Charleston Cheese Dip

On New Year's Eve, I was looking at Mommy's Kitchen's blog.  She had listed a cheese dip named the Charleston cheese dip.  The name alone intrigued me because Charleston, South Carolina is on my list of favorite places to visit.  My mother-in-law was born there and would spend summers there while growing up.

Two months after I married my Hubby, we traveled with my mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law to Charleston.  We stayed in a beach house on Folly Beach with Hubby's grandma.  I quickly got to know the family during that week.  I met Hubby's family who live down there.  Most of all, I feel in love with Charleston.  It is a beautiful city rich in history.

Since then, I have been down there 3 more times.  The boys have been there 2 of the times.  Once when the Wee One was only 2 months old and the Imaginative One was 2 years old.  The other time was almost 3 years ago.  One of our not so good memories from that trip was the Wee One sticking his finger in the drain of the shower.  Fortunately my in-laws were also visiting Charleston that week and were down the road.  My sister-in-law came down and checked over his cut finger and determined the cut was not deep enough to warrant a visit to the ER.

Another memory from that trip was the Imaginative One's fear of the ocean.  His cousin, 22 months older, told him that there were jelly fish in the ocean.  The Imaginative One refused to get into the ocean again because he was afraid he was going to get stung by jelly fish.  So aggravating!  One day he and I went over to the beach and were playing by these concrete barriers.  He gets up and had dog poop all over him.  Visitors were allowed to have dogs on the beach as long as they cleaned up after them.  This visitor just covered the poop with sand.  That was disgusting to clean up.

[caption id="attachment_1785" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Folly Beach, Charleston, South Carolina"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_1786" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="The shower drain the Wee One got his finger stuck in."][/caption]

Anyway, back to the recipe.  I was looking at Mommy's Kitchen's blog entry and saw Charleston Cheese Dip and decided I would make it for New Year's Eve.  It was easy to whip up and delicious to boot.  I didn't have any monterey jack cheese so I just used extra sharp cheddar cheese instead.  Since we don't really like really spicy foods around here, I did not use any of the cayenne pepper.  Plus I don't think we even have any in the house.

Charleston Cheese Dip

Mommy's Kitchen

Stars of the recipe:

• 1/2 c. mayonnaise


• 1 - 8oz package cream cheese, softened


• 1 c. grated sharp cheddar cheese


• 1/2 c. grated Monterey jack cheese


• 2 green onions, finely chopped


• Dash of cayenne pepper


• 8 Ritz crackers, crushed


• 8 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled

Steps:

1. 
   
   Preheat oven to 350 degrees.


2. 
   
   In a medium bowl, mix the mayonnaise, cream cheese, cheddar cheese, Monterey jack cheese, green onions and cayenne pepper.


3. 
   
   Transfer the mixture to a shallow baking dish.


4. 
   
   Top mixture with cracker crumbs and bake for 15 minutes, or until heated through.


5. 
   
   Remove the pan from the oven and top with the bacon.


6. 
   
   Serve immediately with corn chips, bagel chips or crackers.

This post is linked up to Ingredient Spotlight.

Wordless Wednesday

Monday ended up being a snowy day.  The Imaginative One and the Wee One went outside for maybe a total of 10 minutes.  Most of it was in and out the front door to complain about the cold, their brother, or to get more snow gear on.

Hubby told them if they got the living room picked up and vacuumed, he would allow them to get out the legos.  They quickly did that.  The rest of the afternoon was spent playing with those legos on the floor.  Even Hubby got into the action.

Every New Years Eve, the Imaginative One, the Wee One, and I head over to my mother-in-law's house to ring in the new year.  A new tradition was created a couple of years ago.  The grandkids (4 of them in total) spend the night at grandma and grandpa's house after staying up until after midnight.  Mommy and daddy (if he is off of work) go home to an empty house which is nice.

During the hours that lead up to midnight, we watch tv or movies, eat snacks, or play games.  The kids also do a craft.  Last year, it was painting Christmas ornaments that my mother-in-law stored until Christmas time this year.  I decided we could decorate sugar cookies.  I already knew which cookies I was going to bake.  The problem was what kind of frosting was I going to make for the cookies.  I didn't want a glaze that would be super messy and I didn't want anything that would be too difficult to frost a cookie with.

I finally found the recipe at Allrecipes.com.  It was super easy to put together using my Kitchen aid mixer.

After I whipped up the frosting, I put it into 4 seperate containers and then added different food dye to the frosting so they could have different colors.  When I handed each of them a container of frosting, they stayed with that one color with the exception of the Imaginative One.

[caption id="attachment_1753" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Sugar Cookie Frosting"][/caption]

(I made the some of the cookies into the shape of vampire teeth because I thought the boys would enjoy decorating those.  They also decorated the cookies on placemats so there would be less mess to clean up.  The sprinkles I had were Valentine themed ones so my nephew used those on his sugar cookies.)

Here is the recipe:

Sugar Cookie Frosting

Stars of the recipe:

• 
  
  2 cups of powdered sugar


• 
  
  1/4 cup of shortening or butter


• 
  
  2 Tbsp and 1.5 tsps of milk


• 
  
  1/2 tsp. vanilla extract


• 
  
  food coloring

Steps:

1. 
   
   In a large bowl, cream together powdered sugar and shortening (or softened butter)


2. 
   
   Gradually mix in the milk and vanilla extract with an electric mixer until smooth and stiff (about 5 minutes).


3. 
   
   Color with food colored if desired.

Snow Day

During December, we really didn't see snow.  It tried to snow last Tuesday but it was more rainy then snow.  We had lots of rain.  In fact, there was a couple of times I thought I would need to take a boat to work because of how much rain we got.  Yesterday the day started out as a mild day with temperatures around 50 degrees.  During church, it started to get really windy.  In fact, we kept hearing the wind whistle throughout the service.  The rest of the day was windy with the temperatures falling quickly.  We ended the day with temperatures in the lower 30s to high 20s.

This morning I woke up to snow falling.  It's been nonstop ever since.  The Wee One and the Imaginative One decided to go outside.  They only lasted a few minutes before calling it a day.  They wanted to warm up with hot chocolate.

Here is a picture of the boys enjoying their snow day:

Menu Planning Monday ~ January 2, 2012

I go back to work on Wednesday.  It will be nice to get some normalcy back  in my life but on the other hand it's been nice to be able to relax and not worry about my students for a little while.  They keep me on my toes while I am teaching them.  Things they do and say are priceless.  I always say I could write a book about some of the words that come out of their mouths.

Going back to work means limited time to get food on the table when I get home.  If I don't menu plan, I'm like a fish out of water.  I just flop around and don't always cook or eat what I should.  Which is not good at all.

Here is my plan for this upcoming week:

Monday - baked spaghetti, left-over Italian bread, spinach salad

Tuesday - ham egg casserole, buttermilk biscuits, pancakes or waffles, fruit

Wednesday - veggie beef soup, rolls, left-over spinach salad

Thursday - eat whatever you like night

Friday - Thai veggies with pork over rice (with a peanut sauce)

Saturday  - chicken scampi, angel hair pasta, some sort of veggie

Linked up to:  Menu Plan Monday

Happy New Year!  I haven't blogged as much as I like during the past year.  This needs to be corrected.

Right before Christmas, I was browsing through Not Rachael Ray's blog and found this recipe for sugar cookies.  I had all of the ingredients so I got to work baking those cookies.  Oh my goodness, these are easy cookies to make.  I usually have lots of problems when using cookie cutters.  Only a few times did I have a problem.

Last night being New Years Eve, I decided to make a batch of the sugar cookies and homemade icing so the Imaginative One, the Wee One, and their cousins could decorate sugar cookies while waiting for midnight to come.  With the excitement in the air and the anticipation of the new year, they quickly decorated the cookies (5 to 10 minutes tops) before they were back to playing and their movie marathon.  The cookies were soon forgotten.  Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Rachel offers three different variations for these cookies.  I'm only going to only list one of the variations which is the simple cut out cookie.

[caption id="attachment_1746" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Sugar Cookies"][/caption]

(We had decorated them on place mats so we did not get my mother-in-law's table super messy.  Both the Imaginative One and the Wee One managed to get sprinkles and icing all over their mats.  So I removed them from the mats to clean them and put their cookies on their plastic bags to dry.)

Sugar Cookies

Not Rachael Ray

Stars of the recipe:

• 4 cups flour


• 2 teaspoons baking powder


• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda


• 1/2 teaspoon salt


• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg


• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened


• 2 cups sugar


• 2 large eggs


• 1/4 cup milk


• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract


• 1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

Steps:

1. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg in a bowl.


2. In a separate bowl, combine butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla extract and lemon extract.


3. Add milk and flour alternately until combined.


4. Chill dough until easy to handle. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.


5. Roll dough out on a well floured board or counter (for crisp cookies, roll to about 1/8” and for softer cookies roll to about 1/4”).


6. Cut with floured cutter.


7. Bake at 350*F for 6-7 minutes.

Here is the link to the frosting recipe.

 

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.



Here's an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,600 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 43 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.