Crab stuffed mushroom caps (and crab bread too!)

Do you have an Aldi's near you? If so, I highly suggest you go check it out. I lived in this city for years before I finally decided to go check it out. Oh the things I was missing out on! Just like any store, you have your good deals and your not so good deals. But if you really go in with a mission, you can get some great buys! They have a brand called Fit and Active that I just adore. I purchase their whole wheat pasta, fat free/low sodium broths, and some of their treats too! In fact, I just picked up a box of gummis that were only 45 calories per bag, 0 grams of fat, and $1.50. Now to me, that's worth the trip!

Okay I'm sure you don't care about my grocery lists, but while I was at Aldi's getting a few staple items I saw that they had packages of whole Baby Bella mushrooms for $1.59. I threw them in my bag and while I was checking out, I knew exactly how I was going to use them...

As an appetizer for date night dinner!

Ingredients:

• 1 package of Baby Bella mushrooms (there were about 10 total in mine, varying sizes)
• 4 oz (half block) of cream cheese
• 5 legs of imitation crab legs. I'm sure you could easily sub canned crab but this is what I had on hand. They look like this:
• 
• Chives
• Garlic powder
• Black pepper
• About two TBSP shredded cheese
• Bread crumbs

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350
• Cut out the stem and a little bit more of the mushroom to creat a little hole to fill
• Chop up the crab into pretty small pieces and throw into a bowl with softened cream cheese. Mix well.
• Now add in some chives. I believe I used about 1 TBSP.
• Also add in some garlic powder. Garlic powder is pretty potent, so start with just a few shakes, mix well, taste it, and decide for yourself.
• Throw in some black pepper and some shredded cheese too. I always have packaged, shredded "pizza" cheese on hand so that's what I used.
• After really mixing this all up, scoop and place into your mushroom caps.
• Sprinkle a little bit of bread crumbs on the top and transfer to a glass baking dish.
• Bake for 15 minutes or until mixture is heated through.

For the very quick couple of minutes that these took, they turned out delicious! Rich and creamy... but look out, we gobbled up almost all of these and barely had room for dinner!

This ended up making about enough for 11 or 12 mushrooms but I only had 10. But I didn't let this go to waste! While the mushrooms were baking away in the oven, I slapped the remaining crab mix on a piece of French bread, topped with a little shredded cheese and threw it in the toaster oven for a few minutes. It was fantastic! In fact, I might make this crab bread again this week...