Lentil Salad (vegan)

Ingredients:
1lb bag of dried lentils
2 cups of shredded carrots
1/4 cup olive oil
Juice of 1 lemon
3-4 cloves of garlic
Salt to taste
Optional: Parsley or shredded apple

Steps:
1. Cook the lentils according to the package
2. Once cooked and drained, mix the remaining ingredients with the lentils.
3. Cover and chill. Serve cold.

Bacon Wrapped Stuffed Dates

Oh my...ladies and gentlemen, I think I'm back (in the kitchen)....(for now...)

These little guys were awesome!

Center Cut Bacon Wrapped Stuffed with Gorgonzola and Honey Goat Cheese Dates!

Ingredients: -Bacon (avoid thick cut, I used center cut and it was perfect!), cut in half (or thirds if you have long pieces of bacon)

-Pitted/Dried dates (near the raisins)

-Gorgonzola cheese

-Goat cheese (I used honey flavored, it was really good, but might use plain next time - it was pretty sweet!)

-Seasoning mixture: 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt, 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper,1/3 teaspoon garlic powder (you can eyeball this, and play around with it! You might need to make more depending on how many dates you make.)

Steps:

Preheat oven to 385 degrees F 

1. Mix 1 part Gorgonzola with 1 part goat cheese and set aside.

2. Slit open the dates (make sure not to cut them completely in half) and stuff them with the cheese mixture; press them closed (like a stuffed taco). 

3. Wrap the bacon around each stuffed date and secure with a tooth pick. 

4. Mix the dry seasonings and sprinkle all over each bacon wrapped date. 

5. Place the dates on a rack/cookie sheet and bake for 15 minutes on one side (rotate pan once) and then 15 minutes on the other side. Depending on how crispy you like your bacon, you may want to continuously check on the dates, and extend the times as necessary. The good news is that the seasoning helps the bacon crisp up!!)

Enjoy!

Stuffed and wrapped: 

Prepped with seasoning:

All done, crispy and tasty!

Stuffed Jalapenos

Perfect game-day appetizer. 

Yes, you guessed it: EASY & DELICIOUS...I feel like that's becoming a common theme among my posts.

One of Trey's buddy's from work brought these over for the UNC vs UM game and, yes, YUM!

If you eat meat (Italian Sausage) and don't mind some heat, try it! And don't let the word "jalapeno" scare you...if you seed the jalapenos completely, it will NOT be spicy. I, however, reserve the seeds and sprinkle extra all over the jalapenos!

Ingredients

20 Jalapenos

8 oz. of softened cream cheese

1 cup of grated parmesan cheese

1 lb. hot Italian sausage

Steps

1. Cook Italian sausage until browned.

2. Preheat oven to 425f.

3. Prep the jalapenos: rinse, half, seed.

4. Mix cream cheese, parmesan and sausage.

5. Stuff each jalapeno half then bake until browned, about 15-20 minutes.

*Bacon optional :)

Baked turkey, egg and mushroom cups topped with guacamole

Speedy Lunch:

Baked Turkey, Egg & Mushroom Cups topped with Guacamole

Paleo-friendly meal

Servings 2

Yields 4 cups

Ingredients:

4 slices of deli sliced turkey

3 eggs

3-4 mushrooms, diced

1 ripe avocado

1/2 of a lime; or lime juice

Garlic salt

Onion powder/minced onion

Coconut oil

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Coat muffin pan with coconut oil.
3. Fold each slice of turkey in half and line in pan.
4. Mix eggs and diced mushrooms together.
5. Fill each turkey cup with egg mixture.
6. Bake for 15 minutes, or until eggs are no longer watery.
7. For the guac: mix avocado with juice of half a lime and seasonings. (Mine turned out very sour/tangy, but the strong flavor boosted the flavor of the entire cup! Didn't need to season the eggs at all!).

*This was made and eaten within the 20- 25 minutes I have at home for my lunch break! The best part is that you can add ANY veggie into the egg mixture that you have on hand. It was amazing.

Enjoy!

"Bang Bang" shrimp

"Bang-Bang Shrimp"

It's been years since I've eaten at Bonefish, however, there is a great place in town, Pacific Rim, that serves these "Pac Pac Shrimp" as an appetizer during happy hour for only $4.00! I feel ridiculous when I want to order multiple orders of this appetizer when I go out...so I decided to try a copy-cat recipe I stumbled upon on Pinterest.

I SLIGHTLY modified the recipe from: http://fakeginger.com/2011/10/02/bang-bang-shrimp/

The only thing I did different was the breading process. Instead of coating shrimp in the breading mixture, egg, then breading mixture again...I coated the shrimp with cornstarch first, then dipped in egg, then in the breading mixture.

It's very important to cool the breaded shrimp for at least the 20 minutes...I allowed for about an hour (I had some time to spare). This made the frying process SO SIMPLE-no mess!!!!

I tried a few by pan frying before deep frying an entire pound....and both methods equaled perfection!!