Food tricks

Now that I live at home again, my parents do this thing where they find something they like and they want it every time I cook for them..... We've had the  Beef and Broccoli Stir-Fry  I posted in January on a weekly basis. With that in mind--and acknowledging the fact that I have been coaching more and doing my grad school interviews--I haven't had the time to try many new recipes, BUT I found this one.  I tried it last month when I had to whip something up to impress the new boyfriend.  It was really easy, and cooking the noodles in the garlic and broth added a lot of flavor.  A friend from college once told me, after his time in Italy, that over there they season the water before they cook pasta.  After making this, I can totally understand why. As far as reviews:  the boyfriend said that even though he wasn't USUALLY a huge white sauce fan, he really liked this.  He might have been trying to impress me right back, but I really liked it.  I...

Though my third-annual Super Bowl Dip-Off changed locations this year, I would say that it was pretty successful.  Thank you to all the friends and family who participated!  Especially my parents, who are incapable of taking a challenge lightly (no wonder where I get my competitiveness from), and made three dishes each. I mean, it is sort of cheating making so many..... but I think everyone agreed my mom's Easy Feta Dip was definitely the winner, so I guess we can overlook the multiple submissions. Super Easy Feta Dip Recipe from:  The Girl Who Ate Everything Ingredients: About 1/3 cup olive oil 3 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced 3-5 green onions, thinly sliced 8 oz. feta cheese, crumbled 2-3 tsp Cavendar's Greek Seasoning Fresh baguette, thinly sliced Directions: In a medium bowl, combine olive oil, tomatoes, green onions, feta, and Greek seasoning.  Stir to combine. Serve with thinly sliced baguette. Optional: Brush baguette slices with olive oil, lay out on a cooki...

When I was a kid, my mom would make huge batches of enchiladas so we would have some in the freezer.  She would boil a huge pot of chicken and then we would all sit around a big bowl shredding it for hours. Well... at least it felt like hours... I wish we had known about this little trick back then. I made some  BBQ Chicken Dip  for the Super Bowl Dip-off, and after cooking the chicken, I just threw it into the mixer with the pastry attachment on low and in about a minute had perfectly shredded chicken.

The annual Super Bowl Dip-Off was a success--though my parents might have taken the challenge a little too literally... They each made three dishes each, and in usual Phillips' style we had WAYY too much food.  But I guess that is the point of the Super Bowl. ;) Though there were a lot of dip submissions, I am selfishly going to post what I think was the best item of the day (even though it wasn't a dip)... I've been seeing this on Pinterest, and I guess I should have tried to make the brownies from scratch to really complete the recipe, but I cheated and used a box of brownie mix.  If you want to be adventurous, the entire recipe (including brownies) was posted by  Your Cup of Cake , a super cute blog with wayy better pictures than mine. Anyways, here is the recipe for the cookie dough icing.  It is eggless, so it is edible, and though I am usually not a fan of eggless cookie dough, this recipe tastes pretty close to the real thing.  I even got a call from my f...