Next week is my final week of tech support training. We'll finally be out of the classroom! Very, very exciting! To celebrate, we're having a potluck. This, of course, means I get to experiment with some new dishes. I decided to use this weekend to test a few recipes I found online to see how well I like them and help me decide which, if any, I'll be remaking for the potluck. I chose two recipes: candy bar apple salad and mini taco meatballs. Candy bar apple salad is a dessert salad with chopped up apples and Snickers bars in it. Mini taco meatballs are basically exactly like regular meatballs but with taco seasoning baked into them.
First I chopped some Braeburn apples. This is the longest step involved in any of the recipes I tried today. Took forever. The recipe didn't specify a type of apple, so after reading all the descriptions of the types offered at my local grocer - and basically giving up on understanding the difference between any of them - I just chose Braeburn at random. I think it was all about the two-tone for me, actually. I just like how they look. Normally, I prefer green apples, but these two-toned apples won me over.
Then I chopped some Snickers bars - regular and almond varieties. The almond variety of Snickers are slightly more difficult to chop up than the normal variety. Side note: there's something terribly gratifying about chopping things to little bits with a butcher knife. Speaking of which, I couldn't stop the theme song from Dexter from playing in a continuous loop while I was chop-chop-chopping along. Fun times.
With all my chopping complete, I mixed up the vanilla pudding and let it set for a couple minutes. Then I threw it all together in a bowl with some whipped topping. Very easy stuff. This is the result. It was much better after being refrigerated for a few hours. When I made it, everything was room temperature except for the whipped topping having just purchased everything at the grocer and whipping it together immediately upon arriving back at home. Everything being the same temperature and being chilled really made the difference in the flavor. I will absolutely be making this for the potluck at work, with a minor change. I think using either chocolate or chocolate fudge pudding will make a serious difference. The vanilla pudding is kind of blah. It was very blah when I first made it, but it got a little better after some time in the refrigerator. Colder is better. This recipe yields a lot more than I anticipated. Luckily, it's quite good, so it's not even a problem. Except maybe calorie wise.
These are mini taco meatballs prepared and ready to go into the oven. This recipe actually took a lot less time than the other. For this recipe I just had to mash all the ingredients (beef, salt, pepper, eggs, taco seasoning) together in a bowl and roll out the meatballs. Even with cook time, it still took a lot less time to make the meatballs than the salad. It's all about that chopping. On an unrelated note, look at how tiny and sad that mini taco meatball in the exact middle is. I guess this means the recipe is really only meant to yield about 30 tiny taco meatballs, but I managed about 30.3 of them.
While I was at the grocer, there was a woman there offering samples of a new buffalo ranch dressing. I definitely got some of that. Two bottles, actually. I also found some chipotle and spicy ranchero sauces. The mini taco meatballs alone are like a tiny taco flavored party in your mouth, but with these accompanying dipping sauces and some tortilla chips... ¡Muy delicioso! This recipe does require a great deal of meat to produce a decent number of meatballs, so I doubt I'll be making these for the potluck.
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