Recipe Review: Grilled Pimiento Cheese Sandwiches

Store-bought Pimiento Cheese is for the birds in my opinion, but Trisha's Pimiento Cheese is a family favorite around here. Super easy & super delicious.

Saturday night, the hubs and I were out on a date at a local restaurant & brewery. I'm not a beer drinker, but my hubby really likes their beer and the food is yummy. It's also a bit different, so I love to look over their menu. One item really caught my attention this weekend: Grilled Pimiento Cheese & Bacon sandwich. Hmmm...I love grilled cheese and I love bacon, but I never thought of a grilled P-cheese sammy. I wasn't in the mood to order that, but I had to try it at home on Sunday since we had a big bowl of P-cheese just waiting in our fridge.

I'm not sure I'd call this a "recipe", but here's what I did.
1. Start by heating up your George Foreman Grill (or equivalent...I think mine is Hamilton Beach).

This is my secret weapon to making several Grilled Cheese Sammies at once without making a mess. I never use butter this way either and think they're just as delicious (& healthier!) without.

2. Spread delicious Pimiento Cheese on one slice of bread.

3. Cook 2 slices of bacon, drain, break in half, and put on the other slice of bread.

4. Put together to make P-cheese & Bacon sandwich.

5. Insert into grill for 2-3 minutes. Just enough to get the bread browned and warm up the cheese a little bit.

6. Serve up and enjoy!

My hubby was pretty skeptical, but after he finished he said it was like a slice of heaven! Seriously, this was delicious and we'll be eating these more often. Without the bacon would have been good too. 

Meal Plan Monday

Last week I was determined to blog more. I even started a couple of posts that I still haven't finished. It was sort of a crazy week between hosting a night meeting until almost 10pm, girlfriend dinner an hour away, working my sweet little PT job that I LOVE 4 days, and working out. I don't think that I've mentioned that I started working out, but more on all that later (hopefully).

Anyway, this is an easy post to get me back to blogging. I didn't cook much last week because my poor hubby had a stomach virus for 3 DAYS! Bless his heart, he was miserable. Needless to say, he didn't each much so I didn't cook much. So here's a semi-repeated menu from last week. Best part of this menu - I don't have to go to the grocery store this week!

Monday - BBQ Pork (crockpot), Roasted Potatoes, & Green Beans (needed a Gluten-free dinner because my Mama is coming to visit...yay!!!!)
Tuesday - Sausage, Peppers, & Pasta
Wednesday - Mustard Chicken, Rice, Broccoli
Thursday - Leftovers...gotta clean out the fridge before the Easter weekend with the family!

Check out more Meal Plans, recipes, and links at OrgJunkie.

Meal Plan Monday

Happy Monday! I haven't had much blogging inspiration lately...been quite busy (with wonderful things!), but I love blogging and reading other blogs, so I'm determined to get back to it.

This MPM post is coming a bit late in the day since I remembered I hadn't posted yet while I was enjoying dinner. So, here it is...better late than never!

Monday: Buffalo Chicken Spaghetti (freezer)  She has a ton of delicious, easy meals - definitely recommend checking her out!
Tuesday: Chili (freezer)
Wednesday: YoYo (You're On Your Own) for my guys since I have a girls dinner planned with a high school bestie! She'll be a Mommy within the month - yay!!!
Thursday: Sausage, Peppers, & Pasta I found Italian Sausage on sale recently, so we've eaten this quite a bit in the last 2 months, but we just LOVE it. I double the amount of peppers this recipe calls for - the peppers are our favorite ingredient!
Friday: Pizza Night!

I'm also making Trisha's Pimento Cheese this week. Makes up a delicious sandwich for lunch and also a yummy snack with a few crackers. I adore this cookbook for its down home comfort food, although I'm sure it's caused my thighs to expand a bit more than I care to admit.

Check out lots of other Meal Plans at OrgJunkie.

Jewelry Organization

I got started with my Spring Cleaning today (I definitely needed it!) since I had a few free hours that Little Man was spending at my in-laws. I started with my closet, mostly because I'm so excited to pack up the winter clothes and pull out my spring clothes! When I say I started with my "closet" what I really mean is I cleaned out my personal closet, my stuff that takes up about half of my hubby's closet, and my stuff that takes up the majority of the closet in the Guest Room. Yeah...I need to clean out & PURGE! I probably wear only 1/3 of what I actually own. I'm proud to say I only have one little shoe rack (with out of season shoes) left in my hub's closet and it will take up it's new residence in the guest room closet along with a few out of season clothes once I take the all the "purged" clothes to our local consignment shop & the rest to Goodwill. 

As part of this process, I had to remove this big plastic container with a bunch drawers out of my closet. I had lots of random stuff in it (panty hose, old make-up bags, etc), but I was mainly using it to store my jewelry. Um, I have quite a bit of jewelry...I came by it honestly. Very few items that are actually worth anything, mostly just fun costume jewelry. My motto is a chunky necklace can make the plainest shirt look great!  Anyway, my jewelry really needed to be cleaned up, organized, and put in a dresser drawer. 

As I watched my team play (and WIN!) the late game tonight in the ACC tourney, I had a mission!

I laid out all my jewelry (after detangling about a million necklaces!) and matched up any sets. I also had a big pile of junk to get rid of. I wasn't exactly sure how to get these organized so I could get to my jewelry easily without having to search for the missing matching earrings or navigating a mixed up necklace mess. And then it hit me!

Necklace/earring set + snack baggies = SUCCESS!

 

So, here's the finished product! I can easily see what I have to match what I'm wearing and nothing gets lost or tangled.

Here's my newly organized jewelry drawer! All those baggies look a little messy, but it's really easy to navigate through them.

As my Mama always says, "All lined up like little toy soldiers!"

Oh how I love a good organization project!

Real Life...

Blogs often showcase the "best" of your life...a delicious meal, a pretty craft, a cute kid. Sometimes I think that can give readers the impression that your life is perfect. I think it's important to be REAL among all the pretties. As I looked around my house at the end of the day, I decided this is a perfect opportunity to show you our REAL LIFE. Our frequently messy life. So, here's a "tour" of my home if you had stopped by tonight. 

Family Room: Notice the pillows and blanket the Little Man insists on throwing in the floor every time he goes near the couch. That lovely blue piece of plastic is part of a Little Tykes T-ball set. Not exactly sure where the bat & balls are. Or why we have it inside...

A bouncy seat I pulled out of the attic for a visiting friend and her cute, chubby-cheeked baby. 3 weeks ago!

Yes, there are 4! snack cups on the floor. I cleaned several out of the floor board of the car, then Little Man picked them up off the table and brought them to me. Good thing the old ones were empty or that would have been one gross snack time.

Sam's Club pack of paper towels still sitting in our family room after 6 days.

Kitchen: As always, dishes to wash, clean dishes to put away, and just general mayhem.

Our kitchen table is the bane of my existence. No matter how hard I try, it is our landing zone. When we eat at the table (which isn't all that often), we just push the junk to one end.

Front Door/Hallway: Look! There's the t-ball bat. And part of a dump truck. And a lot of tools with a dancing moo-cow hanging out at the tool bench.

Upstairs: Sweaters hanging to finish drying on the rail...it's been in the 60s for 5 days now. I wonder how long they've been there. Hmm...

Guest Room: I don't even want to speak of this!

Little Man's Room: Toys - fine. Laundry basket full of clothes that needs to be put away - been sitting there for 2 weeks (I've washed, folded, and put away 2 other loads since then, so why didn't I put those away too?!?!). This picture was not kind to the paint color. And I promise the glider cushion is khaki, not peach.

Guest Bath: Bleach left from cleaning up a poop-in-the-tub incident, Tide box to be trashed, cloth diaper that needs to make it to the pail, and other assorted mess.

Master Bedroom: The Queen of make-your-bed-daily club has been caught! No making up the bed today. I think you actually need to like your bedding to want to make it up.

Items to make it in the attic (the attic door is in my closet, so this is the "waiting zone"). That box has a few random Christmas items in it - oops!

Master Bath: Cleaning supplies left from a dog-crate clean-up project last night. And I haven't dried my hair since yesterday morning. Ugh!

Dog crate drying in our (dirty) shower...at least the crate is clean now!

So, there's my real, messy life. A life (& house) that I love. And one that is a bit cleaner now thanks to waiting for all these pictures to upload. :)

Spring has arrived!

Remember how I was longing for Spring, well Spring is HERE! At least for a few days...I know not to expect the beautiful high-60s days to stay around. I'm sure we'll have at least one more cold blast, but until then we're going to soak up every sun-filled minute! We spent almost all day outside Sunday and a good chunk of Monday...playing, working in the dirt for the garden, putting up gates for the pasture fence, and slapping on some fence paint. We'll be spending more time outside today because it's going to enter the 70s!!!!!!!!

Off to enjoy the sun! :)

Meal Plan Monday

I'm trying to just eat what we have since we have quite a bit of meat in our freezer right now (and I need to make room for some pork!). I also stocked up on pasta recently during a Super Doubles Coupon event and "Buy 2 Get 3 Free" promotion, so don't be surprised to see pasta dishes on my coming menus. My hubby has two night meetings (with dinner provided) this week, which makes meal planning pretty easy since I don't need to have a full blown meal those nights. Here's what we're eating this week!

Sunday - Chicken Pie, Green Beans, Roasted Carrots
Monday - Italian Sausage, Peppers, & Pasta (a family fav!)
Tuesday - Hub's dinner meeting #1, so leftovers/chicken salad sandwich
Wednesday - Spaghetti w/ Caesar Salad
Thursday - Hub's dinner meeting #2, so leftovers/chicken salad sandwich
Friday - Pizza night!

Check out lots of other meal plans at Org Junkie.

Fresh Pork!

I'm making an effort to have our family eat more local foods. We've made progress eating veggies from our garden and getting fruit from local farmers, along with quite a bit of preserving so we can eat that way year round. (We don't eat exclusively local - I bought grapes today that I'm sure are from somewhere in South America, but Little Man LOVES grapes!)

One area I haven't done any local eating is in the meat department. I generally just buy the loss leaders and stock up. However, I started to have a change of heart when we watched Food, Inc. So today I made the first step in our local meat eating endeavor! I ordered pork from a local hog farmer (like 10 minutes from my house kind of local!). Next Saturday I'll be picking up 10lbs of Pork Chops and 10lbs of Sausage (5lbs Hot/5lbs Regular). I thought the prices were very reasonable. The Sausage was $3/lb and the Pork Chops were $4/lb. He also has Pork Tenderloin and Ribs. Maybe next time I'll be brave and order some of those, too.

Longing for Spring

I'm longing for spring and I know I'm not the only one. This has been one ROUGH winter in NC. It's been cold. REALLY cold. We've never had this much snow as long as anyone can remember. I'm looking forward to those 60-degree spring days where we can get out, dig in the dirt, and start planting our garden.

First tomato from our 2009 Garden

I'm a relative gardening newbie...last year was my first garden experience thanks to my in-laws, but boy am I hooked. I canned an insane amount last year (especially for my first time ever doing that), but I'm dying to have all those fresh fruits and veggies rolling in. I'm ready to get out the Water Bath & Pressure Canners. I'm ready to hear the "pop" that comes with a sealed jar.

Freshly canned Green Beans

It's been WONDERFUL pulling out homemade salsa, pasta sauce, chili base, pizza sauce, pickles, and homegrown green beans throughout the year. I love knowing every ingredient that is in our food and knowing that I put it there myself. I've already started a list of what I'd like to can and freeze this year. It looks lengthy and is probably a bit ambitious, but a girl can dream (and then can until she gets ill thinking about sterilizing one more jar!).

I've been reading through this book and this blog while I long for warmer temperatures and delicious food. I'm ready...bring on SPRING!

Meal Plan Monday

It's that time again...time to plan meals for the week and hopefully replenish some of my freezer meals for the month of March. I've started a part-time job at the YMCA (yay! I finally got a membership for FREE!!!), but the only downside is the shift is during Little Man's naptime. That means I get no break in my day, so I've gotta get some things in order to make my day a little easier because after 2 hours in the pool with very excited 2nd graders, I'm beat! We also have our MOPS Spring Clothing Sale this Thursday - Saturday and since I organize all the volunteers & consignors, I have to have something easy for later this week. Oh yeah, and my hubby has meetings on Tuesday & Thursday evenings. I'm already tired just thinking about this week!

Here's what we're eating...

Monday: PW Lasagna (this is delicious and makes a HUGE pan, so I'll freeze half for a dinner later this month)

Tuesday: Chili (comfort food from the Crock Pot on a cold rainy/snowy day) - I'll freeze about half that will be left over.

Wednesday: De-constructed Broccoli Chicken (from the freezer)

Thursday: Potato Soup in the Pampered Chef Magic Pot (I'm not a consultant, I just love this thing!)

Friday: Pizza Night (trying out a new dough recipe in the Bread Maker)

Check out plenty of other meal plans at Org Junkie.