W4DW-Bacon Cheeseburger Jalapeno Poppers

What's 4 Dinner Wednesday?

This week I HAD to go to the grocery store.  I haven't had time for a big shopping trip since January before all the baby calves started arriving.  I still need to do a stock up trip, but oh well maybe next week.  I passed the reduced price produce cart and saw a huge bag of hot peppers for the whopping price of 25 cents!!!  I knew they had to be used quickly, but Jalapeno Poppers sounded really good.  When I got home, I realized I had no cream cheese...that never happens in my house...I LOVE cream cheese.  Luckily, one of my favorite 4-H'ers texted wanting to know if she could come by for a visit after school.  I told her sure...if she brought cream cheese.  :)  She agreed and told her mom she was definitely eating with me that night.

Since we had a ton of peppers, we thought they should just be the main course.  After a little thinking, I came up with Bacon Cheeseburger Jalapeno Poppers.

Bacon Cheeseburger Jalapeno Poppers

1/2 pound ground beef, browned
1 (8 oz) package cream cheese
1 cup cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon creole seasoning, optional
1/2 pound bacon
Jalapeno or Serrano Peppers

 Combine ground beef, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and creole seasoning and set aside. 

Cut peppers in half and remove seeds.  Here is my Jalapeno Popper link to show how I cut and remove the seeds from the peppers.  Make sure you wear gloves when removing the seeds!!  One rub of your eye with hot pepper juice can set it one FIRE...believe me, I speak from experience.  :(

Spoon ground beef and cheese filling into pepper shells.  Wrap each pepper with a half strip of bacon and place in a baking dish.  Bake at 350*F for 30-45 minutes.

Sprinkle additional cheddar cheese over the top if desired.

-A Kansas Farm Mom

W4DW-Cherry Cheese Pie

Growing up the best recipes weren’t found online.  They often looked like this:

I don’t know if it is the memories that go with some of the recipes that make them taste better or not.  Both of my grandmother’s were known for their cooking in the area and they both played a large role in my childhood.  I have already shared my Grandma Jessie’s Zucchini Cake.  This recipe was a family favorite growing and was often our selection for a birthday cake. I think the most requested main dish for birthday dinners had to have been Barbecue Meatballs. 

Cherry Cheese Pie

1 graham cracker crust

8 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 can sweetened condensed milk 

½ cup lemon juice 

1 t. vanilla

½ can cherry pie filling or strawberries

Beat cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk until smooth.  Add lemon juice and vanilla and mix thoroughly.  Pour into crust.  Refrigerate 2-4 hours.  Pour cherry pie filling over the top and serve.

A double recipe can be made in a 9x13 baking dish to serve a large crowd.  

Here is the version my 7 year old requested with strawberries.  I had a few in the freezer from his grandpa's garden last summer that were perfect for the cheesecake.

W4DW-Touchdown Taco Dip

I am bringing you this week's recipe a early this week.  It was so close between my Facebook followers last week when I asked which recipe they wanted to see that I thought I would give you this one early in case someone wanted to make it for New Year's Eve.  

I found this recipe over 10 years ago when I was selling Pampered Chef kitchen tools.  The Farmer still asks for it when i need to take an appetizer or finger food to a social gathering.

Touchdown Taco Dip

1 can refried beans

8 ounces cream cheese

1 cup sour cream

2 tablespoons taco seasoning

2 garlic cloves, pressed

½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

Optional toppings:

Tomato
Green Onions

Ripe olives

Cilantro, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 350*F.  Spread refried beans over the bottom of a pie plate or 8 inch square baking dish.  Combine cream cheese, sour cream, taco seasoning and garlic using a mixer.  Spread cream cheese mixture evenly over beans.  Sprinkle cheddar cheese over the top.  Bake 15-20 minutes or until cheese is melted.  Add the additional toppings over the top and enjoy with corn tortilla chips.

If you are looking for other appetizers for your New Year's Eve or Super Bowl Parties, here are the links to the other appetizers I have posted.

Jalapeno Poppers

Bacon Wrapped Hot Dogs

Pork Meatball Appetizers

Taco Bites

-A Kansas Farm Mom


Shared on:
Melt in Your Mouth Monday
Pink Hippo Party
Thursday's Treasures
The Wife of A Dairyman
Foodie Friends Friday

W4DW-Cream Cheese Christmas Snickerdoodles

I have been so lucky to make friends over the years of my married life that are amazing cooks.  This weeks recipe is a combination of 2 of those friends.

1.  Almost 9 years ago, The Farmer was injured by a cow and earned an ambulance ride to Wichita to see a spine specialist.  When we came back, it was up to me to do all the heavy lifting with the help of a couple of amazing friends.  I found that we had a neighbor that loved watching my then one year old.  I tried to pay her and she refused.  Her daughter and friend had so much fun with him that she felt she should pay me!  I have continued to use this family for baby sitting especially when our long hours in the field wear on me and we have pretty much became family.  One perk of having her watch the boys...she loves to bake.  I can't tell you how many times I came home during wheat harvest after the boys had ate supper with their family and I had half a cake in my hands or a plate of cookies.  We were glad to be her taste testers for many new recipes.

2.  We got married shortly after Christmas.  Being new to this community, I was overwhelmed with the support of many of The Farmer family's friends.  One of these sweet ladies hosted a shower for me not just for the wedding, but also our first born.  (That second shower is a whole story of its own that I will have to share another time.)  We are always expected for Halloween, even though she gets over 200 Trick or Treaters at her house.  If I don't bring the boys by, I get a phone call to see where we are.  :)  Small towns are great that way. 

I can't take credit for this recipe, because you see Friend #1 shared this recipe with me (I think it was out of the recipes she made in 4-H).  Friend #2 always has the prettiest Christmas Snickerdoodle cookies.  I never would have thought to roll them in colored sugar.  My baker in the making (our 9 year old) mixed and baked the cookies for us.  Oh, and our youngest son was in charge of arranging the cookies in a pretty way on the plate.

Here is the recipe that my boys told me, "Mom, these are the best cookies ever.  You don't have to make any other cookies ever again."  Who can argue with Snickerdoodles made with cream cheese?

Cream Cheese Christmas Snickerdoodles

1 c. butter                                                                                           5 ½ c. flour

1 c. cream cheese                                                                              4 t. cream of tarter

3 c. sugar                                                                                           2 t. baking soda

4 eggs                                                                                                 ½ t. salt

Cream butter, cream cheese, sugar and eggs until smooth.    Set aside.  Sift remaining ingredients together.  Stir both mixtures together.  Chill dough.  Roll chilled dough into small balls.  Toll balls to coat in mixture of 4 T colored sugar and 4 t. cinnamon.  Place 2 inches apart on greased cookie sheet.  Bake at 400 for 8-10 minutes until lightly browned, but still soft.  Remove from cookie sheet and cool.

What is your favorite type of Christmas treat?

-A Kansas Farm Mom

You might also enjoy:

Gift Guide from a Farm Mom

Shared with:
Thursdays Treasures 
Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop  
Foodie Friends Friday 
Pink Hippo Party
Melt in Your Mouth Monday

 

W4DW- Jalapeno Poppers

What's 4 Dinner Wednesday?

The last week has been a fun filled time spent with my boys at the local fair. I love it when I can spend time with them outside of a combine or tractor cab! We have been doing a lot of baking and putting finishing touches on numerous items for the fairs.

Our area is in a pretty severe drought, but one thing that seems to handle the heat and dry weather well is the hot peppers in the garden. They are still producing like crazy. Early this summer we attended a covered dish dinner with our Limousin cattle friends and I got this recipe for amazingly simple, surprisingly unbelievably good Jalapeno Poppers. If you still have some extras in your garden, you might want to try this with them. The banana peppers were pretty good as well!


First you will want to take the seeds out of the peppers.  It is best to wear gloves to do this.  The oil from the hot peppers can stay on your hands for a long time.  If you rub your eyes or nose, it will burn and cause some major irritation.  It is always better to be safe than sorry!

After you get the seeds out, you have 2 lovely little pepper bowls.

I then filled them with cream cheese.  My dad made them the other day and added some Old Bay Seasoning to the cream cheese, but I prefer them with plain cream cheese.  I am a self proclaimed lover of cream cheese.

I placed my peppers in a baking dish.  We also tried to make them on the grill.  If you want to cook them on the grill, I suggest placing them in a baking pan as they did not have the same flavor.

Next, you are going to wrap them in bacon, but first I would like to give you my bacon buying tutorial.  Bacon packages have a convenient window on the back of the package that allows you to see how much meat or fat you are buying in the package.  It always amazes me how much difference there can be from one package to the next of the same brand of bacon.

Wrap the cream cheese stuffed peppers with bacon.  Depending on the size of the peppers, I used any where from 1/4 of a strip of bacon to 1/2.

Place in a baking dish.  I baked these in the oven at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes or until the bacon was done.  As I said before, you can cook them on the grill, but I think they need to cook in a pan for at least part of the cooking, so the bacon seasonings soak into the peppers.

That's it!  Enjoy!  Amazingly simple, but OH so good!

Keep praying for rain everyone!  The crops are still holding on here, but it is going to have to rain soon if the soybeans are going to make anything.  The grass is disappearing rapidly and the cows would sure appreciate it if it would cool off a little.  The weather forecast is for it to be really hot and dry for the next week.  Sure hope the air conditioner doesn't quit!

Have a great week everyone!

-A Kansas Farm Mom