Honey Stout Glazed Chicken Bites

Ohweeeeeeee these have a kick to them, wakes your mouth right up!

These little bites are made with beer, not just any beer Guinness baby!

Seriously even the coloring on them is awesome, you want your food to be somewhat attractive that makes it more eatable.  Using your senses right?!

I've been meaning to make these for awhile now and the time was right.

So I started off the day before marinating the little chicken bites.  Then following up the next day with cooking them.

You do not necessarily have to use that process, depending on the time you have available to cook, really.  At least marinate them for an hour.

But, the longer you let the meat soak the more flavor you're gonna get.  And let me tell you mine were not short on flavor!  There is a definite zing to them.

So lets get started!

What you will need is:
2 Large Chicken Breast, cubed (trim off all the fat)
1/2 Cup of Stout beer, Like I said this Irish girl used Guinness
1/2 Cup Honey
1/4 Cup Soy Sauce
1 Teaspoon mustard
1 Teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes
2 Cloves garlic microplaned, or finely chopped
1 Teaspoon fresh ginger, also microplaned
1/4 Teaspoon black pepper
Cilantro for garnishing (approximately 2 Tablespoons)


How to make them:
Start of by cutting your chicken into bite size pieces.
Mix your marinade, add to a bowl all your ingredients excluding the cilantro.
Whisk that well.
Add the chicken to your marinade.
Decide now how long you will be marinating your meat.
Like I said earlier I had mine in the fridge overnight.  But you can marinate for an hour if you're short on time.
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees once you're ready to cook.
You may also grill these but being that they are bite size you might have more difficulty.
Lay your chicken bites on to a baking sheet.
You might want to use a disposable baking pan, I warn you its going to get pretty messy, but I did get my baking sheet clean.
Cover with tinfoil for the first 20 minutes and the last 10 minutes cook uncovered
Brush the chicken with the marinate every 8 minutes.

Cooking for 30 minutes
Garnish with cilantro

I adapted this recipe from the Beeroness

Dill Ricotta Spread

You can just feel summer in the air, everything is green, buds are popping up everywhere!
This weather calls for a light appetizer and I have one just for the occasion!
Dill Ricotta Spread, such fresh flavors, it's delicious!
I'm going to a girly party tonight and this will be perfect to bring along, it would go great with a margarita too NUM!
I have a pot of dill growing in my kitchen right now I will have to make this again when its grown but mostly I was going to use that for canning pickles this summer.

What you will need is:
115oz Container of Ricotta cheese (whole milk)
3 Tablespoons fresh dill, chopped
2 Heads Roasted Garlic, chopped
1 Teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil, divided

How to make it:
Start by roasting your garlic.
Warm your oven to 400 degrees line a pan with tinfoil
Chop the tops off your garlic heads and drizzle 1 tablespoon of olive oil over them, wrap the garlic in the tin foil and roast for 40 minutes.

Once that is finished let it cool so you can pick up and squeeze out, chop that up and add to a bowl
Mix with that the ricotta cheese, dill, salt and remaining olive oil

Serve chilled with a crunchy bread, so amazing!

I tweaked this from the original recipe I found on Bun In My Oven.

Revival

Friday night date night went to check out this new place in Minneapolis named Revival.

I have read a lot of good reviews about it.

So I was pretty excited to finally be going there.

Let me just say that I actually dreamt about how good the burger was!  I mean I like food and all but I usually do not dream about it, that is how good it was people!  

Pictures I have seen previous to coming here were basically their fried chicken.  But right before we went I heard they had a good burger.  Yes a burger, 1 burger.  And it is to die for!  

I can't wait to go back and have a whole one hahaha!  

What we did was order a 2 piece fried chicken and the burger and split it.

Fried chicken you can get southern fried (that we did) or Tennessee Hot, it was good, very moist but not my Grandmas :)  Who I may say is from the south.

Now did I say I liked the burger?  More like Loved the Revival Burger!

There are lots of sides to choose from we picked the collard greens, they were really good.  I don't think we have ever had them before.

So many wonderful southern sides to choose from it was a hard decision.  

To start with we had the fried green tomatoes with pickle sauce, the pickle sauce totally worked not overwhelming at all.  

But I like my fried green tomatoes better or should I say my friend Daryl's better who is from Tennessee. 

I'm kinda doing this review backwards! Appetizer last and now I'm going to tell you about the wait.

We were greeted by a very nice hostess telling us it will be over a 2 hour wait, good lord no but we put our name in and they text you when your table is ready.  

It is a pretty small place so we grabbed a couple beers and sat outside beautiful night for it.  

I saw a lot of people not wanting to wait and that is too bad because the wait was only 20 minutes!

Nice interior pretty simple, I like that, nice light from the huge window.  Tables were really nice.  Chairs though hummm....... do you have a bunch of supermodels eating here?  How's a person supposed to get their butt in that chair and be comfortable?  I'm hoping for a window seat next time its a bench.

Don't go thinking I have a big butt, it's a regular sized butt ! LOL!

Everyone who worked here were so great, so helpful and concerned about your visit.  Everyone pitched in, looks like a good place to work.  

There are 3 sauces that are on your table, house made.

Beer and wine selection is great.

I hope to see them do well and I can not wait to go back!  

Asparagus Tart

I am just a little late in posting this one!

Well for Easter I made your good old reliable deviled eggs and an asparagus tart, it was really good!

The presentation was very eye catching too.

Simple, simple, simple and really that is what you want don't you when your cooking a big holiday meal?!

Seriously I can not wait to get my double wall oven, someday!  I had so many things going in and out of the oven.

I found this delicious recipe on Pinterest, who then led me to Martha Stewards website.

What you need is:
5 oz shredded Gruyere cheese, I used a smoked version
2 sheets puff pastry, defrosted
15 pieces asparagus, ends trimmed and washed
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

How to make it:
Make sure your puff pastry is defrosted, I put mine in the fridge the night before
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees
I lightly buttered a deep baking sheet
Lay your pastry out on the sheet, using your fingers try stretching it to the edges
Poke holes in the pastry with a fork
Bake for 15 minutes
Remove from oven let in deflate a bit
Sprinkle cheese over the pastry
Lay asparagus alternating tips and ends on top of cheese
Brush with olive oil
Sprinkle with salt and pepper
Bake for 25 minutes

Slice how you desire!  It is really is fantastic!


Martha's Original Recipe you can find here

Mini Grilled Cheese

Happy National Grilled Cheese Month!
Why not a grilled cheese appetizer!?!
I have seen people cut your regular run of the mill grilled cheese sandwiches into strips and serve with a shot of tomato soup.  Cute idea.

This is made by Michael at Inspired by Charm.

I had been seeing on the interwebs (something my husband says) this Everything Bagel Cheddar Cheese (made by Cabot), I knew I had to have some!
Everything Bagel is my ultimate favorite bagel ever!
I could not find any near me so I ordered it online, I had to have it!

Well, me being the self proclaimed Appetizer Queen!  I had to make something with this cheese and being that it is National Grilled Cheese Month I had to create something.

Question to myself, what is popular on a bagel sandwich?  Lox, Salmon!

So here we have it a mini grilled cheese, with the everything bagel cheese and thinly cut Salmon.

What flavor!

I hope you can find this cheese near you soon, if not why not order some!?  I mean you get a nice little reusable cooler and black ice packs.

Ok off the subject but sometimes I think how many more exclamation marks could I have fit into my blog post?!  I get excited, ok!!!!!!???!!!!

Alrighty what you will need is:
1 Block of Everything Bagel Cheddar Cheese made by Cabot Cheese
Thinly sliced Salmon
Baguette
Butter for frying

How to make it:
Warm your frying pan
Spread butter on each side of your sliced baguette
Layer your cheese and salmon in between your slices of bread
Ok this is silly, do you not know how to make a grilled cheese?  I hope you do.  So you know what to do.

Hope you enjoy your mini grilled cheese!

Explore Duluth

Happy Spring Break!  We took a quick 3 day trip to Duluth, MN.
We have been there many times over the years.  A nice place to take a vacation, lots to do.
I got to experience a couple things I have never done before on this trip, it was pretty cool!

Duluth is on the shores of Lake Superior, the lake is freezing and goes forever as the eye can see. Just like I imagine the ocean would be (yes sad, sad Angie has never been to the ocean).

Duluth has a downtown area and a peninsula into Lake Superior.  The peninsula is my favorite area.

When we got into town it was lunch time, we skipped breakfast and were famished!
We checked out a place named Fitgers Brewhouse, Brewhouse and restaurant attached to it's hotel. Very old, pretty cool history located downtown Duluth.
Started out with the bacon cheese curds, very interesting, they were square!  Ok tasting, not our favorite.
Little man had a bowl of carrots, basically he munched on to much junk food on the drive there and I made him eat the carrots.
I ordered the Artichoke Dip Chicken Sandwich, very good!
Hubbie had a poutine burger, he has never had poutine, he was not really a fan.
But we would go back and try other items.

For our next adventure we visited a historic mansion named the Glensheen Mansion.  Just amazing. There are different levels of the tour you can purchase.  We went, with the cheapest package, about an hour tour.  Really fun.  Loved it.
You can take a flashlight tour on Friday and Saturday nights, rumor is the home is haunted!
If you're short on monies you can roam the grounds for free!

Both nights we were in Duluth we had dinner at the Canal Park Brewery, it was right next door to the hotel we were staying in, so super convenient! Service was excellent.  We enjoyed everything we ordered.  Beer was awesome, we tried beer flights to see what we liked the most.  Sunday night they had live music, it was so much fun!
Oh, there is a fire pit out on the back patio overlooking the lake, just perfect!

Another new adventure we experienced was the Great Lakes Aquarium, there are two levels to this building.  The upstairs level was my favorite more tropical fish, just beautiful.  This is really a family orientated place, so lots of little ones running around.  And be prepared it really smells like fish! 

The next day we visited another old brewpub, an Irish one at that!   Named Carmody Irish Pub.  

We were so lucky and got an impromptu tour of the brewing system in the basement by the master brewer!  Really cool, dude was super nice.  Nothing fancy at all it was just like the guy next door who was brewing in his basement !  

We did lots of walking along the shore line, finally nice enough to do that.  Walked out to a light house and watched a barge come in.  He blew his horn I just about had a heart attack!

Stopped into my favorite fish shop, you have to go if you're in town and if you're not, you can always order online!  Northern Waters Smokehaus.

So if you're ever planning a trip to Minnesota hope you can make it to Duluth!