This Dip Needs Help

Last weekend, my parents were in town. Becaue I'm an overachiever, I attempted to fix a "dippy type thing" for us to munch on while we watied for my sister to arrive.

It was not my finest hour.

I thought I had a Knor vegetable soup mix in my pantry. I didn't. But I didn't let that stop me!

I had sour cream in the fridge. I have a cabinet full of spices. I decided I could make my own dip.

Let this be a warning to you: "fat free sour cream" + "mini food processor" = "very runny dip".

I think the flavor was very good, though. Which is why I am imortalizing the process here.

You're welcome.

Sour Cream Dip That Needs Help

16 oz fat free sour cream
1/4 cup low-fat 3 Cheese Ranch Salad Dressing
2 Tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp celery salt
2 tsp dill

I put everything in a food processor; I suggest you just mix it all together in a bowl - the food processor made the dip very runny.

My dip was very runny - as I've mentioned, I blame it completely on the food processor. I think it would also be awesome made with cream cheese instead of sour cream (or even half sourc cream and half cream cheese).

Experiment away, my pretties - and let me know how it turns out.

Stuffed Mushroom - you can never fix enough

I needed an appetizer.
Mushrooms were on sale, buy one get one free.

Please, whatever you do, don't tell me that something involving fate, higher powers, and/or a universal plan had nothing to do with this coincidence. Because those mushrooms - those exact mushrooms that wound up in my kitchen and no other mushrooms - were destined to become Stuffed Mushrooms.

And I was determined to use whatever I had in my kitchen to make the filling inside them. What did I happen to have in my fridge? A half a cup of leftover queso dip from my local Mexican restaurant.

It's like fate moved into my kitchen and set up permanent residency.



Stuffed Mushrooms

• 1 pound white mushrooms, washed and stems removed (I saved them for something else)
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 green bell pepper, diced
• 1/2 cup queso dip
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1/2 - 3/4 cup Italian flavored bread crumbs
• About 3 ounces mozzarella cheese, cut in tiny little cubes - small enough to fit in the bottom of the mushrooms

Cook your onions in your oil slowly, but let them get the beautiful brown carmeliz-y look that makes you almost forget about the mushrooms patiently waiting to be stuffed. Add the bell pepper and cook until it's starting to get soft.

Zap the queso in the microwave for about 20 seconds so it's softer. Stir in the sour cream. Add the onions/garlic/bell peppers, salt, pepper and bread crumbs and thoroughly combine.

Put a piece of cheese in the bottom of the mushroms, and spoon the filling on top, mounding it up a little high. The stuffing is the best part, so don't skimp!

Bake on a lightly greased cookie sheet for 20-25 minutes.

Notes:

You could easily add the mushroom stems to the stuffing - I'd probably cook them a little with the onions and peppers. But I wanted to save them for a pasta dish the next night.

I wanted the peppers to be a little crisp, to have a little bit of crunch. But feel free to make them as soft and smooth as the onions.

If you don't happen to have leftover queso, you can use softened cream cheese, more sour cream, mayo or whatever tickles your fancy. Queso, as always, tickled mine.

Guacamole!

It’s gotten VERY warm here lately. Last week we had one day that the high was only 32. Five days later, the high was 72. So you’ll understand my momentary madness when I had the overwhelming urge to make what is, to me, a very summery dip. Guacamole.

Guacamole is SOOO easy. Even if you just got some avocadoes and smashed the ever-loving heck out of them with a little lime juice, it would taste heavenly. Since I’m an overachiever, I added a few things. Since I’m a nincompoop, I forgot to take a picture. I actually looked at the empty bowl and said “Damn! I needed a picture of this!”

Now, I’m a little kinky when it comes to avocadoes. I like to hold back a little bit of the scooped out fun so that there’s some chunks in the mix. If you like it nice and smooth though, go ahead and throw it all in the food processor at the same time. It’ll still give you a momentary urge to turn your kitchen that awesome shade of light-green, 1970’s horrible interior decorating green that we all still have nightmares about. Or at least I do, and I wasn’t even born until 1977.

Guacamole

Ingredients:

• 3 avocadoes, pulp removed from the rind
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 2 jalapenos, sliced in half lengthwise, seeds and white pitch removed
• 1 tsp minced garlic
• ½ tsp kosher salt
• ½ tsp red pepper flakes
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• Juice from 1 lime

Procedure:

Saute jalapenos in olive oil until the skin is blackened. Put them in a food processor with 2 ½ of the avocadoes and the rest of the ingredients and pulse until mostly smooth. Roughly chop the remaining avocado and stir in. Serve with the chips of your choice. Or spoons. Really, it’s your choice.

Notes: a little fresh cilantro would make this a lot better. But because I’m forgetful, I forgot to buy any.
I really like this with some chopped roma tomatoes sprinkled on top. The reds and greens are both Christmasy and summery all at once – which makes it perfect for a week with crazy weather like this one.

OH NO! Green Tomato Salsa

Last week, I was all excited about my tomato plants being reborn. Then I found the scourge that is the tomato hornworm running a refugee camp in my plants. So I hurriedly harvested the green tomatoes, because I certainly wasn't going to let the dratted worms have all the fun. If they can eat my underripe fruit, then by golly so can I.

The only problem is...I have never made anything with green tomatoes. I've eaten fried green tomatoes. I've even watched part of the movie on TV. But I wasn't sure about breading and deep frying sliced roma tomatoes. Very small, immature roma tomatoes. And my hazy memories of the movie provided no inspiration at all

So I poked around the internets, and found some salsa recipes that I liked. And then, I promptly ignored the basket of green tomatoes and itty bitty onions (that I forgot I planted and found growing around my tomatoes) for about 4 days.


That was until I made the chicken stuff a couple of days ago. As I was cleaning up the kitchen, I kept looking at that basket. And then I saw the bowl that had held the paprika'd onion and bell pepper, and it has a little paprika residue all around the inside. And then I looked back at the tomatoes and peppers. And then, finally growing tired of my obtuseness, my Kitchen Muse knocked me on the side of my head with my iron skillet and roared "ROAST THE TOMATOES IN THAT BOWL, DIMWIT".

Being smart enough to listen to my muse when she starts throwing around my heavy kitchen implements, I promptly washed the cutting board and started cutting things in happy abandon.

Roasted Green Tomato Salsa

20ish small green Roma tomatoes, halved
10 very tiny white onions (or 1 medium), chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp ground red pepper
1/2 tsp ground chipotle pepper

*note - The Professor does NOT like spicy things, and I do. So I always start off pretty mild and then divide the salsa, spicing up my portion afterwards.

Preheat oven to 250F.

Put tomatoes and onions in an oven-safe bowl. In a separate bowl, mix olive oil, cumin, chiptle and red peppers. Pour over the tomatoes and onions, and stir to coat. Put in the oven, uncovered, for about an hour or until the tomato skins are shriveling. I love the taste of shrivelled tomato skins. mmm....where was I ?

Remove from the oven, and set to work with your potato masher. Or, if you like using your food processor, do that. I just hate to clean the damn thing. But I ended up getting it out because The Professor likes smooth salsas. Taste as you mash, and add more spices as you like. The Professor's portion of this was perfect for him, but I added another dash of each the red and chipotle peppers.

This salsa was completely unplanned, and since I was too lazy to go to the store and spend the $1 on fresh peppers, I just used what I had in my spice cabinet. But I'm going to try this next year, when I will hopefully have a little more motivation to use real peppers.