SueLues Food

As a dessert for the Zion National Park Thanksgiving weekend, I decided to try making chocolate bark. My friend Rachael told me good things about this recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/french-chocolate-bark-recipe/index.html

So I tried it. It was super easy, and the result was certainly delicious, but I would have to say the cashews and apricots were not that exciting. I prefer a much tarter california apricot, but those are actually hard to find. The more common turkish apricot are too sweet and tasteless for me. My camp-mates were not huge fans, they had some, but it wasn’t as amazing as I was hoping. Also, it only lasted about a week, even refrigerated, probably would have lasted longer frozen.  

For this year’s annual Halloween party, I wanted to keep it fairly easy, unlike last year where I tried to make homemade candy, and my sea salt caramel ended up as a caramel apple dip because it was like glue on the wax paper.  Anyways, I chose to do cheese balls shaped like mummies, the spider web seven layer dip, and the now famous meathead. All three of these recipes I got from here: http://www.divinedinnerparty.com/halloween-party-appetizers.html. They have a lot of other fun Halloween themed recipes to try.  The cheese balls were ok, but the recipe made like 4 times as much cheese as needed for a party of my size, so a lot went to waste.  Seven layer dip is pretty much standard party fare.   But the meathead…that became this year’s piece de resistance!

It turned out to be very easy. I bought a skull from the local Halloween store, washed it, covered it with cling wrap, actually, press & seal wrap worked the best, with a little tape. Then, spread cream cheese all over the skull, leaving the teeth visible. Then, take delicious salami’s, prosciutto, and other cured meats and wrap them over the cream cheese. I thought I might need toothpicks, but actually it stuck perfectly. The eye’s are small mozzarella balls with a sliced green olive with pimento on top (this did need a toothpick).

Everyone loved it!  So much so that folks didn’t want to peel off and eat the meat. One friend even was uncomfortable being in the same room with it he looked so real.

So, next year, we might have a little competition to see who brings in the best head shaped appetizer.  I am already imagining some pretty interesting concoctions!