Update: Not-Guac Avocado Dip

Last spring I posted about a word-of-mouth recipe I got from my dad called "Not Guac Dip".  I rambled on and on about how you needed to embrace your adventurous side and give this recipe a shot because the flavors are out of this world.  It's been a little less than a year since I shared the recipe but so far, everyone who has tried it has loved it.

As we move into the season of grilling and sipping margaritas and cold beers on the deck, I wanted to share an updated version of this recipe along with a handy tip. 

This updated version uses a white balsamic vinegar instead of your regular dark balsamic.  It's an easy fix for those who are put off by the discoloration that the dark balsamic gives the dip.  Both my Mom and Roy prefer the taste of the white balsamic over the regular dark balsamic so it's a win-win for them.

And now for the tip... if you've ever made anything with avocado in it, you know how quickly it goes from green to brown when it's exposed to air.  Pressing plastic wrap onto the surface only helps so much.  However... if you hang on to the pit and add it back into the bowl after you're finished making the dip... it keeps the avocado from turning brown.  I tested it last week and the dip still looked fresh after 6 hours. 

This is great with tortilla chips but if you have leftovers, I highly suggest it over some undressed iceberg lettuce.  Add it to your list today. You won't be disappointed!

*****

"Not Guac" Avocado Dip
serves 4-6
2 ripe avocados
2 Roma tomatoes
Half a medium red onion, finely diced
1/2 cup Feta cheese, crumbled
Garlic salt
Olive Oil
White Balsamic Vinegar

Roughly chop avocados into chunky pieces.  Roughly chop tomatoes into chunky pieces (remove seeds and watery insides).  Finely dice half a red onion.

Combine avocados, tomatoes and red onion in a medium bowl.  Sprinkle in 1/2 cup of crumbled Feta cheese.  Give it a light sprinkle of garlic salt (remember, you can always add more).  Stir gently to mix.

Drizzle lightly with olive oil and then with balsamic vinegar adding a bit more balsamic vinegar than olive oil.  Again, go easy.  You can always add more later.  Stir gently to combine.

Test with a tortilla chip and add more olive oil and balsamic vinegar as needed.  I like my dip to have more balsamic than olive oil since it gives the mixture an unexpected but fantastic flavor.

Enjoy!  Know that the longer this sits, the more the flavor builds.  And definitely try your leftovers on a salad, you won't be sorry.

Quick Tip: extend the life of your berries

A few weeks ago I talked about how I had just bought approximately two metric tons of fresh fruit from Costco and I was thinking that my healthy eating habits had hit a tipping point.  [Side note: we did in fact make it through almost all the fruit we bought, just working through the last few apples now]

Well 5 days later I got up early for a 6:30am hot yoga class with a girlfriend and after class immediately went to the nearest Dunkin Donuts for a coffee and donut with sprinkles. 

So... maybe that tipping point is a bit farther off than I thought.  That's what I get for blogging about my healthy eating habits! 

Anyway, I bought the fruit intending to try out a new vinegar wash that I found on Pintrest.  Fill a bowl with a mixture of one part vinegar to ten parts water (white vinegar or apple cider vinegar is best).  Dump the berries in and swirl them around to dislodge dirt, mold spores, etc.  Because the vinegar in the solution is so diluted you can either drain and put the berries right in the fridge or rinse them in fresh water.  The tip says you can pop them right back into the fridge but I was worried that leaving them wet might be problematic so I dried mine on a kitchen towel covered with a paper towel for about 30 mins. 

Drying my blueberries and washing my strawberries

Does this give you two weeks like the Pintrest tip said it would?  Not really.  But it does extend the quality of the berries quite a bit in my opinion.  I've done this twice now and I've lost zero berries to mold or soft spots.  Sure they still get a bit wrinkly but they last much longer than most out of season berries do.  I feel a lot less guilty buying pricey produce knowing that I'm going to get my money's worth.

Any other tips for extending the shelf life of produce?

Fruit & Veggie Resolution Update - week who knows...

It's been awhile since I posted an update on my 2012 resolution to eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.  Last time I checked in I confessed that the novelty had worn off in February and due to work commitments and being up to my eyeballs in busy, I expected March to be a wash.  And it kind of was.  I did my best to eat fruits and veggies when I could over the past few weeks but I gave up counting servings. 

Surprisingly, when my last event ended last Thursday and I came out of the fog... I found myself craving the good stuff.  When I wanted a snack, I found myself looking for apples and blueberries and bananas.  Sure I was craving nutella to go with the apples and bananas, but it's a big improvement!

In a moment of weakness and at the suggestion of that friend I mentioned earlier this week (Hi Helber!), I ended up at Costco with a cart that included:

• 18 ounces of blueberries
• 2 pounds of strawberries
• a dozen Gala apples (weighing in at 5.5 lbs)
• 10 lbs of grapefruit

FOR TWO PEOPLE.

Please note this is in addition to the grapes, asparagus and tomato/cucmber salad I already have sitting in my fridge. 

All joking aside, it appears as though my eating habits have finally hit a tipping point.  It took 3 months to turn this from work into a habit.  It no longer requires as much thought and effort, the choices are becoming more natural.

Back to my fruit binge... I want to tell you I saved a lot of money given that it was Costco.  But I saved about $1.20 on the apples and probably $2-3 on the grapefruits.  At the very least, I had a great time eating the samples after work and I'm glad that I won't have to go back to the store every 2 days to stock up again. 

I'm fortunate in that I have a great fridge which keeps fruit very fresh so the apples and grapefruits should be ok. 

The berries could be another story though.  We'll have to see how long the berries last.  I purposefully bought a boat load and then gave them a bath in a mixture of 1 part white vinegar to 10 parts water per a tip I saw on Pintrest.  Supposedly it removes dirt, mold spores, etc and berries will last much longer.  I'll update you on the outcome next week and let you know if the tip is a good one.

Till then, the fruit and veggie resolution is alive and well, even if it is covered in nutella!

Event brain... aka: sorry I hoarded the beef stroganoff pics

Those of you who know me well, know that last week was one of the biggest work weeks I'll have all year.  My team hosted 50 senior executives from across the country in my home office for 2 days. That combined with a few other projects that all came due within about two weeks of the event and I have a bad case of event brain. 

It's like pregnancy brain, but without an 18 year commitment.

And I had it so bad that my post about beef stroganoff included multiple pictures of my ski trip and absolutely zero pictures of the recipe in reference.  My bad.

I realized this during the middle of the event on Wednesday and texted a friend and faithful reader (Hi Helber!!) to confirm the mistake.

And then I sat around all weekend and drank Spotted Cows and went to the spa with a girlfriend instead of fixing it.  I want to feel bad but I'm still not firing on all cylinders yet and it's very hard to feel bad when you're drinking good beer and playing hooky with a buddy.

So here is the recipe WITH photos. 

Unrelated: is it possible to make crock pot food look appetizing while it's still in the crock pot? With the exception of BBQ and ribs, I'm not sure it is.

Fantastic tip from Mel at Upgrading Melissa, leave a wooden spoon on or over your pot of boiling pasta. When the pot invariably starts to boil over, this will stop it. Pretty cool and it works! PS: doesn't her recipe for roasted asparagus pasta with balsamic butter sauce look yummy?

*****

Crock Pot Beef Stroganoff
20 mins active, 5-6 hours cook time
Serves 4-6


1 pound cubed beef of your choice
2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed golden mushroom soup
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup water
1 bullion cube
1/2 packet of onion soup mix
Dash of garlic salt
Freshly ground pepper1 heaping Tbsp of sour cream
4 ounces cream cheese 


In a slow cooker, combine the meat, Golden Mushroom soup, chopped onion, Worcestershire sauce, water, bullion cube, soup mix and water.  Season with a dash of garlic salt and some pepper.

Cook on low setting for 5-6 hours (or high for 3-4).  Add sauteed mushrooms 30 minutes before serving.  Stir in cream cheese and sour cream just before serving.  Best served over egg noodles.

Sugar Cookies + How to Soften Butter

This weekend Roy made a request for sugar cookies. And not only did he want to eat them, he wanted to bake them from scratch and then decorate them. Decoded this meant Roy wanted to eat some cookie dough.

My immediate reaction was to freak out.  I don't typically bake from scratch and I thought for sure I wouldn't have all the ingredients necessary.  One Internet search later, I was looking at Alton Brown's recipe with 684 positive reviews.  And shockingly, I HAD all the ingredients.  I felt immediately more grown up and mature. Then again the "ingredients" constituted flour, butter, sugar, an egg and baking powder.  Knock that maturity marker down a notch or two.

I helped Roy locate all the ingredients because we would have been there for hours if he had to find the baking powder on his own.  But after setting everything out, I tried to sit quietly and watch while he enjoyed the creative process.  For the record, after he enjoyed the creative process, he got to enjoy the clean up process.  We're equal opportunity in this household.  :)

Unfortunately, we had places to go that evening and couldn't wait for the butter to soften naturally.  I know enough not to microwave butter if you're using it for baking, unless the recipe specifically calls for it.  Another Internet search later and I was testing out this little tip...

To soften butter for baking, place a stick or half a stick between two sheets of wax paper and roll out with a rolling pin.  A recipe that calls for "softened butter" isn't calling for butter at a specific temperature necessarily, it's just calling for butter that is pliable and moldable.  Something that will work well when creamed with sugar.   That being said, you're going to have a hard time rolling out a stick of just-out-of-the-fridge cold butter.  You should let it warm up for a few minutes before breaking out your rolling pin.

Softened butter in hand, Roy finished the dough which we refrigerated overnight (technically the recipe only requires 2 hours of chill time but like I said, we had places to go and all).

One thing that I found unusual about this recipe was that it called for you to sprinkle powdered sugar on your baking surface.  Has this always been the way you make sugar cookies?!?  I just assumed it would be flour since that's what you usually use in baking.  Once I tried the cookies I completely understood the powdered sugar.  It gives the cookies just a smidgen of extra sweetness, it's perfect.

The 684 people who reviewed this recipe weren't wrong.  These cookies are good!  I'll be hanging on to the recipe and trying them with a bit of lemon extract and lemon icing come spring.  You could always try a bit of almond extract too if you prefer that flavor.

These turned out just like sugar cookies should, a little bit crispy around the edges and softer in the middle.  They're melt in your mouth good without icing (thanks to that little bit of powdered sugar) but they're not so sweet that the addition of icing makes them overwhelming. 

*****

Alton Brown's Sugar Cookies
Makes 2 1/2 dozen cookies, 15 mins prep, 2 hours inactive

3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
Powdered sugar, for rolling out dough


Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Place butter and sugar in large bowl of electric stand mixer and beat until light in color. Add egg, vanilla extract and milk and beat to combine. Put mixer on low speed, gradually add flour, and beat until mixture pulls away from the side of the bowl. Divide the dough in half, wrap in waxed paper, and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Sprinkle surface where you will roll out dough with powdered sugar. Remove 1 wrapped pack of dough from refrigerator at a time, sprinkle rolling pin with powdered sugar, and roll out dough to 1/4-inch thick. Move the dough around and check underneath frequently to make sure it is not sticking. If dough has warmed during rolling, place cold cookie sheet on top for 10 minutes to chill. Cut into desired shape, place at least 1-inch apart on greased baking sheet, parchment, or silicone baking mat, and bake for 7 to 9 minutes or until cookies are just beginning to turn brown around the edges, rotating cookie sheet halfway through baking time.

Let sit on baking sheet for 2 minutes after removal from oven and then move to complete cooling on wire rack. Serve as is or ice as desired. Store in airtight container for up to 1 week.

Quick Tip - cutting watermelon

I love watermelon, but I hate the mess it makes when I'm cutting it up at home.  The juice ends up everywhere and invariably, someone walks thru it and spreads it around the rest of the house.  And my OCD personality just can't handle it.

Late last summer I brought home a cool yellow watermelon from the farmers market and was digging around for a cutting board which I conveniently store right next to my bacon cooking dishes.  That's right.  I said dishes.  Plural.  As in more than one.  I don't mess around with bacon.

The larger bacon dish caught my eye and immediately a light bulb went off. If I cut the watermelon on the raised edges in the dish, the juice would all run down the tray and collect at the end, where the bacon fat normally goes. The sticky, messy juice would stay contained, there would be less to clean up, and everyone would be happy!

Flash forward through the long winter to a few weeks ago when the Royfriend brought home a 10 lb watermelon from the store.   What's that you say?  A 10 lb watermelon for just the two of you?  Are you secretly competing to be the next Duggar family?  No, no we are not.  Apparently someone had a case of "my eyes are bigger than my stomach, my fridge, and all the tupperware in my house".

Anyway, turns out Mr. Engineer thought my idea was pretty brilliant.  And I was beyond excited about how little mess came from that 10 lb watermelon.  Everybody wins!

xoxo,
The Eater