Tag Archives: cheese

Shrimpy Biscuits

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Shrimp Puffs

Confession:  normally when I see a recipe starting with a tin of biscuit dough, I quickly turn the page.  They just don’t taste like real biscuits in my opinion, and many of them contain trans fats and ingredients I can’t pronounce.  But I saw this recipe for Shrimp Puffs in Food Network Magazine on two occasions, and I kept thinking about how much my daughter Samantha would like them.  And I seem to have a weakness for recipes that call for fresh dill.  Once I tracked down a tin of biscuit dough without any funky ingredients (Pillsbury‘s Simply brand), I decided to give it a go.  I had a larger tin of biscuits than the recipe called for, so my youngest kitchen helper Lauren broke eight pieces of dough into thirds and then we pressed them into all 24 mini muffin tins (the recipe states 20).  Even with this change, there was a ton of the shrimp-cheese filling, so we didn’t need all of it.  I had chives on hand (and thought they would go over well with the kids) so I used those instead of scallions.

As expected, Samantha loved these cheesy shrimp-topped biscuits.  So did my husband.  Lauren adores plain biscuits and was not happy about having shrimp stuck to the top of them…she was looking around for her usual strawberry jam.  And not surprisingly, I thought they were “okay”.  They would be a good party snack, but we had them with a big salad for a quick weeknight dinner.  Even though they weren’t my favorite creation to date, I will make these again since Samantha enjoyed them so much (and Lauren had a lot of fun “helping” with the dough).

It’s a Monday Night Miracle

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Bethenny's Pesto Lasagna

I rarely cook a “real” dinner on Monday nights.  The timing of the kids’ activities means there is about a 15 minute window to sit down and eat — sometimes together, sometimes not.  I’ve been wanting to try Bethenny’s Pesto Vegetarian Lasagna for a while, and hoped that with just six ingredients, I could quickly prep this ahead of time and then throw it in the oven during the mad dash activities that tend to occur in our house on any given Monday.

I decided to cut the recipe in half, and I added a seventh ingredient – shredded parmesan cheese on top.  I covered the lasagna with foil for most of the cooking time.  While this was a delicious dish, mine did not turn out anything like the picture in the original recipe!  After it came out of the oven, the bubbly cheese settled, and the lasagna was less than an inch thick.  so I would recommend this as a side dish, not a main course.  The good news — my kids really liked it.  The pesto was the main flavor and you just can’t go wrong with basil and cheese.