Party Food for Holiday Visits

With family visiting for the holidays, we have lots of food planned for the next few weeks. 

This weekend is no exception, we are finally decorating our tree.  Finally!  

So I am planning a menu.  I'm thinking maybe hot roast beef sandwiches and some brie and crackers, and something with fruit...  I know, this sounds  like a lot of trouble for just decorating the tree, but I have found that making an EVENT (key the music) out of something that really doesn't take a lot of time, keeps my teen and young adult children IN THE MOMENT for just a little longer.

One of the dips I am thinking of making is Hot Spinach and Artichoke: 

It is delicious, but it is a little overload on the Spinach is you aren't already a big fan.

For this you need:

1/2 pound of cooked bacon, crumbled

8 oz cream cheese

1 package frozen chopped Spinach (thawed/drained)

1 can marinated Artichoke hearts (drained)

1 cup Parmesan cheese

8 oz sour cream

1/2 cup mayo

Mix the cream cheese, beating until creamy.  Add all other ingredients and mix until smooth.

Bake at 400 degrees (preheated) for about 20 minutes, until hot and bubbly. 

I am definitely going to have veggies, too.  

 I love to play with veggies. ALL of my kids love them like this (NOT the hubby)... I made this last week and they ate almost all of it before the family came over.  I am going to put it out again this week long before I put out the roast beef. That way they will be sure to eat their vegetables!

Finally, I think the best thing I'm going to enjoy when we're decorating the tree will be 

Double Dark Chocolate Pomegranate Cookies!

These photos were taken by my daughter, Sarah, who will be making these cookies for me again this weekend, when she is home from college.  YUM, can't wait!  

To see Sarah, I mean.  

:)

She makes THIS recipe using Dana's recipe from MADE (Dana-Made-It.com).  

What are YOU making (or eating) for the holidays?? 

Sharing here...
at Catch My Party and
Cook Bake Nibble, and also:

3 Ways to Be a Super-Hero

My daughter is in LOVE with the Hippie Tote I made last week, and even though I have lots of requests for more from my other daughters and their friends, I have been trying to make some headway in my house - it's a wreck and I can't even set up for Christmas!

Oh! Did I tell you that I am going to have another Give-Away this week?

However, it takes me forever to get anything done, because I get so EASILY DISTRACTED (see above, lol).

In fact, recently I have been enlisted to be the newest super hero...Easily-Distracted Woman!

How did I do that?  Nice of you to ask!  By doing a few things...

#1.  Making MORE cookies... (recipe adapted from HERE)

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Craisin Cookies adapted from Smitten Kitchen

#2.  Making some pretty scarves...

 #3.  And I have ALSO been ignoring my cleaning and decorating because I've been using digital scrapbooking software, which I will be posting about here in the next few days.  I started playing around with digital scrap-booking after I went to that "crop" in the spring, because I just loved that I could create beautiful images and vignettes using my photos that I have in my computer.  I can't wait to show off what I'm working on!

So stayed tuned for THAT, and my next GIVE-AWAY!!

 

Egg Free Cookies

One of the blogs I follow is The Baking Bookworm and I hope its okay that I put it up here as a link, because she's got some fun recipes and book reviews. And yesterday's post was about cooking for people with allergies.

As a person with a SEVERE nut allergy, I constantly have to be aware of what is in my food. Often I don't eat the yummy treats set out at school or church activities because I can't trust what is in them. Of course, I do make my own, but its always nice to get a taste of something that another person has made.

Well, Laurie's post about finding an egg-free treat took me right to a recipe that my 19 year old daughter has been baking whenever she comes home from college (I've made it but for whatever reason it tastes better when she makes it!).

The recipe is called Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies and it contains NO EGGS!

The original recipe calls for icing to put on top of the cookies, but honestly we've never made it that way, there is no need - the cookies are so great without it. I will include the icing recipe anyway, but believe me, simple is just great (and less work).

1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup pumpkin puree (canned works just as well as fresh and = less work)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat over to 350º and grease your cookie sheets. Personally when I can I love to use parchment paper because its so easy for clean-up.

In a medium bowl, cream the shortening and the sugar, then stir in the vanilla and pumpkin.

In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon. Stir this dry mixture slowly into the creamed mixture. Add the chocolate chips.

Drop dough onto cookie sheets, bake 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Cool one minute on the cookie sheets before putting on wire cooling rack.

The cookies don't look like much, and they don't rise a lot when they are baking, but wait until they are cooled off (really, even warm they don't taste as good) and they are amazing!

Now, if you want to make that icing I mentioned, its just a simple recipe you might have used for something else. You need:

1 - 8oz package cream cheese

1/2 cup of butter

1 pound of powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

dash of salt

Mix this all together and spread it on the cooled cookies!

This is a terrible picture so I will have her make some more this weekend and I will update this post. Sadly for my waistline, these cookies disappear quickly. Its really hard to stop eating them!!! But it will be a lovely weekend for eating cookies, I'm sure. With my cappuccino from my Magic Bullet, I'll have a delicious weekend!