of filling! pretend you are at the mall getting Mongolian BBQ and cram as much into that bowl as you can! but be gentle -- the mushroom caps can split]
  
  
  
• broil the oiled and stuffed mushrooms for 3-5 minutes, or until cheese is melted
  
  
  
• serve and eat!
  
  
  ~*~