Vegetable Dip

Every Friday night, I go to bible study. We meet in a friends home, and every week someone else takes a turn preparing and bringing snack. This week was my turn, so I decided to put together veggies and dip. Never really feeling like buying a tub of prepared dip with all sorts of delicious chemicals in it, I decided instead to make my own. Of course, Ranch Dip is the undisputed leader in the world of Veggie Dips, so it was to a new recipe app on my phone that I looked. Ya know, there really is an app for everything these days.
I discovered a delicious looking recipe for ranch dip, and set about to put it together.

3/4 C. Sour Cream
1/2 C. Mayonnaise
1/3 C. Fresh Chopped Parsley
1/4 C. Fresh Chopped Chives
1/4 tsp. Minced Garlic
Dash of Salt
Dash of Pepper

I started by preparing the parsley and chives. I discovered that I had no fresh parsley, but I did find some dried parsley in the cabinet, so I decided to use that. I worked out just fine. Then I chopped up the chives. I love chives. In fact, I often will substitute green onions instead of regular onions in some recipes.

Next, I mixed the mayonnaise and sour cream with the greens.

Then I added the garlic, salt and pepper.

I mixed it up and stuck it into the fridge for a bit to let the flavors mix. Also because the parsley needed to soften up.

After it was chilled, I arranged the veggies on the plate and took it to the bible study.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I know I did. :)

Crockpot: Cheesy Chicken and Broccoli

I've been rather relaxed about blogging here, of late, but the time has come to once again begin posting recipes. I have actually made quite a few things recently, and hope to upload them soon.
The first recipe is, once again, a crockpot recipe. In case you haven't noticed, I really like crock pot recipes. This particular one I pulled off of the internet. I was looking for a good recipe to make with the ingredients I had on hand. Namely, frozen chicken, several cream soups, and broccoli.
I love broccoli, but I had recently purchased a lot, and was afraid I wouldn't get around to eating it before it went bad, so i decided to use it up. A good looking recipe popped up almost immediately, and I proceeded to put it together.

I started with the cream soups. The recipe called for Cream of Broccoli (although the recipe said any basic cream soup, such as Cream of Chicken, or Cream of Celery, could be substituted. This was good, since I hadn't any cream of broccoli. I substituted the Cream of Celery and moved on. The other thing it called for was a can of Cream of Cheddar Cheese.
Now, this is a particular kind of soup that, as far as I know, is only made my Campbells. It's very good, and I knew I had bought a can recently, so I began to search through the cabinets to find it. No such luck. I searched more and still could not find it. Time was ticking, and I knew I'd have to leave for work soon, so I quickly googled a solution to my problem. (I later discovered that my brother had used the soup to make himself some cheese fondue sauce)

Luckily, Cream of Cheddar Cheese soup seems to not only be just a Campbells thing, but also only a North American thing. Several substitutions were suggested, including a mixture of evaporated milk and shredded cheddar cheese, cooked on the stove until the cheese melted. I tried this and the result was delicious. :D

So I took this cheese mixture, plus the celery soup, and poured it on top of several frozen chicken breasts, and then set it to cook for about 6 hours on low.

When it was about 2 hours away from being done, the broccoli got added.

Rice was made a few hours later. I love rice. ^_^

It looks pretty good!

Now, I have to say, this was not my favorite recipe. However, it's not because it's a bad recipe. It's mostly because I'm not a huge fan of cooked broccoli. It was hailed as a success by my taste-testers, though, so I imagine if you like broccoli, you'd probably like this very much. :D

Summer Harvest

A friend of ours with a large garden recently gave us lots of vegetables. Zucchini, Squash, and many Cucumbers.



















In an effort to cook all of them, I decided to challenge myself to make a full meal using at least one of those vegetables in each dish.

First up were the cucumber pickles. A favorite of mine since I was little, it's been awhile since I've made them. Slicing up all the cucumbers was easy, but then I realized we were out of onion. You simply cannot make cucumber pickles without onion and it looked like I'd have to make a trip to the store before I had planned to.
Instead, my sister's garden came to the rescue! She had planted onions that year, and I managed to dig up eight of the tiny vegetables to use. :)

After I set the cucumbers and onions to drain, I went off to the store to purchase the rest of the ingredients necessary to complete the meal.
Upon returning, I added the vinegar and sugar to the cucumbers and put them in the fridge to chill.



















On to the Summer Squash Bread!
I had two kinds of summer squash, so I grated up about a cup of each.



















The bread recipe called for nutmeg and cinnamon. After mixing all the ingredients, I took a small taste. It was rather delicious! I was going to put it in the regular bread pan, but decided to use a special bread pan acquired at a garage sale a few months back. It was designed to give bread that braided look.

In to the oven it goes!



















Moving on to the zucchini brownies, I decided to chop the pieces of zucchini smaller than I had the summer squash. I mixed up the whole concoction and had a taste. Not bad! A bit crunchy, but I figure the zucchini pieces will probably soften once they are baked in the brownies.



















The bread took longer to bake than I had hoped, but I think it may have been the fault of the pan. They finally finished, however, and it looked amazing!



















A quick taste proved the look true, and it quickly got added to my recipe book for future baking days.
The zucchini brownies did not take nearly as long to bake, but they were not quite the success I had hoped for. They came out, instead, rather flat. The taste was alright, but nothing phenomenal. Upon further examination of the recipe, I discovered that I had forgotten the baking soda. Explains the flatness. :P

























After those things were all ready, I started in on the main course. I diced up what was left of the squash and zucchini, and set it to steam on the stove



















I decided to add some fresh garlic, even though the recipe didn't exactly call for it. I have never cooked fresh garlic before, so I decided to just slice it up and saute it with the chicken.



















Then I put another pot of water on to boil, and added my pasta, while I used the front burner to saute the chicken and garlic in oil.


















20 minutes later, I took the veggies off the stove, drained the pasta, and cooked the last piece of chicken. With no further injuries than a few slight blisters from boiling olive oil, I considered my job well done. Quickly, I combined the pasta, veggies, chopped chicken and garlic.



















Then I added cubed mozzarella cheese, minced garlic, more olive oil, some sun-dried tomatoes, and parmesan cheese, and put it out on the table with the bread.




















I consider it to be rather a success, after having tasted it. I felt very Italian tonight. ^_^