Croque Madame Casserole

Keeping it simple today... Just a recipe! I made this last night and it was super simple and super delicious! Apparently, it's a french thing... but I got it from Paula Deen... so we'll call it French Southern cuisine :)

Croque Madame Casserole

Ingredients:

6 T butter

1/4 cup all purpose flour

2 cups milk

2 T Dijon mustard

3/4 t. salt

1/2 t. pepper

1/2 t. nutmeg

12 slices of white bread

3/4 lb. deli ham

2 cups grated Gruyere cheese

6 eggs

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400. Grease a 13x9 inch casserole dish. Melt 6 tablespoons of butter in a skillet over low heat until bubbling. Whisk in flour and cook for 1 minute. Slowly whisk in the milk and cook until thick and bubbling. Whisk in the mustard, salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Pour a thin layer of the sauce into the prepared casserole dish and cover it with 6 slices of the bread, then slices of the ham and an even layer of cheese. Repeat the layers once more, ending with a third layer of sauce to cover all. Bake the casserole for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside.

Working in two batches, fry six eggs in a skillet (3 at a time)- cooking until the whites are set on both sides. Top each portion of the casserole with a fried egg. Top with remaining gruyere and return to the oven until the cheese melts.

*****swiss cheese is the cheese that is most closely related to gruyere... if you can't find gruyere or it is more expensive than you want it to be! :)*****

Before the eggs...

With the eggs...

It's a pretty rich dish, so I served it with a salad :)

Happy Wednesday!

Just 3 days until Razorback football starts! :)

The Story of the Nutty Bird

Something about a hot summer day makes me want to eat a really light and healthy meal... maybe it's because I saw myself in a swimsuit this past weekend... haha I'm not sure but when I was thinking about what to "cook" for dinner last night, I just kept coming back to the Nutty Bird.

The Nutty Bird is a sandwich that I haven't eaten in FOREVER but I have many fond... and some not so fond.... memories of. When I was a little girl, my family used to have a favorite Saturday lunch spot called Daddy's Serious Sandwiches. The "Nutty Bird" was a sandwich on their menu that my dad and I used to always order. Some time when I was in middle school, the location of the restaurant where we ate closed. I missed the sandwich (because I've always loved my food! haha) so my dad started making it for my lunch at school.... and this is where the not so fond memories come in!

The ingredients on this sandwich are pumpernickel bread, smoked turkey breast, cream cheese, cucumbers, sunflower seeds and bean sprouts... very uncool for a middle school girl... with braces... to eat bean sprouts. Haha My friends (one of which is still one of my best friends... and hopefully she will read this post! haha) were RELENTLESS in making fun of me! They thought I was so weird for eating that sandwich and they used to wave their fingers in front of their mouths while I was eating it to represent the bean sprouts that got stuck in my braces... Awesome, I know. Needless to say, I asked my dad to go back to putting plain turkey sandwiches in my lunch and I haven't eaten a Nutty Bird since! Until last night... when I introduced my silly sandwich to my husband... he loved my sandwich and he did NOT wave his fingers in front of his face while I was eating... such a relief! haha

We also had a delicious summery salad to go with our Nutty Bird sandwiches. I had some fresh tomatoes from my grandparents' garden that I wanted to use so I looked up this Paula Deen recipe on the Food Network website:

Corn, Avocado and Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

2 cups of cooked corn, fresh or frozen

1-2 avocados, cut into 1/2 inch cubes

1 pint cherry tomatoes, halved (I chopped up some regular tomatoes)

1/2 cup finely diced red onion

Dressing:

2 T. olive oil

1/2 t. grated lime zest

1 T. fresh lime juice

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1/4 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

Directions:

Combine the first four ingredients in a glass bowl. Combine the dressing ingredients in a separate bowl, pour over the salad and gently toss to mix.

**********

Have a great Thursday!

BLT with Jalapeno Mayo

We kept dinner really simple at our house tonight... it's too hot to stay in the kitchen too long! :)

We just made regular BLT sandwiches but we "kicked them up a notch" (Emeril's words and Emeril's recipe! :)) with a little Jalapeno Mayo!

Here's the recipe:

Jalapeno Mayonnaise

Stir together the following ingredients and chill until ready to serve:

1/2 cup plus 2 T. Mayo

1 or 2 jalapeno peppers- seeded and finely chopped

1 t. lime juice

1/2 t. minced garlic

1/4 t. salt

1/8 t. dried crushed oregano

Served with a side of fruit, it was the perfect light summer meal!

*****Use turkey bacon and light or fat free mayo for a figure friendly version! :)*****

BBQ Chicken Sandwiches... With a Twist!

Because of this...

I needed to cook a REALLY easy meal tonight.

But I didn't want it to be boring.

This is what I came up with:

BBQ Chicken Sandwiches on Jalapeno Corn Cakes

Here's my inspiration:

A few weekends ago, Evan and I went to Nashville, TN for a Family Life Marriage Conference. It was a really fun weekend! Since we are food lovers, we spent a lot of our free time looking for great restaurants! In our search, we found a book called, "Where The Locals Eat: Nashville." It was a FABULOUS find!! It gave us several great recommendations. One of those was a restaurant called Puckett's Grocery and Restaurant. They have excellent BBQ and they give you the option of having your sandwich on Cajun corn cakes instead of regular bread! Such a cool concept! So I decided to give it a shot at home. Here's a pic of the restaurant... you should try it if you're ever in Historic Downtown Franklin, TN.

For the BBQ Chicken, all I did was throw a pound of raw boneless skinless chicken breasts into my slow cooker with an entire bottle of BBQ sauce this morning when I woke up. I put it on the lowest setting and when I came home from work, dinner was basically ready!

For the coleslaw, I stopped by my favorite BBQ restaurant in town and bought a quart of it (I told you I was going simple tonight).

Now for the Jalapeno Corn Cakes... all I did was take my favorite cornbread recipe, mix all the ingredients together and fry little cakes up in the skillet (the exact same way that you would make pancakes). Word of advice: This was an experimental idea so I had to try a few times before I got a cake that I liked. In the process, I learned that there is plenty of batter to make a few mistakes and that the smaller you make the cakes, the more likely they are to be pretty.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of yellow cornmeal

1 cup sour cream

1 can creamed corn

3 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

2 eggs

2/3 cup vegetable oil

2 or more chopped, seeded jalapenos

1 cup grated, mild cheddar cheese

*****

I served these with fruit and the restaurant served them with sweet potato fries but the sandwich is so filling that you don't really even need a side item!

Here's the finished product...

Now on to tackle the monster in my laundry room :)