Potlucking - Punch and Meatballs

We went to a potluck a couple of weeks ago - lots of fun and enough food for half a neighborhood.  There was spinach dip and chips and dip, dry ribs, wings, salads, meat and cheese, veggies, breads, desserts, cookies.....you name it.  I ate too  much and it was glorious.

We took some raw veggies because our kids are pretty picky eaters but they will always eat some raw vegetables; and they did, but they ate nearly everything else as well.  I was surprised and impressed. 

I made some grape jelly meatballs - The Mister had these at a party years and years ago (we still lived in Calgary!) and we keep meaning to make them, and finally their time arrived.

I used this recipe and they were perfect.

We also made a punch called Lifesaver Punch from Best of Bridge.  

It is a thawed can of Strawberry Daiquiri mix and a thawed can of Pink Lemonade mix and 4 cups of Ginger Ale.  I found it too sweet so I added the other half of the 2 liter bottle  of Ginger Ale and still thought it was too sweet, but it was all drankened (huh?) up, and the boys have requested I make it at home this holiday season.  

The other potluck we were to go to we have bowed out of; so thankfully I am done with that for the year.  I am focusing on getting to the end of 2017 in one piece and wishing for a joyful new year.

Potluck Salad, and Merry Merry

My work hasn't been having regular potlucks for a few years now, 

we are down to one in December. 

We decided to do all appies for the potluck this year, 

so we divided our group into appies, desserts and drink. 

 I was in the appie category and I decided to do a salad. 

 I spent an hour perusing Pinterest and ended up choosing 

one of the first salads I looked at - 

Autumn Apple Salad with a Maple Vinaigrette.  

The recipe makes salad for one, so I made 4 times the amount 

of dressing (which was a lot, but that's ok because it's really good), 

and then just added the other ingredients to a container of

 baby romaine - crumbled bacon, dried cranberries, pecans, feta cheese and apples.  

The salad was AMAZING.  So delicious.  

I made more for The Mister and I on the weekend and he loved it too.  

 This is a super duper keeper.

Recipe: Autumn Apple Salad with a Maple Vinaigrette

Can you BELIEVE it's the end of 2016.  

This year completely sailed by.  

It was good and bad for me and my family, just like it probably was for you, 

just like it was for everyone.  

I'm holding tight to the good stuff and trying to let the other stuff flow away.  

Whether you celebrate at this time of year or not, Cheers.  

Be happy, be safe, be loving, be kind.

Paleo casserole and Potluck

This is another dish I cooked from Quick and Easy Paleo Comfort Foods that I just loved.  It's a chicken and broccoli casserole, and the sauce is made from cauliflower and coconut milk and curry powder.  Delicious!  And thankfully the leftovers reheated well, because we had leftovers for a few days.  I like this book a lot.

I'm recovering from our latest potluck at work - what a feast!  My friend made a baked corn dish that reminded me of a souffle, and I really liked it.  There were lemon meringue pies in mason jars (so cute) and a decadent mint chocolate milkshake too. 

I was on salad duty and I wanted something different.  After searching Pinterest for 3 days I found a contender - a sweet potato salad with a cranberry chipolte dressing.  Yum!

I tested it out at home and loved everything about it, except that I found the dressing to be a bit too spicy for me, and I know a couple of the ladies attending the potlucks aren't fans of spice. (Yes, they suck.)  So I cut way back on the chipolte, and added a smidge more honey.  I took the salad unassembled to work, so I had 6 containers of various sizes to haul to work.  But who cares, it's potluck day!

I decided the night before to bring some extra cranberries, and I rough chopped them and folded them in the salad along with the pumpkin seeds (perfect touch in the salad), cilantro, green onions and dressing.

Everyone enjoyed it, and it was a nice healthy dish to stand up to the pie, milkshakes, and rice that was on the table.

Original recipe here

Orange and Lime Ice Tea

I'm trying to find a drink recipe for the next work potluck - I am on drink duty (obvs) which seriously is the toughest course. 

 I made this on the weekend and it's definitely on the short list, which needs to get shorted asap. 

 I really REALLY like ice tea and the addition of citrus is good. I went with only 1 tb of brown sugar but I'm thinking that if this makes the cut, I'll up it to 2. 

Orange and Lime Iced Tea 

from smoothies and juices by Christine Ambridge 

 1 1/4 cup water 

2 tea bags 

scant 1/2 cup orange juice 

4 tb lime juice

1-2 tb brown sugar 

8 ice cubes 

to garnish (i didn't) 

wedge of lime 

sugar 

slices of fresh orange, lemon or lime 

Pour the water into a pan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, add the tea bags and leave to infuse for 5 minutes. 

Remove the tea bags and let the tea cool to room temperature. 

Transfer to a pitcher, cover with plastic wrap, and chill in the refrigerator for 45 minutes. 

 When the tea has chilled, stir in the orange and lime juices. Add sugar to taste. 

Take two glasses and rub the rims with a wedge of lime, then dip into the sugar to frost. 

Place the ice cubes in the glasses and pour over the tea. 

Decorate the rims with slices of fresh orange, lemon or lime, and serve.

Potlucks and Lis' Antipasta Squares

We've somewhat revived our potlucks at work, and have had 2 in the past few months.  For the first one I was on dessert duty, so I busted out the great recipe for Chocolate Valentino Cake from the February 2009 Daring Bakers challenge.  It's a very simple recipe that results in a decadant cake that was a hit at the lunch.

No photo.

Since I heard the news about Lis passing away I have visited her blog a few times, reading random posts, bookmarking a few recipes to try.  Last week we had our Christmas appetizer potluck, and I decided to make one of the recipes I saved from her blog - Antipasta Squares.  It's one of her very first posts, and it made me smile to read it.  

I did a test run on the recipe, using the meats and cheeses she suggested.  It was good - but a little too meaty and eggy for me.  I decided that for the potluck I would change the meats to ham and turkey, and use marble cheese.

The night before the potluck I found some home-roasted bell peppers in the freezer, so I thawed them, chopped them and stirred in some salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar.

We are lucky to have an oven at work so I baked the squares about an hour before the lunch started.  I layered the ham and turkey on the bottom crust, topped with the cheese, and sprinkled a layer of the roasted peppers on.  The second crust went on, and into the oven it went.  They turned out quite well, other than being a bit ugly to look at (so no photo!).  My co-workers ate more than I had expected, but luckily there were a few squares to take home for snacking.

The possibilities are truly endless with this recipe; you are limited only by your imagination for your filling.  I'll be coming back to this recipe again.

Recipe: Antipasta Square

Baci di Cioccolati - the best chocolate cookies

I rarely look at "stats" for my blog, but every year starting in November, my daily visitor numbers start to climb, when everyone begins looking for cookie recipes for holiday baking.  My number one post each year is always for shortbread - here - but I want to share another recipe with you today, in case you are looking for a simple, amazing, knock your socks off cookie recipe. 

My mom makes these every few years, and I made them a couple of months ago for a work potluck and handed out the extras to some co-workers, and the next day I had to make about 15 copies of the recipe to hand out, they were so popular.  These are delicious and truffle-like and gorgeous.

This recipe comes from the book Dishing: Calgary Women Cook.

Baci di Cioccolati

Rosemary Harbrecht

Makes 4 dozen

10 oz semi sweet chocolate

2/3 cup butter

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

   pinch salt

1 cup dried cranberries

1 cup dried apricots, choppped

1 cup white chocolate chips

Gently melt the chocolate and butter together in a double boiler or microwave.  Let cool.

Beat the eggs and sugar together until thick.  Add the vanilla and melted chocolate and butter.  Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt and mix well.  Fold in the dried fruits, and then the while chocolate chips.

Preheat the oven to 325'.  Drop by spoonfuls onto a greased or lined cookie sheet.  Bake 12 minutes, until the tops are crackly, puffy and shiny.  They will remain soft after baking. 

Potlucks

Last summer a couple of the ladies that I work with and I were talking about work, how stressed we could get, how sometimes we felt solitary, even though there are people everywhere.  The idea of a morale-boosting lunch came up, and after no progress in the weeks that followed, I jumped in and organized a potluck lunch for our department.

It was a great lunch; fun and relaxing and full of amazing food.  We decided to do it monthly and we have been, for the past 7 months now.  I am still the organizer and each month after the date is picked I email everyone their course.  (I have a spreadsheet I created to keep track of who has made which course for what month, so no one has to make a main course 3 months in a row.)  It's a nice way to socialize and relax for an hour.  It's also a super way to find new recipes.  The dishes have been creative and awesome and we definitely eat well.  We've had pulled pork sandwiches, quesadillas, Italian meatloaf, bacon wrapped asparagus, cheesecake, and oh mah gawd.  So much good food.  Gee, I can't figure out why I am not losing any weight......

I don't have photos of most of my dishes but I thought I'd share what I've made for the lunches so far.

1.  Vegetable - Cauliflower with Tomato Curry Sauce- I found this in a Weight Watchers cookbook I own. Recipe here.  This was fabulous and the curry sauce is amazing.  It would be great on other veggies or even meat, if you were so inclined. 

2. Dessert - Tofu Mousse.  Even after all these months, this is still a sore spot with me.  I have made this mousse a few times before.  It is really really good mousse.  Anyway the day of the potluck I shared the "secret" of the mousse with one of my friends.  She was quite surprised and was looking forward to trying it.  Since it has been a few years since I made it, all of a sudden I couldn't decide if I should take the mousses out of the fridge for a while before the lunch, or leave them in until the last minute.  I left them in the fridge, which was the wrong thing to do.  The mousse was too firm.  As my friend blurted out the ingredients of the mousse everyone took their first bite.....and it was too cold and too hard.  No one said anything, but I could see that most people weren't enjoying it.  I told everyone to let the dessert sit on their desks for a bit that afternoon and then eat them.  I know a couple of them did, but I know a few got tossed out.  It bummed me out, that a tofu dish was getting a bad rap AND quite frankly, that I was coming off looking like I don't know how to cook.

3. Main dish - Lettuce Wraps.  This was a Rachael Ray recipe, chicken and veggies wrapped in lettuce.  It was good.

4.  Christmas - Caramels - This one has a story behind it that I was planning on telling here, but I don't know if I will.  Short version is that I tried to make butterscotch sauce for ice cream, but it solidified, so I smeared it on to pretzel squares and drizzled them with chocolate for our Christmas potluck.

5. Drink - Grapefruit Margaritas - Everyone in the potluck group has agreed that Drink is the hardest category - especially when the drink has to be non-alcoholic.  I found a recipe at Martha Stewart for Pink Grapefruit Margaritas.  They were a hit - very refreshing.  I will make these again when the weather warms up.

6.  Appie - Tomatos Stuffed with Guacamole - so easy to make.

7. Salad - Chop Chop Salad.  I have a photo of this one, only because I've made it before.  A real winner from Guy Fieri.  Excellent.