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I love to cook. It's something I've loved doing for many years, but never really explored it to any extreme. When my mom was alive, she always did the cooking because food just tasted better when she made it!! After, for a while, all Adrian and I did was eat out. And then when we moved to Vernon it was summer and too hot to make anything but salad or, again, eat out. So when the colder months came, I decided to see what I could come up with. I've become a master at making dinner meals that consist of more than just a piece of chicken and a salad .... (which was pretty much all I made in Kamloops and for the first few months here in Vernon). And I have lots of recipes to share, but that's for another post.

Our holiday season consisted of lots of yummy snack type foods. Chips, crackers and dips, appetizer type tasties and my own creation of a super easy appy: mushroom and asparagus wrapped bacon with cream cheese. Now I'm not claiming fame to the original idea of this, I'm just saying that I found a way to make it my own. I had planned to just use the veggies and the bacon until I realized I didn't have any toothpicks and therefore had no way of keeping the bacon on the asparagus. But cream cheese came to the rescue and here's what I ended up with!:

Bacon Wrapped Asparagus
You will need:
- 1 package of bacon cut in half (a whole piece will be too long)
- 1 bunch of Asparagus washed and dried(but, really, you can use as many as you want)
- About 1/2 a stick of cream cheese (depending on how thick you want to coat the asparagus) softened enough to be spreadable
- wax paper (enough to cover your work space)
- Cookie sheet layered with tin foil
- cooling rack
( I use the cooling rack to place my asparagus on because it cooks the bacon more evenly and lets all the fat drip off .... it's handier to use but you don't HAVE to use it)

What you do:
(Now I haven't actually found a non-messy way to do this yet so it's really up to you as to how you want to coat the asparagus)
1. Using a spoon or spatula, cream the cream cheese in a thick layer onto the wax paper
2. Take a piece of asparagus and roll it around in the cream cheese until it's nicely coated
3. Take a slice of bacon and wrap it around, pressing it lightly into the cream cheese as you wrap
4. Set each piece onto cooling rack/foiled cookie sheet
5. Bake in preheated oven at 400 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes (or until bacon is cooked and crisp)
6. Let cool for about 5 minutes and then enjoy!!



Cream Cheese Filled Mushrooms with Bacon:
What you'll Need:
- 1 package of bacon cut in half (a whole piece will be too long)
- About 10 stuffing Mushrooms OR 10-15 small mushrooms (better for bite-size appies) washed and stems removed
- About 1/2 a stick of cream cheese softened enough to be spreadable
- Half a tomato diced into very small pieces
- A couple green onions diced into very small pieces
- Cookie sheet layered with tin foil
- cooling rack
( I use the cooling rack to place my mushrooms on because it cooks the bacon more evenly and lets all the fat drip off .... it's handier to use but you don't HAVE to use it)

What You Do:
1. Cream the cream cheese in a bowl with diced tomatoes and green onions (you can add other veggies too, like cucumber, white onion, zucchini, or any softer veggie that has a low cooking time)
2. fill mushroom caps with cream cheese mixture
3. Place onto cooling rack/foiled cookie sheet
4. Lay bacon halves over top of the mushroom caps, pressing the middle into the cheese
5. Bake in a preheated oven at about 400 degrees F for about 20-25 minutes or until the bacon is cooked and crisp
6. Let cool for about 5-8 minutes and enjoy!!



The easiest after dinner treat I made was butter tarts. Now, you can find tart recipes anywhere and are usually simple to follow. This is a link to the most basic recipe I could find: http://www.cookingnook.com/butter-tart-recipe.html But I made some changes. Firstly I didn't have corn syrup so I just omitted it!! Secondly, I used equal amounts of butter and brown sugar for a more sweeter taste. Thirdly, I only used one egg...(this was due to some seriously bad luck with about 4 cartons of eggs) and I added extra vanilla. I use a bakers emulsion vanilla... which seems to always taste better in my baking. In the end, this is what I came out with (and they tasted so darn good!!)



Well, this was possibly my longest blog ever!!

Thanks for reading!!

xxooxxoxxoxxoooo