celebrating america with a feast!

happy birthday, america!!  we hope you & your loved ones had a fabulous weekend celebrating this great country.  blakey & i celebrated in our favorite way, we ate!  we cooked & ate some fantastic food.    it really was a lovely four days off of work for me & four days of great food & fun for us.  first up, our holiday meal!

what better way to start any celebration than with bubbly!  & for an american party, red bubbly!  we discovered our favorite liquor store in birmy carries our favorite summer sparkling wine - lambrusco grasparossa di castelvetro.

for our appetizer, blakey requested jalapeno poppers!  easy & delicious - my favorite kind of food.

bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers

10ish jalapenos, halved & cleaned of seeds

8oz light cream cheese, room temp

a bit of shredded cheddar cheese

10ish sliced of uncooked bacon {or however many jalapeños you have}, cut in half

1. stuff the jalapeno half with softened cream cheese, filled straight across.  sprinkle each with a little cheddar cheese.  wrap each stuffed jalapeno with one half piece of bacon & secure with a toothpick or two.

2. bake at 400 for 20 minutes & then check on your poppers.  your pepper & stuffing should be hot but your bacon likely still needs more time, so broil for about 5 more minutes until the bacon is fully cooked.  enjoy!

we continued with our fourth of july tradition & made the pioneer woman's spicy dr pepper pulled pork!  oooh, we love this pork.  but you are probably fully aware of that by now.  i did make it a little bit differently this time, adding an extra onion & two bell peppers in the dutch oven from the beginning.  it was nice to have a little more vegetable in the mix.  delicious!

for some strange reason, i always want mexican food &/or beverage on the fourth.  maybe because it's summery?  i have no idea.  but i was craving my mexican corn salad, so that stared as our feast's side dish.  yum.

& dessert?  blue bell's rockslide brownie ice cream topped with fresh blackberries!  amazing.  & we pretended the fruit made it healthy :)

{how every morning over my break began - 

tanky & green man playing in the rain

while i hid in the corner on our patio out of the rain

with a cup of coffee & a fantastic book in hand.

loved it.}

love love,

kjp.