Tag: appetizers

Difficult Choices – The Appetizer Basket

45 Comments

Choices. We face them every day. Some are small choices like what to wear today (although that’s never a simple choice for Miss A), some are a bit more monumental involving career, love, children, etc. One thing is certain, we make a multitude of choices each day.

A few weeks ago, you all were faced with a choice for the appetizer basket of our Chopped Challenge. Taking 39% of the vote was the Lobster, Chipotle, Fajita and Chocolate basket nominated by Eva at Kitcheninspirations. Appetizer Basket Continue reading →

One for the Money, Two for the Show

30 Comments

As promised tonight’s introduction to Romanian cuisine is complete with a bonus recipe. Yep, this is a twofer. Now that summer is here we’re eating lighter and enjoying the outdoors quite a bit more. That means there’s less time to spend holed up in the kitchen. All that said, you’re probably wondering why then, we have two recipes. Well…they are both appetizers and absolutely easy.

Both Beth from Yes Folks, I Run Like a Girl and Kate from Minestrone Soup both suggested eggplant and eggplant salads as part of our tour of Romania. So our first recipe is just that – a Romanian Eggplant Salad. While searching for eggplant recipes we also came across a recipe for Fasole Batuta, or a Romanian Bean Dip. The bean dip recipe is adapted from Lake Magazine which also had this little tidbit of information: It is estimated that there are more than one million Romanians living in America, and of this group 17 percent live in Illinois and Michigan. In metro Chicago alone there are about 100,000 Romanians. I had no idea! That was kind of a fun little fact to learn about our area.  Continue reading →

Musgo, Musgo, M-U-S-G-O

30 Comments

Sorry flashing back to high school cheerleading there (Let’s Go, Let’s Go, L-E-T-S-G-O). Tonight we’re eating what my mom calls musgo. In other words, everything Must Go! We’re still pretty full-up from the weekend and we have a fridge full of leftovers. So while we were going to begin our new country tonight, selected by Mr. N, we’ve decided to hold-off until we finish up the musgo.

In the meantime, we’ll share one of the recipes from our “barn raising” that was a favorite for Mr. N and Miss A. Our original plan was to use a bunch of little smokies in an Amish breakfast casserole, but since we didn’t have much success with Amish recipes this weekend, we decided to look for other options. We found an interesting recipe on Hot Dog City that put an Asian twist on an American favorite. These Pigs in a Blanket Asian Style were definitely the biggest hit with the kids yesterday. We started with these ingredients: Continue reading →

Amamos a los Maestros and Mexican Food

8 Comments

We love teachers! Amamos a los maestros! This week is Teacher Appreciation Week and in honor of the fabulous individuals that guide, teach and mentor Mr. N, we cooked up a few Mexican dishes for the PTA’s teacher appreciation lunch today. We also couldn’t pass up an opportunity to explore a few more Mexican recipes in honor of Cinco de Mayo. We once again consulted the book Mr. N gave me for Christmas, The “I Don’t Know How to Cook” Book Mexican by Linda Rodriguez for ideas.

As the primary appetizer we selected the Mexican Roll-up. It’s easy to serve whole, or sliced into appetizer-sized bites. The first step was to chop the jalapeno peppers and green onions. Then we combined all the ingredients, including cream cheese, spices and veggies, into a large skillet. Continue reading →