Mimi's Cafe Carrot Cake Muffins

A spring dessert turned into muffins for breakfast - have your carrot cake and eat it too!

I adore carrot cake and I am not particular how it comes - it can have pineapple, coconut, raisins, walnuts, pecans, or whatever. I think it's fantastic. I love having dessert-like treats for breakfast and knew these carrot cake muffins would be awesome! They do have pineapple, raisins, and walnuts in them and they aren't as sweet as carrot cake, so they make for the perfect spring breakfast.

Asparagus Casserole #FantasticalFoodFight

Welcome to another Food Fight! Fantastical Food Fight is a group of food bloggers who will get a theme or ingredient each month and make some sort of variation for it. It could be traditional or nontraditional and can be found in a cookbook, on a blog, or be a blogger's own creation! For more details, check out this page.

This month's Fantastical Food Fight theme is ASPARAGUS. We are almost in prime season for asparagus and what better way to bring in the new season of food than with sharing tons of asparagus recipes. We have been having asparagus with Easter dinner over the last few years and one of our go-to recipes is this Asparagus Casserole. Think green bean casserole but with asparagus.

I would ask for this over green bean casserole any day of the week even though I love green beans. I adore asparagus and in this casserole, it's so addictive! I did switch up a few things from the original recipe to include omitting mushrooms because we're not huge fans of mushrooms (Cami loves them, but the rest of us, nope!). None of us really care for Swiss cheese so I subbed in Gruyere which turned out so very well. It's a wonderful side dish with a baked ham. I cannot wait to see what other asparagus recipes my blogging pals have to share today!

Menu Plan Monday - March 18, 2019

Once again, it's a week of old favorites. The only new recipes are the breakfasts, dessert, and Weds' dinner. I am over-the-moon excited and ready for everything this week though. It's going to be amazing!!

Monday - Meatball Parmesan
Tuesday - Jalapeno & Cheese Grilled Chicken
Wednesday - Easy Cinnamon Twists // Eddie's Award Winning Chili
Thursday - Pork Schnitzel Sandwiches
Friday - Burgers with Caramelized Thyme Onions
Saturday - Crispy Chicken Florentine Melts
Sunday - Caprese Florentine Quiche // M&M Blonde Brownies

What are you having for dinner this week?
Feel free to leave a link to the recipe in the comments!

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Perfect French Fries

These french fries are homemade with lots of love and deserve the title "perfect"

I've been trying to find the right way to do homemade fries for a long time. I love to use my deep fryer because I like my fries to have some crunch to them. Homemade fries for me are often not crunchy at all. I decided to try out this method from Bobby Flay's cookbook, Burgers, Fries, & Shakes, and see if it was what I was looking for. What I like about this recipe is that you don't have to peel the potatoes. I love potato skins and that's also less work in the long run. It is, however, a process. A lengthy process that requires making a mess. I think in the end it is worth it though because these fries are definitely the best homemade fries I've ever had.

Argentinean Burgers

These hearty burgers are topped with sharp cheese and fresh, homemade chimichurri sauce!

We are relatively new to chimichurri but it's definitely up there with pesto for sauces we love. Chimichurri is a parsley-based sauce that originated in Argentina and Uruguay. I was definitely drawn to this burger in the Bobby Flay cookbook I have because it's a very simple burger, but the homemade chimichurri is on top and I knew that would make this a killer recipe. I was unable to find Manchego cheese but any sharp white cheese will work well as a substitute.