Broccoli Cheese Bites

It was past midnight. I was mindlessly scrolling through Pinterest (follow me!) on my phone, while laying in bed. Then I saw these and stopped dead in my tracks. It took me less than 30 seconds to get out of bed, put my shoes on, throw open the fridge and start making these. No exaggeration. I was like a tornado in the kitchen on a mission. I even dropped a 10" chef knife on the floor (jump back!) in the process. The only thought in my brain was "must make these fast, so they bake fast, so I can shove them in my face fast."

Original recipe can be found here. I had to alter it based on starting the recipe without checking all my ingredients first (because I was trying to make it as fast as humanly possible).

~3 cups broccoli florets, washed and cut in small pieces
~1.5 cups shredded cheese of choice (I used extra sharp cheddar)
4 eggs, beaten
1 tsp Italian seasoning
1 sleeve Ritz crackers, crushed (I used reduced fat)

Preheat oven to 375°. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl, using your hands to mix thoroughly. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and roll the mixture into golf ball sized portions, spacing them evenly. Bake for 20-25 minutes, turning halfway through. Makes about 30.

Try to let cool a few minutes before chowing down, otherwise you might burn the roof of your mouth! (ow.)

These were so good, which I'm excited about. I feel like the possibilities are endless- you could make with any fresh veggie on hand - spinach, beans, corn. You could use different cheeses or spices each time, too.

They'd be great as an appetizer or finger food while entertaining, or even as a side for dinner. They kept well and reheated nicely in the toaster oven. The second time I ate them I dipped them in low fat sour cream.

Johnny even enjoyed a few. Except he hates to get his hands dirty and greasy (computer geek phobia, having to work with keyboards and all...) so he used the tongs from flipping them. I thought it was funny when I turned around, especially since by now it was like 1am and we're both in the kitchen snacking away.

Annnnnnd, thank you for being patient-- the winner of the $25 Wal*Mart gift card was comment #21, Wendy from The Coupon Queen! Congratulations! Please send your mailing address to christina (at) dinneratchristinas (dot) com and it'll be on it's way! Thanks for playing everybody! Glad to see I'm not the only one who loves her sugary kid's cereal!

Cereal and Yogurt Parfait (Giveaway Post)

Hello everybody! I have a special treat to share with you and a chance to win a $25 Wal*Mart gift card, so stay tuned for the information at the bottom of this post!

Pillsbury has created a new site, Bake-Off.com, which showcases over 100 recipes chosen from recipe contest finalists across the country. I was asked to peruse the site and choose a recipe to share with you, and I chose a simple, low-fat dessert.

Of course I changed it up, but the original recipe can be found here.

2 cups Cheerios cereal (I used the new peanut butter kind!)
1 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp water
2 tsp butter, melted
whipped topping of choice
2 containers Yoplait fat free yogurt (I used Boston cream pie mmm)

Preheat oven to 350°. In a large zip bag, using a rolling pin, crush your cereal to resemble a coarse crumb. Add the sugar, water, and melted butter to the bag and reseal. Move everything around until it's fully incorporated and moistened.

Grease a baking sheet and pour the cereal mixture in the center. Lay a piece of wax paper over the top and use your rolling pin to roll the mixture out to about 1/8" thickness. Pop in the oven for 10-15 minutes, until browned. Watch closely, the edges can start to burn quickly near the end. Remove from oven and let cool, then crumble.

In a pretty glass, layer cereal crumbles, Yoplait yogurt, and whipped topping. Garnish the top with a few extra cereal crumbles. Enjoy!

This was really, really good. A nice after-dinner snack for me when I made it. My favorite part, by far, was the Cheerio crumble. After baking, it got nutty and crunchy and delicious. I'd love to make a pie crust or experiment more with other cereals.

Ok, now for the fun part! I have another $25 Wal*Mart gift card to give to a lucky Dinner at Christina's reader. Giveaway will end Monday, April 23rd at midnight. I'll announce the winner on Tuesday, April 24th.

 

To enter, just leave a comment answering: What is your favorite cereal!? 
 

Mine is a toss-up between Golden Grahams and Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch. We always have both on hand. We also usually have Lucky Charms or Froot Loops too! What can I say? We like sugary kids cereal more than the healthy, bland stuff!

Giveaway packaged provided by MyBlogSpark, General Mills, and Wal*Mart. The opinions, photos, and recipe adaption are my own.

Korean Pancakes

When I opened the box from Sophia, this was one of the things I was most excited about. To be honest, I didn't really know what to expect. I saw "Hot" and I saw "Sweet." I thought it would be like a sweet batter with a spicy filling.

The photos on the back are adorable. Why can't our American packages have cute little cartoons showing us how to cook each step!?

I saw the brown spoonful of filling and thought perhaps some sort of bean paste?

Well, needless to say, I was wrong! First, you mixed water, an included packet of yeast, and the pancake mix in a bowl and kneaded for 5 minutes. You rolled this mixture into 10 balls.

Next, you rolled out the dough into your hand, put a spoonful of the mixture, and sealed it. You placed it in a hot pan with a little oil. After the bottom browned, you were instructed to flip it over and mash it with a spatula. Then, you cooked each side an additional 1-2 minutes.

I anxiously broke into the first one and promptly burnt my mouth on the molten hot filling. Turns out, it is like a cinnamon sugar mixture. It melts down to this gooey, maple syrup kind of jam with little bits of nuts in it. Sinfully delicious! Thank you, Sophia!

Welcome Package

Sorry guys, it's been crazy around here lately.

Johnny and I packed the moving truck with help from our friend Goran on Wednesday and Thursday. Friday we left a lot later than expected and drove all day and night from IL to NC. We got here about 10am with a 16' moving truck and my Jeep on a car tow behind.

We rented a 16x20' storage unit and unloaded everything into there. At this point we'd been up about 36 hours. It was exhausting. Some of the stuff I moved into my parents' house, where I'll be staying for a couple of weeks. It's a confusing, scattered mess. Some of my stuff is in IL, some is in the storage unit, and some is thrown in boxes and suitcases around here.

I heard from work I didn't have to start until Friday, the 10th, so I took a short road trip to my God daughter's house, about 3 hours from here. It was so nice to be close enough to family and friends for a change!

Now I'm back at my parents' house, but the A/C upstairs is on the fritz. One second it'll be nice and cool, then without any warning it won't come on and raise up to a blistering 88F! I moved into their downstairs guest room, so now my stuff is scattered even MORE.

I'm using my mom's laptop to post this. Hopefully the apartment will be ready soon and then I'll be able to sort through my stuff, officially unpack, and hook up MY computer. Thanks for hanging in there through all this!

Sophia, the sweetheart that she is, sent me a care package to my parents' house. It was here waiting for me on the table when I got back from visiting my God daughter.

I was just expecting these - fruit chews she had a photo of on Facebook.

But no, she sent a whole slew of goodies!

Also soup, which I broke into right away for lunch. It was spicy, I went through three tissues while eating it! So delicious, and had a separate vegetable packet, not like our Americanized ramen!

Thank you Sophia, you rock!

I'll try to be better about posting! Either from my mom's laptop, possibly my iPhone (if I can figure it out), and definitely my computer once I get it hooked up.

I have a lot to show you guys! The house photos, pictures from my trip, and of course food!!

Various Reviews

Sometimes Blogger uploads my pictures sideways for no reason. Even J, the web developer/programmer, can't figure it out. I usually fiddle around and re-save them to fix it, but for now, since I'm posting from a random computer and don't have much time, I'm leaving them sideways. Sorry!

I got these Magnum ice cream bars with a coupon from Foodbuzz. They come in a 3 pack box, and are usually in the $4-5 range, but these were on sale for $3 at my local store. All of the flavors had whey (boo) so J couldn't test them, and I went with my choice since I'd most likely be the only one eating them. (My dad's not big on dairy.)

It was pretty good. The milk chocolate was my least favorite part, I think I would have preferred dark chocolate. I liked the crunchy of the almonds and the ice cream was amazingly delicious and creamy (maybe the whey?). Honestly, unless I had the coupon I probably wouldn't buy them. $1+ for a lone bar is way out of this cheap frugal girl's budget.

I won Ally's AMAZING giveaway a few weeks ago. I literally screamed and called J over. This is, hands down, the awesomest giveaway I've won! I got 4 of these little cookbooks, an (unpictured) grocery bag, and 52 coupons (1 year's worth) for FREE Organic Valley products. Our store carries their milks and butter, but I'm hoping NC will have a wider variety of their products. It'll still be cool to not have to buy milk for a whole year! Thanks again, Ally!!!

I saw a commercial for these and wanted to try them. I'm not usually a cookie person, but something about these caught my interest. I had a coupon from the Sunday paper, so I got them.

Wow, they're good. The peanut butter ones were my #1 choice and are reminiscent of Girl Scout's Tagalongs. Dangerous, but oh so delicious.

I received a coupon through Foodbuzz's Tastemaker program and Magnum ice cream to purchase the bars. The photos and opinions are my own.

Banana Walnut Muffins

Like Errign, I can't stand bananas once they are ripe. I like them with a little bit of green, right before they become ripe, otherwise it makes me want to gag.

Anyways, I bought a bunch of bananas for the three men currently residing in my home. And they sat, and sat, and sat. I asked what was going on once they became spotted and they confessed that none of them wanted to eat them in case somebody else wanted them.

I know, right? Men!

So, in my first ever baking experiment where I kind of loosely went off a recipe and threw stuff in a bowl, hoping it'd turn out:

3 over ripe bananas, mashed
1 1/2 flour
3/4 sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup water
pinch of salt
1 cup chopped walnuts

In a medium mixing bowl, mash the bananas. Add all of the other ingredients, except the walnuts. Stir until everything is smooth and incorporated. Fold in the walnuts.

Scoop even amounts into 12 lined muffin tins. Bake in a 350° oven for about 25 minutes.

I'll update you on the house in the next post - we've got a lot more done, if you can believe it! I'm too tired to sift through photos now to show the progress!

Kale Chips

I finally tried kale chips. I know, I know I'm late to the game. But the only place around me I can find kale is at Wal*Mart and I know you won't blame me for avoiding that place.

It's a simple process. Stem the leaves and tear into 3-4" pieces. Rinse thoroughly and drain. Toss in a bowl with olive oil and your choice of spices. You could sprinkle garlic powder, paprika, onion powder, cayenne pepper, etc. depending on your mood.

Spread out onto a greased baking sheet and pop into a 350° oven for 12-15 minutes. The leaves will be dried and crispy when they're ready to be removed. Some areas might remain slightly soggy/steamed but most crisp up some upon standing.

I thought they were good, but they didn't rock my socks off. Plus I think it's a lot of effort for not a lot of product.

If I were to make these regularly, I'd do really big batches because you snarf them down pretty quickly. Although I'm not sure how well they keep and also how the nutrients are once you've baked them to a crisp.

Sweet Treats

My mom sent some jars of sweet treats in the Christmas box for Johnny. (I'm a little late in posting this, and some of the jars were already dug into at the time of photos.)

Each one was in a jar that I can reuse later. She labeled the tops to let us know what was inside.

These are delicious pepita (pumpkin seed) brittle cubes.

Chocolate covered sunflower seeds. Really tasty and beautifully bright!

Rock candy! Har har - get it!!? These are Johnny's favorite - they're dark chocolate.

And "chicken bones" which are cinnamon flavored hard candy with a chocolate "marrow" in the center.

She purchased these in bulk bins for Christmas gifts by weight, then divided amongst recipients and jars. I think it's a really cute, special idea!

Sweet Potato Bread

It feels odd to have not shared this recipe with you yet because I have been baking it all month long.

Seventeen total loaves to be exact.

20 pounds of sweet potatoes, 20 pounds of flour, four pounds of butter, a gallon of milk, and a whole jar of yeast has passed through my kitchen in the past few weeks to make those loaves.

It was worth it. I love this recipe! It was what I chose to gift to everybody this year.


I first saw the bread on Sophia's blog, shared from The Kitchn (in roll form). I'll share mine below for convenience, and since I made a few alterations.

3/4 cup warm water
1 scant Tbsp active dry yeast
1 heaping cup mashed sweet potatoes
1 cup milk (I used skim)
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) melted butter (I used salted)
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp kosher salt (*see Note below)
4 cups all purpose flour

Begin by scrubbing your sweet potatoes and baking them in a 350° oven until soft. Wait a few minutes to cool, peel off the skin, and mash.

Use a very large bowl and add the warm water and yeast in the bottom. Let it sit a few minutes to dissolve while you set up the other ingredients and prepare things, such as melting the butter. (*Note: I do not buy unsalted butter. It falls under the non-alcoholic beer category for me - what is the point? If the extra salt bothers you, simply omit one of the teaspoons of kosher salt.)

Combine the rest of the ingredients except the flour in the bowl, stirring with a large wooden spoon (Any other people out there from an Italian household that grew up with a deep fear of wooden spoons?) until fully incorporated. Add the flour and begin working with the spoon, using your muscles. It will seem like too much flour and you'll wonder how you will get it all mixed - but trust me, it will eventually come together.

Spray another large bowl with non-stick spray and plop the dough into it. Let rise until doubled - about two hours. (Tip: I have two favorite methods for letting my dough rise. The first is in a warmed microwave. Our microwave is right above our oven, so it conveniently was warm from baking the potatoes beforehand. Another great place to let dough rise is in your kitchen sink with the drain plugged and a few inches of hot water in the bottom.) After two hours, transfer the dough to a greased loaf pan. Bake at 400° for approximately 40-45 minutes.

This really is a beautiful bread. It's not like a sweet, desserty bread you'd expect from the name. Instead, it's more savory with a hint of sweetness. The crust gets a delicious crunchy exterior, while the inside remains moist and fluffy.

My favorite way to eat it is toasted with a drizzle of honey.

And that is exactly how I finished a whole loaf.

In three days.

By myself.

S'Mores Brownies

You're going to hate me.

Actually, let me rephrase that.

You're going to love me, your thighs are going to hate me.

1 box your favorite brownie mix
1/2 bag mini marshmallows
6-8 graham crackers
1 bar your favorite chocolate

Bake the brownies according the package instructions, removing from oven just before done. Layer with the marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate bar (I used 70% cocoa). Place back in the warm oven until the chocolate and marshmallows soften a bit.

For extra sinfulness, slice and serve warm. (Random factoid: knowing that I'd be making these, I bought the low-fat graham crackers. As if that somehow made it better.)

As expected, these are obnoxiously sweet. My teeth were hurting. But it is oh so good.

I think it'd make an excellent potluck contribution. It'd also be great for a bake sale or cake walk. As easy as brownies, but a lot more special and unique!

A huge thank you to Mary at Giving up on Perfect, who linked these up to Friday Firsts!

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

I printed out this recipe from my cousin's blog last year. Sometimes it seems like I'll never get around to all the printed, bookmarked, and torn out recipes I want to try!

Contrary to the plan, we didn't make the homemade pumpkin ice cream on Thanksgiving. There were just too many other sweets to warrant making it. However, I'd already thawed some fresh pumpkin puree from the freezer so I needed to find a way to use it up!

I used Anne's recipe exactly, with the only exception of fresh puree in place of canned and some chocolate chunk pieces because I didn't have enough chips on hand.

I think the fresh puree might have made these cookies a lot more moist than canned puree would have. They were very "cakey" and I think would have been better in muffin form. Some fell apart, but they still tasted great! A subtle pumpkin and spice background to the traditional chocolate chip cookie!

Hickory Farms

Right now I'm at a blogger meet up with Beth, Mara, Jenn, and others! I'll have tons to recap later, but in the meantime here's a short video for your viewing pleasure! I filmed my recent Foodbuzz Tastemaker package, a box from Hickory Farms.



The package seen in the video was provided by Hickory Farms as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker program.

Cheesy Toes with Stinky Dip

Another cutesy Halloween treat! This time, these came from the Cooking Club magazine. I kept the recipe as is, but changed the dip up some.


Please note: The recipe says it makes 5 dozen toes. Ours were ~1 1/2" long and we only got like 40.

Official warning: If you are on a diet please shield your eyes. I have my own growing thighs to worry about, I can't be held responsible for your undoing too.


Cheesy Toes:
2 cups extra sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, cubed
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups flour
sliced almonds

Stinky Dip:
1/2 cup sour cream
2 Tbsp mayonnaise
1/2 tsp dried basil
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

Pulse cheese, butter, and salt in a food processor until well-blended. Add the flour and blend until a dough forms. Form dough into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for an hour until firm.

Remove dough from the refrigerator and shape into toes, making about 1 1/2 inch long, by 1/2 thick. Press a sliced almond onto the tip for a nail, and use a spoon to press "knuckle creases" into the dough. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and freeze for 30 minutes, until firm.

Heat the oven to 400° and bake 10-12 minutes until golden brown (I checked the bottoms because the tops didn't brown.)

To make the dip, simply combine all of the ingredients and stir well. Serve chilled dip with warm or room temperature toes.

YUM! The toes were deliciously cheesy and soft on their own, but the dip definitely kicks it up a notch! I'm not sure if it's the fresh garlic or the lemon juice, but there is a definite tangy, biting punch that is enjoyable for your taste buds! You can't help but giggle when you're munching these down - they really do look like little toes!