Eating Dinner With My Family

We are all sitting here, wretched full, because it was a really great dinner. Not only is it pretty easy (super easy if you buy tortilla chips rather than make them, but it's totally worth it to make them yourself it really doesn't add that much time, and you can avoid all the chemicals and such by making your own), but it is tasty and economical!   I did alter the recipe a bit.  First of all, we didn't need a whole chicken worth of meat for the 4 of us to eat, and since we had 1 & 1/2 breasts left over from the hobbit dinner, I shredded them and just made a few more tortillas worth of chips to make sure we didn't have too much sauce to filling.  So obviously an other change was more tortilla chips.  I also used Parmesan in place of the cotja cheese, but feta would work too if that is what you have in your fridge.  Oh and the onion I had was really big, so when the rest of the veggies came out of the oven, I separated the quarters in to thirds by t...

This is a tasty and easy little dip that originally was made with black eyed peas. I like it with the white acre peas a lot.  The only change I would make next time is I think I will use cilantro instead of parsley or maybe a mixture of the two.  It could just be that we love cilantro, but we think that would be a much better herb for this.  I made the chips too.  I had some leftover corn tortillas and made them similarly to the Parmesan Tortilla Crisps , but I just used plain oil and then seasoned with salt, and garlic.  Fast and filling, and certainly healthier than those mayo or cheese based dips. Texas Caviar 3 1/2 c Cooked White Acre Peas   1/4    red onion,finely chopped 1/4 c  roughly chopped fresh parsley 1/4 c  red wine vinegar 2 T  extra-virgin olive oil 3 ea garlic,minced 2    plum tomatoes,seeded and chopped 1    small bell pepper seeded and finely chopped 1  ...

Update:   I had the eggplant, hummus, pickle and tomato/cucumber salad on a pita the next day for lunch and I loved it.  Maybe it was that it was all cold, or the sit over night melded the flavors of the salad,, but I thought it was a million times better the next day. I had such high hopes for this dish.  So may of my favorite things are in it, and it wasn't bad, but the consensus around the table was that it was a 3.  I even went out and bought these Mediterranean pickles I had at a local Mediterranean restaurant to try and make it how it should be.  My issues, since it is my blog and I was the one poised to love it, were that it was a bit soggy, and therefore sloppy, and I thought the potato was useless.  I wouldn't bother with it next time.  I didn't make my own pita and I got the only "sturdiness" available, so that may be part of the issue.  There was flavor, but it didn't deliver like I had hoped.  That aside, we are spoiled ...

Part three of my ode to my friend dinner.  The corn muffins.  I love this one because I dislike sweet corn bread.  I agree whole heartily in this with the blogger I got this recipe from.  The muffins were really great.  I was concerned that the amount of pickles jalapenos was too small, but I didn't mess with the recipe.  I'm glad I didn't.  While these muffins weren't really spicy, there were spicy bites here and there which was nice.  I am not a baker and because of this I had all kinds of issues with the process.  (that is totally on me not the recipe;)  After removing them from the oven to add the cheese I forgot to mix in, and my uncanny ability to spew flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and anything else in powder form around my kitchen until every surface it got a thin coating, the muffins baked nicely and were very tasty!  This makes a lot of muffins.  I hope they keep because if they don't I am wasting a lot of...