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Ok, so this is where I should come forward and admit something. I friggin love hot, spicy food. Whether its wasabi slathered on sushi, jerk chicken with scotch bonnets, four pepper chili, you name it, I am game. We have even found jellies made by the wonderful people of One Screw Loose that are made from habeñeros and ghost peppers; excellent products. Ok, so this will not be like that, but jalapeños are still in the league of hot peppers in my opinion.

Before going any further (starting to feel this post is going to have a lot of links in it), you should also check out daiya foods. If you have not had cheese since before you can remember, this is a great brand to get introduced to. I have only tried the shredded mozzarella so far (only one I have found local), and will definitely be making the trek to find their products in other places.

With that said, back to the peppers. I highly encourage wearing latex gloves (or non latex alternative if allergies deem necessary) whenever working with hot peppers, because the oils from the pepper can get on your hands and can transfer to other things you touch. I have known people to get oils from the peppers in their eyes, underneath fingernails, none if this feels good. So, gloves, yes, good.

Next pretty darn important thing; cleaning out the peppers. Jalapeños range anywhere from mild to moderate on the spectrum of heat (scoville units). I have tried to find good information on how to tell if a pepper is going to be hot, and there just isn’t any definitive data either way on this. Comes down to this, if you buy a jalapeño, it might be mild, and it might kick your butt, end of story. That said, a LOT of the heat is held in the seeds and veins insides of the pepper. We want to remove all seeds and remove everything on the inside there. If you want, you can keep some of the seeds to put in the mix to ensure that you get a lot of that heat; may the lord have mercy on your soul.

Next is our mix for stuffing the peppers. 3 ingredients; shredded cheese, Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese, and the sausage of your choice.

We have done them wrapped in bacon, as well as with sausage, both work just fine, and you could absolutely sub out the sausage with ground round meatless crumbles if desired.

Ingredients

About 6 Whole jalapeno peppers, halved, cleaned and seeded
1/3 Cup Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese
1/2 Cup Daiya Mozzorella or Cheddar Shreds
1/2 Cup Cooked ground sausage of your choice

Steps

· Preheat oven to 375 F.
· If you took them off, put your gloves back on.
· Set halved peppers on cookie sheet.
· Mix other ingredients in medium bowl.
· Fill each pepper half with mixture.

· Bake for 30-35 minutes
Enjoy and repeat as needed.

Keep living the daydream!

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I think one of the few things we do more often than these mushrooms is jerk chicken, which, incidentally goes really well with the mushrooms. As we approach Labor Day, it feels right to get a few things out there that can accompany grilling out. I’m not going to say that we are approaching the end of grilling season; as quite frankly, we are in Georgia, and we grill out about 50 weeks out of the year. 47 of those weeks it’s because it’s too dang hot to cook in the kitchen, the other three are because it’s actually nice outside for a change. Ok, back inside to the mushrooms.

These have adapted over time, and I know you will love what they have become. First rule: waste not want not. We were cleaning the mushrooms and pulling out the stems and getting rid of them. One day it dawned on us, why the heck are we throwing away mushrooms when we want to eat mushrooms? So, clean the mushrooms, pull the stems, and set those aside. Check the stems afterwards to see if they need to be trimmed up a bit, and then chop up the stems fine. This will get added to the stuffing mix, and there is usually some extra on the side that otherwise would not have any mushroom component; see how smart that was?

The next major change was adding ground Italian sausage. I got some to do some jalapeno poppers (should have that recipe ready tonight), and there was so much extra, we added it into the mix. Now that extra side serving that doesn’t have a mushroom, has mushroom in it AND sausage, it’s a beautiful life.

Ingredients

about 15-18 Medium Sized Mushroom caps, cleaned and stems separated
2 TBSP Olive Oil

2 Cup Pepperidge Farms Herb Stuffing Mix
1 Cup Chicken Broth
1/2 Cup Tofutti Better Than Sour Cream
Chopped Mushroom Stems
1/2-3/4 Cup Cooked ground sausage of your choice

Instructions

· Preheat oven to 375 F
· Have mushroom caps in a large bowl; pour olive oil over caps so all mushrooms get some oil on them
· Place caps on cookie sheet.
· Chop up stems fine, removing any ends that you deem need to be trimmed off; put in large bowl
· Add stuffing mix, broth, Tofutti BT sour cream and ground sausage
· Fill each cap with mix, you will have a rounded top overfilling the cap, but not so much that it falls out

· Bake for 30-35 minutes
Enjoy and repeat as needed.

Keep living the daydream!

Continue reading »]]> So I wanted to do a test post as I am continuing in my crash course in WordPress & blog creation. I am very anxious to get things going but there are a few things that I do have to figure out still. You are definitely going to get to observe my learning process, but I want to make that part as painless as possible for y’all. So the other day we had some friends over, and there was a request for something with some kick.These jalapeno poppers seemed like the right answer to the question. Here’s a pic of the sliced jalapenos before adding the stuffing to them. That post with the full recipe should be soon to follow. For now, going to see how this translates onto the site.

Add in sausage or tofu crumbles, Daiya shredded mozzarella and Tofutti cream cheese, and bake until they just start to brown on top. They did not last very long, and the conversation quickly turned to wrapping them in bacon next time.

Cheers!