Quick and easy pickle dip

 

Are you ready for some football?

I know that this pigpen is.  As hard as it is to believe that football season is here (I mean where did the summer go?), we love this time of year.  Whether it be Bubby's flag football games, high school, college, or the  NFL, we love football.  So when I saw Gooseberry Patch's Touchdown Pickle Dip recipe in The Harvest Table, I knew we had to try it.

Touchdown Pickle Dip

Ingredients

2, 8oz. packages of softened cream cheese
1 pound of deli shaved ham, finely chopped
32 oz. jar baby dill pickles, drained and juice reserved
round buttery crackers or cracker sticks

Directions

Chop the shaved ham.

In a large bowl, blend cream cheese and ham. 

Finely chop pickles and stir in.

Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of reserved pickle juice; blend well.

If dip seems too thick, add more pickle juice.

Cover and chill until serving time.

Serves with crackers or cracker sticks.

Score!

Who will you be cheering for this football season?

Semi-Homemade Pioneer Woman Guacamole

As you know, I usually follow recipes to a T and take very few liberties when baking or cooking.  In fact this was even a topic of discussion on my Goode friend's, Cris from Goodeness Gracious, Facebook page this week.

So I was kind of struggling when I found The Pioneer Woman's guacamole recipe in her cookbook.

It lists 3 ingredients, but provides no measurements.  It uses words like some and big pile when referring to salt and pico de gallo, respectively.  That being said I recently had an epiphany of sorts while reading this recipe, I realized that if I bought pre-made pico de gallo that I could have guacamole in a snap just about anytime we wanted since it wouldn't require any cutting.

I was so thankful this light bulb went off as it allows me to whip up guacamole in heartbeat as an appetizer for friends or even as a quick snack or light meal for The Farmer and me.

Ingredients
Avocados, 3/4 to 1 whole avocado per person per PW
Some Salt (I prefer to use kosher salt.)
Big pile of pico de gallo

Directions
Halve the avocados lengthwise.  Remove the pit and scoop out the insides onto a large plate or bowl.

Sprinkle on some salt and mash way with a fork until you get the avocado to the consistency you want.

Throw on a "big pile of pico de gallo."

Stir together gently and you are ready to eat some yummy guacamole.

Enjoy!

Hints from PW:  Always test guacamole with tortilla chips so you'll get a more accurate gauge of the salt content and adjust the salt to taste.  Additionally to avoid browning, gently press plastic wrap against the surface of the guacamole until serving.  Guacamole will keep in the fridge less than 24 hours.  (This is why I like making it with pre-made pico de gallo as you only have mix up as much as much as you want instead of making up an entire recipe of guacamole.)

Whole lot of cookin' and bakin' going on at this pig pen

Thanks to an amazing mother-in-law and aunts on my husband's side of the family, all I had to make for Easter weekend was 2 desserts and 2 appetizers.  Truthfully, 2 of my most favorite things to make.  Although I have a few good standbys, like my cheese ball, I usually try to do something new and different for family gatherings.

Since my new Gooseberry Patch cookbook, Sunday Dinner at Grandma's, hasn't arrived yet, I was quite thankful that my mother-in-law had just helped work behind the scenes at a Taste of Home Cooking Show and brought us each home a goodie bag from the show.  Lucky for me, the goodie bag contained 2 of Taste of Home's magazines:  Cooking Schools and Simple & Delicious.  I was able to find all 4 of my needed recipes and many more that I would like to try.

3 of the 4 recipes were super easy as one utilized the crock pot, another only required 10 minutes of baking and only dirtied one dish and a cutting board, and the other didn't require any baking, but all 4 appeared to be a hit.

For my appetizers, I made the Olive Pepperoni Spread and the Reuben Spread.  Now I must admit I am not a reuben fan, but The Farmer and his mom love them so I thought this would be a good way to make Reubens for them.

Olive Pepperoni Spread
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup pizza sauce
1 c. (4 ounces) shredded Italian cheese blend
1/4 c. sliced and quartered pepperoni
2 T. sliced ripe olives

First spread the cream cheese into a 9-inch pie plate.

Layer with pizza sauce, Italian cheese, and pepperoni.  (I probably used a bit more of each of these than the recipe called for as I went off of appearance.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted.  (10 minutes is what it took in my oven.)

Sprinkle with olives and serve with bagel chips.

It's a long story, but I didn't even get to try this as I never made it to this Easter celebration and there were no leftovers so I think it pretty much speaks for itself.


Reuben Spread
2 pkg. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, cubed
3 3/4 c. shredded Swiss cheese
1 can (14 oz.) sauerkraut, rinsed and well drained
4 pkg. (2oz. each) thinly sliced deli corned beef, chopped
1/2 c. Thousand Island salad dressing
Snack rye bread

After cubing the cream cheese, shredding the Swiss cheese, rinsing and draining the sauerkraut, and chopping the corned beef, combine the first 5 ingredients in a slow cooker.  Cover and cook on low for 4 hours, stir to blend.  Serve with snack rye bread.  (Notice, I used one of those amazing crock pot liners... a must for this recipe.)

The Farmer said he would only tweak this recipe by toasting the rye bread before serving.

So needless to say, these will be recipes I will be holding onto since they appeared to be liked and were quite easy to make.  Hopefully that will be the case with what what we are cookin' and bakin' up for this weekend as we will be celebrating Big Sissy's First Communion on Saturday.  I sure hope I can keep up with the dishes and my emotions.

Cooking with an 8 year old - Chinese Chicken Wings

In honor of Little Sissy's 2nd birthday, Big Sissy decided to get busy in the kitchen and make a new appetizer for the festivities. We decided to turn to our new Quick & Easy family favorites Gooseberry Patch cookbook for Chinese Chicken Wings.

Ingredients
2-3 lbs. of chicken wings
1/2 c. soy sauce
1 c. pineapple juice
1/3 c. brown sugar, packed
1t. ground ginger
1 t. garlic salt
1/2 t. pepper

To help Big Sissy out, I cut each chicken wing into 2 parts and we pre-measured all of the ingredients before we started filming.  She also divided the chicken wings between 2 bags as we doubled the recipe.

After being "assisted" by Little Sissy, Big Sissy added garlic salt not garlic sauce and added freshly cracked black pepper.

Then it was time to add the sauce to the wings.

After marinating for several hours or overnight, she arranged the wings in a single layer on an ungreased jelly-roll pan.  (I think we should have lined it with parchment paper as the pan was a bit sticky after baking.)  Bake at 450 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until golden and juices run clear when chicken is pierced with a fork.

Since we needed to keep the wings warm, we used the crock pot with one of those handy dandy liners to keep them warm for serving; however, they didn't stay in the crock pot for long as everyone was anxious to try them.  They were a big hit.

A New Favorite Cheese Dip from the pig pen

It's amazing to me at times what a small world it really is.  I am almost reminded of this daily.  Well one of those reminders came to me about 8 1/2 years ago.  8 1/2 years ago, The Farmer and I were appointed to our state's Farm Bureau Young Farmer & Rancher committee.  This was a 2 year commitment that absolutely changed our lives.

Any way, one of our fellow committee members was a good friend from college.  I hadn't talked to her much in the few years since we graduated, but it was sure good to see her familiar face when we walked into the meeting room for the first time and we have most definitely stayed in touch since that meeting 8 1/2 years ago.

After seeing my good friend Cris' queso dip blog post, my long, lost friend told me about  a cheese dip recipe that she said "we had to try."

Well we tried it over the weekend and it was delicious.  In fact, no leftovers made it to the next day.

Now, I had about 5 other things going on as I was making this dip so I forgot to take a lot of pictures, but here's what I got.

3 simple ingredients:  2 bars of Cream Cheese (full fat, reduced fat, or fat free will work), 1 can Rotel (undrained), and 1 pound ground sausage (browned)

After you brown the sausage, combine all 3 ingredients in the crockpot so the cream cheese can melt and all 3 ingredients can combine together.

Stir occasionally and Enjoy with tortilla chips.

 The best part of this recipe is thankfully I remembered to use one of the greatest inventions ever... a Reynolds Slow Cooker Liner so when we had eaten all of the dip all I had to do was take out the liner and I had a clean crock pot.