Party Food

Hello! Posts may be kind of sporadic for the next week or so, as we won’t have Internet hooked up in the new place until next Saturday. I’m working on this from the old apartment, in the middle of a major cleaning session.

Last night we went to a friend of Spike’s house for a party, and I brought my usual party dish: taco dip!  I can’t call it 7-layer dip because I don’t think I have all 7 layers accounted for in my version, but it’s yummy just the same.  We got lots of compliments on it last night!

I start with a layer of spicy fat free refried beans

I mix together a packet of Ortega hot and spicy taco seasoning and a container of fat free sour cream, then layer on about a third to a half of this mixture.

Next comes a layer of shredded Mexican cheese (a handful or two, a little less than half a bag), followed by diced tomatoes with green chilies (sometimes I use salsa here, but I usually favor the canned tomatoes).

Then another layer of the sour cream mixture, another layer of cheese, and topped with sliced black olives and scallions.

Delicious! And sloppy. And not all that bad for you!  We brought a bag of jalapeno Scoops and another kind of tortilla chips, but ended up leaving both because there were already tons of chip options for dipping. I had a few chips’ full of this dip, some Sabra hummus (my favorite), a sample of homemade guacamole, a chocolate chip cookie and a few handfuls of cashews.  And a few sips of Spike’s beer!

Do you have a standby recipe that you always make for parties?

Enjoy the rest of the weekend! Until next time…

 

Ready for the Weekend

..and ready for the move! Movers are coming tomorrow morning, and we’re pretty much good to go.  Spike is very organized and likes to make lists and spreadsheets whenever we have major life changes.  What would I do without him?!

Breakfast this morning was my new favorite cereal (as of yesterday)–Wegmans maple pecan crunch.  And it was every bit as good today!

Tonight for dinner we had to be somewhere at 6, so we ran over to Baja Fresh and had about 15 minutes to eat.  I’m so glad we did! I LOVED it.  I’ve never been before and had no idea that it wasn’t just another Chipotle or Qdoba.  I had really delicious blackened mahi mahi tacos.

I love fish tacos and get them a lot, and these rank pretty high–especially considering they’re “fast food.”  I brought half home because of the time constraints but will definitely enjoy the rest later this weekend.

Spike got the blackened shrimp tacos, which he also enjoyed.  He said the shrimp was perfectly cooked.

We also shared the chips that came with our meals, and tried 3 of the salsas from the bar–the spicy roja, the salsa verde, and one more mystery kind.  My favorite was the roja–very smokey with decent heat.

I brought the leftover chips home and ate a few tonight as a post-dinner snack. 🙂

Time for bed! Gotta rest up for our busy day tomorrow.

 

Brussels Chips

Tonight I’m in mega-cleaning mode.  We have company coming tomorrow, and then more coming later this weekend.   Between that and packing to move into our first house next week, there’s much that still needs to be done. Good thing I’ve had all week off. 🙂

After shoveling both our cars out AGAIN this afternoon, dinner was half leftover and half new.  We warmed up some buffalo chicken pizza that I made the other night to use up our non-Super Bowl dip ingredients (well, Spike warmed his up–I prefer mine cold).

Before and after…

 

This was really simple–3 chicken breasts, shredded, mixed with a bottle of Frank’s buffalo wing sauce and topped with part-skim mozzarella.  Yes, I used the entire bottle and it was a HUGE mistake.  It was way too spicy, even for us.  The dough came from Wegmans (where else?).

I wanted to use up the rest of the sweet potatoes, along with some brussels sprouts we picked up yesterday, so we roasted both in some olive oil and seasonings.

Going in…

Ready to eat!

Some of the outsides peeled off to make crunchy little brussels chips! Yum.

Good night!