Category Archives: Appetizers

Spicy Honey Roasted Almonds

Almonds are a great snack.  They are full of protein, and healthy fats.  But sometimes snacking on just plain nuts can be boring.  And buying those pre-made mixes of mixed nuts or spiced nuts are so expensive.  They are so easy to do at home, and I am sure they are much better for you.

Jean made these awhile ago, and I have had them in the back of my mind since.  I have been playing with different nuts, and slightly different combinations of my Indian Spiced Nuts lately, but wanted to try something new.  My husband likes it spicy, so I thought it was the perfect time to try these.  They are great mix of sweet and spicy.

These really are super easy to throw together.  There is about 5 minutes of hands on work, then bake them for 10, let them cool and you are done.  I only managed to have a small handful of these before the disappeared to my husbands work.  He likes to take them, so he has healthy snacks at his desk throughout the day.  These would be great to have on hand for snacks, or to put on on your holiday appetizer table.

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Spicy Chili-Lime Yogurt Dip & Giveaway

Did you know that November is Diabetes Awareness Month?  I honestly had no idea.  I am embarrassed to say that, but I just didn’t know.  I have been very fortunate to not have diabetes touch my life, or anyone close to me.  I recently met someone who has it, but he manages it very quietly, so you would never know.  My friend Carolyn, from All Day I Dream About Food is my closest real connection to diabetes.  She is constantly in the kitchen doing amazing things, making over the most decadent dish to make it diabetic friendly.

Today many of us are getting together to help spread the word about Diabetes.  Did you know that 25.8 million people (adults and children) in the United States have diabetes. In 2010, 1.9 million new cases of diabetes were diagnosed in people 20 years of age and under.  It is a wide spread disease that can affect anyone.

Today Carolyn challenged us to share a recipe that was gluten free, lower in carbs, and didn’t use any type of sugar.  I came up with this Greek yogurt dip.  It is a little spicy, and you can never go wrong with chili and lime together.  Serve with veggies, or your favorite gluten free crackers for a super healthy snack.  You can easily serve this at any party, and no one will ever know that you are serving something healthy!

Diabetes

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Chicken Club Eggrolls


I must admit I am not really a fan of eggrolls.  At least the traditional Chinese version.  I like the idea of them, I just can’t find one that I like.  We have a friend who makes traditional Vietnamese eggrolls, and those I like.  Apparently I like lots of meat :)   Those are mainly ground pork, with some bean threads and a few other things.  I could eat those every day, they are so good.

These eggrolls are obviously not your traditional eggrolls, which is probably why I like them.  I found these on Pinterest, and knew I had to try them.  They have chicken, bacon, and avocado – one of my favorite combinations of food!  Plus an avocado dipping sauce.  What is not to like with these?  Per the notes on the original recipe, I did add cheese to the filling.  It really did make everything stick together, and worked perfectly with the filling.

I was very happy with how these turned out.  They were  a great dinner that was on the healthy side.  The eggrolls are baked instead of fried.  These would make for a great appetizer or snack at a party.  And if you wanted to go all out, these would be amazing deep fried!  The dipping sauce is super easy to put together, and worked great with the egg rolls.  I am not a fan of ranch dressing, but here the seasonings were perfect.  Even my super picky 7 year old ate some of these.

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Indian Curry Meatballs & Giveaway

I have been kind of obsessed with Indian food lately.  I love the traditional dishes like Chicken Tikka Masala, but I also love spicing up traditional foods to make them have more Indian flavor.  Take these Curried Pretzels and Indian Spiced Nuts for example.  Simple, easy snacks that both got an Indian makeover.  Amazingly enough, my super picky 7-year-old loves Indian flavors as well.  Those nuts, are one of his favorite snacks; so I decided it was time to spice up some meatballs.

I love a really good tender meatball.  It can have barbeque sauce, marinara, or the famous glazed (with jelly) meatball.  I am not too picky, I just love a good meatball.  The opening weekend of football season my husband requested we have snacks and appetizers to watch the games with.  I made a couple of his favorite dips, but I needed something that was actually going to fill us up.  And something that my 7-year-old would eat.  Guacamole just isn’t his thing.  Enter meatballs.

I also made a spiced yogurt sauce to dip them in, and it was perfect together.  The meatballs were very tender, and super moist.  They were also full of so much flavor from the curry and garam masala.  I am having visions of making a curry sauce and serving these over rice next time…yum!  These would work great sitting in the crock pot for a party.  They are flavorful twist on the traditional.

Please go check out Culinary.net to get the recipe!

Now time for the GIVEAWAY!!!

Today I also have a fun Gift for you!  Catching FireFlies wants to give one lucky ready a $43 gift certificate!  A quirky amount to match their quirky and fun site!

Check out this Guitar Spatula, these Wake Up Coffee Mugs, or these Flower Measuring Spoons! Such cute stuff!

What do you need to do to win?
Leave a comment for each to have it counted as an entry
(if you already do some of these, just leave me a comment letting me know.)

1.  Leave a comment with one thing you would want from Catching Fireflies
2.  Like Dinners, Dishes, and Desserts on Facebook
3.  Like Catching Fireflies on Facebook
4.  Follow Dinners, Dishes, and Desserts on Pinterest
5.  Follow Catching Fireflies on Pinterest
6.  Follow Dinners, Dishes, and Desserts on Twitter
7.  Subscribe to Dinners, Dishes, and Desserts via email

You have 7 chances to win.  This is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only.  The giveaway will close Wednesday, October 3rd.  I will announce the winners on Thursday the 4th.  The winner will be drawn using random.org.  Please make sure to leave your email address, so I can contact you if you win.


Avocado Hummus

Avocados!!!  You know I love them, and can’t get enough.  Well today, I put them in hummus, and it is incredible.  And, just so you know, I can’t stand beans.  That is just how good this is!  I am sharing the recipe today over at Eat. Drink. Love.  Stephanie is in the middle of moving from Florida to Arizona, so she kind of has her hands full right now.  I can completely relate, so I am excited to share this recipe over at Stephanie’s today.  Go get it, and tell her I said Hi while you are there!

Asian Turkey Meatballs

Did you enter the giveaway for $1000 from Visa?  Make sure you click over and do it, it ends on Sunday!

Thanks goodness it is Friday!  This was a really long week!  My son got his first cold at school, so that means we haven’t slept well the last couple of nights.  Hopefully a nice relaxing weekend will be what he needs to get better.  The leaves are starting to change up in the mountains, so we might take a trip up there to see all the gorgeous colors.

And maybe I will make more meatballs.  They are pure comfort food to me, and I love them!  I had this recipe printed for over a year.  Really not sure why it took me so long to make them.  I made them when my parents were here, and everyone loved them.  My Dad, ever the skeptic, didn’t really like the idea of soy sauce for dipping.  But once he was forced to try it, he was sold.  He went back for more.  Even my 84 year old grandpa ate his fair share!

These come together very quickly, so they are great for a weeknight meal.  Or you could easily serve them as appetizers for the weekend football get togethers.  My 7 year old dipped his in ketchup, so they will even work for the little ones in the crowd.

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Mexican Snack Mix

Every year around Thanksgiving we make Party Mix.  It makes a pot that literally lasts until Christmas.  Sometimes though, you can’t really wait until Thanksgiving for party mix.  And sometimes, you want your party mix to have some kick.  Enter Mexican Snack Mix.

This makes a reasonable amount of snack mix (about 5 cups).  Is super adaptable to whatever you have or want to throw in.  It also has lots of yummy flavors, and a tiny bit of a kick.  You could easily give it a big kick, if that is your thing too.  See, super adaptable.  I made this last Friday, and I am embarrassed by how quickly it disappeared.  You have to be prepared, it is super addicting.  I had to just stay away, because once I started, there was no stopping.  But with only 2 tablespoons of butter in the entire recipes, it really isn’t that bad for you.  Whole grain cereal, nuts, fat free pretzels….I could think of worse things to snack on :)

I found this recipe in the Tortillas to the Rescue. It is full of recipes that only use tortillas.  I always have a couple sitting in my fridge, so I was excited to see all the other ideas of things to use them in.  Be it dessert, appetizers, breakfast, lunch or dinner, there are recipes for everything.

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Quinoa Bites

Crispy Quinoa Bites

The whole blogging world seems obsessed with quinoa right now.  There are so many different salads, cakes, and side dishes out there.  Lots of people even eat it for breakfast, kind of like oatmeal.  I have been experimenting with different salads and versions trying to find more ways to incorporate it into our diets as well.  It is so good for you, and so versatile, you can’t help but want to eat it!  I have had doing a “cake” on my list for awhile, so when I saw this recipe, I knew it was time.

I made this for lunch a couple weeks ago.  It was the perfect light lunch in my opinion. I used regular muffins tins, but you could use a mini muffin tin and serve it as an appetizer.  My husband suggested putting in some Italian sausage next time.  I was actually going to try that last week, but with my parents here it just didn’t happen.  The flavors would go really well together, and it would make for a great dinner option. I plan on making it very soon.

It may come as no surprise, but my 7 year old wouldn’t get even close to this.  We did force him to try one bite, but he wasn’t a fan.  I didn’t expect him to be, but had to give it a shot.  Now, when I do the sausage version I will be giving it to him as his meal, and hoping the sausage is enough to make him eat it :)

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Red Onion Salsa

Red Onion Salsa

This post is up late today!  That is what you get when you have visitors and lots of fun over the weekend.  We went up into the mountains both days, enjoyed the gorgeous scenery, and beautiful weather.  After dropping my family off at the airport last night, we made our way back to Fort Collins, and I was just too tired to do much of anything.  I was supposed to have a fun post for you today, but it hasn’t been officially approved yet, hopefully later this week!

I do have a Giveaway going on, you don’t want to miss!

Tomorrow is the first day of school for my 2nd grader.  Today we need to go grocery shopping (need stuff for school lunches again), label his school supplies, meet the teacher, and try to do something fun for this last day of summer break!  A lot to cram into one little day, good thing we all slept in today :)

This salsa is one we have been making for years!  When we first got married  almost 11 years ago, we started planting a garden.  Salsa was the one thing we wanted to get out of our garden, so lots of tomatoes and peppers were planted.  This is one of the first recipes we tried, and have been making it since.  It is always a hit with friends and at get-togethers.  I made this before my parents got here, and when we had it with dinner even my mom remembered having this salsa many times before.

Unfortunately, I do not know the source of this recipe.  I have it handwritten on a recipe card, with no reference to where we found it.

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Avocado Bruschetta

Avocado Bruschetta
I could pretty much live on avocados.  I eat them on or in just about anything.  So the other day when we were trying to think of a light dinner and my husband suggested Bruschetta, I knew exactly what I was going to do.  We had lots of tomatoes from the garden that needed to get used, so I made a traditional version as well.  But I had to turn the avocado that was ripe into something as well.

My husband requested that I make homemade bread for this, so I did.  Any French or Italian loaf from the store would work equally well.  There is just something about the smell of bread baking in your house that can’t be beat.  After we were done eating my husband said he would have actually paid money at a restaurant for this meal.  Considering it was entirely vegetarian that is HUGE praise coming from him.  There are still a few tomatoes on my plants, so I am hoping to make the traditional version again, and actually take pictures before we eat it all :)

I enjoyed this with a glass of wine, and it was the perfect end to the day.  We tried to get our 7 year old to eat it, but he was not a fan.  He did prefer the avocado version to the tomato version, but  still wouldn’t take more than the one bite we made him have.   The only thing that could have made this better would be patio furniture.  This meal seems perfect for sitting outside, and enjoying the weather.

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