Rosemary Chicken Salad and Egg Salad in Carrot-Shaped Rolls
The carrot-shaped rolls made the rounds on Pinterest and I knew I had to make them. Thanks to the wonders of Amazon Prime, I had the conical molds in time for Easter. My only regret is that the molds were a bit on the small side, so I couldn't fit too much salad into the rolls. I liked how the rolls turned out, although they were a bit difficult to make because I was unable to find seamless crescent roll dough, so I had to mush together the pre-cut seams. The overall effect was very cute.
I despise hard boiled eggs and mayonnaise, so the egg salad was purely for the benefit of my guests who like such things. They seemed to like the egg salad :)
I thought the chicken salad was good. The almonds were an interesting crunchy alternative to celery and the scallions were an interesting touch. I hardly tasted the rosemary at all. I think this is a nice savory option. For something a little sweeter, I prefer Ina's chicken salad veronique (which is amazing).
Modifications: I used all yogurt instead of a yogurt/mayo mix in the chicken salad.
Veggie Platter with Herb Dip
I love the look of the garden-like veggie platter from the linked Martha slideshow, but I didn't have time to track down a galvanized metal garden tub and perfectly tiny baby vegetables. I used what I had and came up with a somewhat artful display of carrots, radishes, asparagus, tomatoes, and green cauliflower. The radishes were my biggest splurge - French Breakfast radishes from my favorite vegetable store. These radishes were so much better than conventional varieties I've had -- they were hardly spicy at all. I was worried that the herb dip would be too dominated by dill (because that's all it smelled like), but it tasted very good and balanced.
Challah with Raspberry Jam
A got me a braided sesame challah from Blazing Bagels, one of our favorite local places. Challah is one of my favorite breads, so it only gets broken out for special occasions :) I was going to make strawberry jam, but realized that the red berries in my freezer were raspberries, not strawberries. I therefore substituted the strawberries for raspberries and doubled the amount of sugar. Because of raspberry's lower pectin content (I think), this didn't firm up much at all, but it was a nice "spoon jam". Most recipes I saw for raspberry jam had a 1:1 fruit to sugar ratio, which I thought was crazy. I believe it is mainly for preservation reasons, but I wasn't canning this jam, so I greatly scaled back the amount of sugar and it turned out properly sweet.
Dirt Cake
Dirt cake is a home ec favorite. I'd love to make a "luxury" version of this someday with real pudding and whipped cream, but the box pudding/cool whip version has a sense of nostalgia. I did not bury gummy worms in it because I don't like them, but apparently this was missed :) Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture, but my dirt cake had peeps hanging out on top.
White Wine Spritzer
A and I are obsessed with the show "30 Rock". I've often been compared to Liz Lemon at work (which I realize isn't flattering...but can kind of explain why I quit that job). In an episode this season, it is revealed that her signature drink is white wine with Sprite and ice cubs in a thermos, called "Funky Juice". I thought that this white wine spritzer recipe sounded like a classy Funky Juice, so I had to make it. It was delicious, even though I was drinking it from a glass without ice cubes.
Modifications: Trader Joe's was out of sparkling lemonade, so I used sparkling limeade, which I thought was even better. I made a pitcher out of 1 (750 ml) bottle of "3 buck chuck" sauv blanc and 1 (1 L) bottle of sparkling limeade (a higher proportion of juice to wine than the recipe).
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