Spinach Dip Recipe

by Nichole Roberts

Ingredients: 8 ounces cream cheese, cut in cubes 1/4 cup whipping cream 1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry, 2 tablespoons chopped pimento, 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, 1/4 teaspoon garlic salt, 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese, 2 teaspoons grated onion, 1/4 teaspoon dried leaf thyme, crumbled

Preparation: Combine cream cheese and cream in slow cooker. Cover and cook on LOW until cheese is melted, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Add remaining ingredients; cover and cook on LOW for about 45 minutes longer. Serve with raw vegetables, crackers, or crusty bread cubes.

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How to Make a Sparkling Mead the Easy Way

by Will Kalif

A Sparkling wine is a wonderful variation of your typical wines and, in particular, is a great treat for the holidays. Mead, being a wine, can also be made in the sparkling variety with very little extra effort. Here is a tutorial on how to make sparkling mead the easy way.

Sparkling mead is identical to any other type of sparkling wine in that it is a wine that has continued its fermentation process right inside the bottle. This extra fermentation causes a large amount of gases to be built up right inside the liquid. And it is this extra gas that causes a champagne bottle to pop when opened and causes the wonderful flow of tiny bubbles.

There are many different ways to make sparkling mead just as there are many different ways to make a sparkling wine. And some of these ways can get quite complicated with specific guidelines and restraints as far as yeasts used, times of ferment, temperature of storage and rotation of bottles as they mature. The way I outline here in this article is just about the easiest no fuss way to make up a five-gallon batch. You will be able to bottle up your mead and set it aside until ready to drink.

Make your five-gallon batch of mead the way you normally would and at the bottling step instead of putting it right into the bottles mix two-thirds of a cup of honey into the five gallon carboy. Stir it up gently and once homogenous you then bottle it. That is the whole extra process when it comes to making it sparkle. This extra honey will cause a secondary ferment in the bottles and when you open one it will pop and bubble just like your typical champagne.

This addition of a small amount of honey is the only process change you need to make for your mead but there are a couple of definite changes you really need to make when it comes to safety considerations. The secondary ferment inside the bottles will cause quite a large amount of pressure buildup so you absolutely should not use regular bottles and corks for the brew. You need to get champagne bottles, champagne corks, and wire hoods. The bottles are thicker and stronger, the corks are more reliable, and the wire hoods are an added safety feature. If you use normal wine equipment for bottling you run the very real risk of having the corks pop or even the bottles explode. This is dangerous and at the least can cause quite a mess. So I recommend very highly you spend the extra few dollars. The end product will be well worth it.

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Learn more about the ancient drink of Mead and how to make it the easy way at the author's website: The Joy of Mead

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Easy Recipe - Strawberry Pie

by Jill Seader

Since spring is finally here, sort of (it snowed here in Denver on Easter day, sigh), I thought I would share one of my favorite strawberry recipes with you. It is a pretty easy recipe that does not even require any baking. Start to finish, it takes about 20 minutes. As I do at my baking site, I am going to share with you here the story behind the recipe.

Cream Cheese Strawberry Pie

Strawberries are my favorite fruit. I always have them around when they come into season in the spring. It always brings back memories of going to pick berries with my family in the summer. We would all pile in the car with buckets and ice cream pails, eager to taste fresh summer berries. We would go to one of the nearby berry farms that had acres and acres of berries. I remember it seemed so huge to me as a kid and I could not believe how many rows upon rows upon rows there were. All of us kids of course ended up eating just as many berries as we picked. There is nothing that has quite as much flavor as a strawberry fresh from the field, warm with sunshine. Makes me want to go hunt down a local berry farm so I can share that memory with my daughter!

1 package (8 ounces) strawberry flavored cream cheese

1 package (3.4 ounces) vanilla flavored pudding

2 cups cold milk

1 (6 ounce) ready-to-use graham cracker pie crust

1 pint of strawberries

Prepare the vanilla pudding according to the package directions. (Put the pudding mix and the milk into a bowl and whisk together for 2 minutes.) Allow it to set for 5 minutes. I usually use this time to start washing and cutting the strawberries. I typically just cut them in half for this recipe. Once the pudding has set, place the cream cheese in a medium sized bowl and mix with an electric mixer for 30 seconds at low speed. Add the pudding to the cream cheese and mix for about one minute on low speed. Put the mixture into the pie crust and put it in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. Continue washing and cutting the strawberries while the pie is in the refrigerator. Place the strawberries on top of the pie. Store any leftovers in the refrigerator.

Enjoy your spring (and your berry picking adventures)!

Happy Baking!

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With a passion for baking and anything sweet, Jill Seader enjoys sharing her baking recipes and stories at her website: www.YourBakingStory.com She also invites you to share your own stories and recipes on her site. Happy Baking!

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