Barefoot Bloggers and CEiMB

Croque Monsieur anyone? Or "not just another ham sandwich."

This week Kathy of All Food Considered has chosen Croque Monsieur. I've never heard of this, but I'm open to new things and it sounded delicious. I just hoped and prayed from the title it did not have anything to do with crocodile meat. Lucky for me, it was a ham sandwich. I guess I need to study up on my French! First you mix up some milk and cheese for a nice sauce. I left out the parmesan because that is not my favorite cheese. I used all gruyere.

I sliced some fresh sourdough bread and toasted in the oven. Then you put the sandwich together with more cheese and some wonderful Virginia ham, thick sliced that I got from the deli.

Then you bake and broil and voila! Wonderful, tasty ham sandwich (or croque monsieur if you prefer). I must get some new dishes for my blogging. All my photos are beginning to look alike. White plates, brown placemats, wicker chargers, etc.

Speaking of purchases, I bought a new clothes dryer about six months ago. Now my washer has broken so I went to purchase the washer that matches my dryer. Wouldn't you know they no longer have that style. They've upgraded it. So now, once again, I will have a non-matching washer and dryer. Poop. They did offer to take back my dryer if I had the receipt (IF I had the receipt - little do they know I'm the receipt queen. I have receipts stored from when I was a teenager. HA). However, they would only take it back up to six months and wouldn't you know we bought it like six months and a day. Well maybe eight months, but who knew they would even do that! Good ole Lowes. I love that place. And. . you can negotiate with them. I just told the guy I wanted him to give me a discount and he smiled and said "I can give you 10 percent off." I told him that's what I'm talking about and I bought it!!! Yea, it is being delivered tomorrow. Now if it only matched my dryer.

For CEiMB this week, one of my favorite bloggers, Marthe of Culinary Delights chose Balsamic Chicken with Baby Spinach and Couscous.

I was excited about preparing this dish because I had my eye on it for a while. It turned out to be pretty easy to put together. But Ellie says you can cook this in fifteen minutes and honestly she must be superwoman if she can achieve that! Of course, my chicken was frozen so it did take some time to thaw. But even once it thawed, I think it took about a half an hour for me to make this. The yankee did not care for the spinach part of it, but he couldn't tell me exactly what he didn't like about it. Maybe it was the garlic taste. I absolutely loved the couscous and the spinach part of it. So much so that I could have left out the chicken and just had the rest of it. Who thinks up names for foods anyway? I mean where did the word couscous come from? Does one look at a food and say, "hmm. This looks like a couscous so we'll call it that." Just something I've always wondered.

Thanks Marthe for choosing this. I wouldn't say it was my favorite dish ever, but it was pretty darn good!!