Category: culinary fun

Y’all know I loves me some ALDI! Great prices without having to cut coupons, wheeeee!! So when my pals at ALDI asked me to sample some of their great groceries to throw a party, I was all for it! ALDI sent me $100 in gift certificates and some party ideas and I went with it. Since I eat gluten-free, I decided that a “South of the Border” taco party would be a great fit. Although, because I’m such a considerate person, I did buy some flour tortillas for those who like their tacos soft. I’m a giver!

I set out on a kid-less afternoon with my shopping list and got shopping! It didn’t take long to fill my cart. Some of the things I was on the lookout for: my favorite Little Salad Bar salsa for $1.99, and Little Salad bar guacamole for $2.99. I L-O-V-E both of these items! Sadly, my ALDI only had the *spicy* guac, and I can’t do spicy, so I ran down the road to another ALDI and got my guac! 🙂 It was worth it. Here’s my cart at the end of my main shopping trip:

I got everything I needed for my party including meat, taco shells and tortillas, tortilla chips, vegetables, salsa, guacamole, cheese, sour cream, fresh fruit, drinks, paper plates, cutlery, plastic cups, etc. for less than $85! I was honestly shocked. Even though I am used to ALDI’s great prices, I still expected to use the entire $100 ALDI had provided.

Now that I had my food, I needed a reason to party! I decided to provide food for our house church group to celebrate my BFF Luanne & her hubby’s new house! They moved in on Monday, and we partied the following Sunday with delicious ALDI food!

The tacos were delicious, especially with the Little Salad Bar salsa and guacamole and the Happy Farms sour cream and Mexican shredded cheese. MMMMM. I was also feeling adventurous and bought the ingredients to create a recipe from the ALDI Test Kitchen: Blue Corn, Great Northern Bean & Salsa Pie! It was awesome!

The pie crust is made out of Clancy’s blue corn tortilla chips and parmesan cheese with a little butter to hold it together.

 

Then you add in some heated Dakota’s Pride black beans (which are like, 59 cents and are sooo good!)

Dakota’s Pride Great Northern Beans, sour cream, salsa, and mozarella cheese make up the next couple layers of the pie. Chill it for a while and then dig in. It’s delicious! And so very gluten-free! 🙂
You can find the recipe here at the ALDI website. Note, the recipe is for mini-pies, but it does have instructions for making one big pie, which is what I did.

In addition to all of the fabulous food, I also made a delicious raspberry lemonade with frozen lemonade and Season’s Choice frozen raspberries. It was deeelectable. Seriously all I did was mix the lemonade and dump in the frozen berries (which were only $1.99!) YUM. Another one of my favorite ALDI items I picked up were the cute yet very sturdy paper plates. I thought they went so well with the southwest theme, too!

We had the best time at our #ALDISummer South of the Border party! It was great to christen my BFF’s new home with good friends and great food. If you have any get-togethers coming up, head to ALDI for a great deal on everything you need for your event.

Thanks ALDI, for making our party great!

So after my dried strawberry pinterest fail, I’ve been somewhat skeptical of Pinterest recipes… not enough to keep me from obsessively searching and pinning, just enough to keep me from actually doing them.

But let’s be real, isn’t that the point of pinterest? Pinning things you’re never really going to do?

Also – as another side note – remember when Pinterest served as a bulletin board of sorts, rather than a search engine? No? Well, it did. And it was better then, because people actually pinned new things instead of repinning old things. The problem with repinning old things is that if you don’t click through, you might just be pinning a pretty picture that has no recipe and no content at all. Which is useless.

Anyway.

I tried a few things over the 4th of July weekend that actually turned out, so I thought I’d share them!

First of all – red, white and blue popcorn.

I liked this recipe because it was basic – no karo syrup, jello, or anything else random – just sugar, water, popcorn and food coloring. It was GOOD, people. So good, in fact, that I woke up Friday morning and threw away the rest of the batch, because I knew I’d eat every bite of it before the day ended.

Here’s another one – minted watermelon, cucumber, and blueberry salad.

It was healthy, fresh, and pretty!

These cheese-stuffed grilled peppers were good, but they were missing something. What, I’m not sure, but if I make them again I’d change the filling so it had more flavor. I liked the theory, though, and I will probably try them again!

I never seem to be on the ball enough to marinate meat before we grill it, so I’m always on the lookout for a good dry rub. I found Rock’s T-Bone Steak Rub on allrecipes.com, and Andy and I both really liked it. I doubled the recipe for 6 steaks and had a little left over. I’d probably cut back a little on the cayenne pepper next time, though.

What Pinterest wins have you found recently? Leave a link in the comments so we can repin!

I am super-proud of my mad culinary skills, y’all! Because I made gluten-free cheez-its. And they were DELICIOUS! Now, I’m not totally perfect (sorry to burst your bubble). My 2nd batch was way better than my first.  But dang, are they GOOD!! I didn’t realize how much I missed crackers until I found myself frantically stuffing my face with these.

Now just so I am not accused of recipe stealing, I got the recipe here from Fields of Green. Well, actually I got it from my friend Kris, but she got it from Fields of Green.  It’s also pinned on my Gluten Free Pinterest board if that’s easier for you.

Here is a trick I learned by trial and error. In the recipe it notes that it’s really important to get the dough rolled very thin. Well, I learned that what I thought was thin was not thin enough. So the second time around I rolled it as thin as I could, cut out my crackers, then cut each one in half and rolled them again individually. More time consuming but it made a much crispier cracker! If you are a real baker you probably have some tool that does that for you (ahem, Becky Dell.)

Also, the first time I pricked them with a fork, but then I decided that didn’t look authentic enough, so the second time I just made one whole in the center like a real Cheez-it (as you can see in the picture a the top of this post).

So there ya go. They were awesome. Even the non-GF kids in my family loved them! I hope you do, too. If you decide to make these, here’s another tip: I got my sweet rice flour on Amazon because I didn’t want to take the time to go out and hunt for it in a store. Plus, at the time it was a really good price.

Enjoy! Let me know if you make them!