Baked Eggs Brunch

Last night we went out for Halloween with our friends to do karaoke at the Bear Paw Inn. A cold conversation the previous Saturday night waiting outside in the rain to see Quasi at Satyricon actually evolved into an plan. Me, Shawn, and our friends Stacey & Chris ended up dressing up as characters from one of our favorite TV shoes, Twin Peaks. Shawn was Agent Cooper, I was Audrey Horne, Stacey was the Log Lady, and Chris was our favorite creepy character, Bob. For having thought it up only a week prior and going shopping the day of, we did pretty well!

Me and Shawn as two of our favorite Twin Peaks characters

I needed an easy breakfast to make for the day after the fun. We've also been in a bit of a breakfast rut of breakfast meat and eggs. Boring. My friend Emy directed me to this baked eggs recipe and I must say, it was both easy and delicious.

To save money, I got the bacon ends and pieces since I would be cutting it up anyway. $.78 sounded like a good price to me! I also decided not to use cream since I didn't have any on hand and didn't want to spend the money. I sprinkled some feta over the eggs before baking--I highly recommend it. I also didn't have another ramekin, so I just used my Le Creuset baking dish. I probably could have taken them out a minute earlier, but I hate runny whites, so I left it in a little longer. I'm guessing that it was not using the ramekins that caused the longer cooking time for my eggs.

Carefully remove the individual servings, it will be slippery!

Baked Eggs with Bacon and Spinach (from Epicurious.com)

6 slices applewood-smoked bacon
1 5-ounce bag baby spinach
2 whole wheat or sourdough English muffins, split horizontally, well toasted (IMPORTANT!)
4 large eggs
4 tablespoons heavy whipping cream


Preheat oven to 400°F. Cook bacon in large skillet over medium heat until crisp; transfer to paper towels. Pour off drippings from skillet; reserve drippings. Add spinach to pan, sprinkle with pepper, and toss over medium heat, 1 minute. Transfer to strainer set over bowl to drain. Brush four 1-cup ramekins with drippings. Crumble bacon.

Place 1 toasted English muffin half, split side up, in each ramekin. Divide spinach among ramekins, then sprinkle bacon over, dividing equally. With back of spoon, shape well in center of each ramekin. Gently crack 1 egg into well in each ramekin, keeping yolk intact. Drizzle 1 tablespoon cream over each egg. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake eggs until whites are just set but yolks are still runny, 14 to 16 minutes.

Game Day Snack: Mushroom Dip

After a very relaxing and fun honeymoon, Shawn and I decided to spend our entire Sunday basically on the couch, watching football. Ok, in reality, it's not much different than most of our Sundays during football season. But I digress. New Seasons had a great sale on mushrooms, so I decided to stock up and make us a special dip for our Sunday of laziness. Instead of getting my usual variety pack, which they were out of, I used a mixed of crimini mushrooms and a small package of oyster mushrooms. You can really choose whatever you like, but do yourself a favor and at least get criminis.

I rarely alter a recipe on my first attempt making it. I feel that a recipe was constructed the way it was for a reason, so I want to give it a fair shot before trying to make it better (a pet peeve of mine when I scroll through the reviews of recipes on Epicurious.com, again I digress...). However, this time, having some extra yummy ingredients laying around, I made an exception.

We had a couple of pieces of prosciutto from our in-room picnic at The Allison during our honeymoon, so I diced those up and fried them until crispy and set aside. I added my butter to the bit of grease left over from the prosciutto and sauteed the onions first. Once those become nice and golden brown, add the sliced mushrooms. After the mushrooms had some time to soak up the butter and other flavors, I added a splash of the open bottle of Argyle Chardonnay, let that cook off, then added a pinch of dried thyme, the bleu cheese, and red pepper flakes. I put all that into a serving dish and topped it off with the crispy prosciutto and more sliced green onion.

Wait to add mushrooms until onions are golden brown (not quite there yet)

Mushrooms go in

Did I mention that I halved the recipe??

Serve with crusty bread (and more cheese!) for the most delicious game day snack imaginable

New Seasons Mushroom Dip (Recipe as printed)
3 1/2 Tbls butter
2 yellow onions, minced
2 green onions, minced
1 lb mushrooms, any variety, cleaned and sliced
1/2 cup crumbled Gorgonzola cheese
1/2 tsp salt
Pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)

In large skillet over medium-low heat, melt butter. Add onions and saute until golden brown, about 7-10 minutes. Stir in mushrooms and continue to cook until tender, another 6-8 minutes. Decrease heat to low and stir in cheese, salt and red pepper flakes (if using) and continue to cook, stirring frequently until cheese is thoroughly combined an even consistency is achieved.

Getting Ready for a Spanish Thanksgiving

I just bought a cazuela for our upcoming Spanish Thanksgiving (thanks to Kara and Emy and the Williams Sonoma gift card they gave me). Now I'm just trying to decide which tapas recipes to use and where I'm going to cook everything! So far all I have on the menu is paella and stuffed mussels. Can't wait to experiment!

Wedding Project

Last weekend, I became Mrs. Montgomery. It was a spectacular weekend full of good friends and family, great food, and plenty of delicious wine. A couple of days before the wedding after the majority of our family had arrived, we had a little get together at our house so that everyone could meet and relax a bit before the wedding madness began.

Since Shawn's niece was visiting as well, and I know that hanging out with a bunch of adults all weekend can get a little boring, I thought of a fun project we could do together--make a 3-layer Rice Krispie treat cake for the rehearsal dinner.

7 recipes of Rice Krispie treats later, it was complete.

The bottom layer got a nice chocolate filling

Maddy is a master at stirring marshmallows

It was difficult to find something big enough to build it on, so we flipped it out onto wax paper and my sister and I carefully slid it onto the upside tray

Almost complete...

Dark chocolate covered almonds did the trick

A little decoration

The hubby and I cutting the cake with the biggest knife known to man