Making a homemade cheeseball is a fun and surprisingly easy appetizer. I can definitely see making this again for parties because it's simple to prepare in advance. I liked the idea of rolling a cheeseball in all of the fun stuff you'd find on top of an everything bagel. Inside of all that good stuff is cream cheese, cheddar, horseradish, and...

Remember when I said we ate Hatch chiles in all of our meals, including breakfast? Well this Hatch chile cream cheese on bagels is mostly how we did it. The Hatch chiles are a nice addition to basic cream cheese— way better than your standard veggie or chive cream cheese. There's not much of a recipe to this, but I think it's a good idea that...

We bought 25 lbs worth of Hatch chiles at the grocery store's roasting party. Back in Texas, and even in Washington, the grocery stores we frequented sold them just about every weekend in August, but here in Cali, I had to do a little research and find the one Sunday that a grocery store near us would be hosting a roasting party because I really...

It's been a long while since we've had the pleasure of dining at Benjy's in Rice Village— home of our favorite blood orange margaritas— for happy hour. We used to frequent Benjy's our senior year at Rice and ate way too much of their delicious fried calamari. I still claim its the best fried calamari I've ever had. Perhaps I am remembering it...

Walking in to Santa Monica Seafood, I was nervous. How hard could it really be to shuck oysters?  Eating oysters, that I've got done. I mastered that skill very well in Seattle (hat tip to Seastar and The Walrus and the Carpenter). But making oysters at home has been one of those elusive foods we've just never done. My fears were echoed back to...

Back at Rice, Erin and I used to eat Barry's Pizza pretty often. Their pizza was pretty excellent but whenever we ordered cheese bread, we knew we were in for a treat. It was the most ridiculously large layer of mozzarella you could imagine. Even though I specifically put "Mozarella (LOTS)" on the grocery list this week, Erin didn't buy enough...

Baked brie is one my favorite appetizers at a party, so it's a little hard to believe we haven't made it until now. Despite wanting to make it, I've never actually been able to locate puff pastry when I was searching it out. Until now at Trader Joe's. We decided to put together a little meat and cheese board for the two of us with a baked...

I've been wanting to make arancini (fried risotto balls) pretty much since the first time we've made risotto. But it always seems likes there is never quite enough to make it worth it, or else we have some really weird risotto mix-ins that wouldn't translate into the best arancini. Plus it wasn't until relatively recently that we felt...

I needed something to serve with a bag of cinnamon sugar pita chips I had lying around, but I didn't want this something to venture too far over into dessert territory because I wanted to serve it as an appetizer. The first thing that kept popping in my head was a cheesecake dip, but that definitely skewed towards dessert and seemed a little too...

The closest I ever thought I'd get to eating tater tots at home was glancing down the frozen foods aisle and hoping Erin would say "Go for it babe. Get your frozen tater tots today!" I know that day is never going to come. Being realistic and in deep desire for my tots, I decided to make them from scratch. In the end they require about the same...