Sabra Vegetable Dip

I really like Sabra's hummus. I've had a lot of hummus, and this one's the best. It's creamy, not chunky, and that's the way hummus should be. Trader Joe's and Whole Foods are runners-up, but Sabra is the best.


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Foodbuzz sent me a coupon to try any Sabra product for free. But seeing as I already had two varieties of hummus in my fridge, I went with something new: a Greek-yogurt vegetable dip. Genius! More than I care to admit, I really love those oil and chemical-laden creamy dips that are terrible for you. But these dips are made with Greek yogurt as the base, not mayonnaise, so they're pretty low in fat and calories. I tried the onion and herb flavor, and it was just like those French onion dips in the jar, but better for you. It was really good. So good, in fact, that the entire container was consumed in a matter of days and I forgot to take a picture of it.

So this was definitely a win. And the fact that it was free, well, that makes it a double win.

Fig Newton Fruit Thins

Foodbuzz recently offered to send me some new Fig Newton thins for free. I like free things, so I said yes. I received a box of the fig and honey flavor.

Cookie Monster had actually recently purchased a box of the classic Fig Newtons since we hadn't had them in a really long time (like, 10 years or something). I expected the eating of these Newtons to be all Proustian, but instead they tasted all fake and chemical-y. Blech!

That being said, however, I actually did like these fruit thins. They are slightly sweet with a nice, subtle cinnamon flavor. But here's a caveat: They are not really very cookie-like, at least to me. They're more like a sweet cracker. When I have a hankerin' for a cookie, I want gooey, squishy and chewy. Hence the opened package of these has been sitting on the counter for the last month. Actually, I bet they'd be better for breakfast crumbled over yogurt or oatmeal.

So, I don't think I'd purchase these cookies with my own money (remember: they were freeee!), but it was an enjoyable experience to eat them.

Popcorn FAIL

Oops.

A Special Dinner at Home: Part III

Hi lovelies! I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath at the finale in my three-part special dinner. Let's just pretend this happened, oh I don't know, last week, instead of in ... erm ... February. Oops!

If it weren't currently approximately eight thousand degrees, I would hop to making this pasta again. It was quite possibly the best pasta I have ever had. That it came from my own hands and labor was just icing on the cake. Er, pasta.

So, for this pasta, I used Jenna's recipe.  Mine obviously didn't turn out to be goat cheese ravioli, but the pasta base is the same. I looked in my Mario Batali cookbook, which obviously had a recipe, but it was complicated and long (TWSS!) so I opted for this one instead. Since Jenna's recipe was for one person, I doubled it. (Since, you know, 1 + 1 = 2. What? I was an English major.)

I started off by adding my eggs to the volcano of flour.

And then you squish and swirl and move it around until it becomes one cohesive ball of dough.

Then, you must let it rest so the gluten can calm down. This was not a problem since I was, at the time, baking bread, making ricotta cheese, roasting asparagus and making a sauce for the mussels. So yeah, I had some time to ignore the pasta.

When I had essentially finished everything else, I got to rollin'. This took the most time, since I wanted papparadelle-like pasta--wide, really thin strands. So rolled, and rolled, and then rolled some more, until the sheets of pasta were nearly transparent.

Then I cut them into long ribbons.

And then just cook as you would packaged pasta, in salty, boiling water. However, because it's fresh, it takes about two minutes to cook, so don't walk away from the pot.

I served the pasta with a sauce made from lemon zest, garlic, shards of proscuitto and the homemade ricotta cheese I had just completed. And oh my lord was it good. Transcendent, even. It was really effing good.

So the entire meal was homemade bread, roasted asparagus, homemade pasta with homemade ricotta, mussels for Cookie Monster, and bubbly. Wow. I've just impressed myself!