Tomato Basil Bisque

On a whim, I decided to make Tomato Basil Bisque and serve alongside a gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. To ensure the kids liked them I cut the sandwiches into strips and called the whole thing, “grilled dippers.” Guess what? Harper was in love, asking for this meal the next two nights. Lucky for her, this Bisque recipe makes A LOT of soup although I could easily half the ingredients next time. Here we are a week later and I’m still enjoying the soup and I must declare it is the best Tomato Basil Bisque I have EVER tasted. Ever. No Lie.

How To Apply a Vinyl Decal

>>How To Video<<

 These are the three vinyl decals I made in response to Harvey in Texas. 

Menu of the Week

Our menu of the week focused on fairly healthy dinners from Cooking Light. I tried a few new recipes and had to improvise on Wednesday when dinner took a nose dive. Keep reading to find out what dinners we enjoyed.

20 Minute Dinners are the Best

I am usually skeptical when a recipe says it takes less than 30 minutes to prepare and consist of more than bread, peanut butter, and jelly.  This recipe from Cooking Light promised to be a 20-minute dinner and I put it to the test. I did more than that though, I changed the recipe, made it better, and also made it in under 30 minutes, keep reading to find out how you too can recreate this meal on a weeknight.

Menu of the Week

Go figure the week that Jim thinks I hit it out of the ballpark I miss the pic of my chalkboard menu wall. At least I snapped a few pics of the dishes before we devoured them.

Honey Bourbon Toddy: Cough Syrup for Grown Ups

I came down with the cold of the century early this year. I was miserable and wanted to sip on something with healing properties that would also help me go to sleep. My cure was this seasonal mixture of booze, water, honey, citrus and spices, otherwise known as the Hot Toddy. It soothes, coddles, and makes everything right in your world - the equivalent of Mom.

In a microwavable mug I measure out 4 oz Water and 1-2 Tablespoons of fresh squeezed lemon. Microwave for one minute to get piping hot. Then I stir in in 1-2 Tablespoons of local honey and 2 oz of Bourbon (like Bulleit or TX Bourbon). I use a loose tea steeper to drop in 6 cloves and then stir with a cinnamon stick.

The warm adult beverage does the trick to calm my cough and help me sleep. Well, it's actually the honey that does the trick, I think. But the bourbon sure doesn't hurt.  Taking a full spoonful of honey has been shown to be very effective at calming nighttime coughs but it is not as fun as this adult cough remedy.

Thanks to the cold, I started liking bourbon and now I'm a whiskey girl. Who would have thought?!?!

Menu of the Week

Our menu of the week features a repeat from last week...because it was just THAT good. Of course I tweaked the ingredients and I think it's even better. Keep reading to see what we had.

Menu of the Week

The menu of the week was mostly "hit" and one big miss. Keep reading to see which night bombed!

Menu of the Week

Menu of the Week

What I Cook on Repeat

I'm often asked what I like to cook the most, and frankly I do not have an answer because I do not like repeating recipes that much. In fact it used to drive Jim crazy that I always wanted to try something new instead of recreating a successful dinner that he loved.

I think it was partly due to the fact I FELL so hard and so fast IN LOVE with cooking. Like anything obsessive, you can imagine my craving for knowledge was so great that I was ravenously consuming recipe books and food blogs for new cooking techniques and new ingredients to try.

Lots of Seafood this Week

I neglected to renew my domain name. Ooops! It's gone and I doubt I will play $60 to get it back from the company who is holding it hostage. For the time being you can find my recipe archive at www.homewithmandy.blogspot.com and I may be doing a re-branding later this year. We will see what happens.

Let's get back into the swing of regular blog posts shall we? This was our menu from last week and I mostly appreciated how quickly everything came together each night. There are times when I relish the long list of ingredients I chop and tend to. This was not that week.

Italian Mussels: Mussels are one of our favorite meals to cook and eat on a weekend. I do my grocery shopping on the weekend and this is an item you really don't want sitting in your fridge, it is best to cook it the day you buy them. Mussels are also a fabulous dinner party food because I serve them family style in a big shallow bowl. I have changed up the recipe over the years to keep things interesting, but my standby is posted here. I now add 2-3 sausage links to the pot while I'm softening the vegetables. The way I do it is to squeeze 1/2 inch size balls of meat out of the casings right into the pot. I like how rustic it makes the finished dish in the end.

Peppermint Marshmallows

There was the cupcake fad, then the homemade marshmallow hit the big scene. I wanted to try my hand at it and here is what happened.

I used this Alton Brown recipe for marshmallows because his way is always well thought out and scientifically based. Foolproof, right?

Clip a candy thermometer onto the side of the pan and cook water, sugar, corn syrup and salt until the mixture reaches 240 degrees F, approximately 7 to 8 minutes. Once the mixture reaches this temperature, immediately remove from the heat.