Category Archives: Snacks and Appetizers

I Yam What I Yam

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Once upon a time, there was a large basket of potatoes. They were your standard potatoes; nothing special and they knew it. Buried down deep in the basket was one lone potato that nobody liked. He was….different. He was a funny orange color and not white, red or brown like they were. So they teased him a lot. He got called “orange eyes” and “sweet baby” and they would never let him play in any reindeer games until Santa Claus apologized to him. Wait. Scratch that. Wrong story. They would never let him play potato games. Every time they played “count the green spots” or “hide your eyes” they ignored him.

Why didn’t they like him though? Because he was special. He could do things that they couldn’t do. He also had a much higher vitamin k amount in him but being lovers of Cheetos and Twinkies, they didn’t care too much about that. Wait. Scratch that too. That’s me that is the Twinkie and Cheeto lover. My bad.

Moving on. They didn’t like him because they were stuck in the same old ruts and they knew it. Mashed, fried, baked, boiled. Mashed, fried, baked, boiled. YAWNNNNNNN.

But not Mr. Sweet Potato.  He was the only one in the basket capable of being made into the treat I am sharing with you today. Try taking a russet potato and frying it and then sprinkling it with cinnamon/sugar and dunking it in a warm bath of marshmallow brown sugar cream cheese dip. Not too appetizing huh? So one day Mr. Sweet Potato stood up and decided that he wasn’t going to take it any more. he was going to speak up. So he stood up (as well as any potato can stand up; he was kinda wobbly) and he cried out “Accept me for who I am!!! I YAM WHAT I YAM!!!”

Ok, so none of that really happened. But it seemed like a damn good lead in to today’s recipe. Today I made fried sweet potato chips coated in cinnamon sugar and served with a creamy sweet marshmallow cream cheese dip. Who doesn’t love chips and dips right? This is just putting a new, sweet and tasty spin on the idea. My daughter in law, who says she hates sweet potatoes, can’t stop eating these so I think that means they are a roaring success 😀 Give them a try. They would be a perfect dinner side dish, a late night snack, a great dish for a BBQ or a wonderful way to get kids to eat high in nutrients sweet potatoes. They are…wait for it… to die for. ARGHHHHH!!! No they aren’t. They aren’t. They aren’t!!! Shame on me for using that phrase!!! 😛

CINNAMON SUGAR SWEET POTATO CHIPS

WITH

A CREAMY BROWN SUGAR CINNAMON MARSHMALLOW DIP

  • 3 sweet potatoes, thinly sliced
  • vegetable or canola oil
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • FOR THE DIP-
  • 1 10 ounce bag Kraft Cinnamon Bun Marshmallows (can sub regular marshmallows; just add more cinnamon)
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 4 ounces cream cheese
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 2/3 cups heavy cream
  1. In a large pot, heat about 2 inches of vegetable oil to 350 degrees.
  2. Fry the sweet potato slices, small batches at a time, until cooked, crispy and golden brown.
  3. For the dip, combine dip ingredients in a medium microwave safe bowl.
  4. Cook for 2 minutes on high. Stir to mix then cook in 30 second increments if needed, until smooth and creamy.
  5. As each batch of potatoes finishes, let cool for about 2 to 3 minutes, then shake in a bag with the sugar cinnamon mixture until well coated.
  6. Pour dip into a serving bowl and serve with chips.
  7. These don’t hold great. They are ok cold but as any fried potatoes do, they soften up and lose their crispness so you’re better off not making them far ahead of serving time 🙂

Rules, Schmules!

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I’ve never been very good at following some kinds of rules. In most cases, I am a stickler for them. I always use my turn signals and never follow too closely. I don’t jaywalk. If I were a smoker, I would never think of smoking somewhere where there is a no smoking sign and I try to treat others as I would want to be treated (yes, I feel that comes under the heading of rules. If it didn’t, it does now. I just made it a rule 😛 ) and so on and so forth. But when it comes to recipes, I am simply horrible at following the rules. I can barely follow a recipe much less cooking rules. Mix soy sauce with BBQ sauce? Ewwwww! I’ve done it… it works.  Fruit with meat? I was doing it long before it was fashionable. Wear white after Labor day? Oh wait, wrong kind of rules and a stupid one to boot. Mix two totally different types of cuisine? Yep, been there done that. It’s one of my favorite ways of cooking. Tonight I wanted Quesadillas. But I was also craving the Andouille sausage I bought a few days ago. I wanted Gumbo. I wanted Tex-Mex. In other words, I was completely confused… aka my normal state of being. Pretend you didn’t read that. I am never confused. I walk through my days in utter logic and straight thinking. I also have a dinosaur named Barney who hides in my closet.

So as usual, I decided to play. Sometimes my playing ends in utter disaster like what happened here . Sometimes I get lucky although I like to delude myself into thinking it is my skill. Yeah… right. Pure luck. I tend to think that that is how most decent dishes came about. Luck or mistakes. Tonight I lucked out. I hope you like it. 🙂

Cajun Panini Quesadillas With A Spicy Lime-Cilantro Mayo

  1. 1 lb andouille sausage, cut into bite size chunks (you can also just take it out of the casing altogether but I tend to like the bite you get with the casing)
  2. 1 package pre cooked chicken strips ( the kind in the lunch meat section)
  3. 1 large green pepper, cut into strips
  4. 1 large onion, cut into half moon slices
  5. 8 10 inch flour tortillas
  6. 1 tablespoon olive oil or vegetable oil
  7. 1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning
  8. 1 cup cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
  9. 1 cup cheese (just use your favorite. I used a four cheese Mexican blend)
  10. 1/2 cup mayonnaise
  11. 1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro
  12. zest of one lime
  13. juice of half a lime
  14. 1 tablespoon chili lime hot sauce (Franks makes the one I used but you could just sub your favorite hot sauce. You DO have a favorite hot sauce I hope? Please tell me that you do.)
  • Dump your andouille, green pepper and onion in a large saucepan with the oil.
  • Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently until the andouille is thoroughly cooked and the veggies are soft.
  • Add in the Cajun seasoning, tomatoes and chicken strips. Continue cooking over medium heat until the chicken is heated through and the tomatoes are softened.
  • While this is cooking, preheat your Panini press. If you don’t have a press, you can use a frying pan lightly greased with oil but it is going to prove more difficult to get out of the pan w/out thing flopping out of it.
  • Put one tortilla in the press. Cover with 1/4 cup cheese and a quarter of the sausage mixture. Top with the other tortilla and close press. Cook for about 4 minutes or until it is nicely browned. It’s thick so you may have to press the heck out of the panini press.
  • To make the spicy cilantro-lime mayo, mix together the mayo, cilantro, lime zest, lime juice and hot sauce.
  • Serve the quesadillas  cut into fourths with some of the mayonnaise and a lime wedge on the side for drizzling over.

On A Wing And A Prayer

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Back in 19…well, 19 something and lets just leave it at that shall we, I worked at T.J. Applebees which was the name the restaurant now known as Applebees went by back in the day. One of the Friday night specials they had was ten cent wings. Yes, ten cents. Now of course you feel blessed if you can find somewhere that does wings for 50 cents. But that’s neither here nor there. You don’t want me to get started on a rant over the state of the economy and how difficult it is for a person to get an inexpensive wings fix now do you?

I want to know who decided wings were trendy. I mean really? Wings? They have about 2 ounces of meat and that’s if you find a nice meaty one from a chicken who had weight issues and needed lap band surgery. Couldn’t the “theys” that decide these things have made drumsticks a fad instead? I don’t like drumsticks. I could have had a whole flock of wings all to myself.

The problem with wings (other than the now exorbitant price) is that up until fairly recently they came in three flavors:  mild, medium and “omg, I no longer have lips”. While I love me a good hot wing and have been known to court tongue blisters many times, I tend to crave variety. Mind you, even my variety tends to have some heat to it but it’s not of the Franks Red Hot Sauce kind (I do love that stuff though). So when I made wings for dinner last night, I wanted to try something different. I love Orange chicken but it is usually cloyingly sweet and has no bite to it at all. I also love Chipotle peppers but they have been done to death. So I played around and made my own fusion of the two flavors. I of course also had to use the glaze on boneless skinless chicken breasts because my husband won’t eat wings. Did I mention that I love him in spite of his obvious flaws? But… it worked well on the breast too though it was difficult getting them glazed well without a skin for it to stick to. If I do that again, I will marinade the breasts for some time before cooking them.

But if you like wings (or chicken breasts or any part of the feathered creature actually, especially the lips) or you like a bit of citrusy (yes, that is now a word) heat you may like these. They are sticky, sweet, spicy and with the tang of citrus.

ORANGE CHIPOTLE GLAZED WINGS

  1. 4 lbs chicken wings (whole, pieces; doesn’t matter. Use what you like)
  2. 1 12 ounce can frozen orange juice concentrate
  3. 1 7 ounce can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (I used 5 peppers and some sauce)
  4. 1 cup honey
  5. 1/4 cup brown sugar
  6. 2 teaspoons minced garlic
  7. 1 teaspoon onion powder
  8. 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  9. zest from one orange
  10. 2 tablespoons lemon juice
  • First, if you’ve decided to do this with boneless skinless breasts, I suggest putting the chicken and the marinade/glaze in a large plastic bag and letting it marinade for up to 24 hours. Otherwise, just continue as instructed.
  • Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Put your wings in a single layer (or as close to it as you can get) in a large baking pan and put into the oven while you make the glaze.  This is to help render some of the excess fat off for obvious reasons and so it doesn’t thin out the glaze too much.
  • Take the rest of your ingredients and dump them into the blender or the bowl of a food processor.   Like I wrote in the ingredients, I used five peppers and some sauce in mine. If you are heat averse (you poor soul) use less. If you really like your heat, use more. I would have rated this about a 4. Next time, I will use more peppers.
  • Process this up until it is a nice puree. You may still have some small bits of peppers. That’s no problem.
  • After your wings have been in the oven for 30 minutes, turn the oven up to 400 and take the wings out. Drain off all the fat and pour your glaze over them. Turn them to coat both sides. Cook for about another 30 to 45 minutes until they are nicely glazed (you may want to turn them once more during cooking) and cooked through. Before you take them out, you can turn the oven to broil and put the wings under there to crisp up the skin a little.
  • If you have any extra sauce in the pan, it’s great over rice. Now go… shoo… cook some wings.

Ok, So Maybe I Don’t Hate Peanut Butter As Much As I Thought

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Yes, my backdrop is a roll of paper towels 😛 I was feeling lazy

 

 

I have said for years that I dislike peanut butter; even posted it in here when I made cookies with Reese Pieces in them. I am coming to realize though that it may not be peanut butter I dislike so much as plain old fashioned peanut butter cookies. Now those… I hate. I remember my sister making them when we were kids and I didn’t care for them then and I was a child who would eat anything sweet, including peanut butter and sugar sandwiches *shudders*.  While I am sure my sister is a wonderful cook, I still wouldn’t eat peanut butter cookies now; even if made by her.  There are some things too horrid to be contemplated.

But though it is something I eat rarely, I may actually…kind of…sort of.. a little bit… like peanut butter. Sometimes.

I especially like a certain brand of peanut butter that has some awesome flavors, including cinnamon raisin. Spreading this on toast is like having a peanut butter sandwich on raisin bread. So so good. Also on English muffins and pita bread, on warm rolls so that the peanut butter melts slightly and drips down the side and best of all, just spooned out and eaten straight. Ok, so when it comes to that PB, I’m a junkie. But it’s so darn expensive! Almost 5 bucks for a small container. So I decided to make my own. This is so easy I want to kick myself for not thinking of it before. But if I do that, I may fall and then I wouldn’t be able to reach the peanut butter. So I think I’ll just keep eating instead. Try it… you’ll like it!

CINNAMON RAISIN PEANUT BUTTER

  1. 1 18 ounce jar peanut butter (I used Jif; my favorite)
  2. 3/4 cups raisins
  3. 1 tablespoon hot water
  4. 3 tablespoons sugar
  5. 3 teaspoons cinnamon ( I used McCormick brand)
  • Put your raisins in a small bowl. Sprinkle them with the tablespoon of hot water. Put into the microwave on high for 20 seconds. Stir them around then cover the bowl with a small plate while you mix the peanut butter.
  • Scoop your peanut butter into a bowl. Beat in the cinnamon and sugar. You can use a little more cinnamon but remember that the flavor will strengthen as it sits so be careful.
  • Mix the raisins into the peanut butter mixture.. The brief sit in the covered bowl  helps soften them up a bit.
  • Spoon the peanut butter into a covered container (I used a pint canning jar.) This can be stored at room temp same as any other PB.

Hey; it tastes better off of the Mickey plate! Ask any kid!

 

 

Barely Brie-thing

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Hehehe… I crack me up.When I went in the fridge today, I noticed the small wheel of Brie I got a few days ago. It was in the reduced section then so I said cuss words to myself as I tried to figure out how to use it before it was… *said in a melodramatic tone of voice*… TOO LATE (images of green cheese and the Brie giving birth to alien life forms took place in my mind). I almost left it then because that idea was kind of cool but it DID cost five bucks so I pulled it out of the fridge. Sigh… maybe next time.

I decided on a cheese dip cause any excuse to melt cheese is high on my list of good food. Especially when it’s something I can add bacon to… which I did. Lots of it. Because bacon is NOT liver thus I love it. So far it has been a hit if the half empty pan is any indication. I served it with Tostitos mini rounds but I think it would also be fantastic spread on baguette slices.

HOT MELTY BRIE & BACON DIP

  1. 1 12.25 ounce round brie (I used Alouette brand baby brie)
  2. 8 ounces muenster cheese
  3. 1/4 cup shredded Parmesan/Romano mix ( the fresh shredded kind in the deli area not the dry grated kind in the pasta aisle)
  4. 1/2 cup shredded Mozzarella
  5. 8 ounces cream cheese
  6. 1/4 cup diced green and/or red peppers
  7. 1/4 cup thinly sliced green onions
  8. 1 lb. low sodium bacon, cooked until crisp, cooled and crumbled
  9. 1/2 cup sour cream
  10. 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional)
  • Preheat your oven to 375. Put  the bacon in a foil lined pan (foil lined because I hate washing greasy pans) and cook until nice and crispy, about 20 minutes.
  • Meanwhile, cut your Brie and Muenster cheeses into 1/2 inch cubes.
  • Dice the green peppers into 1/4 inch (more or less; doesn’t have to be perfect, just be sure it’s small) pieces.  Put into a small bowl with about a teaspoon of the bacon grease (you heard me… bacon grease.) Stir together then put into the microwave for 2 minutes on high power.
  • Mix together the mozzarella, muenster, brie, cream cheese, Parmesan  and sour cream. Add in the bacon, red pepper flakes if using, green onions and the green peppers.
  • Put in a 2 quart casserole (or a deep souffle dish or any pretty baking dish) and put in the 400 degree oven until bubbly and the top is nicely browned.
  • Serve with chips, veggie sticks or baguette slices.
  • NOTE- This makes a LARGE pan of dip so if you’re not feeding a large family (or the county) you may want to cut this in half 😛

Five minutes after setting it out. WAITAMINNIT! Where's MINE!?