Starters: Maryland Crab Dip

Maryland Crab Dip

Ingredients:

1 lb. backfin crabmeat

8 oz. cream cheese

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1 Tbsp. Old Bay seasoning

1 Tbsp. Worcestershire

8 oz. grated sharp cheese

3 green onions, sliced very thin

Instructions: 

Clean crabmeat.

Mix together all ingredients.

Place in individual ramekins or in large glass baking dish for serving.

Bake at 350 for 15 to 20 minutes until hot and bubbly. 

Top with additional green onion and a dash of Old Bay.

Serve with crackers, sliced french bread, pita or tortilla chips.

Day Three: Soup for Dessert

Every girl has that time of the month when she craves sweets, snacks, etc.; pretty much all things junk. Unlike the typical woman I'm not a big fan of chocolate at any time of the month. A lot of the time I want a cheeseburger and Doritos, but lately I've really been wanting sweets. I picked up some Florida (being a California girl I'm partial to ours) strawberries while grocery shopping last week, because they were on sale of course. Later that week browsing Taste of Home recipes, low and behold I found a strawberry soup.

Succulent Strawberry Soup
4 servings

Ingredients

2 quarts fresh strawberries, divided
1/2 cup water
5 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp all-purpose flour
1 tsp orange zest
1 cup heavy whipping cream
Fresh mint and additional strawberries for garnish

Directions

1 Mash half the strawberries with a potato masher or fork and set aside
2 In a blender, combine remaining strawberries, water, sugar, flour, and orange zest; process until smooth. Pour into a 2-qt. saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat; boil for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
3 Add mashed strawberries. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered for 10 minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and chill for at least 1 hour.
4 Stir in cream. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Serve with mint and strawberries if desired.

Jalapeño Popper Dip

I usually have jalapeños on hand because I love spice and I put them in a lot of things. I had a lot of extras and wanted to make something different. I found this recipe on Pinterest and gave it a try. I made it without the bacon because I didn't have any. Because I'm cooking for one I halved the recipe and still ate it for four days. I kept the same amount of jalapeños but they were on the small side, too small for stuffing. Next time I'll probably keep some seeds because it wasn't hot at all but still very tasty.

Ingredients

6-8 slices of bacon, diced and cooked crispy
2 8-oz packages of cream cheese, soft
1 cup of mayonnaise
4-6 jalapeno's, chopped and deseeded. The seeds will make it fiery hot.
1 cup of cheddar cheese, shredded
1/2 cup of mozzarella cheese, shredded
1/4 cup diced green onion

Topping:

1 cup of crushed crackers (I used Club crackers)
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 stick of butter, melted

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Combine all of the ingredients into a medium bowl. Stir well.

3. Transfer to an oven proof dish. The size of the dish depends on how thick the dip is. The thicker the dip the longer it may need to warm up. I used a glass pie pan. My dip was a little less than an inch thick.

4. Combine the topping ingredients and sprinkle all over the top of the dip.

5. Bake the dip for 20-30 minutes or until bubbly.

Snacking