This was our first weekend fully at home in our new place, with my pantry fully stocked. I had to celebrate by having some friends over and taking my new kitchen for a test drive! I also completed a personal challenge that I've never conquered before: to use up the entirety of the sour cream and whipping cream that I originally bought for recipes that only use a bit of them.
The recipe links in the post go to the full recipes in my public Springpad recipe box. I've got 650+ recipes from around the internet bookmarked in private mode but I'm only going to make them fully public as I cook and adapt them myself. If you're a Springpad user and are interested in seeing the full collection, leave a comment and we can talk :).
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I started with spicy cheese breadsticks, inspired by Smitten Kitchen's version. I make them with whole wheat pastry flour and more spice!
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For the real spread, I made my version of baked spinach artichoke dip (surprise, it's also spicy!).
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The perfect partner for spicy spinach artichoke dip is sweet baked brie! I usually do brie en croute, but the pastry is almost less than a sideshow for me. Just bake the brie and jam til bubbly and dive in with endives and bread!
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I don't always like really bitter vegetables, but Belgian endives are a revelation dipped in brie and apricot jam. Add some cubes of crusty wheat bread (and a platter of other vegetables, they're ok too) with sweet and spicy dips and you have a perfect party spread!
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After a lovely party, I was left with a large amount of sour cream and heavy cream. Usually, these kinds of ingredients sit in the fridge for a couple of weeks until they spoil. But I had time on my hands and I was determined to use them up in real recipes!
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Trader Joes had organic strawberries for a great price, so I tossed them in a little sugar, set them aside to develop a nice syrup, and made sour cream biscuits.
An aside: I don't care what anyone else says, real strawberry shortcake is made with unsweetened biscuits. No cake or sugary "biscuits" involved!
About 3/4 cup of heavy cream beaten till thick and fluffy to dollop on top, and you have heaven in a bowl.
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Sunday morning I had a serious pancake craving (it's probably been over a year since I've had pancakes!). It probably came from watching a rerun of the Pioneer Woman's show on Food Network (now that I have cable and a DVR, I can watch all sorts of new things!). I adapted her lemon blueberry pancake recipe to use up the sour cream and subbed in whole wheat pastry flour with some all purpose for her cake flour.
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While I grew up picking wild blueberries off the sides of mountains in New Hampshire, I really love the tartness and plump texture of cultured blueberries. Trader Joe's has great organic cultured blueberries in the freezer section!
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After breakfast I had so many blueberries left over (I bought two bags) and about a cup of cream left. I had the perfect blueberry cream scones recipe in my Springpad collection, just modified it with whole wheat pastry flour and all cream instead of half cream, half milk.
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By this point even A was full, so I sent most of the scones to work and B school study group with him.
Postscript: In the spirit of wasting not, I came up with a dynamite recipe for Saturday night dinner featuring the leftover bread cubes from the party. Panzanella is such a great meal, and I've somehow never made it! This one was inspired by Cambridge 1's tomato mozzarella salad, but I couldn't get the dressing quite perfect. Even so, it was so delicious we didn't even notice that I forgot to buy mozzarella til we were done eating.
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It was just as good the next day for lunch with a fried egg (runny yolk underneath, of course) and sweet apple chicken sausage.
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