Chile-Cheese Rice

Logan's preschool had a luncheon for the teachers today. Parents were asked to volunteer to do one of the following:
1)  Stay in the classrooms with the kids for an hour while the teachers were at the luncheon
2)  Prepare a dish for the luncheon
3)  Do nothing
Since I normally do nothing and am much more the chef type and much, much less the preschool teacher type I volunteered to bring a side dish. I made Chile-Cheese Rice from the Grant Corner Inn Cookbook that I've written about before. The rice was great! All but one serving was left in the casserole dish when I went to pick it up this afternoon and I had a teacher ask for the recipe. So, I thought I'd share -

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Chile-Cheese Rice

1 bunch scallions, most of green tops removed, finely chopped

1 jalapeno chile, finely chopped

½ stick butter

3 cups cooked white rice

1 ¼ t salt

1 ½ cups sour cream

2 cups (8 ounces) cubed Monterey jack cheese

2 cans (4-ounce) chopped green chiles, drained

½ cup (2 ounces) grated Cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Generously butter a 2-quart casserole dish.

In a small sauté pan sauté scallions and jalapeno in butter until softened. Stir into cooked rice; add salt, sour cream, cubed Monterey jack cheese and green chiles. Pour into prepared casserole dish; sprinkle with Cheddar cheese.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until cheese topping is melted and casserole is bubbly.

Serves 8.

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This recipe would also be good with cooked and cubed chicken breast mixed in casserole-style.  I am going to make it again this weekend and serve it with Cilantro-Lime Shrimp.  Yum!

Mailbox Surprise

I literally just yelled out, "Oh my God!!!" while standing beside my mailbox when I discovered this at the bottom of the mail stack -

Vanity Fair

There's nothing like Johnny Depp to motivate me to get back to blogging.

An Evening With ...

Guess who I had the pleasure of seeing in person last Thursday night?  One of my imaginary friends and one of my imaginary boyfriends. Celebrity chefs Anthony Bourdain & Eric Ripert!  They were at a sold out show called "An Evening with Anthony Bourdain & Eric Ripert" at Clowes Memorial Hall at Butler University in Indianapolis.  Can you guess which one is my imaginary friend and which is my imaginary boyfriend?  If you've seen either of them on television I'm sure you can quickly figure it out.

Anthony Bourdain - my imaginary friend.  I feel like kissing him would be like licking an ashtray so I don't want to imagine him as a boyfriend. You know he'd be fun to hang out with though.

Anthony Bourdain

Eric Ripert - my imaginary boyfriend.  I feel like kissing him would taste like chocolate and butter and petit fours and creme brulee.

Eric Ripert

The show was just the two of them on stage discussing all things food.  Both of the men seemed in person just as you'd imagine them. Anthony is rough around the edges yet very funny.  Eric is polite and elegant and handsome.  Together they were both very entertaining.

I'm Back!

My very sweet Auntie M. sent me a Facebook message yesterday that said, "I'm missing your blogs."  I thought that was a sign I needed to come back to life and sign on to Blogger.  I've been on a horizontal hiatus for the past couple of weeks.  Let me give you some hints to describe my condition ... "knocked up" (my husband's favorite), "bun in the oven" (my uncle's favorite), "feeling pukey all the time" (from me). You guessed it.  I'm just a few weeks along pregnant and all I've wanted to do is lay in the bed most all the time up until the end of this week. I think I'm now ready to join the land of the living.  For a while there everything made me feel nauseous - even reading, commenting on and writing blog posts.

There has been a LOT of action going on around our house though on which I should be reporting.

For example, this -

And this -

Oh, and remember my husband's handy tree-scaping from some time ago?  Let's just say that plan didn't work out so well.  Here is where those trees ended up prior to their trip to the landfill with a ton or two of broken concrete -

More to come soon.

UGLY

Restoration Hardware has officially lost me.  You should see the look on my face as I just saw this lamp in a RestorationHardware.com email...

UGLY