appetizers

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Five Food Related Topics for Friday

1. First Attempt at Tuna Salad: Bolstered by everyone’s suggestions Monday, I bought some solid white tuna and made tuna salad. I used the America’s Test Kitchen recipe as a jumping off point, and then added red bell pepper. I also substituted pickle juice for pickles (I don’t like pickles in my tuna salad, although I do like celery and red onion), ignored the request that I add fresh parsley (parsley can die in a fire), and squeezed on some lemon juice. I also add capers to my sandwich before eating, although I don’t like mixing capers into the tuna salad itself for reasons I haven’t fully excavated from my soul. I sort of squinted so that the tuna in the can was blurry, and then added it to a mixing bowl and immediately put the other ingredients on top of it and stirred everything together so I didn’t have to think about the color of the tuna. It turned out okay. I think the tuna salad I love has more mayonnaise than I am willing to add to my own tuna salad, because I ostensibly don’t like mayonnaise. 

Next time, I will use more mayonnaise and less mustard; I can put mustard on the bread. I also want to make this mini focaccia because I like tuna salad on focaccia. 

2. Finger Food: In addition to tuna salad, I have been thinking about food a lot this week because we are having guests for the Super Bowl. There is almost nothing I like better than an excuse to make a bunch of fun and tasty appetizers that can be eaten in front of the TV.

We are having two guests, which brings the total of people who will presumably be eating food to five, although counting Carla is probably dumb because she will only eat chips and guacamole, nothing else. (She asked me to buy TWO bags of Lays and TWO bags of Tostitos because she is anticipating a LOT of chip eating.) Keep that in mind as I lay out all the many, many things I am slavering over. We will probably do one of the below things, plus some veggies. Our guests are bringing meatballs. And my husband is making seven layer dip (with taco meat and without olives) because that is the food that is calling to his heart. 

  • Air Fryer Bang Bang Salmon Bites: At various points my Instagram feed seems FULL of people making delicious looking salmon bites in the air fryer. I would love to try these and they seem perfect for a party. 
  • Bunless Cheeseburger Bites: These are adorable and they have the added benefits of being carb-free AND something that Carla would potentially eat. I am not crazy about making burgers in a frying pan though… if only I had additional air fryers to call into service.

  • Air Fryer Buffalo Cauliflower    : I am not much for buffalo wings, but I do love spicy cauliflower.
  • Mini Crabcakes: I really, really want to eat some crabcakes on Sunday and found a package of mini ones in my grocery store’s freezer section. But the price is deterring me. I could make them on my own. But… after the cost of crab claw meat and then making them myself, I wonder if it might not come out to more hassle than it’s worth?
  • Air Fryer Artichoke Hearts: Why does this sound so delicious??? I think only I and one of our guests will eat these, so probably they won’t make the final cut. But I am eyeing them!
  • Endive with Goat Cheese and Candied Nuts: I had this appetizer at a party a million years ago and it was so fresh and delicious and it is VERY EASY to make. You dollop some goat cheese on an endive leaf, add a few candied nuts, and then drizzle with balsamic reduction. This recipe that includes blood oranges sounds appealing, too. 
  • Spinach Artichoke Zucchini Bites: YUM. If I can find some pre-made spinach and artichoke dip at the grocery store, I might do these in addition to whatever else I choose. 

Are you planning to watch the Super Bowl? If so, what kind of snacks do you hope to eat? If not, what’s your favorite party appetizer to make or eat? 

3. Valentine’s Sweets: The Super Bowl will be followed closely by Valentine’s Day. Carla is SO INTO Valentine’s Day this year, and I love it. She and I scrolled through a billion options online for her to buy for her classmates and then she also made everyone a friendship bracelet. She filled all of them out the day they arrived in the mail. She also wanted a special Valentine’s Day outfit, and, while we were unable to track down the ideal dress she had in her mind (which I think was a floor length gown of tulle and sequins, which I expressly said she could not wear to school), we did find some adorable pink clothing at Target that she has already set aside for The Day. 

This is all to say that I am very into making Valentine’s cookies this year. I really want to make two kinds of cookies. Well, in reality, I want to make three or more kinds of cookies and then make up Valentine’s Day cookie plates for all our neighbors but that seems a little extra even for me. So I have reined it in to two varieties. I am pretty sure I want to make these stripey heart cookies because they are darling. However, I have made them in the past and if memory and my blog serve me, they were somewhat prettier than they were delicious. 

I definitely want to make something chocolate. Carla’s old standby is the chocolate snickerdoodle, which I think is delicious and also fun because it is unusual. But my husband isn’t a huge fan of them. Perhaps these brownie crinkle cookies would be good instead? The idea of a brownie in cookie form is delightful. These cinnamon cookies with Red Hots are very appealing to me as well, not in small part because they have cream cheese frosting and I adore a frosted cookie. But I’m not sure where I would find Red Hots? They aren’t something I’ve seen in awhile. I have been tossing around the idea of making raspberry macarons. I haven’t made macarons in a long while and they are delicious and festive. (But also kind of fussy.)

I could always go the cupcake route instead of cookies. Carla has been talking about Nutella quite a bit lately, and these strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate cupcakes are filled with Nutella. I would vastly prefer to make vanilla cupcakes with raspberry filling and raspberry buttercream – but maybe if I make the Nutella ones I won’t eat them all. 

If you make sweets especially for Valentine’s Day, what is your favorite?

4. Grocery Store Swap: Since I have successfully reintroduced yogurt into my diet (hooray!!!!) I have been testing out different yogurt varietals. My current favorite is the Fage 0% blended cherry yogurt. (I cannot stand fruit on the bottom yogurt.) But I can only find it at one specific grocery store, so I have completed rejiggered my shopping schedule to make that store my preferred store. Fortunately, it is near my friend’s house, and we usually go to her house once a week for a writing session, so it’s not wildly out of the way. But I feel slightly neurotic for rearranging my grocery shopping life around yogurt. It’s better than going to multiple stores, right?  

5. Feedly: Okay, so this isn’t TECHNICALLY food-related. But I have been noticing that Feedly is increasingly unreliable. I completely missed a post by Nicole yesterday because it didn’t show up in my feed. Sometimes people’s posts show up late or three times in a row. Sometimes I will see a week’s worth of posts all in a row, as though someone posted them all in one day. A few commenters have noted that some of my posts don’t show up until a day or two later. (Edited to add: I follow my own blog on Feedly and as of 6:00 pm on Friday, my post still has not shown up in my feed. SIGH.)

This all sounds like a really good argument to finally add an old-school style blog roll to my blog, so I don’t miss anyone’s posts. I have been thinking about doing it for a long time, more than a YEAR… but haven’t, mainly because I’m afraid of missing someone and hurting feelings. But that’s silly, right? If I miss your blog, you will know it’s purely a brain failure and not that I don’t adore you and your blog? And you will alert me immediately? My current “systems” – the unreliable Feedly or having everyone’s blogs bookmarked in a browser – are not working. And I don’t want to miss your posts!

How are you keeping up with the blogs you follow?

That’s all I’ve got for this Friday, Internet. Hope you have a delicious weekend. 

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There Are Two Kinds of People, Appetizers Edition

Because I firmly believe that my mother and I cannot possibly be the only two people in the world who are the way we are, I am going to make a Vast Generalization about appetizer serving.

There are two kinds of people: The people who put out the entire bag of chips, and the people who put out half of the bag and then refill as necessary.

The people who put out the whole wedge of cheese, and the people who cut a wedge of Brie in half, and put out half and put the other half in the fridge.

The people who put out the whole jar of salsa, and the people who scoop half the jar of salsa into a smaller dish and put the rest in the fridge, adding more salsa from the fridge as the dish gets low.

And on and on.

The reason I am a Refill Person is twofold:

1.) I am germ-averse, and so I don’t like the idea of saving something that other people have been nibbling on. If it’s chips, I don’t want to re-bag a bunch of chips that people’s hands have been in contact with. If it’s dip, I don’t want to put away and then eat something that other people have been dipping (and possibly double-dipping) into.

2.) I don’t want to waste food. If I put the whole container of hummus out on the table and people nibble at it for a couple of hours, I am not going to want to put the rest of it back in the fridge for future consumption. First of all, see item 1 in this list. Secondly, it’s been out in the air, gathering bacteria and getting warm. Yuck. Extra yuck if it’s a mayonnaise/cream based dip. Or guacamole. Or cheese. If I put out only part of what I have to offer, I can always add more without the risk of having to throw away a large portion.

I acknowledge that there’s a disadvantage to being a Refill Person, which is that you need to be constantly vigilant that the chip bowl isn’t getting too empty. And you have to be keenly aware of the Eating Enthusiasm level of your guests – if it’s waning, you either let the bowl empty out, or you only put in a handful of new chips. If it’s still high, you can fill the bowl up to the tippety top again.

Okay, there’s a second disadvantage. In addition to the vigilance, you might end up spending a decent amount of time going back and forth to the kitchen/fridge to refill, which detracts not only from conversation with your guests (potentially a plus, I suppose, depending on the type of people you are entertaining) but (more importantly) from your own snacking.