It's 5 o'clock Somewhere

The Jimmy Buffett concert was on Tuesday and we had such a great time! We had about 15 people over to our house for a preparty. Mom let me borrow all of her Buffett decorations, so here is what I did:

For food we tried to relate everything to Buffett. We had:

Fruit kabobs and a margarita fruit dip served in a coconut (Margaritaville and Coconut Telegraph)

Crackers and shrimp dip in a volcano shape (Volcano)

Taco Pinwheels (Nautical Wheelers)

Chips and Peach/Mango Salsa (Last Mango in Paris)

5 layer mexican dip (It's 5 O'clock somewhere)

Cheeseburgers (Cheeseburger in Paradise)

We also had Crab Meltaways and brownies but I couldn't figure out how to fit those into the theme.

It was BYOB but we had glasses from our cruise that people could use for their "Boat Drinks."

In the afternoon, after a drink or two ....


Towards the end of the night, after many drinks!

You can see the rest of the pictures at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lafletcher80/JimmyBuffett

Another success!

Tonight I made Blue Cheese-Stuffed Burgers for Jason and we invited my mom over as well. I made 3 burgers instead of 4 and used a little more blue cheese. They were really good! I'm just now getting to where I like blue cheese and these were great. It's another "make again recipe."




Blue Cheese-Stuffed Burgers

Cooking spray
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1 pound ground round
3 tablespoons dry breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons water
1 egg white, lightly beaten
1/4 cup (1 ounce) crumbled blue cheese

Coat a small nonstick skillet with cooking spray; place over medium heat until hot. Add onion; saute 5 minutes or until tender. Remove from heat; let cool. Combine onion, beef, breadcrumbs, water, and egg white in a large bowl; stir well. Divide mixture into 8 equal portions, shaping into 1/2-inch-thick patties. Spoon 1 tablespoon cheese into the center of 4 patties; top with remaining patties. Press edges together to seal.

Prepare grill. Place patties on grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 4 minutes on each side or until done.

Food Blog

So apparently a pretty popular thing to do now is to have a "food blog." It seems to be mostly women my age, recently married, who are experimenting with cooking. They try out a new recipe, take a picture, and post about it in their blog. I'm not going to do an entire blog for it, but once a week I'm going to try out a new recipe and see how it goes. Tonight mom and Patrick came over to help taste test it! We had Chicken with Goat Cheese and Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce. (Found it on another blog - Annie's Eats.) Also had mashed potatoes and a squash/onion/red pepper mix of veggies. The chicken was really good and was voted a definite "make again" by everyone!



Chicken with Goat Cheese and Sun-Dried Tomato Sauce
Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts, pounded thin
1 tbsp. olive oil
¼ cup white wine
½ cup chicken broth
2 tbsp. sun-dried tomatoes, chopped (and drained, if packed in oil)
2 oz. herbed goat cheese
salt and pepper

Directions:
Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Heat skillet over medium-high heat and add oil. When oil is hot, add chicken breasts. Cook through, about 6-8 minutes per side, depending on the thickness. Set aside and keep warm.

In the same skillet, add the wine. Cook over medium-high heat until reduced by half, being sure to scrape up the browned bits from the chicken. Add the chicken broth and reduce that by about half too. Add the sun-dried tomatoes and heat through.

Remove skillet from heat and stir in the goat cheese. Top the chicken breasts with sauce and serve.

**For 4 of us, I doubled the recipe.**

Kenny Chesney concert

At the last minute yesterday Jason & I got tickets to the sold out Kenny Chesney concert. If you ask Jason he'll probably have a different review, but I thought it was fantastic! Rarely is there a concert when I know (or am somewhat familiar with) every song played. Pat Green and Sugarland opened and both were pretty good. The worst part was when we left - we even tried cutting out before the encore was over and it still took us 2 hours to get out of the parking lot - ridiculous! I think we were the last ones in the entire complex to get out of there. Ugh.

Can you tell Jason was a little bored at some points during the night?

Nashville!

Mom, Karen, and I went to Nashville, TN this past weekend. We got there Friday night and went over to the Gaylord Opryland Resort, ate at the Jack Daniel's Saloon, and then walked around and saw the Grand Ole Opry. On Saturday we got up and went to see the Parthenon, and then toured the Belle Meade Plantation. Then we spent a few hours shopping at Opry Mills and that night went out on the town. We started at the Cadillac Ranch where we ate and watched a live band. Then we went to the Wild Horse Saloon. We had a few drinks, ate some fried pickles, and watched the line dancing. It's gotten alot more complicated since I was last there!