valosin's Moscow Mule

valosin made me this drink once! I can vouch that it is divinely delish.

• 2oz vodka
• 1oz fresh lime juice
• Ginger beer (This can be hard to find. Ginger ale will work ok, but ginger beer is darker, a litte sweeter, and more intense. It adds a lot to the drink).

Combine ingredients over ice in a highball glass. Garnish with a slice of lime.

sylph's Mock Sangria

Mix together 1 cup of orange juice, 1 cup of lemon juice, and 1 cup of sugar. Add 8 cups of grape juice--the 100% kind, not the cocktail. Chill this, then just before serving, pour it into a punch bowl with an ice ring or just a bunch of ice, add 2 cups of chopped fruit, which you can buy already done, and then add 4 cups of club soda. That will make 16 servings.

invisible girl's Sherbet Punch

Ducklet asked for punch recipes for a shower... I stole them for the recipe blog.

• Sherbet (raspberry, orange, whatever your pleasure!)
• Equal parts ginger ale & pineapple juice

Mix together for a nice fruity, frothy, spritzy punch!

Note from Britomart: I've had this punch with vodka, too. Yummy!

blue artemis' Chicken & Potato Enchiladas

blue artemis made these in her weekly cookfest this weekend. I thought they sounded wonderful, so asked for a recipe. Thank you, ba! She does warn that this is one of the approximate recipes - it was one she learned from her grandmother, so exact measurements were never involved. (In my opinion, these types of recipes always ended up being the best.)

• Chicken (can be leftover from baking or stew or something) shredded.
• Potatoes
• Green (tomatillo) salsa (TJ's works fine)
• If you want, a can of French cut green beans
• Cheese (either queso ranchero or jack or mozzarella)
• corn tortillas
• Oil for frying

Peel and chop the potatoes into little pieces. Using a non-stick frying pan, cook them (with a little oil) and some seasoned salt, until they are soft. Once they are cooked, throw in the shredded chicken and mix.

You will then need two small frying pans, in one, heat oil for frying, in the second, heat the salsa. Take your tortillas (unheated) and fry them, one at a time, until they are kind of golden, but not fried to a crisp, they should still be bendy. Then take them (one at a time) and dip them in the heated salsa. (Basically, fry them enough that they don't fall apart when you do it, but not enough to make tostadas).

Put your tortilla on a plate, then use a bit of the chicken and potato mixture to fill, throw on some shredded cheese and a bit of the green beans (if you want them), and roll your enchilada. Top with a bit more sauce and shredded cheese. Make as many as you want (or have enough chicken and tortillas for).

BeachBum's Gin of Mellow Delight

• Pour 1.5 ounches Tanqueray over crushed ice.
• Add tonic to taste.
• Squeeze many lime wedges, then drop in glass.
• Drink.
• Sigh with mellow delight.

Britomart's Pink Grapefruit Margarita

As I babbled about in the Hizzy, I recently had the most divine grapefruit margarita in a restaurant on Bainbridge Island. After much dedicated experimentation, I offer this recipe!

• 1 part tequila
• 3/4 part fresh-squeezed pink or red grapefruit juice
• slices of fresh red or pink grapefruit
• 3/4 part Cointreau
• 1/4 part fresh lime juice
• dash of seltzer water*
• coarse salt

Mix all of the ingredients (except the salt!). Rub a slice of grapefruit around the outside edge of a glass, then dip the glass into the salt. Add ice to the glass and pour in the mixed margarita ingredients. Garnish with the grapefruit slice.

* I'm a huge fan of champagne margaritas and was thinking earlier that a dash of champagne, instead of seltzer, would be delicious indeed.

adharas' Lime (or Lemon) Rice

Best recipe EVAH for leftover rice. This is soooo good. And soooo easy to make. And when mujer stayed with me recently, we discovered that this was fantastic middle of the night drunken munchy food.

• 3 handfuls of old, cooked rice - preferably a day old (leftover rice from Chinese food is perfect!)
  
• About 2 TBSP Oil or Ghee
• Small handful of yellow split peas
• 1 green chili (whole)
• 1 TBSP mustard seeds
• 1/8 tsp asafetida (powdery spice available at Indian grocery stores)
• tumeric to taste (1 teaspoon or so)
• Juice from 1-2 limes (or lemon)

Heat oil at medium heat, add mustard seeds and cover pan. Once the mustard seeds are done popping, add the split peas and fry until golden brown. Add the whole green chili (you can cut in half or quarters if you'd like this spicier), the asafetida & salt to taste. Turn off heat and add rice, breaking it up well. Add lime juice and stir in well.

Let it sit of for a couple minutes and taste, adjusting lime & salt as needed.

adharas' Dal Be-Aab

When I stayed with her the other weekend, adharas made this for me and it is so divine. You'll be in danger of addiction. I know I am.

• 1 ½ c black urad dhal, available only in Indian store, and make sure it’s whole black, the white one will result in mushy mess.
• 1 t turmeric
• 1 t red chili powder
• Salt
• 2 T butter/ ghee/ oil (ghee gives best flavor)
• 1 ¾ t cumin seeds
• 2/3 c onions, chopped
• Green chilis, according to taste
  
• 1 T ginger, chopped
• 2 t garam masala
• ½ c tomatoes, chopped
• 2 T cilantro
• ¼ c lemon juice (not lime)
• 1 t ginger paste
• 1 t garlic paste

Wash lentils in running water and boil in approx 6 c water, with turmeric, red chilies powder and salt until cooked. You can make it dry, or as liquid as you want.

Melt ghee in pan, add cumin, sauté until it begins to crackle, and add onions, gr chilis, ginger, sauté until onions are light brown. Add dal, reduce heat, stir few minutes. Add garam masala, tomatoes, cilantro, lemon juice. Cook few minutes. If too thin, just let it cook for a while, uncovered, stirring occasionally. Add ginger garlic pastes, stir & cook for a few minutes.

Britomart's MadCon Blue Cheese Dip

I threw this together for Misa since she's a fellow blue cheese nut. It ended up being a hit with many. I was worried, in fact, that if I didn't post it soon, valeriel would do me harm! I'm kinda embarrassed to even share it because it is soooo ridiculously simple. Everything else I made for MadCon was, of course, ludicrously complicated and took days to make. ::snort::

Oh, the only accurate measurement is the cream cheese. And, actually, I think I used part of another package, so um, yeah. I think this is pretty close, though. Just keep tasting.

• 8 oz package of cream cheese (room temperature)
• 2-4 oz Maytag blue cheese (room temperature)
• 1 1/2 C raw pecans
• 2 TBSP butter (melted)
• salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Chop pecans coarsely and drizzle with melted butter, making sure all the pecan pieces are evenly coated. Lightly salt pecans and bake for approximately 8 minutes (check a couple times to make sure that they're not getting too brown.)

In a bowl, mush cream cheese and blue cheese together with a fork. Taste to make sure you have the desired amount of blue cheese. (I recommend you add the blue cheese incrementally so that the dip doesn't become too strong.)

Once they've cooled a bit, put pecans in food processor - if you have one of those wee, adorable ones, that's best. Grind until they're as small as they can be. (If you don't have a food processor, or don't feel like using it, you could just chop the bejeezus out of them until they're very fine.)

Stir pecan mixture into cheese mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste.

MartianIceQueen's Fruit Compote/Sauce Thingy

Martian threw this together a couple weeks ago & served over angel food cake. Appropriately, it sounds divine...

Cut up some rhubarb (I used 3 stalks), add some sugar (I used about 2/3 cup), some powdered clove and cinnamon, two handfuls of dried cherries, and some orange juice (not quite covering the amount of rhubarb). Simmer until tender. Slice about 2 pints of strawberries, and stir into the rhubarb mixture (once you've taken it off the stove). Cover and chill in the fridge. It turns a really lovely color, and is tart-sweet.