Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

This is a pretty basic recipe, but it is a good one to have. Actually I guess technically it is not a recipe but a preparation. Whatever. If you love hard boiled eggs and want to know how to make them all on your very own, you've come to the right place!!

I like to make 4-6 at a time, cause that's how many fit in my preferred pot, but you could make more if you have a big ole pot. You'll need to put your eggs in the pot and fill it with cold water until there is about an inch of water over top of the eggs.

Put the uncovered pot on the stove to boil. Once the water is boiling, remove the pot from heat and cover it. Set the timer and leave the pot alone for 17 minutes.

Like dis!

Once 17 minutes is up, make up a bowl of ice water. Remove the eggs from the pot and submerge them in the ice water until they are cool to the touch. This process prevents the yolks from cooking more than they should. The icewater keeps the eggs nice and yellow, instead of greyish and gross looking.

That's it - enjoy!

Awesome Poppy Seed Salad Dressing

Over Christmas weekend, we went up to PA to visit Dennis' family. On Christmas eve, we had an awesome dinner thanks to Dennis' dad, Doug. Ham, corn, biscuits, mashed potatoes, & gravy. Num num num!

However, the salad is what I couldn't get enough of! After I had one salad and a main course, when I went back for seconds I had to get another salad. It was spinach with cranberries and slivered almonds, but what really made the salad was the dressing. Turns out Vicki had made the dressing herself and she passed the recipe along to me. So here I am passing it along to you.

Ingredients
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 tsp paprika
1 tbsp poppy seeds
2 tsp minced onion
1/2 cup vegetable oil

I'm sure there is some rhyme or reason to adding the ingredients together, but I just added them to my container in the order they were listed. I used a gravy shaker for this and it worked wonderfully.

The amounts are written on the side which made for easy measuring. Just give it a good shake right before you pour it over your salad.

Vicki's salad consisted of spinach leaves, dried cranberries, and slivered almonds. Dennis is not a fan of almonds, so our salad is a little different. We used a 50/50 Mix of bagged greens that contained spinach leaves and other greens, kept the dried cranberries, and added some goat cheese.

All I can say is... OMG. It was so good! I had a little extra dressing in the bowl when I was done, so I just kept adding greens until I was mopping it up with pieces of spinach. Yummy. Thanks Vicki!!

Holiday Sugar Cookies!! with Icing!!

YAY! I love sugar cookies. I mean really good sugar cookies with icing and sprinkles and nonpareils! Some sprinkles are called nonpareils, btw. So I love sugar cookies, and it's the holiday season and the Christmas season, so naturally I thought I needed to make some. Also, my mom gave me some cute cookie cutters last year so I just had to use them!

Seriously, how precious are these?

Ok back to what's really important... the cookies. I found a recipe for soft sugar cookies because I just hate hard crunchy cookies. Sugar cookies are usually pretty thin so it can be easy for them to be crunchy. This recipe is right on the money. 24 hours later, the cookies are still soft and chewy.

Ingredients

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

+1 cup all-purpose flour for rolling the dough

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Combine the flour, baking powder, & salt in a bowl. Easy. In a separate large bowl, combine the butter and sugar with a mixer until it is all creamy or something. The recipe said light and fluffy... sorry but my understanding of butter and sugar does not lend itself to being light and fluffy. So make it creamy! Add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla extract, and then add the flour mixture slowly. Mix well. Or else.

Oh and preheat the oven to 400. Unless you want to go by the recipe, in which case you will need to chill the dough for 2 hours. What these lame-os don't realize is that there is this great invention, the freezer, which did the job for me in about 15 minutes. Haha, suckers.

This next part requires some finesse. I hope you have a rolling pin. You'll need a clean flat surface to roll the dough out. Sprinkle a handful of flour on the surface and drop 1/4 of your dough on it. Knead the dough and sprinkle some more flour over your dough until it's no longer sticky. Roll out the dough until it is only 1/4 inch thick. If the dough sticks to your rolling pin, sprinkle some flour on and rub it in like you are waxing a car.

Once you have rolled out your dough, start cookie cutting! Try to utilize as much of your dough as you can by putting the shapes close together. Make sure you press down with your whole palm so they cut all the way through.

My workstation

Ok! So now you need to grease up some cookie sheets. I put a dab of butter in the pan and then rub it around with a paper towel. There should be a thin layer of butter coating the pan. To get the cookies up, I find it is best to get a spatula under each cookie and lift it without disturbing the other cookies. Pull away any dough that sticks to the cookie, then grab the cookie and put it on the cookie sheet. I tried to arrange them extremely closely together to get as many as possible on a single sheet.

Put the cookie sheet into the oven for 6 minutes. It's so fast! Use this time to whip up some icing.

 
Ingredients

1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

3 tablespoons butter, softened

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon milk

food color (optional)
sprinkles (optional)

Mix the first 4 ingredients together. I'm sure it can be done by hand, but why would you? Psh. Once you have a big bowl of white icing, you can separate it into smaller bowls and make different colors.

The first batch of icing I made was a little funky looking. It looked like it was trying to separate on me, so my instinct was to throw some more powdered sugar in there. It worked.

The rest is all up to you. Some people have nifty little guns and whatnot to apply the icing, but poor little old me just used the bottom of a spoon. I find it easiest to hold the cookie in one hand and apply with the other, rather than trying to ice the cookie while it is laying on a flat surface. Also, make sure you put any sprinkles on before the icing has time to dry. If you are lucky, your cookies will look like mine because my cookies are da bomb.

This is the spot where the photo of my cookies should appear. This photo is supposed to make you froth at the mouth because it looks so delectable. Well my macbook decided to suck and deny me my pictures. I will figure out this error and put up a picture of the finished product.

Happy baking!

Cookie recipe & icing recipe - both from AllRecipes.com.

Pumpkin Crème Brûlée

Ugh, so many accents and whatnot. That's the last time you'll be seeing the correct spelling with all of the bells and whistles cause I simply don't have the energy for all of that copy and paste action.

I'm not sure whether I should be telling this story, but ahh here goes.

A few weekends ago, Dennis & I went to the Waterfowl Festival in Easton with my mom. We walked around and looked at stuff and it was a grand ole time. It was a lovely day outside, so we stopped to eat lunch at General Tanukis, one of my favorite restaurants.

At this point I should also mention that we had Dexter in tow. So the four of us are sitting at this table with plenty of people passing by. Some people are scared of Dexter and take a wide berth, but others are friendly and want to pet and play with him. Dexter spent his time either drinking water from a bowl on the ground or sitting under the table waiting for scraps. For a few brief moments, he was sitting in a chair but he got a little too feisty so he had to dismount.

Near the end of our meal, Dennis decided to let Dexter sit in his lap. At this point, some kindly old folks stopped to chat and pet Dexter. Oh boy, was Dexter excited!! So excited that he just couldn't help himself and he managed to pee all over Dennis' lap. Dennis yelled some expletives, scaring the old people and my mom... and probably Dexter too. So there Dennis is, covered in pee. It was sad.

The worst part (and the point of this story) is that Dennis really wanted to get some pumpkin creme brulee. We had met up with my dad at General Tanukis the year before and happened upon this delectable dessert during the holiday season. Dennis had spoken of it several times throughout the year, and the second that we got our menus that very day, he checked for and located the very same pumpkin creme brulee. However, once the urincident occurred (see what I did, I combined urine & incident!! he he!!), Dennis said the day was ruined and since we couldn't get the dessert to go, Dennis had no pumpkin creme brulee. :(

He was really bummed out and I was bummed out for him, so I took it upon myself to recreate this dessert at home. He had a terrible day today so I picked a good day to surprise him. He said it was "good." So get ready for some "good" pumpkin creme brulee!!

Ingredients

3 cups heavy cream

1 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1/2 teaspoons salt

3/4 cups granulated sugar

1/4 cups granulated sugar, additional

8 large egg yolks

1 15 oz. can pumpkin puree

The original recipe actually calls for dark Jamaican rum as well, but I just don't have those kinds of resources, people. Anyway, combine the first 4 ingredients in a saucepan. The recipe says use a 4 quart sauce pan but how big is that? I just used my biggest pan that wasn't a pot, if that makes any sense. So whisk those ingredients together and then put the pan over medium heat until bubbles form around the edge of the mixture. I didn't really know how to interpret that, especially since the bubbles formed in the middle, so I just removed it from the heat when I saw bubbles. Done deal. This would also be a good time to preheat your oven to 325.

While your mixture is heating, you should crack 8 eggs and save those yolks, yall! I saved the whites too, just because I hate waste. I save the smallest amount of leftovers and Dennis makes fun of me, but last time I saved egg whites I ate them for breakfast the next morning so, suck it Dennis. Anyway, mix the egg yolks with the pumpkin puree using a whisk. Once your first mixture is bubbly, slowly mix it into the pumpkin/egg yolk mixture. I didn't do it slowly, I just poured it all in and they still came out fine so take that as you will.

Once your mixture is well blended, you should pour it equally into 12 little ramekins. I should be so lucky. I don't own ramekins so I had to improvise. I bought 2 aluminum cupcake tins, each holding 6 cupcakes. Of course that wasn't even enough... why would Good Housekeeping lie to me? I think I could make about 6 more, so unless you have larger than average ramekins, I would guess that this recipe actually makes 18.

Now here is the tricky part - these ramekins need to be in a water bath. Have you ever heard of that? I haven't but I'm sure there's some amazing scientific reason behind it. You have to place them into a cake pan and then fill the pan with boiling water until the ramekins are about halfway submerged. This presented a problem for me because I decided to use a 9x13 cake pan (ok) and a 9x9 cake pan (not ok). Luckily, aluminum is very bendy and I was able to fit 8 into the big pan and 4 into the small one. Here's a terrible picture:

See how it's all bendy on top? Also you can't really see the water on top, but on the bottom one you can see the reflection of the oven rack above.

The recipe says cook at 325 for 30-40 minutes, but I cooked the smaller one for 40 and the bigger one for 35. It wasn't strategic or anything, it just took me 5 whole minutes to situate my "ramekins" in their water bath in the larger one. Sheesh.

The recipe says to remove the ramekins from the water and let them cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 3 hours. I, of course, cut corners and put them straight into the fridge. After approximately 3 hours (probably less) I took 2 out and sprinkled "1.5 teaspoons" of sugar on top. I have no idea how much it actually was. I put the broiler on high and moved a rack up to the top space in the oven, then put the ramekins in for 2 minutes. They were pretty awesome.

Here's my finished product with a few bites taken out of it. Oops. Didn't grab my camera fast enough. The muffin pan thing worked out pretty well. I'd do it again. I'm going to take the leftover batter to my mom's house this weekend and pray that she owns real ramekins. She is like, Martha Stewart incarnate, so she will definitely own ramekins. She called Martha Stewart a prostitute a few weekends ago, but that is a story for another time.

The original recipe is from the Good Housekeeping site. Ciao!

Quick Note about Oatmeal

I have no firsthand pictures to support this post, but I did something Monday morning/afternoon that I need to share with the world.

I made oatmeal using half milk and half.... eggnog. That is all.

PS. When I googled eggnog, a bunch of pictures of eggnog showed up and 1 painting of a woman breastfeeding. WTF. Does she produce eggnog instead of milk? I'm confused and scared now.

PPS. When I scrolled down my google results, I saw pictures of pancakes. This leads me to believe that people are making pancakes with eggnog and now I am inspired.

Meghan's World Famous Chicken Noodle Soup That I Made For the First Time

Holy crap, I have not written anything in awhile. But I haven't really made anything worth writing about in awhile, so what are you gonna do. Dennis was feeling sick last week so I made it my business to make him some chicken noodle soup.

Of course I forgot to take pictures even though I had plenty of opportunities. I made a huge batch of soup and ate the leftovers for days, and still I didn't think to pick up a camera. Well lucky for you, I made so much that I had to freeze some of the broth and therefore another opportunity will present itself soon. Byah!

I perused a couple different recipes to help me with this soup but it was mostly to gauge the timing so I'm not even going to dignify them with a link. That's right - I'm taking sole credit!!

Ingredients
2 chicken breasts
15ish chicken bouillon cubes
1 bag of baby carrots
1 white/yellow onion
1 bunch of celery
1 bag of egg noodles
salt & pepper to taste

Fun fact: Did you know that celery, carrots, & onions are considered the "holy trinity" of French cuisine? The French term is a "mirepoix," or a mixture of chopped vegetables usually used as a base for soups, stews, and sauces. Fun stuff!

I headed into this endeavor with an open mind for experimentation, so my directions are going to be approximate. I think it is really hard to screw up this soup but maybe you all can prove me wrong. :) First things first... get a big ole pot. I have no idea how big mine was.. it was a large pot about 1 foot tall. I filled it up 3/4 of the way to the top, keeping in mind that I was going to have to leave room for the ingredients.

I brought the water to a boil and put a good amount of salt in it. Well that doesn't really help you at all, does it? A good amount could mean anything. Ever seen one of these doohickeys?

These contraptions dispense my salt and pepper because I am high society. So when I say I put a good amount of salt in the water, I mean I cracked the salt grinder about ten times. You could say I put 10 pinches of salt in there. Where was I? Oh yes, the water.

So when the water is boiling, I dropped 2 chicken breasts in there along with 15 bouillon cubes. I say 15, but that is really just a guess. I had no idea how many to use so I just kept adding them until I felt at peace with my chicken broth. I also didn't cut the fat away from the chicken because well, I'm just that lazy. But don't worry I did it later. I let the chicken boil for 10 minutes, then I took it out and checked it with the thermometer every ten minutes until it read the USDA approved temperature of 165 degrees. Then I removed it from the water and cubed it. THEN I cut the fat away. Twist ending.

At this point, you should bring the water down to a simmer, and there should be some fat or oil floating on the top of your water. Use a spoon or a mesh strainer thingy (like I did) to skim the fat from the water. Then you can put the now-cubed chicken back into the water and add your veggies!

I got a bag of baby carrots because I don't know why. Usually when you see carrots in soup they are cut up in little circles, right? Well, I just now came up with a reason. Dennis doesn't like carrots and I thought it would be easier for me to fish them out if they were in baby carrot form so that is why I deviated from the norm. I chopped up the celery and onions like normal though because I guess in some ways, I am still a conformist.

So I let all of that mess simmer on low heat for about 45 minutes. I kept setting the timer for 10 minutes and then checking the carrots. Once the carrots were soft I felt like my work was done. Oh, this is kind of weird but one website said to put SIX whole peppercorns in there and for some reason I did. I do not recommend this. If you have never cracked open a peppercorn in your mouth, you will have lived a full life. Don't do it, and don't chance doing it by putting whole peppercorns in your soup. Yech! Just crack some pepper in it like a normal person.

Now at this point, you should add the noodles. CAUTION! If you are planning on freezing your leftover soup, do not add the noodles to the broth that you will be freezing! I put half of my broth into a separate bowl and let it cool off. Then I added half of the bag of egg noodles to the big ole pot and turned the heat back to high. Using my same trusty method of checking every ten minutes, I tried the noodles until they seemed to be cooked all the way through. One ten minute interval is probably all the time it took.

Once the noodles were done, the soup was complete! I like my soup spicy so I added some tabasco. Dennis buttered some bread and we ate soup and bread. It was delish. I was really proud of myself.

Once the broth that I wanted to freeze had cooled off, I poured it into 2 ziploc bags and put them in the freezer. The reason you should freeze the broth without the noodles is that sometimes this process can make the noodles soggy or give them a weird consistency. You could thaw your soup and throw the noodles in the same way you did with the other noodles, or you could boil the noodles separately and combine them with the heated soup - your choice! Bon appetit!

Scrambled Eggs with Sausage Biscuits & Gravy

An easy one, and a two-parter. What did you do to deserve this? You can thank Mere. Normally I probably wouldn't have put this recipe online, but one of her friends demanded that I put the breakfast up and that Mere's picture appear on the blog. So, feast your eyes on Mere.

Anywho, scrambled eggs. Not hard to make, but I do have my own way of doing it. It might be the same as everyone else's way but who knows.

Ingredients

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

shredded/sliced cheddar

salt & pepper to taste

5-6 drops of Tabasco (optional)

This is all guesswork (for 1 serving) except for the eggs, because I usually just eyeball the amounts. If you have the patience to shred your cheddar cheese, good for you. If you are like me, I cut a few slices and break them into small pieces then toss them in. I mix up the eggs with a fork, using it like a whisk. Toss a pad or 2 of butter into a pan, use the fork to coat the pan with the butter, then pour the mixture into the pan.

Try to resist the urge to mess with the eggs too much. Just let them be for a few minutes, then try to flip the entire mixture over if you can. The key is minimal contact! If you make these eggs well, you won't need any condiments. I love em.

Now for the Sausage Biscuits & Gravy, a favorite for Dennis. He introduced me to them and they are so simple yet utterly delicious. All you really need is a pound of breakfast sausage, some flour & milk, and a package of biscuits (unless of course you want to make your own from scratch).

First, put the biscuits in the oven and while you're waiting for them to bake, you can prepare the sausage & gravy. Just cook the sausage however you normally would - break it up in the pan and stir it occasionally. Once the sausage is done and you have a decent amount of grease in the pan, add 2-3 tbsp of flour and pour milk in until it covers the bottom of the pan (try 1 cup and work your way up from there if you are uncertain). Stir the mixture around until a gravy starts to form.. it shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

And that's it! Dennis likes to spread his biscuits around the plate and smother them with the sausage gravy, whereas I like separating my food into quadrants (as evidenced from the picture above). Happy breakfasting!

Chicken Ravioli with Sage Butter Sauce

For a special occasion this week, D & I decided to use the pasta machinery that D1 got for us... I posted pictures on my old blog but it is some tricky machinery so I will gladly repost!

So! Here's a little romance for ya - back in the ole 2009, D & I were in Rome, Italy for our 1 year anniversary. We went to a FANTASTIC restaurant and had amazing food... Dennis ordered the pumpkin ravioli and he was never the same again. He talks about it all the time. So we decided to try pumpkin ravioli.

At this point you might notice that the title of this post is chicken ravioli. Yea. The grocery store was OUT OF PUMPKIN! Not even real pumpkin, just canned pumpkin - that's all I wanted, and I was denied. So I had to improvise. I knew we had chicken at home, so I grabbed parmesan and sage for the sauce and then I peaced out.

I looked up some chicken filling recipes when I got home and found one that looked pretty easy with the ingredients I already had at home.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

1 carrot, finely chopped

1 small onion, finely chopped

8 ounces boneless chicken breast, cubed

2 tablespoons Chianti

1 egg yolk

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

Salt and pepper

Sauté the celery, carrot, and onion in butter for about 3 minutes, the add the chicken and sauté for 3-4 more minutes, until the chicken starts to brown. Add the Chianti, cook for 2 more minutes, then remove from heat.

Put the whole chicken mixture into the food processor and pulse to chop. It should look kinda like chicken salad when it is done. Pour it into a bowl and add the egg yolk, cheese, salt and pepper. Then use the mixture to fill the ravioli.

We lay out the pasta in sheets and use cookie cutters to make a circle, then put a little lump of the mixture in the circle and fold it in half. Press the edges down to seal them, then cut the edges with a ravioli cutter.

The finished ravioli... one of MANY.

Once you have all of your raviolis, drop them in boiling water for 6-7 minutes. It takes a long time to make each individual ravioli but it's satisfying to eat them knowing how hard you worked, and it's also really rewarding to hear your guests tell you how awesome your meal is. 

Plate sans salad. Note the Boh.

Now for the Sage Butter Sauce.

Ingredients

4 tablespoons butter

8 sage leaves

1/2 lemon, juiced

1/4 cup grated parmesan

I'm going to post the directions exactly as posted because I kind of just tossed them all together and hoped for the best since I was in a huge rush. It was still really tasty!

Melt butter in a 12 to 14-inch saute pan and continue cooking until golden brown color ("noisette") appears in the thinnest liquid of the butter. Add sage leaves and remove from heat. Add lemon juice and set aside. Drain the pasta, but leaving some cooking water, and gently pour into saute pan and return to heat. Add the cheese, toss to coat and serve immediately.

The spread. Note the sage butter.

ENJOY!

Here are the links for the chicken filling recipe & the sage butter recipe.

Easy Lasagna (No-Cook Noodles!)

We made lasagna for dinner tonight, which was off the hook in case you were wondering. I have used this recipe before and it makes the seemingly daunting task of lasagna-making much easier because you don't have to cook the noodles. We made it a little differently since we made our own noodles... that's right you heard me. Made the dough by hand and cranked it through the pasta machine. Boo ya.

Ingredients

1 pound lean ground beef OR 1 roll of sausage

1 (32 ounce) jar spaghetti sauce

32 ounces cottage cheese

3 cups shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese

2 eggs

2 teaspoons dried parsley

salt to taste

ground black pepper to taste

9 lasagna noodles

1/2 cup water

Brown the ground beef in a large pan, drain the grease, and then add the spaghetti sauce. Let it simmer for 5 minutes. Dennis decided to switch things up and use hot sausage instead. It was a good substitute!

Mix the cottage cheese, 2 cups of the mozzarella, 1/4 cup of the parmesan, eggs, parsley, salt and pepper in a large bowl.

Now use a 9x13 inch baking dish and spread 3/4 cup of the sauce mixture in the bottom. Cover with 3 uncooked lasagna noodles, 1 & 3/4 cup of the cheese mixture, and 1/4 cup sauce mixture. Repeat the same layers twice. Top with 3 more noodles, the rest of the sauce mixture, and the rest of the mozzarella & parmesan. Add 1/2 cup water to the edges of the pan then cover the top with aluminum foil.

Put the pan in the oven for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. Remove the foil and bake for 10 more minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before serving so you don't burn yourself.

This lasagna is great and has a lot of servings. It's even better if you have some garlic bread to scoop up the extra gooeyness that will inevitably ooze out. :) Will feed at least 4 strapping young lads.

Side picture so you can see the layers! Here's the recipe from AllRecipes.com.

Tirokafteri - Spicy Feta Dip

When D & I went to visit my grandma (Meema!) for the weekend back in July, she took us to this little Greek/pizza place (I believe it was called Papas Pizza) that she had heard about but had never been to. We didn't get pizza, but I did get a calzone to share with Meema & it was off the hook! We also got a sort of appetizer platter that came with tzatziki sauce, hummus, and "tyrokafteri."

None of us had ever heard of the last one, which the menu described as a spicy feta dip, but we were willing to try it out. It was so tasty, especially combined with one or both of the other dips. D especially loved it and asked the waitress for a take-out menu just so we could look it up and make it when we got home.

Ingredients

8 oz package cream cheese

1 lb feta, crumbled

1 cup lemon juice

1/4 tsp ground White pepper

1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup half & half

4 roasted red peppers, diced (optional)

2 tsp. Tabasco sauce (optional)

This recipe is easy to make but be warned - it makes a LOT of dip!

Soften the cream cheese in large bowl with a mixer, then add the feta, lemon juice, and white pepper. Slowly add olive oil until it's evenly blended. Mix in half & half until the mixture is smooth and soft. Add the Tabasco sauce last - recipe says 2 tsp. but I could have used a little more.

Now add roasted peppers if you'd like to. Sadly this recipe doesn't tell you how to prepare roasted red peppers, but I will!

Heat up the oven to 450 degrees. Put the peppers in whole and turn every ten minutes until all the sides are slightly blackened. When it's time to remove the pepper, either place them in a brown paper bag and close up the end, or place them into a large bowl and cover the top. The steam released will help loosen the skin and make it easier to remove. Leave them to steam for 15 minutes or so.

Now it's time to pull the skin off & it should be incredibly easy. The next part is harder - removing the top and seeds. Actually, the top is easy to pull off, its just separating the rest of the pepper that is difficult. The website I used to help me with this process said to "pull or cut off the top of the pepper and squeeze gently to remove the seeds." It was really hard for me because the pepper gets so slippery after you take the skin off. I ended up tearing the pepper into strips and removing any seeds that might be on that particular tiny piece. It was somewhat time-consuming but, oh well!

The peppers are done once you've done all of the above. You could mix them in with the bulk of the dip or just save them to put in individual servings.

Anywho, here it is! It should be noted that this picture contains Naan which I did not make myself! I just put it in the toaster. :) Also the peppers are not in this picture.

If you're ever in the Virginia Beach area, make sure to check out Papas Pizza and get the dip platter with the Tirokafteri!

Here is the original recipe from Greek-Recipe.com.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

Dennis found this recipe in a Southern Living Crockpot cookbook. No use of the actual crockpot, not that you would know it - it may well have been seeing how long it took. 3 hours cook time, plus the prep time. Ugh! Still, it looks amazing and tastes even better.

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups gingersnap crumbs (25 to 30 cookies)

3  tablespoons butter or margarine, melted

3  (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, softened

1 1/4 cups sugar, divided

1  tablespoon vanilla extract

6  large eggs, separated

32 oz cans pumpkin puree

2  large eggs

1  cup whipping cream

1  tablespoon powdered sugar

Combine crumbs and butter - easier than it sounds! What I mean is, I wasn't sure how to go about turning the hard cookies into crumbs until I remember seeing Rachael Ray put croutons in the food processor to make breadcrumbs. So I followed suit and put the cookies in the food processor and that worked very well!

Press the mixture into bottom of a pan. The recipe tells you to use a 12-inch springform pan. I do not own a springform pan so I just decided to use a 9x9 Pyrex pan. As it turned out, there was way too much batter left over so if you don't have the right pan you should probably halve the recipe. Set this mixture aside.

Beat the cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth, then add 1 cup sugar and vanilla, beating until creamy. Stir in the 6 egg yolks, then pour 2 1/2 cups mixture into prepared crust and set aside.

Add the pumpkin puree and 2 eggs to remaining cream cheese mixture. I used the electric mixer for this step.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites at high speed until foamy. Add remaining 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until stiff peaks form and sugar dissolves. Pour into pumpkin mixture and mix with a spoon. Pour the resulting mixture over the first cream cheese mixture in the crust.

Bake at 300° for 1 1/2 hours. Then turn the oven off, and run a knife around edge of cheesecake to loosen (I didn't need to do this since I wasn't using the springform pan & so didn't need to remove the cheesecake from the pan). Let stand in oven with door partially open for 1 1/2 hours. Remove sides of pan (if you have the springform pan), then cover and chill.

Beat the whipping cream and powdered sugar at high speed until soft peaks form; spread on top of the cheesecake when you are ready to eat it. Since I knew Dennis & I were just going to eat the cheesecake one piece at a time, I kept the whipped cream in a separate container and put it on the side of the plate. If you are planning on making this for some kind of party where presentation is important, spreading the whipped cream on top would make it look lovely!

Here is the finished product. Looks kind of marbled with the pumpkin part on top. Voila! This cheesecake is DA BOMB, but make sure you set aside at least 3 hours to cook it, and a few more hours afterward to chill it. This dessert would be great for any holiday party. Bon appetit!

Here is the recipe from Southern Living. I tweaked the ingredient list slightly.

Pineapple Salsa

Another fruity summer salsa - supposed to be a bit spicier due to the serrano pepper. 

Ingredients

2 cups diced fresh pineapple

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

1 serrano pepper, stemmed, seeded and finely chopped

juice and zest of 1 lime

1/8 teaspoon sea salt

Now I love me some spicy peppers. If you do too, you might be interested in this website featuring a pepper scale. It tells you how hot different types of peppers are on a scale of 0-550,000. Jalapenos are at about 4,000 while the serrano peppers can be anywhere from 7,000 to 25,000. I wasn't sure how to pick a pepper (haha!) because some were orange and some were green, so I just got one of each and put them both in the salsa. I hoped it wouldn't be unbearably hot and I was right. It was just fine.

I didn't put any lime zest in because I don't have a zester and I really didn't feel like it would add anything more than the lime juice would. Also, I happen to have sea salt on my spice rack, but I wouldn't stress about not having any. Plain old salt would do just fine.

I altered the pineapple & onion amounts slightly because the package of pineapple I bought had more than 2 cups. It said 25 oz. I didn't feel like doing the math so I just used all of it and doubled the onion. It tasted great. I feel it is easy to manipulate the ingredients in salsa without ruining the end product. I'm sure you could add some mango or peach in there and it would still taste great.

Here's the recipe from WholeFoodsMarket.com.

Mango and Peach Salsa

After trying the Mango Avocado Salsa recipe 4 or 5 times, Dennis decided he wanted me to find another salsa recipe. I found this Mango & Peach Salsa recipe and it looked pretty easy so I gave it a whirl. It was even easier than the first one.

Ingredients

2 mangos, peeled and chopped

2 fresh peaches, peeled and chopped

1 sweet onion, diced

1 medium tomato, diced (optional)

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro

juice of one lime

dash salt and pepper

Toss them all together in a bowl. Easy peezy lemon squeezy.

Here is the original recipe from About.com.

Quick and Yummy Hummus

I stole that name from the actual page where I got the recipe, but it is a really good title because well... it is quick and it is yummy!

Ingredients

1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained

1/2 cup plain yogurt

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons olive oil

1 tablespoon water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

First of all, I felt really dumb when I read this recipe because I was like, "What the hell are garbanzo beans? Where's the recipe with chickpeas??" So for those of you who are challenged like I am, garbanzo beans = chickpeas. Oops.

So anywho, drain and rinse the garbanzo beans. I found a couple little stray pieces that didn't belong in there so it's worth sorting through the beans before you go to the next step.

Now, the next step! The recipe basically says to dump all of the ingredients into a food processor or a blender and mix them up. My food processor is a little small for my recipes lately, especially when it tells me to blend all the ingredients together (rather than just one ingredient at a time). Also, it doesn't really break them down as much as I'd like, so after my first attempt with the food processor, I poured the somewhat chunky chickpea paste into the blender and used that for the rest of the recipe.

So next I add the yogurt to the mixture. I got a single serving (6 oz) container of Dannon plain yogurt and it yielded just over 1/2 cup so go me! (I was eyeballing the amount and wasn't positive it was going to be enough).

Lemon juice, oh lemon juice. I love it but I never know how much one lemon will give me. I'll say have 1 lemon handy to get the 2 tbsp. The rest of the ingredients are easy enough & self explanatory. Just put them all in the blender and well... blend.

It should be smooth, creamy, and kind of beige colored when it's ready. Then just grab some carrot sticks, pita bread, or whatever else you want to dip and go nuts!!