Homemade Vegetable Dip

You guys, you can tell Knorr's you don't need them any more.  I did it.  I cracked the vegetable dip code.  After spending endless hours (okay, minutes) searching the net for a copycat recipe, I decided I can do it all on my own!

And I did!

Your next bbq guests can thank me.

Ingredients

2 tbsp diced carrot

1 tbsp diced celery

2 tbsp diced onion

1 bouillon cube, chicken or vegetable

1/2 cup baby spinach, sliced in a chiffonade (thin ribbons)

1 tbsp oil

1 tbsp cilantro, optional

black pepper, to taste

1 cup sour cream

1. Place carrot, celery, and onion in a small pan heated with oil.  Mash up the bouillon cube a bit and stir it in with the veggies.

2. When vegetables have softened, stir in spinach until wilted.  Allow mixture to cool.

3. In a bowl mix sour cream, cooled vegetables, cilantro, and pepper to taste. Serve with your favorite dippers.

You know in that vegetable soup packet there is always that rogue pea.  Well, no one has to eat that weird lonely pea any more!

I hope you delight in this small victory as much as I did.

Cheesy Corn Dip

This corn dip is loaded up with cheese and bacon, and it looks damn good in my new chip and dip bowl too!

Cheesy Corn Dip
Adapted from Damn Delicious

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups frozen corn
4 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled into small pieces
1/2 cup sour cream
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
8 oz cream cheese
salt and pepper, to taste
1 tbsp chipotle pepper, minced
2 tbsp chives, for garnish

1. Preheat oven to 350. Mix all ingredients, except for the chives, in a mixing bowl.  Place dip in an 8x8 pan and cook until bubbly, about 20 minutes.  Stir cooked dip, transfer to serving bowl, and garnish with chopped chives. Serve with chips.

You like that fresh chive garnish don't you? Totally in love with my herb garden.

Make this for your next party, it makes plenty for a crowd!

Roasted Heirloom Tomato Salsa

I was given a large bag of heirloom tomatoes from a camper's garden.  After multiple tomato salads, I wanted to do something different.  I also needed a way to eat a whole bunch of tomatoes at once, they weren't looking too good.

And so this salsa was born!

I kept the cherry tomatoes whole and cut the larger tomatoes into chunks to prepare them for roasting.  I also added an small onion.  The vegetables were seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and olive oil.

Above you can see the tray after the trip in the oven.  I put everything in the food processor along with some chipotle peppers and fresh cilantro.

Best. Salsa. Ever.

Seriously, I'm not a huge salsa fan, but this was really delicious.  Roasting the tomatoes before was definitely worth the effort.

French Onion Dip

I have a thing about Friday night snacks.  Sometimes I just get some exciting pre-made freezer item, like fried mac and cheese, other times I like to actually cook something up.

So here we are on a night I wanted to "cook" up a snack, but did not want to visit a supermarket on the way home.  That is why we have a super simple and quick dip this Friday.

Onions before, above, and after, below.

French Onion Dip

Ingredients
1 onion, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1 beef bullion cube
1 cup sour cream

1.  Heat oil in a small skillet.  Add onions, bullion cube, salt and pepper to taste.  Cook until onions have softened and browned.  Let cool.
2.  In a small bowl mix sour cream and cooled onion mixture.  Serve with chips, pretzels, and veggies.

People will be really impressed that you made your onion dip from scratch instead of using that Knorr packet stuff.  No one has to know how easy it was to make!

Valentine's Day

I'll admit I am not a lover of Valentine's Day.  I think flowers are useless and I have no interest in some dumb little thing from CVS (if you haven't watched the SNL video, hop to it).  I do however, love any excuse to cook up a storm!

I gifted some tasty red velvet Chex mix.  This recipe covers Chex cereal in melted chocolate, then rolls it around in red velvet cake mix.  It's festive, and delicious!

I gave it a little extra chocolate drizzle and red sprinkles to give it a little extra pizzazz.

But wait there's more!

Our Valentine's Day celebration occurred outside normal dining hours due to work schedules so I put together a little late-night snack fest.

For the savory portion, creamy lobster crock pot dip.  This recipe came from my latest cookbook love affair Slow Cooker Revolution Volume 2, by America's Test Kitchen.

For the sweet ending, red velvet cake batter dip.  This was really good and I apologize I took such terrible photos of it.  There was just no way I could figure out how to make this dip look good.  But trust me is is really simple and really does taste like cake batter which is fantastic.

And finally I shall brag shamelessly that I got homemade samoas for Valentine's Day!!!! Holy crap you guys have no idea how freaking good they are and I feel so sorry for you.  I am a very lucky gal.

Hope you all had a lovely Valentine's Day filled with hating on everyone's "look at these flowers I got" Facebook statuses.

Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Dip

Yes, yes kids.  This dip tastes like peanut butter cookie dough.  It's also jam packed with chocolate chips and mini Reese's peanut butter cups.

Good God.  I know, pick your jaw up off the floor.  Let's get down to business.

Peanut Butter Cookie Dough Dip
From Sugary Sweets

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup peanut butter
8oz cream cheese
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips
8 oz Reese's mini peanut butter cups, or regular ones chopped

1. Heat butter and brown sugar in a sauce pan, stir until sugar dissolves.  Set aside and allow to come to room temperature.
2. In a mixing bowl mix cream cheese, vanilla, peanut butter, and powdered sugar. Add brown sugar mixture and mix until combined.  Fold in chocolate chips and peanut butter cups.
3. Serve with sliced apples, graham crackers, and/or pretzels.

This dip will blow your mind.  It really is incredibly delicious and super simple to whip up.

Hummus 5 Layer Dip

This dip is really simple and really delicious.  The best part about it: no cooking of any kind., just some chopping which I actually love doing.

Below you can see the ingredients.  This is the order I layered the dip: hummus, cucumber, tomato (used one), olives, dill, feta, more dill to make it look pretty.

Everything gets diced up and layered in a dish.  I used a pie plate and it worked perfectly.

I served it up with pita chips.  I will certainly make this again and you should to at your next gathering.

Super Bowl Feast!

Do we need an introduction? Should we just drool over gratuitous junk food pictures?  Most likely.

Round one: vegetable dumplings (to represent San Francisco), guacamole, tortilla chips, and someone brought a sad crudites to the table and we all pretended to eat it (there was some onion dip to try and trick us into eating it)

Round two: crab cakes (to represent Baltimore) and spinach and cheddar cheese bread.

Round three (yes there's even a round four): tomato basil artichoke cheese dip with rye and pumpernickel bread

Round four: peach shortcake (happy birthday dad!)

Cocktail Party!

When culinary minds meet like they did at my house last Saturday, big things happen.  By big things I mean this kick-ass cocktail party we orchestrated. Get excited.

The day started out as awesomely as it began; with a hike around Cranberry Lake preserve.  Behold the wonders:

Now on to the food!  The only thing we made that had an actual recipe was this peach crumb pie a la Pat and Gina Neely.  I love making a Neely recipe because it allows me to say "brown suga" about a zillion times, without irritating anyone I can assure you.

The peach filling and the crumb topping.

Pre and post-baking.

We also had a peach flavored cocktail.  Where we took this opportunity to finish some flavored vodkas we had lying around the liquor cabinet.

On to appetizer number one: jalapeno poppers in won-ton wrappers.  The filling was cream cheese, cheddar cheese, and canned chopped jalapenos.  We fried these in a pan and they were the talk of the town.

Moving along to appetizer number 2, polenta cakes.  These polenta rounds were topped with yellow squash, red onion, black beans, salsa, and cheddar cheese.  That massive bowl is filled with some guacamole.

Appetizers number 3 and 4 were brie en crute (that an attractive yet unbelievably tasty looking stuff to the right) and stuffed clams (these were of the frozen variety).

What an evening it was!

Greek Eats

I finally delved into I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence. I came across a delightful recipe for zucchini fritters and the whole Greek themed menu branched off of that.

*Note: There was no Greek music and no Greek costumes or tablescapes. Sorry Rachel Ray and Sandra Lee.

The zucchini fritters were really a 4 ingredient master piece and probably the part of the meal I will most likely make again. Just grated zucchini, flour, egg, and feta all fried up.

I know you are eying that translucent paper towel...

Next up was the chicken souvlaki with tzatziki dipping sauce a la Rachel Ray. I know what you're thinking, KTC made a dipping sauce? it's unheard of!, but I did it and I liked it so there.

And of course I had to round it out with some starch. I made this Greek orzo salad it's a Bobby Flay recipe, but I did not follow it very closely.


That my friends was my meal this Saturday night and no there aren't any left overs so back off.

Stay tuned for my Sunday morning monkey bread! It's not nearly as attractive as dinner, but every bit as tasty.