Chew Your Own Adventure

Ingredients:

• 3 potatoes of your choice
• 3 medium-sized parsnips
• 2 large turnips
• 3 tablespoons freshly grated horse radish
• grated cheese of your choice
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 container chicken broth

The result is a unique tasting, but familiar mashed (un)potato that pairs well with any home-cooking!

I’ve been on a hummus kick lately, so earlier in the week I tried my hand at making some. Searching the internet, hummus is remarkably simple. Perhaps the only ingredient I didn’t already have was Tahini, and if you’re a follower of Alton Brown, he substitutes peanut butter in a pinch so I imagine that’s a safe alternative.

The base ingredients to the three hummuses (ok, spellcheck doesn’t like hummii) I made are:

• 1 can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic
• a half-lemon’s worth of lemon juice, fresh squeezed
• 2 tablespoons tahini
• salt and pepper to taste

To prepare, just add all of the ingredients to a food processor and pulse until you reach your desired texture. Starting with this base, I made the following. I apologize in advance for the poor picture quality — there’s just not enough light in my house, and I’m using my iPhone’s camera!

Additional Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons fresh-grated horseradish

I had tried a horseradish hummus from Whole Foods a while back and I really liked it, so this simple addition made it onto my list. If you like a little bite to your hummus, I recommend adding the horseradish to any you make.

Personally, I don’t think I’ll ever go back to just plain-old hummus when making it in the future. You know what they say; once you go horseradish you can’t go ba… ok, ok no one has ever said that.

Additional Ingredients

• 1 avacado
• chopped red onion
• chopped cilantro to taste
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon paprika

I like guacamole and I like hummus, so why not combine the two? I found that this isn’t a novel idea — there are quite a few recipes out there on the net that do this, so I just took the ingredients I normally use in a guacamole and added them to the hummus.

The result was great, but was less spicy than a guac and more filling than hummus. Honestly I think I’ll just stick with either-or depending on what the situation calls for.

Additional Ingredients

• 1 chipotle chile in adobo sauce
• 1 tablespoon of the adobo sauce
• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• chopped cilantro to taste

I’m always looking for a light and spicy snack, and I think I’ve just found my go-to! Beware that the chile in adobo sauce is back-of-the-throat spicy, and it’s only partially balanced by the sour cream and hummus.

Out of the three, this was my favorite. I’ve added it to wraps, sandwiches, and it even goes well with a breakfast omellete.

A while back @mrgan tweeted the following:

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After making cream-braised Brussels sprouts for the first time, I look back in disgust on a life of braising things in - ugh - *water*.less than a minute ago via Twitterrific

Hmm, cream braising… Interesting. I filed this away for later exploration after first seeing it, but I found myself thinking about it more and more. Reading alone in a quiet room I’d hear a soft whisper, creeeam braaaising. I would wake in the middle of the night, feverishly yelling CREAM BRAISING. One or both of those stories are not true.

I paired the sprouts with some fried chicken, and the result was the best down-home meal I’ve had in a while. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Ingredients

• 1 bag of Brussels sprouts
• 1 8-oz carton of Heavy Cream

I pan-seared the Brussels sprouts in olive oil until there was noticeable browning, seasoning it liberally with salt, pepper, and paprika. I then added the cream and stirred, digging into the bottom of the pan gently to get any tasty bits off the bottom. Finally, I covered and let simmer on low heat for about 35 minutes.

Be sure to use the excess cream sauce to dip whatever protein or baked flour product you’re going with that night — you won’t regret it!