Hillshire Farms Gourmet Creations #Cbias #GourmetCreations

I have to admit, when I get the opportunity to try new food I’m usually jumping on whatever bandwagon is available! Hillshire Farms Gourmet Creations was the newest item up to try this past week!

As I usually do, I went shopping after work. I have no desire to drive a half an hour home, pick up the boys, just to turn around and drive back another half an hour, shop with them and then drive back home. Oh how I love shopping on my own.I went first to the frozen foods because I have to be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was even looking for. I’d forgotten to visit Hillshire Farms online to take a peek. Nothing in the frozen foods. So, instead of wandering aimlessly, I dug out my phone and went online. SCORE! Turns out they were going to be found in the deli meat aisle.

I headed over a couple of aisles and there they were with all the other Hillshire Farms sausages. Oh my gosh, I looked at the four packages they offered and knew that I was going to have some really yummy meals! Looking around I didn’t find anything that was as appealing. The four flavors I found:

• Beef and Bacon
• Chicken and Apple
• Beef and Jalapeno
• Spicy Italian Sausage

I was shopping on an empty stomach so I stuck the first three in my shopping cart. As I  had hoped as I continued thru the store, Hillshire Farms had some recipe ideas inside the cardboard packaging. That certainly helped me shop for all the other items I might need for the meals I was going to prepare. Unfortunately when I got to the checkout line, I forgot to tear off the $ .55 coupons that were attached to each of the packages! It was a V8 moment when I got home and saw them still attached!My first thought was to use the Beef and Bacon in an egg bake so that meant I needed eggs and cheese. The rest I would have at home. The next meal would be a Mexican dinner so I needed some black beans, tomato, and olives. I already had the cheese from the first meal I was going to create and I had tortilla chips at home. The third meal was giving me a bit of a pause. I’m not so hot when it comes to making meals out of my own head. I thought I’d either make a salad or a sandwich which meant I needed some good rolls and apples.I got the rest of my groceries and headed home to do some cooking. It was late afternoon and I hit allrecipes.com for a good sausage and egg bake. I found and Easy Sausage Strata and set about putting it together. What I didn’t realize, the recipe was supposed to sit in the fridge overnight. Well, ok then.I got that meal totally together and set about making myself something for lunch and decided to use the Chicken and Apple sausage. I cooked up one of the sausages, and when I pulled it out of the pan it had a great aroma of apple! I had cut slices of apple very thin, put the sausage on one side of a bun and the apple with cheese on the other half. Then I broiled the sandwich for about 5 minutes. When I pulled it out I added tomato, spinach and Mayo. I was so bummed that I had no avocado! Man that was one good sandwich. The apple in the sausage was enhanced by the apple slices on the sandwich.The next day we had the Sausage Strata for dinner. I mean, who doesn’t love eating breakfast for dinner. My boys looked at it a bit skeptically, but once I mentioned that the sausage was Beef & Bacon it didn’t take much coaxing to get them to dig in! My Doodle said, “My favorite part is the sausage.” Yes! The strata really filled us all up pretty quickly.

My next meal will be the Mexican bake. That will be made this week sometime. My boys love Mexican food so this should be a hit as well. Make sure you check out the entire shopping and meal photos and story at Google +.

When you buy a new product do you get an idea of what you’re going to create right away or do you have to search through recipes to come up with something?

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. All opinions are my own and never influenced by the company.