Potato Skins

I LOVE appetizers. It’s a love that always gets me in trouble. I have big eyes and a small stomach and I cannot resist appetizers (and BREAD) before eating dinner. It’s real sad when I get all excited about a meal and can’t take more than a few bites because I’ve filled up so much on the first course.

That’s why it’s always a good idea to have an appetizer night in lieu of a real dinner once in a while. With my family, it usually consists of some frozen pigs in a blanket, mozzarella sticks and cheeses. But since I’ve been painfully aware that my beloved potato skins are all but gone from appetizer menus everywhere, I decided to make my own.

Weeknight Cherry Tomato Margherita Pizza

This is a little Sandra Lee of me, but this is a pizza made with refrigerated pizza dough (gasp, gasp from meanie food bloggers who look down on those who don’t do everything from scratch!). You could make your own dough for this. It would be easy enough, but the reason for making this exact pizza is that it’s stupid easy but will taste amazing. Even if you’re spending a couple extra bucks on the dough, it’s still way cheaper than ordering a pizza!

The BEST Thumbprint Cookies

I need to practice “filling” the thumbprints. Badly.

For my family Pre-Passover dinner, I volunteered to make dessert. My mom makes the best Matzah ball soup that I’ve ever had and a mean brisket so I was glad to leave the cooking to her and stick to baking cookies!

I wanted to try something from How to Eat Everything but ended up getting stuck on the idea of thumbprint cookies. So too Google I went to find out how Mr. Bittman makes them. This is his cookie recipe, but the fillings he suggested were way beyond my family’s comprehension. Most of them like good old fashioned chocolate with nothing fancy added. But I was feeling a little daring and made a few salted caramel cookies, too (which were MORE of a hit than the plain chocolate–it was a shocker, trust me).

Best Baked Shrimp Scampi

Even though I love cooking and more importantly, love eating, I don’t know very much about the culinary world. I watch Top Chef and someone will say “This tastes great but needs more acid!” Acid? I nod in agreement with Padma but I really have no idea what’s she’s talking about.

But with this baked shrimp scampi, I know what I’m talking about. I also know it has acid because it has lemon juice and lemon zest–suck on that, Padma. What I really mean when I say I know what I’m talking about is that I knowwwww this shrimp is the best shrimp you might ever have.

Ginger Chicken Jook

I have professed my love for Chrissy Teigen countless times before but it was awesome to watch her in action cooking, rather than just reading her blog and hilarious tweets when she appeared on “On the Table with Eric Ripert.” This girl is my kind of chick: funny, obsessed with Bravo, and loves food even more than I do.

So when I saw her on Ripert’s show making Jok Moo, I got inspired give cooking rice porridge a try. My boyfriend will eat almost anything but is in a definite Asian food mood lately thanks to a great local restaurant making authentic (and spicy!) Schezuan food, Han Dynasty but he and I had never had jook before.

Peanut Butter Banana Bread

I haven’t bought very many cookbooks since you can find so much online for free! and because my mom has always had some good ones that I could use as resources. But there are a few books that I have been hoping to get my hands on for a while, one being Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything. 

Last Friday I was checking out one of my favorite used bookstores during my lunch break and saw the book sitting there and I quickly grabbed it and got it for a bargain! I walked with the massive text back and forth from work, carrying it like a prize. When I got home I dug right in and have been obsessing over it ever since.

Eggplant Parmigiana Grinders

I love eggplant parmigiana so much that I make my “lighter” version of it at least once a month…except each time I seem to add more and more mozzarella cheese which is kinda wrong considering its name. Oh well.

I really have the uncanny ability to take any semi-healthy recipe and turn it on its head. Super healthy, like boarding on crazy healthy, people the world-over would be horrified at how much dressing I add to salads, how I over-salt everything and how immediately after eating anything remotely good for me, will probably find some chocolate to have for a snack. But I still try to eat right…when I’m not planning a great eggplant parm dinner!