Sausage Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

Man, I was lazy when it came to cooking this past weekend. Well, actually, that is not a fair statement. Saturday, the boyfriend had another softball tourney, so we were at the fields all day. Though they didn't win, it was nice to hang out with sister and baby and read my new book; Evil at Heart by Chelsea Cain...though it's the last in a 3 part series, I read it because it was on sale ($3, what what!) and glad I did. It was so good and now going back and reading the first two. Not the usual way I would do it, but hey, I needed something new to read. I recommend to anyone that likes murder thrillers and can stand some gruesome stuff (like eyeballs and spleens, just to name a few.) Sunday, we took it easy in the morning, finished my book, then went out to have some drinks, followed by more drinks at home and played the Wii. I totally killed it in bowling, but golf...not so much. Weird thing is, I can actual play golf pretty decent in real life, but suck at bowling. Whatever, it was fun and even more fun with some drinks, lol.

Now to the recipe. This is actually from a couple of weeks ago. Going through my phone, I realized that I never posted on it and really enjoyed them and due to being lazy, had nothing new from the weekend to post on. Stuffed mushrooms are a great way to use up the extra mushrooms you might have from a recipe and can be done a million different ways depending on the ingredients you have (if you come up with a good variation, let me know!) In my case, I had extra sausage left from making Sausage Gravy and always have cream cheese on hand. These beauties were done in about 25 minutes, from start to finish and tasted much fancier then they were to make (something this good you would think took tons of time and expensive ingredients.) The amount is to stuff 8 mini portabellas, but depending on size, you might be more or less.

 Sausage Cream Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms

• 8 small portabella mushroom caps, steams removed
• 3 oz cream cheese
• 3 oz breakfast sausage
• 3 tbs Parmesan cheese
• 1 glove garlic, minced
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 cup panko bread crumbs
• 1 tbs butter, melted
• 1/4 cup white wine (cooking wine is fine or chicken broth)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cook sausage in skillet until down.
3. Add sausage, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, garlic, salt and pepper in a bowl. Mix well until combined.
4. Stuff mixture in mushrooms evenly until all used.
5. Combined melted butter with panko crumbs.
6. Top each mushroom with panko crumbs.
7. Put mushrooms in baking dish and pour white wine in bottom of dish. 
8. Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes.
9. Remove foil and bake for an additional 5 minutes.
10. Remove from oven and enjoy!

Tips and Tricks

• Use whatever ingredients you have handy. Crab meat mixed with cream cheese, red peppers, onions and parsley would be delicious!
• The wine is what helps steam the mushroom and makes for a consistent texture. You can use chicken or vegetable broth if you dont have or would not like to use wine.
• If you like them cheesy, add more cheese :) Mozzarella or Italian blend would work very well.
• If you would like to make a meal of these, use full size portabellas!