Greenbay Packers Baked Bratwurst Buns

Yesterday was a very important game for the Greenbay Packers against the Chicago Bears to determine whether or not they would go the playoffs, and Aaron Rodgers was back after his injury. And my husband says I don't pay attention. It's more a matter of caring, and I only care to the extent that I care that he cares.

Mexican Chorizo Monkey Bread

I love the color the avocado gives this!

Thanks to the folks on pinterest, I've recently been exposed to images of monkey bread. For those of you who have not been sucked into the addictive world of pinterest, let me explain.

Traditional monkey bread can be described as a cinnamon roll cake. Little balls of dough are covered in cinnamon sugar and baked inside of a loaf pan, cake pan, or bundt pan. When it comes out, the little balls stick together, but can be pulled apart easily instead of slicing. I've never eaten traditional monkey bread, but it sounds pretty delicious.

The variety that I've seen on pinterest most often is pizza monkey bread. In this incarnation, the dough balls are stuffed with mozzarella and pepperoni and then dipped in marinara sauce. This seemed like an excellent ideas, but  I didn't have pepperoni and I did have some pretty tasty Mexican ingredients. My variation is a little bit different, stuffed with Mexican chorizo, corn, onion, tomato, cream cheese, avocado, and mozzarella. I made some cumin sour cream to dip it in.

Green Bay Packers Potato Skins

look at those tasty potato skins

Fun Fact: Nathan is a huge Packers fan. And it's football season again, so that means football snacks. For our first snack of the season (which I did make opening weekend!), I did a Packers themed potato skin. I took what I see as the flavors of Wisconsin and combined them into deliciousness.

Potato skins are a great football appetizer and can be modified to suit your favorite team... in fact Food Network did just that! oooh potato skin ideas I tried the packers one for this last year, but I found it to be a little bit too heavy and difficult to eat with the sliced bratwurst. I also didn't know (at that point) what beer cheese spread was so I used some regular cheddar

Nathan's Surprise Star Wars Birthday

the main party table

Nathan's birthday was last week on a Tuesday and we really didn't do anything for it. Both of us ended up working late and we ate burgers with a dessert of pudding. He didn't mind, he's not super into his birthday. I don't think he noticed that I didn't get him a gift.

On Saturday he happily went up to see the house that our friend had just bought in New Jersey, not realizing that it was a ruse to get him out of the apartment for a few hours. I went into hyperdrive cooking/cleaning/decorating mode with the components that I had hidden all over the house.

Tex-Mex Dip and Homemade Chips

I have this great book of fingerfood recipes that has a ton of great ideas. The basics of its recipes are awesome and the reality of them are ridiculously challenging and full of ingredients I have no access to. I don't live in NYC or LA. I'm in Delaware and while we have a respectable number of of ethnic food stores, there are some things I can't get. My regular grocery store doesn't even carry dried lentils. 18 different types of dried beans, but not a lentil in sight. Weird right?

yum! I would eat you again through the picture if that were possible

Anyway, I flip through my fingerfood book, looking at all the pretty pictures and generally inspiring myself. This recipes is adapted from one in my book using ingredients I could find and liked (cilantro is gross) using techniques that seemed more practical than those in the book (why would I drain tomatoes when I can just seed them? why would I bake the sausage on a pan when I can stir it in a skillet?).

It turned out really well and Nathan and I both enjoyed it. It was more mild in flavor that I anticipated with the amount of chorizo sausage which I think of as quite spicy. It's possible that that was due to the brand I bought. I would probably add in some diced jalapeno or other spicyness in the future.

Tex-Mex Dip with Homemade Chip

my mouths view

Ingredients

8 6-inch flour tortillas
3-4 Tbsp olive oil

8 oz chorizo sausage (uncooked)
2 cups tomato (seeded and chopped)
1 avocado chopped
1/4 red onion chopped
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp olive oil
sour cream

Directions

Remove chorizo sausage from casings. Cook in a skillet until browned. Put on a paper towel lined plate and set aside.

Cut tortillas into triangles (about 6-8 per tortilla). In a large pan, heat 2 Tbsp of olive oil over medium-high heat. Add in a layer of tortilla triangles. Fry for about 30 seconds on either side, or until golden brown on both sides. Remove to a paper-towel lined plate.  Add more olive oil as necessary and continue frying until all triangles are golden brown. These are not going to be crispy like a corn chip, but they are going to be super delicious.

In a bowl, mix together tomatoes, avocado, onion, balsamic, and olive oil. Stir in the chorizo sausage.  

Spoon on top of chips with sour cream.

Sunday on a Stick

As I was searching for new and exciting recipes last week, I came across these potato pinchos from the food network. While they look delicious (and I may eventually try them out) what I really liked about them was the fact that they were on toothpicks. Nothing says classy like being served on a stick.

Eventually I decided to stick (get it) with two different recipes. The first choice was due mostly to the fact that I bought a couple of sweet potatoes earlier in the week and needed to use them.

Behold sweet potato sausage bites!



I had a really hard time getting my camera to focus on them...

 These were awesomely easy, and I also made them healthier!
Ingredients:
1 sweet potato washed
half a package smoked sausage.. about 7 oz (I used Hillshire Smoked Turkey Sausage... see? healthy.)
pinch of cayenne pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper

for sauce
1/2 cup mayo (I used reduced fat)
1 T lemon juice
1 tsp garlic (I used the pre-minced kind you get in a jar 'cause I was too lazy to chop)
1 T minced parsley

Directions
Preheat your oven to 450F
Cut your sweet potato into half inch "cubes". You'll notice that since the potato itself is round you don't get 100% as squares or rectangles. This is ok, they will taste delicious.

Put your cubes in a bowl and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Spread across a greased baking sheet.
Bake for about 15-20mins, turning two or three times. They will get sorta carmelized and extra delicious

While your sweet potato is baking slice up your sausage. I did about half inch slices and then halved them so they are half circles. Place your sausage in a hot pan and sprinkle with the cayenne pepper. Alternately you could have bought spicy sausage and just left out the cayenne...

Let the sausage brown on both sides, it will only a minute or two per side.

Make your dipping sauce! These are totally delicious with no sauce at all, so if you're looking to cut your calories even further you can just not make it. Mix all ingredients. Store in fridge. This is actually best if it can sit a little bit to let the flavors meld, so feel free to make it the night before you want your snack.

Skewer your potato and sausage. I did it potato on the bottom, but you could put the sausage on the bottom.

These are good hot, and also good at room temperature so they're awesome for those of us who like to make things a little in advance and eat them throughout an extended period. I would make these exactly the same again and again because they were a great blend of sweet and salty with a bit of spice.

I also made Tortellini Salad Skewers

Ingredients

1 package frozen toretllini (cheese or meat your choice!)

1 package grape or cherry tomatoes

Olives--I used blue cheese stuffed olives from the fancy olive bar at my grocery store about 1/2 lb

1/2 cup vinagrette style dressing--I used Zesty Italian

Directions

Cook about 40 tortellini according to package directions. Drain and rinse with cold water. Set aside.

Halve 20 tomatoes and all of your olives.

Skewer half a tomato, a tortellini, and an olive half on each skewer.

Place skewers in a 9x13 dish. Pour dressing over top. Let sit in fridge for a few hours (I left mine overnight). Remove skewers from dish to a separate serving tray. Discard excess dressing.

Eat!

Here was my issue with this recipe... the olive was super over powering. I ended up eating the olives in one bite (because blue cheese stuffed olives are AMAZING. go eat one right now) and then the tomato and tortellini together in another. This was partially my bad because if you look at my reference recipes below you'll see that it in fact called for snow peas instead of olives but I was thinking a mediterranean flair would be tasty...I think if it were to make this into an actual salad vs a skewered salad I would still include the olives but have significantly higher proportion of tortellini and tomato.

original sweet potato sausage recipe

tortellini salad skewere original recipe