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:

Kids in the Kitchen - No Cook S'mores

One of the things our family loves to do is camp.

We don't get to do it enough.

However, I learned a secret recipe.
This recipe makes everyone feel they are by a campfire.
Even when it is cold and they are sleeping in front of the TV.

Graham Crackers

Store-bought Fudge Frosting
Marshmallow Fluff

See how simple it is?

Instead of cooking marshmallows over your stove, you just buy a jar of fluff, spread it on one graham cracker square. Then you spread the chocolate frosting over the other graham cracker square. Put them together, and you have an easy to make, no bake, S'more!

Now maybe you should take a big blanket and cover your kitchen table with it while you enjoy your S'mores. Then you could really feel like you were camping!

I hope you get the chance to be creative today!

Chocolate Jar Word Art

Yum! Chocolate!

Hi! I feel so guilty! I couldn't get this posted this morning because I was in such rush to get to my new job! By the way, I LOVE MY NEW JOB! I am so blessed!

It's been a long time coming...

Plus it didn't help that last night I suffered from serious sewing-silliness.
I was working on a simple bed-jacket for my mother and lets just say she won't be wearing it any time soon!
I decoupaged this candy jar (it previously held a candle) over the weekend.

I modeled it off of the numerous beautiful subway wall-art pieces I've been seeing all over the blogs. I really love them and I'd like to complete one myself.

For this project I mostly used forms of the Ariel font, with a few words in Times New Roman thrown in. The fonts were sized to 50. I simply printed out the sheet of paper and cut out the words. I also cut out a few filler shapes for some spacers.

Then I used Mod-podge to decoupage them on. Easy!

Hershey's CHOCOLATE kisses xoxo

I printed our names, and our favorite places to go and favorite things to do.
And eat - I had to include cookies and chocolate.

I don't have a picture of it on my desk at work, but I'll get one.
My desk looks welcoming already, with just this little jar on it (The picture above shows it in my living room).

Okay, so now I have to go back to try to finish my sewing project. It was funny, first I THOUGHT I did something wrong, then found out I was just fine, but in the end I found a BIG mistake I made at the very beginning.

I am so glad this is relaxing or I would not want to make this much effort, lol.

I hope you are having better success with your projects! And I hope you are just as happy as I am today. Some days just fall into place! XOXO

I hope you get the chance to be creative today!

Oreo Cookie Bites

~ KIDS in the KITCHEN ~

Plus: More Adventures with my Magic Bullet!

I have a new recipe I'd like to share. I spotted this in a magazine last weekend and I can NOT remember where I saw it, or I would happily give credit. The recipe is very simple and AMAZING. Its also fun to make with KIDS!

Oreo Cookie Bites:

* 8oz softened cream cheese

* one package of Oreo cookies

* Milk Chocolate Chips

* White Chocolate Chips

Prepare your work area. You will need to place waxed paper onto two cookie sheets. You'll also need either a plastic bag and mallet or a food processor.

Crush the Oreo Cookies. I used my magic bullet, trying both blades, but it took some time and didn't go as smoothly as I'd hoped. If you don't have a food processor, I would recommend putting the cookies into a plastic Ziploc bag and crush them with a mallet. I used the Magic Bullet because I wanted to be sure the cookies were finely crushed. I don't really know if it was worth using that particular machine to blend them. Either pressing the button or crushing them in a bag, the kids will like this part.

After you have crushed the cookies, blend them with the softened cream cheese. You can use a wooden spoon or your food processor for this part. Both you AND the kids can do this.

I have a picture to show you of the crushed Oreo cookies mixed with the cream cheese but really, it doesn't look that great. You don't really want to see it. It looks like mud. But I assure you it tastes great!


Now for this step you will find that your kids either love or hate to do this: Use a spoon to take a small amount of the cookie mixture from the bowl. Using your hands, form small bite-sized balls out of the cookie mixture and place them on the cookie sheets. Place the sheets into the freezer to sit for a bit while you prepare the melted chocolate. Your hands WILL get messy!

Wash your hands for this next step. This step involves heat so an adult should do this. Melt the chocolate chips. You can do it on the stove or in the microwave. I melted the milk chocolate chips on the stove but melted the white chocolate chips in the microwave wave. Even food cooked in the microwave can give a severe burn, so be sure to be careful! Plus, overcooking chocolate is never a good idea.

One you have the chocolate melted, dip the cookie balls into the chocolate and allow them to sit on the cookie sheets until each ball is coated with milk chocolate. Melt the white chocolate and use a spoon or a fork to drizzle it on top of the chocolate covered Oreo balls. The white chocolate drizzle is a fun thing for the kids to do.

Place the cookie sheets back into the freezer or into the fridge until the chocolate is firm. After the chocolate has hardened, you can remove them from the cookie sheets and store them in the fridge for a while or even freeze them for a few months.

Enjoy!

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!