Fresh Food Friday - This Time, With Black Eyed Peas!

This week, we're plugging on through Trisha Yearwood's "Georgia Cooking in a Oklahoma Kitchen", with her Black Eyed Pea Dip. I can't legally print the recipe for you here, but I can't actually find it online either, so we're gonna talk about it. All abstract like.

The police line up:

I jiggered with the quantities a little bit, and in at least one case, the ingredients. The recipe called pickled jalapeno, but knowing that I intended to third the recipe, I didn't want to fuss with procuring pickled jalapeno just to use one, so I went fresh.

The gist is, as the gist typically is...mix together. And at this point, I couldn't help but think that if you just stopped right here, you'd have a great chance at selling black eyed peas to your picky eaters who might not otherwise try them. Cheese. Cheese!

Once you've got the mixture otherwise together, add butter (which I'll spare you pictures of, cause that is not cute). And then for serving, the recipe notes say that she'll commonly serve this like during football parties and that sort of thing, so she'll often just put it in a crock pot, and leave it out with some chips. Or, simplified; heat and eat.

Which I did:

It doesn't come out quite so yellow, the lights in my kitchen are really warm, I guess. :)

I honestly can't make up my mind what I think about this dip! I think I liked it better as a little cold salad! Warm...it's like you lose all the flavors a little bit. It just becomes a buttery, cheesey...thing. Cold, all the ingredients retain their own flavor, and it felt kind of bright and summery. 

I think, if I were to make this again, it'd probably get made as a black eyed pea side dish - I do believe this is a crafty way to sell black eyed peas to people who might not otherwise try them, but if I had to pick one of those special, "I'm only making this cause it's your birthday" type of recipes...this wouldn't be it.

So I don't love it, I don't hate it. It just is what it is. Black eyed peas and cheese.

Like these recipe walk throughs? Me too! I've done more - like this one!

So...Not Quite, Pinterest...

I'm always perusing Pinterest, looking at all those seemingly perfect outfits, and spotless kitchens that were achieved in five minutes a day with nothing more than baking soda and a toothbrush, and I decided to snag one, and try it out.

Several Christmases ago, I was given a set of sheet pans from my aunt. They've been very well loved, and I'd always thought well taken care of. Regardless, they now look like this guy:

Well loved, right? Kind of depressing to look at too, right?

Enter Pinterest, with posts like this one, promising that these guys;

can have your pans looking like new in no time. It's almost too good to be true, isn't it? Let's find out!

Instructions say start with the baking soda, and add the hydrogen peroxide until you get a paste. Simple enough:

Catching the droplets made me feel kind of artistic. ;)

Apply to the pan, Scrub. The blog I linked above makes it sound like it's no big thing, done and over in a couple of minutes. I scrubbed until the baking soda paste started to turn brown, and then let it sit for a full 10 minutes, and got this;

So that's...better? It's hardly the miracle cure Pinterest would let you believe though. It upgraded me from "really well loved" pan to "pretty well loved" pan. Not that it took a ton of effort or anything, but this one wasn't worth the hype, I don't think.

Aah, well. Maybe next time, Pinterest!

Later, lovelies!

Like reading about Pinterest? Me too! Check out another Pinterest tip I've tested, here!

You can find this post here too!