Hey there food blog readers! We're taking a break from your regularly scheduled Megan blogs so I can show off a real monstrosity of a sandwich I made awhile back. We've been watching the "Man Vs. Food" TV show, and all the ridiculously mouth watering meals Adam Richman partakes of have given us a lot of ideas for our own over sized entrees.

In one of the episodes a cook added macaroni and cheese to a cheeseburger, which got me thinking there might be some interesting applications there. I'm a fan of making sandwiches with chicken and wing sauce, so I decided to combine the two ideas. The base of the sandwich is a chicken thigh (skin removed) that I coat heavily with several different seasoning mixtures. The thigh gets baked instead of pan cooked.

Here's me putting together the first layer on an onion bun. That's a mixture of wing sauce and horseradish on the bun for added kick. The macaroni and cheese goes on top.



The next layer is strips of extra thick bacon. I decided this already absurd sandwich needed to go to a whole new level, so I also put on popcorn shrimp. The bottom layer is the finished chicken and more of the wing sauce/horseradish concoction.



That's the face of happiness, right there.




Here's the finished product, in all it's messy and monstrous glory. Part way through I had to start using a fork to catch all the cast offs. This was easily one of the best sandwiches I've eaten, and I'd definitely pay twelve bucks or more to eat this in a restaurant. The combination of flavors and textures is absolutely spot on, and everything mixes together perfectly in your mouth for a truly "Man Vs. Food" worthy meal.

Albertson's Ad (Wed. 5/5 through Tues. 5/11)

For the past three weeks Ty and I have been picking up the Albertson's store ad when it comes out on Wednesdays. What began as a diversion to get out of the house for a few minutes has become a real money-saver. Though we still do most of our weekly grocery shopping at WalMart, Albertson's always has a few of the items that we need (or want) for less.

Here are some of the highlights from this week's Albertson's ad:

Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts or Tenders $1.99/lb.
Pork Shoulder Boneless Country-Style Ribs $1.99/lb.
New York Strip Steak $4.99/lb.
Wild Caught Lobster Tail $4.99/each
Kellogg's Cereal 5 for $10 (buy 5 and receive a $4 coupon for your next visit!)
16 oz. Butter $1.79
Fresh Express Salad $1.88 with coupon
Cottonelle Toilet Paper 12-pack $4.88 with coupon
SoBe Lifewater 10 for $10
Mountain Dew Dewmocracy 10 for $10

Pick up an ad from your local Albertson's stores to see more of the items that are on sale this week. There are a lot of special items on sale for Mother's Day (May 9th) including flowers, boxed chocolates and other gifts.

Grilled Pork Chops with Fresh Nectarine Salsa

I found the recipe for Grilled Pork Chops with Fresh Nectarine Salsa from AllRecipes.com after it was featured as the "Recipe of the Day" a couple of weeks ago. I find a lot of my recipes through the great "Recipe of the Day" newsletter from AllRecipes.com and would recommend it to any and everyone.

The recipe takes flavorfully-seasoned boneless pork chops, grills them and then tops them with a scoop of Fresh Nectarine Salsa. I knew it would be good, but I didn't realize just how good it would turn out.

I started by making the Fresh Nectarine Salsa, which involved a fair amount of chopping. It also required me to seed fresh tomatoes, which I had never done. I looked online for a guide to seeding tomatoes and sure enough, I found a simple one on AllRecipes.com. Here it is for anyone else who is equally clueless: Removing Tomato Seeds We followed the recipe for the salsa exactly, except that we doubled it so we would have extra to eat with chips later. It smelled so delicious while we were making it that it was really hard for Ty and me to wait for dinner to eat it.



The pork chops were really tasty, but simple. The only thing we changed from the recipe was that we added a 1/2 tsp. of garlic powder. Everything came out great!! The guys all went back for seconds and Ty even proclaimed the recipe "restaurant quality".



This is one of the best recipes we've tried lately. Do yourself a favor and try it out for yourself: Grilled Pork Chops with Fresh Nectarine Salsa

At Last, the Long-Awaited Meatloaf!

Meatloaf was on our meal list last week, but because we wanted to make sure we used up all our leftovers it ended up getting pushed to the next week. When we finally did make it, the guys were definitely ready for it.

I've been making meatloaf for a long time, honestly it's one of those dinners that I probably popped out of the womb knowing how to make. I never use an exact recipe, but nearly every meatloaf I've made has contained the following ingredients: 1 lb. of lean ground beef, 1 lb. of ground turkey, an egg, chopped onion, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder and crushed crackers or bread crumbs. Sometimes I even like to go a little crazy adding in different kinds of spices. You get the idea.

Here are the meatloaves before going into the oven. I always make two because we usually eat one and have the other for leftovers.



We served the meatloaves with boxed butter and herb mashed potatoes and "California-style" veggies.



I'm particularly fond of the boxed mashed potatoes from WalMart. They're only $1 and save me from having to wash, peel, cube, boil, drain and mash the potatoes myself (which I try to only do for holidays and other special occasions). Besides all of that, they actually taste good. It doesn't get better than that.

Matt's Chicken Enchilada Soup (Mmm...tasty!)

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far away... Just kidding, I couldn't resist. Anyway, a long time ago when we lived with our grandparents here in Montana, our Grandma Vicki introduced us to a delicious Chicken Enchilada Soup that she made. Honestly, it was one of the highlights of living there...it was THAT tasty! So after we moved out, Matt decided that that couldn't mean the end of our Chicken Enchilada Soup eating, so he got the recipe from Grandma. Years later, he's totally reworked the recipe to make it even better and has made enough changes that he can truly call the recipe his own.

The ingredients in this delicious soup include cubed chicken breast cooked in chicken taco seasoning, canned enchilada sauce, corn tortillas, cream of chicken soup, sour cream, Cheddar cheese, canned corn and black beans. Yes, it is just as delicious as it sounds.

Matt makes his amazing Chicken Enchilada Soup several times a year and it's always a favorite at our house.

Here is Matt's Chicken Enchilada Soup in all it's glory. It's perfectly okay if you find yourself drooling after looking at this picture. We didn't see it happen and we won't tell a soul. ;)

Ravioli

Ravioli is a lazy night favorite at our house. We can have the ravioli and the garlic bread done and on our plates in just under 20 minutes. What could be better than that? I always buy one package of three-cheese ravioli and one package of meat ravioli and use half of each bag. I put the rest of the mixed ravioli in a Ziplock bag for another lazy night dinner occasion. Keeping with the marvelous speediness of the meal, we usually use a nice, jarred pasta sauce to serve over it. This time we used Newman's Own Cabernet Marinara and I'm almost certain it was the best marinara sauce I'd ever had. Not only was it delicious, but it was nice to know that we'd bought something we could enjoy that would also benefit charity. Again, what could be better than that?

Spinach and Ricotta Chicken Roll-Ups

This was another recipe I found in my Jillian Michaels "Making the Cut" book. The chicken had to be pounded to a quarter-inch thickness, which was, surprisingly, not as much fun as it sounds. Still, I pressed on. The filling consisted of chopped fresh spinach, Ricotta and Parmesan cheeses, and various seasonings which was spread on to the flattened chicken breasts and then rolled up.

Here's what the Spinach and Ricotta Chicken Roll-Ups looked like just before they went into the oven.



Here's a look at the finished product. We served the Spinach and Ricotta Chicken Roll-Ups alongside Au Gratin potatoes for a tasty dinner that was a big hit with all the guys. I will definitely be making this recipe again!