I love a breakfast casserole and this one has to be the best one I have ever made. I think Chris and Zoe both agree. It was pretty simple to throw together. The best part is, you could prepare it ahead and refrigerate it to save time in the morning. You would just make it up to the point where you layered the tater tots and refrigerate.
What You Need
Cooked Ground Sausage (I used a fully cooked back of turkey sausage, you could use any kind you want. Just brown it before throwing the casserole together)
3 cups of cheese (i prefer sharp cheddar or a cheddar mixture)
2 cups milk
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 package frozen tater tots (2 pounds)
Bacon Bits or 4-5 slices of cooked bacon crumbled
What You Do
-Preheat oven to 350F
-Brown the sausage if you didn’t purchase pre-cooked
-Layer the sausage in your baking dish/pan (I used around a 9×13, maybe a little smaller because it was oval shaped) Cover it with 2 cups of sharp cheddar cheese
-In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, onion powder, salt and pepper.Pour evenly over the sausage and cheese in the pan.
–Layer with tater tots.
–Bake in oven for around 40 minutes. Top with bacon and remaining cheese, bake another 10 minutes.
The working mom struggle is real you guys! I stayed home with Zoe on Friday and took her to the doctor. We are battling another cold and ear infection. Girlfriend really wasn’t herself all weekend. I wanted to stay at home with her again today, but at the same time, I’d also like to keep my job. Since she didn’t have a fever, I dropped her off at daycare this morning and feel like the worst mom ever. What can you do?
This weekend we didn’t do a whole lot since Zoe was sick. We went over to Chris’s parents house for a little bit on Saturday. Zoe got to walk around in grass for the first time. It was so funny! The rest of the day was spent snuggling and watching TV. I did manage to get the floors cleaned during Zoe’s nap. And I made a delicious breakfast casserole that I will post the recipe for soon. It has tater tots!!!
Sunday, we headed to the grocery store and got Mexican for lunch. Zoe ate all of my beans and half my rice. She also ate a good portion of her soft taco.
While Zoe napped, Chris and I played a game of Monopoly on the Switch. He spent all his money putting houses on three of his properties and basically caused me to go bankrupt in two turns. I had so much more money than him before that.
We had fettuccine alfredo for dinner and started watching 9-1-1. The show is intense! Chris and I decided that by the end of it, we will probably never leave the couch again. I think it ruined roller coasters for Chris. I already avoided them at all costs, and that episode just solidified that decision for me. Have you seen it?
Back to reality today. It is supposed to be in the 70’s here most days this week. Crazy! Though, it is all gloomy and rainy, so don’t be too jealous. The change in weather has reminded me that I need to really get back on the treadmill to work on my summer body. Oops.
Linking up with Biana. I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Hey there, Friday! I picked Zoe up from daycare last night and she had a fever. Ugh. I thought we were going to go two full weeks germ free. I will be working from home today and hoping that it is just a little cold! This month is flying right on by. Before we know it, Easter will be here and everyone will be posting spring break pictures.
Favorite Moments: I received the sweetest Valentine’s Day card with some stickers from Andrea! She really knows how to make a girl feel special!
Chris surprised me on Valentine’s Day by inviting me to go to lunch with him. We went to IKKO in Five Points and had Japanese egg rolls, sushi, miso soup and salad. It was sooooo good!
We got Zoe a little something special to open on Valentine’s Day and they had a party in her class. She came home with a lot of Valentine’s loot! I sent her with applesauce pouches, Minnie Valentine’s cards and glitter stickers for each of the kids in her class. She really loved the card that Chris got me because it played music. She carried her M&M guy around all day.
I picked up two slices of cookie cake from Target as a treat after our lasagna. They were seriously up there as some of the best cookie cake slices we have ever had! My M&M’s reached out to me last month through Smiley 360 and offered me a voucher to put towards customizing my own M&Ms so I ordered some for Chris. I chose the colors, the XOXO clip art and uploaded our engagement photo. They turned out so well! They had sent them in a large bag with a white scoop and the M&M guy. Such a cool and unique present to give! I highly recommend.
Favorite Recipe: How amazing does this orange chicken look? I love making chinese take-out type food at home. It really saves on the sodium, calories and msg!
Favorite Show: Have you seen The Resident? My SIL told me about it last weekend and Chris and I binged all the episodes this week. There are only four right now. SO GOOD! It has the dude from Good Wife/Gilmore Girls and Emily from Revenge. It takes place at a hospital in Atlanta. This hospital isn’t real, but you get some Atlanta city scenes in some of the episodes that makes me homesick. Definitely check it out. Matt Czuchry is such a bad-ass doctor!
Favorite Lust: I want to get a cast iron skillet. Does it matter the brand and cost for this? I always see them for under $30 pretty much anywhere, but then there are some that are over $100 in the fancy brands. What are your thoughts? This one here is pre-seasoned, is that better than ones that say they aren’t?
Favorite Funnies:
Also a story by me….
Linking up with Amanda. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
To prove that January was the longest month ever, somehow I have a TON of books to review. At the bottom I left a list of must reads and ones to skip. I still provided you with my thoughts and bottom line like I do every month. I have some really good ones in here!!! Linking up with Steph and Jana.
Dr. Emory Charbonneau, a pediatrician and marathon runner, disappears on a mountain road in North Carolina. While police suspect Jeff of “instant divorce,” Emory, suffering from an unexplained head injury, regains consciousness and finds herself the captive of a man whose violent past is so dark that he won’t even tell her his name.
I love a good Sandra Brown thriller romance! This one did not disappoint!!! It captivated me immediately and had a few twists that I didn’t see coming. I really got wrapped into these characters and the side plots and how it all came together.
When Janey Sweet, CEO of a couture wedding dress company, is photographed in the front row of a fashion show eating a bruffin…her best friend and business partner, Beau, gives her an ultimatum: Lose thirty pounds or lose your job.
I thought that January was the perfect time to read Fitness Junkie, as I am trying to hop back on the bandwagon. While there is a lot of fitness and health talk in the book, there is so much more. I found it to be a book about self love and discovery. The characters and situations really cracked me up at times. I think this is a perfect tribute to our weight obsessed culture to be honest.
Bottom Line: This was a great read. If you have ever been on a diet or workout plan, you could definitely relate to Janey.
**I received a copy of Fitness Junkie from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are of my own.**
Shandi and William’s lives collide in destiny one afternoon in a gas station hold up. Shandi is juggling finishing college, raising her three-year-old genius son Natty and doesn’t know that her blond god Thor who stepped between her son and a gun, has his own complications. When he looked down the barrel of that gun he believed it was destiny: It’s been one year to the day since a tragic act of physics shattered his universe.
I picked this up from the library after Kelly told me that most of this author’s books take place in Alabama. Funny enough, this book is actually in Lumpkin County Georgia and Atlanta. Driving around all the areas I used to frequent daily. I loved that part of it. But more than that, this book was so good!!! It really captivated and I had to know what was going to happen. I loved all the characters in the book.
Eleanor knows she’s a mess, but today will be different. But before she can put her modest plan into action-life happens.
I enjoyed Where’d You Go, Bernadette a lot so I was excited to dive in to this one. I really liked that this book takes place all in one day. But other than that, the character in this book was too similar to Bernadette. Her kid even goes to the same school as Bernadette’s kid. And she has the same issues with the other moms. The same quirky personality. I just got really bored with this book and thinking that it was a lessor version of Berndette. So I quit. Perhaps if I would have read this one first, I would have liked it more.
Bottom Line: Meh. It wasn’t horrible, but I didn’t love it either. If you have already read Bernadette…you might be disappointed.
When I got this book, I thought it was going to just be another cookbook to add to my collection. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was a lot of literature on Thai food and culture as well. There are some wonderful photographs throughout the book and a lot of different recipes that I have never seen anywhere else. While I feel like some of the recipes require more than I am willing to do (live shrimp), I can tailor them to fit my needs just fine. I will say that some of the ingredients would be hard to find in my area, and some of the recipes sound complicated/labor intensive. So I wouldn’t recommend picking up this book just for the recipes. There aren’t as many recipes in the book as I thought there would be.
Bottom Line: If you like travel books or Thai cuisine, this would be a great addition to your collection.
** I received a copy of Pok Pok: The Drinking Food of Thailand from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are of my own.**
For 10 years Arlene has kept her promises, and God has kept His end of the bargain. Until now. When an old schoolmate from Possett turns up at Arlene’s door in Chicago asking questions about Jim Beverly, former quarterback and god of Possett High, Arlene’s break with her former hometown is forced to an end.
This book takes place in a small backwoods town in Alabama. You get the Southern Baptist ridiculousness, the racists against a mixed race couple and small town drama. This book went in a direction I never saw coming. I had mixed feelings about Arlene and for awhile I was just trying to figure out where it was all going. I liked how the book bounces back and forth between what is currently going on and memories that she had. They all lead you to what happened and why.
Bottom Line: I enjoyed this one. I liked Someone Else’s Love Story better, but I plan to continue to binge some more from this author.
Beau Fortier moves into Lauren’s parents guest house when she is just a teenager in high school. She had a major crush on him. Now she is back in New Orleans ten years later and Beau seems interested. But things have changed. Lauren is older and more confident.
I was so so so excited to receive an ARC of this book!!! I was hooked right from the beginning, and really loved the past and present view points of the book. Grey had me back in school listening to Wonderwall and excited to get on AIM!
This book was hilarious and the characters are totally relate-able. I especially loved the setting in New Orleans with a splash of the culture and food scene. I haven’t been in a really long time and the book had me yearning for a trip. There were so many quotable, hilarious lines that had me laughing out loud.
I really love a good slow burn of the romance and the hot hot hot chemistry! The inner dialogue was perfect. This was my first R.S Grey book and I can promise you, it won’t be my last. I am on a quest to binge and read them all now. I read this book in two sittings, which is saying A LOT considering my current phase in life.
Bottom Line: The perfect RomCom!!! I highly suggest this book!
**ARC received from the author in exchange for an honest review.**
Min Green and Ed Slaterton are breaking up, so Min is writing Ed a letter and giving him a box. Inside the box are items and a story along with why they broke up.
Min came off as a bitter ex and I got tired of hearing her say GD a million times. I also got tired of her referring to herself as arty and different. Yeah yeah yeah, we get it. Let’s move on!!!! The chapters ended with “and that’s why we broke up,” right after talking about something nice Ed did that had absolutely nothing to do with why they broke up. And I didn’t finish the book, but it seems like Min fell in love with this ass of a jock after just two weeks of knowing him? Sort of ridiculous if you ask me.
Bottom Line: I broke up with this book, it just wasn’t for me.
Laura witnesses a brutal attack. She and her boyfriend Kit call the police, and in that moment, it is not only the victim’s life that is changed forever.
So, it wasn’t that this book was bad by any means. It’s just that it moved really slow, and didn’t really keep my attention. It took me forever to read it, and I often ditched it and went to something else. The last little bit of the book picks up and was more attention grabbing. I think if you don’t mind waiting til the very end of the book for a twist or thrill, then this would be good for you. I didn’t mind the alternating POV’s, but I wasn’t real big into metaphor of the solar eclipse and bright and dark people.
Bottom Line: If you like a slow developing thriller, then this might be for you.
**I received a copy of He Said/She Said from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are of my own.**
I waited forever to get this book from the library! When it came in, I dropped everything else I was reading. This book grabbed me from the start. There were so many times I just wanted to scream or was just do disturbed. It really makes you think what you would do if you were in Grace’s situation.
I think that the Zone diet in general brings valid points, but is hard to keep up with 100% of the time. Everything in moderation is a better approach for long term maintenance. I felt like the author uses scare tactics and I don’t like that approach. I can summarize the book for you by saying take fish oil, follow the Zone diet, exercise and reduce your stress. There is nothing mind blowing in this book. He emphasizes fish oil over and over again. I cant stand the taste of most fish and the thought of taking an oil that may either make me smell like it or taste it repulses me.
Bottom Line: I already summed it up for you! No need to read.
One minute, pregnant Leah Andrews is throwing up over the side of a yacht and the next, she’s married to party boy Brooks. It’s an arrangement born of sheer desperation to save her job, but now the tabloids are all over them, their friends are running a pool betting on whether they’ll actually stay married until Baby Day, and worst of all, she and her new husband might just be falling for one another.
I really loved the first book in this series, 69 Million Reasons I Hate You, so I was really excited to read this book. You get little snippets of Cole and Kiersten from the first book, and get to know Leah and Brooks more in this book. This was a super cute story and I enjoyed it. Not as much as the first, but still good in its own ways.
Bottom Line: Cute read! If you are looking for a fun love story series, try this one out!
**I received a copy of The Billionaire’s Unexpected Baby from Netgalley in exchange for my honest review. All opinions are of my own.**
I am not quite sure how we got to Monday morning already, but here we are. It has been super rainy and gross here the last few days, and it doesn’t look like it is going to change anytime soon. I love rainy weather when I can stay home and cuddle under blankets and watch mindless TV all day. Not quite the same sentiment when you have to drive to work, and figure out how to balance an umbrella, a 20 pound kid and all their stuff that goes back and forth to daycare.
This weekend we spent a lot of time with Chris’s family. On Saturday, we went over to his parent’s house for Chris to help his dad with some things. Sunday morning, Zoe and I met up with my sister and nephew for some grocery shopping at Target. My oldest nephew turned 13 yesterday!!! So crazy! I didn’t get to see him, but I sent his present home with my sister. After we got back and Zoe napped, we headed over to Chris’s sister’s house for his grandmother’s 90th birthday party. Zoe got to meet some family she hasn’t seen before and spent lots of time playing with her cousin too.
We also attempted selfies this weekend, with little success. No make up for me, an a blurry Zoe who can’t sit still.
We did eat some delicious things this weekend! Chris ordered us Fox’s Pizza on Saturday night when we were on our way home from his parent’s house. We always order one pineapple and ham pizza and one pepperoni. Yum!
I also made homemade lasagna last night for dinner for our Valentine’s Day tradition. We are celebrating our 8th one this year!
I finished reading another book on Saturday, and Kathy was kind enough to send me two products to try out. Spoiler alert, I am loving both so far!
Have you heard of The Ordinary? Surely you have. They have a SUPER affordable skin care line that you can order straight from their site, and Sephora now carries it as well. Because it is so effective and affordable, it is sold out often, so keep checking back on the items you want! Kathy suggested that I email them and write out all my concerns and allow them to suggest my regimen. It took them a few days, but they emailed me back an AM and PM routine. The HA that Kathy sent was part of it. If you want to start with just one, I would get The Buffet. It has many ingredients in it that address a wide range of concerns. They suggested I use it AM and PM. I’ll check back in a few weeks and let you know my thoughts after using them more. So far the HA stuff is great. Between that and my exfoliate that I shared last week, my skin has been so soft and smooth! Eminence Strawberry Rhubarb Dermafoliant, 4.2 Ounce
Linking up with Biana. I hope you all have a great week!
