MoFo: Snacktime!

Last week, I had a few friends over for a Harry Potter marathon to get us ready to go see the new one in IMAX. We only made it through 4 movies, but only because we devoted so much time to cooking tasty treats! We wanted snack food, but wanted to keep it semi-healthy, so we decided on minestrone soup, jalapeno poppers that we baked rather than fried, and pigs in a blanket. We didn't use recipes for anything, but I'll explain the basics.

For the soup, we started with a mirepoix of onions, celery, and carrots with potatoes and minced garlic. After those softened, we added four cups of water and a couple couillion cubes. We used one Edward and Sons Not-Beef cupe and one Rapunzel Sea Salt and Herb cube. Then we added a can of fire-roasted tomatoes and a bunch of seasonings (from the Penzy's trip I talked about earlier!) and let everything simmer for about 45 minutes while we made the rest of our snacks. A few minutes before we were ready to eat the soup, we added some mini pasta shells we had boiled earlier and some chopped zucchini. It actually ended up being super (soup-er! ha!) delicious! We probably should have added more water, because it was more a stew than a soup, and we also all wished we had thrown some cabbage in, but all-in-all extremely satisfying.                                                             For the jalapeno poppers, we made a filling out of Tofutti cream cheese, minced onions and garlic, salt, and chili powder. We cut one of the walls of each pepper completely off, stuffed the pepper, and "glued" the panel back on with the filling. We then dipped each pepper in a rice milk/flour/nooch combo before coating it in a panko/nooch/salt/pepper mixture. We baked them at about 375 degrees until they were golden brown and the pepper was softened. We were pretty happy with these, especially considering they were baked instead of fried. Next time we would blanch the peppers for a few minutes first. They would probably be a little trickier to stuff once blanched, but it would shorten the cooking time.

Stuffed.

Coated pre-oven.

About to be in my belly.

The pigs in a blanket were so easy there's not really instructions, just ingredients. We got a package of Apple Sage and a package of Chipotle sausages from Field Roast. We found some crescent rolls that are vegan. Ours were just some cheap store brand with the same ingredients as Pillsbury Original Crescent Rolls which are also vegan. Rolled out the dough, wrapped a piece of dough around 1/3 of a sausage, baked according to the temp and time on the dough package, wham-bam done. Oh I lied. We also fried the sausages for a couple minutes before wrapping them in dough just to get them all browned and crispy. So good and so easy. Next time we are making the ultimate snack and stuffing a jalapeno with sausage and cheese then wrapping the whole thing in dough. NOM. 

***These awesome snacks were brought to you by Harry Potter, mimosas, and organic wine in a box.