Party time

I like old-fashioned homemade cheese straws. Discovered spinach balls a while back too. (Recipes below straight from the WWW, I'm reasonably sure they came from allrecipes.com)

Cheese Straws

INGREDIENTS:

* 1 (8 ounce) package shredded Cheddar cheese
* 1/2 cup butter, softened
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C).
2. In a mixing bowl, combine the cheese and butter. Blend in the flour and salt. Form the mixture into 6 balls. Roll the balls into slender "snakes." Cut each "snake" into 4 straws. Bake the straws for about 8 minutes, or until golden brown.

Spinach Balls

* 2 (10 ounce) packages frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
* 2 cups Italian-style seasoned bread crumbs
* 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
* 1/2 cup butter, melted
* 4 small green onion, finely chopped
* 4 eggs, lightly beaten
* salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, mix the frozen chopped spinach, Italian-style seasoned bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, butter, green onion, eggs, salt and pepper. Shape the mixture into 1 inch balls.
3. Arrange the balls in a single layer on a large baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven 10 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned.

I always like artichoke and spinach dip. It can be rich but it always gets eaten.

I like to make my own salsa and serve it with thick, golden tortillas.

Vermont Girl's Salsa
* 5 plum tomatoes
* 2 ripe avacadoes
* Half of large red onion
* 3-5 large cloves garlic
* 3 jalapenos
* cilantro (half bunch)
* juice from one lime
* salt, pepper to taste

Dice everything up really fine, mix together.

It's super easy; chopping everything up small and uniform is the only time-consuming part. I like to get avacadoes that are just soft, so that when you mix it all together, the avacado breaks down a little and makes the salsa thicker. And if there are leftovers, it's great over grilled chicken.

Hey, there's something at allrecipes for cocktail party ideas... Lots of drink ideas and I like the idea of using whole small kumquats (skewered on a pretty toothpick) in a tart drink! Like an olive, only cooler!

This was surprisingly good:

Soften an 8 oz. block of cream cheese.
Pour most of a bottle of Pickapeppa Sauce over it.
Serve with little toast rounds, wheat thins, triscuits, something strong enough not to crumble going through cream cheese.

That's like this hot pepper jelly I've gotten in the past and mixed with cream cheese. Check out these Vermont made jellies.

They say to spread over a brick of cream cheese and serve w/crackers. I actually mixed the two together and wasn't happy with the way it looked (kind of... salmon-y in color). Maybe don't mix the two together?

Yeah, I was wondering about that. I could see sort of whipping the cream cheese up a bit and mounding in a bowl with the sauce poured or spread over the top. Then dragging a toast through would pick up a bit of both.

I like to mix cream cheese with Indian hot lime pickle, which looks really disgusting (but tastes good). This two-layer approach might be more acceptable for public consumption.

I still think about this party snack that I had about 10 years ago was green olives encased in this doughy-cheese crust, like it was covered in cheez-its or something. Mmm.

n/a, thanks for reminding me of olive/cheese/garlic bread, which is basically a baguette halved and spread with garlic butter, topped with chopped green olives and then mozzarella cheese, baked until the cheese melts.

I wonder if Rabin the Cat's cheese straws could be wrapped around olives.....

chorizo, very lightly fried so it just softens, not much browning of it at all though, and the pan de-glazed with dry sherry. in a bowl, with maybe a couple hunks of bread on the side