Posts

Showing posts from December, 2013

Best Vegetable Recipes of 2013 ♥

Your favorite vegetable recipes of 2013 from A Veggie Venture, one per month, all in one handy spot for easy reference. Yes, this year I'm featuring your favorite recipes , the vegetable recipes which you and other readers and visitors come back to again and again, all year long. It's that time of year, the week when we food bloggers look back over a year's worth of recipes and pick our favorites! I love-love-love this process! It really helps us hone our recipe collections, highlighting the best of the already very good, especially for sites like A Veggie Venture and my food column Kitchen Parade which by design, already post only really good recipes, the ones that work, the ones that are special or especially useful. (Here's the 2013 favorite recipes from Kitchen Parade too.) But I also love all the many sources of "best of the year" lists for movies, books, gadgets, etc. So this year, I'm collecting "best of the year" lists on Pinterest

Easy Appetizer: Hot Corn Dip ♥

Today's easy appetizer recipe: Just five pantry ingredients and ten minutes, that's all it takes to put this appetizer together. Are you good at appetizers? Me, not so much. :-( But this Hot Corn Dip was a hit on Christmas Eve afternoon during our annual family open house for forty or fifty or some times sixty people – I never count, we're just happy that the extended family is in one place for a few hours. But right, the dip. So yes, I watched one person after another dip a Frito corn chip into the hot dip and then go back for another, each time savoring the cheesy warmth. For a casual New Year's, for an upcoming playoff game and the Superbowl, this is a winner!

Easy Make-Ahead Endive & Apple Salad ♥ Recipe

Today's winter salad recipe: Just sliced endive and apple tossed in a quick curry vinaigrette. Make-ahead for holiday buffets or potluck gatherings, adding welcome freshness and a bit of "crunch" to rich food. Note #1: The Saturday before Thanksgiving is grand timing for a party! We were feeling all geared up and festive but it was too soon to start cooking for Thanksgiving and way too soon to be (over)planning Christmas gatherings. So that night, four couples gathered for an "Alsatian Harvest Feast" – and did we ever feast ! The meal was seven courses over five hours, each course better than the next. A charcuterie platter with two kinds of hand-made Alsatian sausage. Swiss and French raclette, warmed until melty on the stove in a small cast iron serving dish. (We have three, all from Lodge, small to slightly bigger to slightly bigger still, an oval , a rectangle and a round . We love them all!) Chicken liver pate. Excellent homemade bread! Warm onion soup