Sinfully Awesome Mashed Potatoes

Oh my heavens, if you're watching what you eat, you need to just skip this recipe.  Don't even look at it.  Seriously, it's not good for you.  At. all.  But it's DELICIOUS!!!  Sinfully Awesome, actually!!  I started from a Twice Baked potato recipe from the same place I got this , decided I wanted to make mashed potatoes instead of individual, and referred to my favorite red & white Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and voila!  Sinfully Awesome Mashed Potatoes!!  A must try!!  But only if you love cheese, butter, sour cream, and bacon!!

For this you'll need:

• 8 medium russet potatoes
• 1/2 cup butter, cut into slices (you could probably use a bit less butter, like 1/4 cup :)
• 1 cup sour cream
• 3 bacon slices, cooked and crumbled
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 cups grated sharp Cheddar Cheese
• 2 green onions, sliced

Start by peeling and slicing the potatoes.  I then put them in boiling salted water for 20 minutes.  While they are cooking, I got started on the rest it...

Cook the bacon till brown and crispy.  Drain on paper towel.

Combine butter, sour cream, milk, bacon, green onions, 1/2 cup cheese, seasoned salt and pepper.  Mix and put in refrigerator until potatoes are ready.

After potatoes are drained, season with additional seasoned salt and pepper to taste.

I was going to use a mixer to whip my potatoes, but decided that I really just like mine kind of lumpy so I just used a large fork to mash.  It worked well and was super easy.

Then mix potatoes with butter mixture

Put in greased dish.  Top with cheese (I used about 1 cup of cheese, but you may want to use more :)  Bake in 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes or until sides are bubbly and cheese is melted.

Looks pretty good when it comes out!

And AMAZING on your plate!!  Seriously. Amazingly. Yummy.

And we had some with the beef stew from the night before - a perfect compliment!  And, yes, I only ate the beef pieces out of the stew - no squash was had by me :)  But I sure did have a second helping of those potatoes!!

Angel Hair with Tomato, Bacon, and Onion Sauce

I tried another recipe from my new cookbook this week.  This one seemed simple enough with limited ingredients and not too much prep time.  Or so I thought - ha.

I started with these ingredients:

• olive oil
• one large onion
• 3 strips of bacon
• sea salt
• 6 medium tomatoes

Just look at these beauties...

Can you smell them?  Right through the screen??  Yum, yum, yummy!!  Me and one of my little people (children) LOVE tomatoes - and these were perfect!

However, dicing and seeding 6 tomatoes was not perfect.  In fact, it was very time consuming and slightly annoying.  Just being honest.

And here's my pile of tomato carnage when I was done dicing and seeding.  All six tomatoes.

Then I moved on to slicing the onions.  Easier than the tomatoes, but I was kind of done slicing at this point.  And the baby was screaming.  Good times.

Then guess what was next?

Slicing the bacon into 1/4 inch pieces.  This is where I learned it is impossible to slice raw bacon with this knife.

So I got out this knife.  It did not yield any better results.  I even tried freezing the bacon a little, that didn't help.  I'm open to any tips on how to cut raw bacon, thank you ;)

After what seemed like I was chopping forever, I got to work on my sauce and set up the area - 

Bacon in the pan with 2 tbs olive oil, onions & tomatoes on deck (couldn't resist that, I'm watching the Rangers game while I type this)

Fry bacon until it's light brown, this was the beginning of the frying...

Remove bacon from pan and put onions in the same pan - using that yummy bacon flavor!! Cook onions until soft, about 10 minutes.

Add tomatoes - isn't it pretty??

After cooking for 10 more minutes over low heat, return bacon to sauce and cook 2-3 minutes more.

Use sauce on your favorite pasta.  The recipe recommended bucatini, but since I have no idea what that is, we had angel hair.  Hubby liked it, said it was better than Ragu - so I guess that's a compliment ha!  It was good, but the chopping was a bit tedious - next time I may try throwing it all in the food processor and chopping it up that way - I'll let you know how that turns out when I do!