Cheesy spinach dip

What's all THIS crap??

This is me reaching fairly randomly into the refrigerator when I realized I had a huge bag of spinach I'd forgotten about, that needed to be used Real Soon. Like, NOW. Told my sister to bring home some chips and I got to work.

WARNING: DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME. I DO NOT GUARANTEE RESULTS, NOR DO I PROMISE GOOD HEALTH

Tablespoon of butter, tablespoon of flour over low heat, cook a few minutes. I added about 1/4 cup of white wine, which in this case turned out to be Riesling, and even I know that's not a good idea. Riesling's too sweet, you want a dry wine, maybe a Chardonnay or a Sauvignon Blanc. It's what I had, and instead of skipping the wine altogether, I went with it. I do what I WANT.
Now, this would have been fine and dandy like so, maybe more wine, but noooooooo. I went a weird direction and added..... MILK. To an acidic wine. I believe in my heart of hearts that I knew somewhere in my subconscious that this was a Really Bad Idea, but, like I said, I do what I WANT. Can you guess what happened? Curdling happened. I almost gave up on it then, but I had faith in this little abomination I was creating and I kept simmering until it became smooth and creamy again. Believe it or not.
I added a bit more milk (probably ended up using about 3/4 of a cup total, give or take).
Then I started throwing stuff in, not all at once, but little by little. CHEESES. Shredded Monterey/Colby blend, bleu cheese crumbles, grated parmesan. Dashes of white pepper, parsley. Stir frequently, and while that's simmering and melting and coming together....

In a large pan heat some olive oil, add super finely chopped onion and garlic and saute over high heat until translucent. I added the huge amounts of spinach and covered, stirring occasionally until wilted. Drained it as best as I could and added it to my cheesy mess up there.
I simmered that for a while until it was nice and thick and cheesy and as scrumptious-looking as you can allow yourself to imagine it to be after you've seen it in its curdled stage. Removed from heat and added a couple of tablespoons of cream cheese, stirred until well incorporated, and voila.


It turned out to be delicious and everybody present loved the hell out of it and now it's completely gone, but that's not the point.

I still don't recommend trying this out for yourself.

(Aside from eating it with chips, I poured some over rice and it was awesome. Maybe making it thicker and baking it inside croissants would be fantastic. I could also see it over seared salmon. But seriously, don't make this at home)

Lunchbox

Every now and then the Daughter gets more than a sandwich to take to school for lunch. Some time last week she took some tuna sushi rolls, which I'm happy to report she loves. The thing with something like sushi is that you have to keep it cold, and those blue ice block things take up too much room in a little girl's lunch box.

That's when a snack like grapes comes in handy.

Place grapes in a single layer in the freezer until solid - you don't want one big block o'grape. Once they're frozen you can put them in a ziploc bag and they'll keep your food cold until lunch time arrives.

I cut her sushi rolls real thin, so they can go in a regular square sandwich container and leave plenty of room for the baggie of grapes in there, too (I use parchment paper as a divider).

Caramel popcorn

It's been a very long time since we've bought microwaveable popcorn. I used nothing but the minimum amount of vegetable oil to pop the corn.

A couple of tablespoons of brown sugar and a nice sprinkle of sea salt over low heat, couple of tablespoons of butter, once that's well dissolved about a tablespoon of milk. I may have added a bit more to thin it out.
And in hindsight it may or may not have been better to let the freshly popped corn cool off just a little before assaulting it with melt-your-skin Hot Caramel, but it was ai'ight. Poured caramel in a thin stream while stirring a bit, and when all the caramel was in I shook the hell of the lidded pot for a while. Let it sit, shake some more. The pot was still very hot, so then I moved them to a large bowl and moved them around until they were cooled off, because I wasn't looking for popcorn balls.

Tasty.