Stuffed Mushroom Caps, tis the season

Every year since the kids were little we have a night to do our Christmas decorating and we like to invite the grandparents over and make a night of it with appies and eggnog.  You can't decorate a Christmas tree without eggnog.  Because things have changed so much for the kids this year and we are making new traditions I still want to keep some of the old ones even if they are tweaked a bit.  I am a huge Christmas fan and always had to beg to set up the tree and decorate the house for the beginning of December.  Now we did it when we wanted.  I may be making the kids Christmas crazy but who cares, its Christmas.

November 19th was a long enough wait for us so we decided to invite my parents over and do appies and decorate the tree.  The rest of the house may have already been done :)  My mom is on a wheat free diet, which I am used to with my ex but haven't been doing lately of course.  So I set to work making my menu.  The kids were really into it and I loved it, we made some great memories that night! 

My menu got a little out of control because there are so many appies that we love and so before you know it you are making way to much food.  Some things like crackers, cheese and garlic coil sausage scream Christmas and even my Dad said after having one now it feels like the Holidays!  I also made some homemade potato skins, 7 layer dip, broccoli salad, stuffed mushroom caps, some homemade potato chips and dip and scallops wrapped in bacon.  I think there might have been more but that's all I remember :)

The favorite of the night though, well of Kristina and I's, was the stuffed mushroom caps.  I am a huge fan of stuffed mushroom caps but hate to order them in restaurants when I know that I can make them in about 10 minutes at home and they are just as good if not better because I get to choose everything that goes into it. 

So here is what I did.  I used a package of herb and garlic cream cheese, added some minced garlic, Parmesan cheese and grated cheddar cheese and mixed.  I took the stems out of the mushrooms and stuffed them with this mix.  Then I added more grated cheese on top and cooked them at 350 for 12 minutes.  They were so good, and not to bad for you, compared to the bacon wrapped scallops ;)   There are plenty of other great recipes for appies on Life Made Delicious that you should check out!  This is what I am thinking about making for Christmas morning, with bacon though of course.

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