Chicken Stuffed Mushrooms

A few months ago Allrecipes asked me to develop a recipe using Diamond Crystal Salt and I came up with super yummy (and easy) Roasted Asparagus with Sea Salt and Parmesan.  I loved how it turned out- and that my daughter loved it too!

Well, since I helped them out over the summer they asked the other Allstars who created recipes and me to make a recipe from their collection.  There were a lot of yummy recipes on that list- everything from Easy Cashew Sea Salt Toffee to Salted Naan Sticks with Mango Chutney.  The choices definitely ran the gamut, but they all sounded so tasty!

In the end I decided to go with Chicken Stuffed Mushrooms- I was trying to stay at least a little bit on the lower carb end of things... and I'm a sucker for a stuffed mushroom.  :-)

Mastering The Perfect Southern Breakfast Gravy

Once upon a time, 14 years ago, there was a girl in California that had never heard of biscuits and gravy.

In fact, she didn't even know gravy existed in any shade other than brown, and generally only ate it on Thanksgiving over mashed potatoes.

I know, crazy, right?

When I was 18 my best friend and I got our first apartment.  Literally two weeks after my 18th birthday we were out on our own.  It was then that I was first introduced to the idea of biscuits and gravy.

Sometimes she would make them for us on Saturday mornings.  Goodness we felt so grown up back then...we were babies!  But when we would have "the guys" grill for us on our itty bitty balcony, get dressed up and make lasagna and drink Arbor Mist (ugh), or sit around in our pajamas eating a real meal of biscuits and gravy on a Saturday morning we felt SOOOO grown up.

An Ode to Pimento Cheese

Pimento cheese is one of those things that I don't know that I'd even heard of before moving to the South.  Do they even sell it in California?  I dunno.  Much like sausage balls, it was an amazing part of southern cuisine I missed out on for a large portion of my life.

Anyway, for years my husband has been dumbfounded by the fact that I've never tried it.  I've just never had the desire to try it...it looks funny.  It's orange and goopy looking.

Then came Tupelo Honey Cafe.

Tupelo Honey is a small, popular regional chain of restaurants that originated in Asheville, NC- one of my all-time favorite towns.

A couple of weeks ago my husband and I kicked off our anniversary weekend by having lunch at one of their locations.  Remember when I said I'd gone way off the diet wagon for a couple of weekends? Yeah...this didn't help.