Happy Hour Dinner - Meatless Monday

There is very little JR and I like better than Happy Hour food. You know, those little munchy (I'm using munchy as a word Blogger and I don't care what you say. Some days I hate you so don't make me kill you) thingies that you order up at half the price during happy hour. It is always the best part of dinner.

Sunday night we decided (okay, JR had no voice in this decision. I make. He eats. ) that we would have Happy Hour dinner. This is in no way like Junk Night. Someday, I will explain my theory about teaching my children how to fend for themselves by forging and serving themselves their own dinner. It wasn't because I was lazy. I was teaching a life skill. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, we (uh um I ) made happy hour food for dinner. It consisted of Spinach and Roasted Red Pepper Pita Pizza, Stuffed Mushrooms, and Guacamole Stuffed Potato Skins. Add an alcoholic beverage of choice and dinner was served.




Let me share the Guacamole Stuffed Potato Skins recipe with you.

Guacamole Stuffed Potato Skins

5 medium sized red potatoes; baked, cooled and cut in half lengthwise.
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
2 Tablespoons flour
3 small avocados, peeled and diced
2 Tablespoons Sun-dried tomato pesto or chopped sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 lime
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon Paprika
2 tomato slices, cut into 8 wedges

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Scoop out centers of potato halves, leaving about 1/4 inch thickness. Coat with olive oil. Coat skins with flour. Place in single layer, skin-side down on baking sheet. Bake for about 15 to 20 minutes. You want them a bit crunchy.

2. Put 2 of the avocados in a bowl. Add sun-dried tomatoes, cumin, paprika, and lime juice. Mash it up.

3. Divide up avocado mixture up and stuff into the potato halves. Top with last avocado chucks and tomato wedges.

These were so awesome that I foresee a fight over the leftovers for tomorrow's lunches. Since, I pack the lunches I'm thinking that JR is going to be missing out. As Miss Julie would say; "I'd eat that".

Once again, I took a perfectly good recipe and adapted it for my nefarious purposes. I saw something like it in the current edition of Vegetarian Times magazine (pg 74 if you really want to look it up). My recipe is so different as to be not even the same

This is one of those; "let's take food and stuff it into other food" things. Something that you can never go wrong with in my book. Think about all the good food stuffed in other good food. Manicotti, mushrooms, and calzones. Though technically calzones are food wrapped in food but let's not quibble.

I also made some Pumpkin Pecan Spice Bread and painted an oil painting. Had a very productive weekend for a change. This is the first time I've been able to paint anything but small watercolours since moving to Houston. It felt good.

I used some medium gel that changed the way I paint. It is amazing stuff. I had to work really fast because the gel shortens the drying time by more than half. It was like speed painting. Totally freaked my out at first. Then I got the hang of it. I like the way it turned out. Pictures will have to wait until tomorrow. The gel in the paint and the flash on the camera are not playing nice.

Hope you all had as productive of weekend and your upcoming week is terrific.

Love,
M